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Memory As Torchlight: Frederick Douglass And Public Memories Of The Haitian Revolution, James Lincoln

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

The following explores how Frederick Douglass and others used public memories of the Haitian Revolution during the nineteenth century.

Victory, Reconciliation, And Reunion: The Soldiers’ And Sailors’ Monument Of Easton, Pennsylvania And A Memory Of The Civil War, Bryan Toth

Seton Hall University Dissertations and Theses (ETDs)

Thirty-five years after the Civil War came to an end the people of Easton, Pennsylvania erected a monument to honor the men of Easton and Northampton County that fought and died in the sectional conflict. With the nation recognizing the sesquicentennial of the Civil War the study of how the people of Easton have chosen to remember this conflict can help us better understand the war itself and its ever changing place in the collective national psychology. The Soldiers’ and Sailors’ Monument that was built in Easton’s Centre Square is reflective of a Northern monument design, and a memory of …

Forgotten Glory: African American Civil War Soldiers And Their Omission From Civil War Memory, Connor E. Seaman

History Undergraduate Theses

African American soldiers were a central aspect of the Union Army’s effort to defeat the Confederate Army in the Civil War, yet their contributions were forgotten by white American society in the fifty years following the end of the conflict. Their contributions were absent in the various forms of commemoration that were performed and constructed after the war, including monuments, Memorial Day services, and veterans’ reunions. Through examining these forms of commemoration, as well as Emancipation Day celebrations, certain trends become apparent. African American veterans were excluded from Civil War memory through physical segregation both physically and in the language …

“'They Was Things Past The Tellin’: A Reconsideration Of Sexuality And Memory In The Ex-Slave Narratives Of The Federal Writers’ Project", Lynn Cowles Wartberg

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

In 1936, Federal Writers’ Project (FWP) employees began interviewing formerly enslaved men and women, allowing them to speak publicly of their experiences under slavery. Defying racism and the repressions of Jim Crow, ex-slaves discussed intimate details of their lives. Many researchers considered these interviews unreliable, but if viewed through the lens of gender and analyzed using recent scholarship on slavery and sexuality, FWP interviews offer new insights into the lives of enslaved men and women. Using a small number of ex-slave interviews, most of them drawn from Louisiana, this thesis demonstrates the value of these oral histories for understanding the …

Through A Glass, Darkly: The Changing Past Of Coffee County, Georgia, Jonathan Hepworth

All Theses

In 1954, Coffee County, Georgia, commemorated its centennial with a massive celebration that essentially shut down the county seat of Douglas for a week. Parades, fireworks, speeches, and above all a large-scale historical pageant, the 'Centurama,' were components of the celebration. The history celebrated in 1954, however, did not necessarily match up with Coffee County's actual history. This thesis examines the history of Coffee County and its changing nature, looking at politics, economics, and culture. It finds that historical 'memory' is not always planned out by society's elites, but can change as the result of politics, demographic shifts, and commercial …

Faithful Remembering: Constructing Dutch America In The Twentieth Century, David E. Zwart

Dissertations

The people of the Dutch-American community constructed and maintained a strong ethnoreligion identity in the twentieth despite pressures to join the mainstream of the United States. A strong institutional completeness of congregations and schools resulted from and contributed to this identity. The people in these institutions created a shared identity by demanding the loyalty of members as well as constructing narratives that convinced people of the need for the ethnoreligious institutions.

The narratives of the Dutch-American community reflected and reinforced a shared identity, which relied on a collective memory. The framing, maintaining, altering, and remodeling of the collective memory from …

On The Imperishable Face Of Granite: Civil War Monuments And The Evolution Of Historical Memory In East Tennessee 1878-1931., Kelli Brooke Nelson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

After the Civil War individuals throughout the country erected monuments dedicated to the soldiers and events of the conflict. In East Tennessee these memorials allowed some citizens to promote their ideas by invoking both Union and Confederate Civil War sympathies. Initially, East Tennesseans endorsed the creation of a Unionist image to advertise the region's potential for industrialization. By 1910 this depiction waned as local and northern whites joined to promote reconciliation and Confederate sympathizers met less opposition to their ideas than in the past. After 1919 white East Tennesseans, enmeshed in the boom and bust cycles of the national economy, …

Monuments And Massacre: The Art Of Remembering, Lafe Gerald Conner

Undergraduate Honors Capstone Projects

Rain transformed the dusty trail outside our trailer into a highway of sediments speeding and settling. Inside the trailer I pulled on my boots and raincoat while my dad slipped into a larger version of his own. Then, with my two brothers, we embarked in puddle play. Aimed at impeding the torrent, we employed any object; rocks, branches, wood chips, even our own wet boots and hands. Eight years old, maybe nine and I knew nothing about erosion or sedimentation, only that rain brought the stream and the stream brought puddle play.

I hold this memory, feeling its grainy texture …