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How The City Of Indianapolis Came To Have African American Policemen And Firemen 80 Years Before The Modern Civil Rights Movement., Leon E. Bates Aug 2016

How The City Of Indianapolis Came To Have African American Policemen And Firemen 80 Years Before The Modern Civil Rights Movement., Leon E. Bates

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This study explores a series of events that occurred in the spring of 1876. The relationship between the Indianapolis city government, the Marion County Courts, the Indianapolis Police Department, and the African American community came together to usher in changes never before envisioned. The Indianapolis Police Department (IPD) was formed in 1855, then disbanded 12 months later in a political dispute. From 1857-to-1876, the IPD was all white. These changes took place as the Reconstruction era was coming to a close. The first Ku Klux Klan was at its apex, terrorizing black communities, and Jim Crow was coming into its …


"A Part Of, Rather Than Apart From" : Louisville's Black Arts Scene In The Mid-Twentieth Century., Wesley Sawyer Cunningham Aug 2016

"A Part Of, Rather Than Apart From" : Louisville's Black Arts Scene In The Mid-Twentieth Century., Wesley Sawyer Cunningham

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the role that three predominantly black art organizations – Gallery Enterprises, the Louisville Arts Workshop, and the West Side Players – played in Louisville, Kentucky’s black community during the mid-twentieth century. Working from the integrated and cooperative nature of the long Black Freedom Struggle in Louisville, Kentucky, local black artists formed integrated organizations around the arts and promoted black identity, inclusivity and creativity through community-building and consciousness-raising. Furthermore, by defining the varying uses of the term “political” in reference to black art, this work shows that the politicization of artwork can best be understood using a spectrum …


"Puritan Hypocrisy" And "Conservative Catholicity" : How Roman Catholic Clergy In The Border States Interpreted The U.S. Civil War., Carl C. Creason May 2016

"Puritan Hypocrisy" And "Conservative Catholicity" : How Roman Catholic Clergy In The Border States Interpreted The U.S. Civil War., Carl C. Creason

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes how Roman Catholic clergy in the Border States—Missouri, Kentucky, and Maryland—interpreted the United States Civil War. Overall, it argues that prelates and priests from the region viewed the war through a religious lens informed by their Catholic worldview. Influenced by their experiences with anti-Catholicism and nativism as well as the arguments of the Catholic apologist movement, the clergy interpreted the war as a product of the ill-effects of Protestantism in the country. In response, the clergy argued that if more Americans had practiced Catholicism then the war could and would have been avoided. Furthermore, this thesis illustrates …


A Nativist Upsurge : Kentucky's Know Nothing Party Of The 1850s., Eric B. Brumfield May 2016

A Nativist Upsurge : Kentucky's Know Nothing Party Of The 1850s., Eric B. Brumfield

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis analyzes the rise and fall of the Know Nothing Party in Kentucky. Beginning with the presidential election of 1844, this thesis traces the decline of the Whig Party and the growth of nativism in the mid-nineteenth century. In addition to the political shift, the thesis explores the growing immigration numbers of the 1840s and 1850s and the anti-Catholicism that propelled nativist attitudes. While the issue of slavery sank the national Whig Party, this thesis argues that the failure to address concerns over immigration and naturalization largely led to the party’s downfall in Kentucky. Destroying the second party system, …