The American Crucible: Slavery, Emancipation, and Human Rights

Beginning with the history of slavery and the Atlantic slave trade, this course explores slavery, freedom, and the struggle for human rights in America through the Civil War. We examine slavery in the colonies, the revolutionary challenge of Haiti, the growth of the domestic slave trade, and the lives of Black Americans—enslaved and free—who built families, churches, communities, and movements for freedom. Through figures such as Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman, as well as lesser-known voices, we trace abolition, resistance, westward migration, and the political struggle over slavery that culminated in Civil War and emancipation. Throughout, we ask how Black Americans helped transform the meaning of America's unfinished promise of freedom. This course uses the Hybrid format which allows students to participate remotely and/or in the classroom.