This institute will explore the history of black Americans as they struggled to secure their dignity as human beings, and rights as American citizens, in the face of racial prejudice.

We will examine the diverse viewpoints of leading black intellectuals and activists on human equality, slavery, self-government, the rule of law, emancipation, colonization, and citizenship. Specific documents, issues, and controversies will include the Declaration of Independence, the U.S. Constitution, reconstruction, black codes, Jim Crow laws, and segregation. We will also review laws, constitutional amendments, court cases, and social criticism addressing civil and political rights in America.

Important authors to be examined will include Martin Delany, Frederick Douglass, Booker T. Washington, W.E.B. Du Bois, Marcus Garvey, Martin Luther King, and Malcolm X. We will also read a history of the fight for equal rights in America and related scholarly commentary and fiction. Contemporary issues to be considered will include affirmative action, black reparations, racial profiling, and the "achievement gap" in education.

Faculty: Lucas Morel is Associate Professor of Politics at Washington and Lee University. He is the author of Lincoln's Sacred Effort and has published widely on Lincoln, Frederick Douglass, and slavery. Diana Schaub is Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of Political Science at Loyola College in Maryland. She is the author of Erotic Liberalism: Women and Revolution in Montesquieu's "Persian Letters" and numerous articles in the field of American political thought.

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