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Colored Lawyer, Topeka: The Legend And Legacy Of Elisa Scott, Jeffery Scott Williams

Theses and Dissertations

Attorney Elisha Scott’s reputation for fighting injustice grew so large he received letters addressed only, “Colored Lawyer, Topeka, Kansas.” He was born in obscurity in 1890, but his death made national news in 1963. Scott’s story may not be known at all if his name was not often listed as counsel in Brown v. Board of Education, the 1954 case that desegregated public schools. But it was his sons who filed the case and helped fight it from Topeka to the United States Supreme Court. He was never officially part of the legal team. He had, however, won a …

The Presbyterian Exception? The Illegal Education Of Enslaved Blacks By South Carolina Presbyterian Churches, 1834-1865, Margaret Bates

Theses and Dissertations

The study of literacy among enslaved people in South Carolina is often limited to legal literature, enslaver and enslaved autobiographies, and Northern accounts of education from teachers sent to the South. The use of these types of sources to describe literacy and education of enslaved people leaves out a major contributor to the enslaved literacy movement, the churches. Using documentation from two Presbyterian churches in South Carolina, this thesis expands upon the enslaved literacy movements in South Carolina to look at the roles ministers, missionaries, and congregations played in teaching enslaved blacks how to read religious literature, why these institutions …

That 90'S Kind Of Love: The Rise Of African American Romance Novels In Traditional Romance Publishing, Jamee Nicole Pritchard

Theses and Dissertations

In 1994, Pinnacle Books, an imprint of Kensington Publishing Corporation, launched a new line of romance novels that featured Black characters written by Black authors. The new line was called Arabesque, and it was the first of its kind in mainstream publishing dedicated to love stories that explored Black life and culture. The line influenced other publishers to follow suit in acquiring similar titles and authors, and because of the number of African American writers signed to major publishing houses in 1994, the year was deemed by the press as the birth of the African American romance novel. This study …

Foxy Ladies And Badass Super Agents: Legacies Of 1970s Blaxploitation Spy And Detective Heroines, Carlie Nicole Todd

Theses and Dissertations

The presentation of Black femininity in Blaxploitation spy and detective films like Cleopatra Jones (1973), Foxy Brown (1974), and Get Christie Love! (1974) – depicting powerful, independent, and multidimensional characters – was a sharp departure from the derogatory images of African American women in film prior. These films also included some of the first Black spy and detective film heroines – Foxy Brown, Cleo Jones, and Christie Love – that portrayed a “serious” female detective or government agent as the main protagonist and center of the film’s action. These Blaxploitation heroines were unique in how their characters departed from prior …

"Accountable To No One": Confronting Police Power In Black Milwaukee, William I. Tchakirides

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation uncovers the roots of discriminatory police power in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and traces Black-led efforts to make the city’s police bureaucracy more accountable to all citizens. It analyzes the politics of police reform in the century spanning the passage of two state laws that reconfigured Milwaukee’s law enforcement arrangements. The first (1885) removed City Hall’s managerial control over the Milwaukee Police Department (MPD). Corporate elites and social reformers fearful of rising working-class power and moral degeneration in the immigrant-industrial city lobbied for the statute’s enactment. The second (1984) reversed course, re-empowering non-police officials after decades of Black-led campaigns for …

Brew City Black Ball: Milwaukee As Microcosm Of The Early-Twentieth Century Black Baseball Experience, Ken Jon-Edward Bartelt

Theses and Dissertations

While historians have learned a great deal about the Black professional baseball played during organized baseball’s Jim Crow era, there are many teams whose stories are yet to be told. Two of these teams, the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, played their home games in Milwaukee, Wisconsin during the 1920s. By exploring the untold histories of the McCoy-Nolan Giants and Milwaukee Bears, much can be learned about overarching themes in early-twentieth century Black professional baseball. By analyzing newspaper coverage of the McCoy-Nolan Giants, an independent barnstorming team without Negro League affiliation, important truths about the experience of Black baseball on …

Responding To Change: Girl Scouts, Race, And The Feminist Movement, Phyllis E. Reske

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA) is to teach girls to be giving, self-sufficient, and independent in their homes and communities through volunteer work and earning merit badges. Open to all girls since its inception, the GSUSA offers Girl Scouts training in both gender-conforming and nontraditional vocations. However, during the first half of the twentieth century, segregation and domesticity was emphasized in American society. The organization began to focus less on careers, independence, and racial inclusion to preparing predominately white girls to be good wives and mothers. As Black Power and women’s liberation …

Two Strivings: Uplift And Identity In African American Rhetorical Culture, 1900-1943, Jansen Blake Werner

Theses and Dissertations

During the late nineteenth- and early twentieth century, the notion of “uplift” functioned as a major thematic within African American rhetorical culture. In this milieu, “uplift” generally connoted a sense of collective self-help. However, in contrast to more generalized reform efforts, uplift was expressed as a distinctly intraracial endeavor. That is, rather than overtly leveraging the dominant white society to enact legal or political reforms, uplift typically centered on the ways in which African Americans could enhance the quality of black life independent from white involvement.

Understood as public proposals for how African Americans could employ forms of self-help to …

Discriminating Tastes: How Advertisements Taught Consumerism And Race To Gilded Age Youths, Jaclyn Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

Commercial and social trends of the Gilded Age combined to give a unique and novel power to colorful advertising trade cards that were collected, exchanged, and preserved in scrapbooks by middle-class children living in the Northeast. These children were members of one of the earliest generations to grow up with mandatory co-educational schooling and to be part of a distinctive youth culture created through peer interactions. After 1876, advertising trade cards became ubiquitous and were a significant component of that peer culture. The cards were also innovative in that they were the first example of colored images to be made …

An Improvised World: Jazz And Community In Milwaukee, 1950-1970, Benjamin Barbera

Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at the history of jazz in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1970. During this period Milwaukee experienced a series of shifts that included a large migration of African Americans, urban renewal and expressway projects, and the early stages of deindustrialization. These changes had an impact on the jazz musicians, audience, and venues in Milwaukee such that the history of jazz during this period reflects the social, economic, and physical landscape of the city in transition.

This thesis fills two gaps in the scholarship on Milwaukee. First, it describes the history of jazz in Milwaukee in a more comprehensive …

Jewish Ethnic Identity And The Dissolution Of The Black-Jewish Alliance, Nathan G. Caplin

Theses and Dissertations

Since the early 20th century, Jews promoted civil rights for Black Americans in law, society, and employment. The Jewish hand of friendship developed into a natural alliance of African-American and Jewish leaders committed to racial equality that blossomed in the 1950s and 1960s and culminated with the passage of the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. Despite their long term mutual efforts towards racial equality, the Black-Jewish Alliance faltered after Jews and Blacks cooperated to achieve these victories, and their alliance lay in ruins by the late 1960s and early 1970s. The Black-Jewish Alliance began to wane as …