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The Catholic Church And The Formation Of Human Rights Doctrine In El Salvador, Edward Mikus Iii

Theses and Dissertations

The Catholic Church’s focus on human rights in the years following the Second Vatican Council led to increased political activity amongst the clergy in socially stratified El Salvador. This development, in turn, led to a breakdown in relations between the Church and the Salvadoran State

"Cracks In The Melting Pot": Native Americans, Military Service And Citizenship, Brittany A. Kelley

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

This paper focuses on Native American military service in Euro-American Wars. It analyzes their reasons for fighting and compares those reasons to the reasons of other racial and ethnic groups. This paper explores how certain racial and ethnic groups are marginalized and “otherized” and how they occasionally attempt to assimilate into mainstream society through military service. Irish Americans and African Americans viewed the Civil War in this way, while Native Americans hoped they would be able to improve their individual situations. Native Americans fought for purposes of assimilation and citizenship in World War I, and while they were technically granted …

No Foreign Despots On Southern Soil: The American Party In Alabama And South Carolina, 1850-1857, Robert N. Farrell

Master's Theses

During the 1850s in the South, the American Party, also known as the Know Nothing Party, rallied southerners culturally and politically around nativism, an anti-immigrant and anti-Catholic ideology. This thesis studies nativism in the Deep South and challenges existing scholarship by Tyler Anbinder and William Darrell Overdyke. Anbinder claims that southern Know Nothings held little in common with their northern counterparts and exhibited only regional characteristics. Overdyke maintains that the American Party in the Deep South participated in the national organization, but he argues that nativism appeared only as an incidental component.

An analysis of private papers, speeches, and newspapers …

Maligned “Milish:” Mississippi Militiamen In The Civil War, Tracy L. Barnett

Master's Theses

Thousands of southern men avoided regular military service in the American Civil War and enlisted or were drafted into state organized militias. In Mississippi, these units were termed Mississippi State Troops or Minute Men. This thesis argues that Mississippi militiamen’s pre-war positions and localized conception of military service directly influenced their wartime experiences. Militiamen, often in their thirties and forties, were older than the average Confederate soldier, established community members, and heads of families who sought service near home. The Mississippi state government, however, visualized militia service as anything but local and developed a centralized militia system that removed men …

They Were Never Silent, You Just Weren't Listening: Buffalo's Black Activists In The Age Of Urban Renewal, Domonique Griffin

Senior Theses and Projects

“They Were Never Silent” will explore the inner workings and impact of both top-down and bottom-up approaches to Urban Renewal for African Americans in the city of Buffalo. For decades, government funded projects that arose in the name of “saving” inner-cities have been guilty of concentrating poverty into centralized areas, directing monies toward downtown development that dislocated families, excessive housing clearance, and modernizing segregation in the form of public housing projects. However, we have yet to fully explore how black community members crafted their own visions of a revitalized city. Many of the most significant bottom-up Urban Renewal developments have …

A Reformers' Union: Land Reform, Labor, And The Evolution Of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860, Sean G. Griffin

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

“A Reformers’ Union: Land Reform, Labor, and the Evolution of Antislavery Politics, 1790–1860” offers a critical revision of the existing literature on both the early labor and antislavery movements by examining the ideologies and organizational approaches that labor reformers and abolitionists used to challenge both the expansion of slavery and the spread of market relationships. Extending the timeframe of the antislavery and labor movements backwards to the 1790s, this dissertation situates the origins of the pre-Civil War labor movement in republican ideology and currents of transatlantic radical thought, and traces the rise of agrarian and communitarian labor reform against the …

Flood Of Change: The Vanport Flood And Race Relations In Portland, Oregon, Michael James Hamberg

All Master's Theses

This thesis examines race relations amid dramatic social changes caused by the migration of African Americans and other Southerners into Portland, Oregon during World War II. The migrants lived in a housing project named Vanport and an exploration behind Portlanders’ negative opinion of newcomers will be undertaken. A history of African Americans in Oregon will open the paper and the analysis of events leading up to a 1948 flood that destroyed the housing project and resulted in a refugee and housing crisis will comprise the middle of the paper. Lastly, an examination of whether or not an improvement in race …

"Our Captain Is A Gentleman”: Officer Elections Among Virginia Confederates, 1861-1862, Ryan C. O'Hallahan

Theses and Dissertations

Enlisted soldiers preferred to elect company- and regimental-level officers during the first year of the American Civil War. This thesis explores how early Confederate mobilization, class conflict between elites and non-elites, and Confederate military policies affected officer elections from spring 1861 to spring 1862 among Virginia Confederates. Chapter 1 explores how the chaotic nature of mobilization and common soldiers' initial expectations regarding their military service influenced elections from April 1861 until late July 1861. Chapter 2 details the changing nature of elections as elite officers faced challenges from non-elites and Confederate policies regarding furloughs and conscription forced officers to reconcile …