Course Description:

On 1 June 2021, President Biden commemorated the centennial anniversary of the Tulsa Massacre in which white Americans killed Black Tulsans with impunity as they burned the Black Greenwood neighborhood to the ground. While many Americans expressed surprise and horror when they learned of the massacre for the first time over the last year, white supremacist violence erupted repeatedly from Memphis, New Orleans, New York, Los Angeles and Wilmington in the nineteenth century to Chicago, Washington D.C., Atlanta, and Greensboro in the twentieth, targeting nonwhite others from across the racial spectrum. And although they seemed sporadic bursts racist violence, these massacres occurred without exception alongside political movements to limit the rights of marginalized groups to benefit a white majority. This course examines this process of backlash, encompassing both vigilantism and public policy, as a central feature of the American state.