The Department of History is pleased to announce that Dr. Jackson will be offering a new course in the fall: HIST 3910, “Slave Resistance, Fugitivity and the Underground Railroad.”

The course counts as an elective in the History major and minor, it is cross-listed with Ethnic Studies 3000, and fulfills the upper-division requirement of the Multidisciplinary Core of the College of Arts and Sciences. It will meet on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays 11:30-12:20.

From Dr. Jackson:

There are only a few well known instances of slave rebellion in the United States, and only one successful revolution in the Americas, a fact that slave owners often used to assert that enslaved people were happy with their bondage. But as Harriet Tubman allegedly said, “There were two things I had a right to, liberty or death; if I could not have one, I would have the other.” Enslaved people constantly resisted the dehumanization of their enslavement in any way they could, even if it cost them their lives. This course looks at the history of slavery through the eyes of people who refused to let the institution of slavery rob them of the large and small freedoms all humans crave. We will consider slave narratives, rebellions and representations of slave resistance in popular culture (films, novels, television). The course will also investigate the important role that Ohio, especially northwest Ohio, and Michigan, in particular Detroit, played in the history of the Underground Railroad and free Black communities.