Instructor
Melissa Ooten, Ph.D., Asst. Director, WILL Program
Academic Year(s) Offered
2009 - 2010, 2010 - 2011
Overview
The history of the South is a conundrum to many. The South has been the site of some of the nation’s worst injustices and some of its most inspiring strides toward equality during the last century. Today, the South is experiencing unprecedented growth, and with continued immigration, its racial and ethnic makeup has changed substantially in recent years. Yet there’s still something troubling about inequality in the South. Three of the five states with the highest high school drop out rates are in the South. The AIDS epidemic disproportionately affects Southerners, especially African Americans. And obesity rates in the South literally outweigh those of any other section of the country. The South has come far by many standards in addressing issues of equality, but it still has a long journey ahead. This course will examine the successes and setbacks of these struggles for equality in the South since Reconstruction.
This course will examine various activism movements in the U.S. South since Reconstruction. Although some of these movements were national or even international in scope, we will focus on how these movements played out in the South. Some of the movements we will examine include: anti-lynching campaigns in the early twentieth century, women’s suffrage, Appalachian labor movements, the Civil Rights movement, student movements of the late 1960s and 1970s, and the “war on poverty” in the 1970s. The Civil Rights movement, potentially the most significant social and political movement of the twentieth century, will hold a prominent place in our studies. In our final weeks of class, we will study more contemporary activism, including the environmental justice movement, immigration, activism around AIDS prevention, and prison reform.
In the spring, we will spend a week touring the South and meeting with current and past activists of these social movements. We will study historic sites that commemorate the history of Civil Rights, such as the National Civil Rights Museum in Memphis and the Martin Luther King Jr National Historic Site in Atlanta. We will visit sites of present-day activism, such as the Highlander Center in the mountains of East Tennessee which addresses issues of immigration, poverty and environmental justice in the South; the Southern Poverty Law Center which works to bankrupt hate groups, including the Klan, through legal action; and communities in New Orleans still working to rebuild years after the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. Along the way, we will eat at some of the South’s most famous restaurants and enjoy culturally important sites such as the Rock’N’Soul Museum in Memphis and the Delta Blues Museum in the Mississippi Delta.
Related Information
In May Term of 2008 Dr. Ooten led a group of students to southern sites famous in the civil rights struggles of the 1960’s. This 19-day trip was a field course in American history and was the pilot for the SSIR course described above. The two articles below describe that trip and the reactions of the students who participated.
