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The Evolution Of Protest And Social Movements In The National Basketball Association From The Mid-20th Century To The Present Day, Luke Messersmith

Honors Theses

For my thesis, I focus on the National Basketball Association (NBA) and the evolution of how its personnel—players, coaches, refs, owners, etc.—navigated racism, politics, social injustice, platform utilization, and other pressing topics from the mid-1900s to the present day. Monumental players that used their platform in the NBA to inspire change include Bill Russell (1960s), Kareem-Abdul Jabbar (1970s), Craig Hodges (1990s), and LeBron James (2010s). These men and many others risked their images, and in some cases, their NBA careers, in order to protest, march, boycott, and kneel for causes they believed in, such as the civil rights movement and …

Smashing Solidarity: Two New York Strikes At The Start Of The Postwar Wave, Joseph D. Parziale

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

Two strikes in New York at the beginning of the massive 1945-46 strike wave—one by elevator operators in commercial buildings and another by dock workers throughout the Port of New York—can help us better understand a moment when workers exhibited a profound sense of themselves as a class, while their rivals in the shop, the corporate boardroom, and the halls of power fought vigorously to dispel the notion that workers divided by geography, industry, race, nationality, and gender were right to see their fates as intertwined. Historians’ focus on the economic issues at stake in the major strikes of the …

"We The People": Self-Governance And The Evolving Treatment Of Freedom Of Assembly In The United States, Josephine Savaria-Watson

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis looks to ground the importance of a vigorous right to assemble in the history of the United States. I argue that given the events of the last year, the current Supreme Court doctrine that limits assembly and association to expressive purposes is too restrictive and fundamentally misunderstands group rights. Instead, I argue that the Supreme Court must reinvigorate the right to assemble in order to protect democratic governance.

I begin with the history of assembly in the United States in Chapter II, which demonstrates how assemblies have been utilized by minority groups as a means to exercise political …

Wild And Wonderful: How Both A Local And National Newspaper Framed West Virginia Leading Up To The 2016 Election, Emily Grace Martin

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

During the 2016 Presidential election, journalists from all over the country flocked to West Virginia to try to understand the draw to then-candidate Donald Trump. There is a well-documented history of outsiders flooding the state and its surrounding Appalachian states to attempt to make sense of the current political situation, all while operating off of stereotypes and preconceived notions about the people of the Mountain State. This study aims to determine how stereotyping and the concept of framing or othering — when in-groups create out-groups — were used by a local West Virginia paper, as well as a national newspaper …