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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities

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 …


"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti Mar 2016

"The Fate Which Takes Us:" Benjamin F. Beall And Jefferson County, (West) Virginia In The Civil War Era, Matthew Coletti

Masters Theses

This thesis analyzes the editorial content of a popular regional newspaper from the Shenandoah Valley, the Spirit of Jefferson, during the height of the Civil-War Era (1848-1870). The newspaper’s editor during most of the period, Benjamin F. Beall, was a white, southern slaveholder of humble origins, who spent time serving in the Confederate military. Beall, however, had also quickly established himself as one of the preeminent Democrats in his home county of Jefferson, as well as both the Shenandoah Valley and the new state of West Virginia. Beall firmly believed in the institution of racial slavery and fought to …


"Only Steers And Queers Come From Texas": The Texas Sodomy Statutes And The Making Of An Other, 1860-1973, Jecoa Ross Jan 2016

"Only Steers And Queers Come From Texas": The Texas Sodomy Statutes And The Making Of An Other, 1860-1973, Jecoa Ross

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

This Thesis explores the history of sodomy as it has been conceptualized through the creation and enforcement of the Texas sodomy statutes between 1860 and 1973. In analyzing state court cases, legislative records, and newspaper accounts, I argue that the evolution of the concept of sodomy from its inception as a broad criminal category in the 1860 Texas sodomy statute to its more-narrow conceptualization by Texas legislators as a behavioral characteristic of homosexual status in the 1973 homosexual conduct statute was a political and historically contingent process. This process was political firstly in that it allowed for the construction of …


“The Most Poisonous Of All Diseases Of Mind Or Body”: Colorphobia And The Politics Of Reform, April J. Gemeinhardt Jan 2016

“The Most Poisonous Of All Diseases Of Mind Or Body”: Colorphobia And The Politics Of Reform, April J. Gemeinhardt

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

Focusing on the mid-1830s through 1865, this thesis explores colorphobia—the irrational fear and hatred of black people otherwise known as racial prejudice—as a reform tactic adopted by abolitionists. It argues that colorphobia played a pivotal role in the radical abolitionist reform agenda for promoting anti-slavery, immediate emancipation, equal rights, and black advancement. By framing racial prejudice as a disease, abolitionists believed connotations, stigmas, and fears of illness would elicit more attention to the rapidly increasing racial prejudice in the free North and persuade prejudiced white Americans into changing their ways. Abolitionists used parallels to cholera, choleraphobia (fear of cholera), and …