When the Founding Fathers declared the new United States to be an independent nation in 1776, it was both a weak power and one that had already invaded Canada (and failed).  Almost 150 years later, as World War I came to an end, the United States was widely recognized as a great power that dominated the Western Hemisphere and had influence around the world.  In this course, we will cover this evolution of American power, focusing on economic, cultural, and military factors that made it possible, as well as the people and factors that checked American expansion.
 

Struggling in Freedom's Birthplace: Black Activism and Racism in 20th Century Boston

This course explores Boston’s racial history during the twentieth century. We examine the role that African Americans have played in the making and remaking of the city. We focus on major events and figures in Boston’s civil rights movement and the struggle for racial justice: newspaper editor William Monroe Trotter; activist Melnea Cass; the development of Freedom House; Ruth Batson, Ellen Jackson, and the movement for school desegregation; Bill Russell and the Black Celtics; the segregated Red Sox; the political career of Senator Edward Brooke; white violence and busing in the 1970s; the campaigns of Mel King. We read primary source documents as well as the most recent scholarly monographs.