Morehouse College - Fall 2018
Morehouse College, Dr. Samuel Livingston: Africana Social Justice: The Case for Reparations
Course description: The course, Africana Social Justice: The Case for Reparations explored historical, cultural, political, economic dynamics and contexts surrounding the quest for reparatory justice since enslavement in African American and Anglo-Caribbean contexts. Students compared these historic struggles for reparations using an African-centered historical approach augmented by attention to intersectional identity, ethics, and social contracts. Over the duration of the course, students expanded their understanding of questions that enliven historic and current reparations movements by interacting with activists and scholars in the field.
Assignment description: Creating a Story Map (digital mapping) project, students examined and documented African diasporic life-chances and activist responses to oppression. For the final summative assignment students created policy analysis papers in one of the areas suggested by Michigan Congressman John Conyers’ H.R. 40 (115th Congress). They recommended avenues for the redress of grievances (e.g., World Court, the Organization of American’s Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), United Nations, etc.). Through an analysis of primary sources, statistical data, and interdisciplinary sources, the course examined Black agency within the historically evolving social contracts of the United States of America and the CARICOM member states. The Story Maps linked below represent each student's personal scholar-activist interests as they intersect with the question of Reparations for the descendants of enslaved Africans of the Diaspora.