Meeman Life-Long Learning Center — Fall 2017 Classes

THE BATTLE FOR THE SOUL OF AMERICA: RACE & VIOLENCE IN THE UNITED STATES
Dr. Anthony C. Siracusa

This six-week course explores the relationship between race and violence in the United States in the decades between the end of Reconstruction and the present. Of particular importance is understanding how and why lynching arose as a tragically common phenomenon across the United States between 1877 and 1945. The Equal Justice Initiative (EJI) has estimated that at least 4,000 African Americans were lynched in this period. This course will examine the writings of black leaders who spoke out against this violence in the 19th and 20th centuries – W.E.B. DuBois, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, and Rayford Logan – alongside scholarly studies of this white violence and discuss the impact of lynching on the development of American life in the 20th century. We will also examine the writings of black Americans who have spoken out against the continuation of white violence in the 21st century – Ta-Nehesi Coates, James Cone, and Bryan Stevenson – and explore the troubling continuities between past and present.

Anthony Siracusa, PhD, Vanderbilt University
Five Thursdays: August 31; September 7, 14, 21, & 28
Class will meet in King Hall | 5:30-7:30 p.m.
Tuition: $180 | 1 CEU

https://www.rhodes.edu/content/meeman-fall-2017-courses