3. Reconstruction Era, 1865-1911

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About this Lecture

Lecture

In this module, we continue to explore the history of gun control in the United States, looking in this section at the period between the end of the US Civil War in 1865 to the 1911 Sullivan Act. In particular, we think about: (i) the extent to which previously enslaved African-Americans were able to make the most of their freedom following the US Civil War; (ii) the impact of the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments on the nature of gun control laws in the southern United States; (iii) the violence perpetrated against African Americans in this period, and the impact on African American gun ownership; (iv) the different views of African American activists and campaigners including Ida B. Wells, Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois; and (v) the importance of the 1911 Sullivan Act.

Course

In this course, Dr Kevin Yuill (University of Sunderland) explores the history of gun control in the United States from the colonial period to the present day. In the first module, we think about the history of the right to bear arms in English law, and the precise formulation of the Second Amendment: ‘A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed’. After that, we trace the history of gun control in the United States from the early 17th-century to the present day in four key periods – 1619-1857, 1865-1911, 1911-34 and 1945-present.

Lecturer

Dr Kevin Yuill is Associate Professor of American History at the University of Sunderland. His primary interests are in the intellectual history of the United States, particularly race and equality in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, attitudes to suicide and death, and attitudes to the possession of firearms. His recent publications include (as co-author) The Second Amendment and Gun Control: Freedom, Fear, and the American Constitution (2017) and Assisted Suicide: the Liberal, Humanist Case Against Legalization (2013).