Social Protest Literature, Spring 2001 -- Mr Furr

Homework Page

I will post all writing assignments on this page.. You should create a 'bookmark' of your own to this page, so you can go to it without having to first go to the Home Page for the course.

NOTE: BE SURE TO USE THE PROPER SUBJECT LINE ON ALL HW ASSIGNMENTS! SEE BOTTOM OF HOME PAGE FOR EXAMPLE!

Be sure to "send a copy to yourself" of ALL your homework assignments!

NOTE: See note on Home Page at top about World of Odysseus. Very important!

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS

For Friday, January 19
- send me two emails, from different email servers. See the full instructions on the Internet page.
- See the list of free web-based email providers at the bottom of our Home Page.
- Make sure that the Subject line of the email messages conforms to the model at the bottom of our Home Page.
Read "Jesus and the Jewish Resistance". Think about what this has to do with the course. We'll have a discussion in class.
Look at at least one of the following:
- Maccoby, "The Problem of Paul" (also linked from the page above);
- Earl Dogherty, "The Jesus Puzzle".
- The Journal of Higher Criticism.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS on Fast, The Proud and the Free:

Important Web Resources on The Proud and the Free:

Toward an American Revolution: Exposing the Constitution and other Illusions, by Jerry Fresia (Boston, 1988).
This work contains a pretty good class analysis of the origins and formation of the United States Constitution, revealing that document's bias in favor of the wealthy and privileged, and something of the background of how the elite maneuvered to take control of the American Revolution and turn it against the democratic aspirations of the majority.
Gouverneur Morris' Letter to Thomas Penn, May 20 1774. The young aristocrat Gouverneur Morris writes about the dangers of the common people -- "the reptiles" -- waking up, taking over the Revolution, and replacing Aristocracy with real Democracy, and concludes that the only hope for the rich is to remain under British rule.
Howard Fast, "Reply to Critics," 1950. In this essay Fast discusses his historical research and evidence, and refutes critics who accused him of "treasonable distortion of history." An important piece. It is reproduced from Masses & Mainstream, the literary and cultural journal of the Communist Party USA, which Fast was very active in for many years.
Howard Fast Home Page, by Steve Trussel. A great resource, full of information about Fast, his fascinating career as politically-committed author Communist Party activist.
Fast's Introduction to the collection "The Call of Fife and Drum," which includes The Proud and the Free, and which just went out of print.
"The Constitution - A Democratic Document?" or, America's Permanent Class War. Many interesting quotations illustrating "the Underside of History" -- history that is suppressed. Please read the quotation from Amos Singletary, and the others from the Revolutionary period.
Charles A. Beard was a famous American historian (at Columbia University) in the first half of this century. His book, The Economic Interpretation of the Constitution, first published in 1913 and still in print, is the most famous argument that the "Founding Fathers" were the elite, fashioning the Revolution in their own interest. Here is an essay in which he argues his case in briefer fashion, put on the web by an historian at Ohio State.
"Shays's Rebellion" took place in Western Massachusetts in 1786-87, led by former Revolutionary soldiers who finally realized that they were being robbed of the benefits of the revolution by the elite of the new nation. Here is one page devoted to this rebellion.
- (NOTE: There are several other pages about Shays's Rebellion. He has become somewhat of a hero of the right-wing "militia" movement, who imagine that he was for "States' Rights." He was not. Shays's rebellion is far closer in motivation to the Rebellion of the Pennsylvania Line, described in Fast's novel, than to the Militia movement, who are funded by elitist corporations.
The Proud and the Free deals with the early opposition to slavery.
- Here is the electronic test of The Journal of John Woolman, an 18th century Quaker who died shortly before the American Revolution (text from the University of Virginia e-text collection).
- Observations on the slaves and the indented servants, inlisted in the army, and in the navy of the United States is a work of 1777 pondering the contradiction in that many slaves and "indentured servants" who were counted as slaves, like Jamie Stuart of The Proud and the Free, were fighting in the revolutionary army.
The American Revolution a Revolution? The elitist result of the American Revolution, the subject of The Proud and the Free, leads many contemporary historians to deny that the American Revolution was a "real revolution" at all since -- unlike the French, Soviet, and Chinese Communist revolutions, the social order was not changed, and the same class remained in power. This page in The Netherlands follows this discussion among American historians.
Gracchus Babeuf's Declaraion.
A desperately poor intellectual from a peasant family, Babeuf became the most "radical" of the French Revolutionary pamphleteers, in that he insisted upon calling for EQUALITY.
When the more prosperous citizens took control of the French Revolution and turned decisively away from any egalitarian policies, electing to defend property and wealth instead, Babeuf formed a tiny group called the "Conspiracy for Equality." Before the group could do anything except issue its principles, it was discovered and destroyed by the "revolutionary" police. This certainly marks the definitive "hijacking" of the French Revolution by the prosperous upper classes (who called themselves "middle class").

