Global Societies: From Civil Rights & Anti-Apartheid Movements to Democratic Action

As an instructor at Virginia Commonwealth University in Sociology and the School of World Studies (long-time adjunct of 15 years), each semester I teach "Global Societies:Trends and Issues" (aka "Two Trains Running"), "Zulu Culture and Identity", the "Sociology of Contemplative Practices", and every few years, I teach "Comparative Social Justice". All of my courses center on how it is the people, citizens - who are the ones that build movements to confront racial domination in South Africa and the United States. If accepted to participate in this Institute, I want to redesign my "Global Societies-Trends and Issues" to incorporate contemporary community-based pedagogy focusing on not just contemporary social justice but incorporating spaces for social action. For many students, the civil rights and anti-apartheid movements feel distant, almost mythical, until they realize that these movements were built by students (like themselves), teachers, miners, domestic workers, clergy, etc., often at great risk to themselves. Teaching these histories, I have found that students inevitably ask three questions: how did they do it, what does that work look like now, and what can we do?

The Institute interests me because it offers a way to answer those questions. It provides a structure for linking analysis to democratic practice, allowing students to learn from past movements while experimenting with their own campaigns for more equal and inclusive societies. I grew up during apartheid and witnessed both the brutality of the system and the collective imagination required to dismantle it. That experience shapes how I teach and how I understand democracy as fragile, unfinished, and dependent on the people. The Institute's focus on social action aligns with that perspective and offers a way to redesign Global Societies so that students engage in contemporary democratic work rather than only studying its history.

This course explores the parallel histories of apartheid South Africa and Jim Crow America, focusing on how ordinary people build movements to confront racial domination, claim dignity, and expand democracy. Through memoirs, film, and primary sources, we investigate leadership, tactics, internal movement debates, youth organizing, and the moral and strategic choices that shaped these struggles. We then examine the "post" apartheid and "post"Civil Rights periods to consider what work remains unfinished in each society. The course moves from analysis to action by asking how democratic struggles unfold in the present and how students might contribute to ongoing efforts to build more equal and inclusive worlds.

Ewell Mthethwa

Instructor

Sociology and School Of World Studies

Virginia Commonwealth University