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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Creating The Black California Dream: Virna Canson And The Black Freedom Struggle In The Golden State’S Capital, 1940-1988, Kendra M. Gage
Creating The Black California Dream: Virna Canson And The Black Freedom Struggle In The Golden State’S Capital, 1940-1988, Kendra M. Gage
UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones
This dissertation examines the black struggle for racial equality in the Golden State’s capital from 1940-1988 and an integral leader of the movement, Virna Canson. Canson fought for nearly fifty years to dismantle discriminatory practices in housing, education, employment and worked to protect consumers. Her lifetime of activism reveals a different set of key issues people focused on at the grassroots level and shows how the fight for freedom in California differed from the South because the state’s discriminatory practices were harder to pinpoint. Her work and the larger black community’s activism in Sacramento also reveals how the black freedom …
Broad Shoulders, Hidden Voices: The Legacy Of Integration At New Orleans' Benjamin Franklin High School, Graham S. Cooper
Broad Shoulders, Hidden Voices: The Legacy Of Integration At New Orleans' Benjamin Franklin High School, Graham S. Cooper
University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations
This paper seeks to insert the voices of students into the historical discussion of public school integration in New Orleans. While history tends to ignore the memories of children that experienced integration firsthand, this paper argues that those memories can alter our understanding of that history. In 1963, Benjamin Franklin High School was the first public high school in New Orleans to integrate. Black students knowingly made sacrifices to transfer to Ben Franklin, as they were socially and politically conscious teenagers. Black students formed alliances with some white teachers and students to help combat the racist environment that still dominated …