Babeuf -- who took the name "Gracchus" as a nom de plume from the name of the famous Gracchi Brothers who were popular leaders, 'tribunes of the people', in the ancient Roman Republic -- was tried and executed for his belief in equality. At his trial he poured his all into an impassioned plea for equality and attack on all those who would preserve inequality.

Babeuf was known in his day as "the first communist". One of his followers, Filippo Buonarotti, was eventually released from prison and, as an old man in the 1830s, formed a group based upon Babeuf's principles of equality -- communism -- in Paris. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, then young German students in Paris, joined his group.

Therefore, Babeuf's ideas became one of the springs of the modern working-class Communist movement.

For Tuesday, January 23.
In addition, please read Howard Fast, The Proud and the Free, which you'll obtain in Xeroxed form from me (cost = $8).
For Friday, January 26.
For Tuesday, January 30.
For Friday, February 2: Please finish reading The Proud and the Free. No written assignment for today, but the rest of the assignments assume you have read it all. We'll discuss passages in class.
For Tuesday, February 6.
For Friday, February 9.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS on Bontemps, Black Thunder:

Important Web Resources on Bontemps, Black Thunder:

H-SHEAR (Mailing list on Social History of the Early American Republic - S.H.E.A.R.) review by Prof. Seth Rockman, U. California/Davis, of James Sidbury. Ploughshares into Swords: Race, Rebellion, and Identity in Gabriel's Virginia, 1730-1810.
Rothman's review also briefly discusses Douglas Egerton's 1993 book on the Gabriel Prosser rebellion, Gabriel's Rebellion (Chapel Hill, 1993).

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS on Fast, Freedom Road:

For Tuesday, February 27: do a paper on Freedom Road, according to the Guidelines, also linked on our Home Page.
For Friday, March 2. NOTE: This assignment is on Labor's Untold Story, which you have to buy at the MSU Bookstore

NOTE: Spring Break runs from March 5 to March 11. I have put up the first two HW assignments for the week after the Break in case any of you wants to get a head start on your work.
For Tuesday, March 13.
For Friday, March 16.
For Tuesday, March 20.
For Friday, March 23: Read ALL the documents hyperlinked in the HW assignment for Tuesday, March 20. Bring them ALL to class, for a thorough discussion. No written assignment, but I expect you to be able to discuss them all.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS on Reed, Ten Days That Shook The World

NOTE: Almost any library will have a copy of this book. In addition, you can read or download the text for free from Project Bartleby, at Columbia University. In this edition, the paragraphs in each chapter are numbered, so we can find a specific passage easily. I will use this system in assigning passages, rather than page numbers, since there are many editions of this book with differing pagination.

(If you prefer, you may download the complete text of this book as a .txt (Text) file from this page , at any one of the servers listed. Choose .txt for the text file. The .zip, or ZIPped (compressed) file is smaller, but you will have to use an UNzip program to unzip it. If you don't know how to do this, get someone to show you, or download the .txt file. You can then either print it out or read it on your computer, laptop, ebook, PDA, etc.)

Tuesday, March 27: CLASS CANCELLED! (I'm sick).
3/27 HW becomes HW for 3/30.
For Friday, March 30: Write your paper on Ten Days That Shook The World. Refer to the Guidelines for Short Papers, also linked on our Home Page.
For Tuesday, April 3.
For Friday, April 6.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS on Saxton, The Great Midland

For Tuesday, April 10.
For Friday, April 13, do your paper on The Great Midland, following the Guidelines linked on our home page.
NOTE: THIS PAPER IS STILL DUE FRIDAY, APRIL 13, EVEN THOUGH CLASSES AT MSU ARE CANCELLED BECAUSE OF GOOD FRIDAY.
For Friday, April 20.
For Tuesday, April 24.

HOMEWORK ASSIGNMENTS on Salt of the Earth

For Friday, April 27.
For Tuesday, May 1.

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