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Full-Text Articles in African History
Sea Of Change : Race, Abolitionism, And Reform In The New England Whale Fishery, Justin Andrew Pariseau
Sea Of Change : Race, Abolitionism, And Reform In The New England Whale Fishery, Justin Andrew Pariseau
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Bound together across lines of color and lass, Nantucket and New Bedford residents pursued the unique economic opportunities presented by whaling during the nineteenth century. Whaling was becoming a major industrial enterprise with few available options to fulfill the labor needs required for the whaling crews, ropewalks, blacksmith shops, and sail lofts that made it possible for Nantucket and New Bedford whaleships to transit the globe. Whaling thus generated the jobs that made it possible for free black communities to thrive. People of color consequently turned the need for labor to their advantage. Drawn by the financial opportunities that the …
Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo
Nineteenth Century Enslaved African Americans' Coping Strategies For The Stresses Of Enslavement In Virginia, Allison Michelle Campo
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
An Enslaved Landscape: The Virginia Plantation At The End Of The Seventeenth Century, David Arthur Brown
An Enslaved Landscape: The Virginia Plantation At The End Of The Seventeenth Century, David Arthur Brown
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Lewis Burwell II designed Fairfield plantation in Gloucester County to be the most sophisticated and successful architectural and agricultural effort in late seventeenth-century Virginia. He envisioned a physical framework with the intent to control the world around him so that he might profit from growing tobacco, while raising his family's status to the highest in the colony through the display of wealth and knowledge and the enslavement of both Africans and the natural surroundings. The landscape he envisioned contrasted with those of the enslaved Africans he purchased and put to work in the fields and buildings surrounding his '1694 brick …
Drawn Together, Drawn Apart: Black And White Baptists In Tidewater Virginia, 1800-1875, Nancy Alenda Hillman
Drawn Together, Drawn Apart: Black And White Baptists In Tidewater Virginia, 1800-1875, Nancy Alenda Hillman
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
A detailed study of local Baptist communities in Tidewater Virginia, "Drawn Together, Drawn Apart" explores the interactions of black and white evangelicals both under slavery and following emancipation. Significant bonds of fellowship between black and white Baptists persisted throughout the antebellum years. The majority of black Baptists continued to engage in baptismal, worship, and disciplinary gatherings with their white neighbors. Baptists of both races participated in the national culture of reform through their commitment to temperance, mission work, and other forms of "benevolence.".;At the same time, a pattern of black religious autonomy was developing. as Christian paternalists, white Baptist leaders …
Gathering Places, Cultivating Spaces: An Archaeology Of A Chesapeake Neighborhood Through Enslavement And Emancipation, 1775--1905, Jon Jason Boroughs
Gathering Places, Cultivating Spaces: An Archaeology Of A Chesapeake Neighborhood Through Enslavement And Emancipation, 1775--1905, Jon Jason Boroughs
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This study is a community-level analysis of an African American plantation neighborhood grounded in archaeological excavations at the Quarterpath Site (44WB0124), an antebellum quartering complex and post-Emancipation tenant residence occupied circa 1840s-1905 in lower James City County, Virginia. It asserts that the Quarterpath domestic quarter was a gathering place, a locus of social interaction in a vibrant and long established Chesapeake plantation neighborhood complex.;By the antebellum period, as marriage "abroad," or off-plantation, became the most common form of long term social union within plantation communities, enslaved social and kin ties in the Chesapeake region were typically geographically dispersed, enjoining multiple …
Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney
Community Building After Emancipation: An Anthropological Study Of Charles' Corner, Virginia, 1862-1922, Shannon Sheila Mahoney
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
The half-century marked by the end of the Civil War and the beginning of World War I was a critical period of cultural, social, and economic transition for African Americans in the southern United States. During the late nineteenth century, while African Americans were rebuilding communities and networks disrupted by enslavement and the ensuing Civil War, several settlements developed between Williamsburg and Yorktown on Virginia's lower peninsula. One of the settlements, Charles' Corner, is an optimal case study for understanding the gradual process of community building during a particularly challenging period of African American history dominated by systemic racism and …
Dooley's Ferry: The Archaeology Of A Civilian Community In Wartime, Carl Gilbert Drexler
Dooley's Ferry: The Archaeology Of A Civilian Community In Wartime, Carl Gilbert Drexler
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Warfare and conflict are familiar topics to anthropologists, but it is only recently that anthropological archaeologists moved to create a discrete specialization, known as Conflict Archaeology. Practitioners now actively pursue research in a number of different areas, such as battlefields, fortifications, and troop encampments. These advances throw into sharp relief areas that need greater focus. This dissertation addresses one of these shortcomings by focusing on the home front by studying Dooley's Ferry, a hamlet that once lay on the banks of the Red River, in southwest Arkansas. Before the American Civil War, it was a node in the commodity chains …
No Longer Lost At Sea: Black Community Building In The Virginia Tidewater, 1865 To The Post-1954 Era, Hollis E. Pruitt
No Longer Lost At Sea: Black Community Building In The Virginia Tidewater, 1865 To The Post-1954 Era, Hollis E. Pruitt
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
...the early people of Gloucester County were English gentlemen and ladies... Many of these fine old families continued wealthy for generations, until about seventy years ago, when a terrible war, known as the War between the States,... deprived them and their present day descendents of their property and wealth, as well as their Negro slaves who were freed at the time of this war.(Gray 66).;All across the post-Civil War South, the newly freed African Diaspora struggled to find ways to maintain their families and to develop communities. Having been systematically denied education, property ownership, political participation and participation in both …
Black Female Landowners In Richmond, Virginia 1850-1877, Hannah Catherine Craddock
Black Female Landowners In Richmond, Virginia 1850-1877, Hannah Catherine Craddock
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Race News: How Black Reporters And Readers Shaped The Fight For Racial Justice, 1877--1978, Frederick James Carroll
Race News: How Black Reporters And Readers Shaped The Fight For Racial Justice, 1877--1978, Frederick James Carroll
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Between 1877 and 1978, black reporters, publishers, and readers engaged in a never-ending and ever-shifting protest against American racism. Journalists' militancy oscillated as successive generations of civil rights activists defined anew their relationship with racism and debated the relevance of black radicalism in the fight for racial justice. Journalists achieved their greatest influence when their political perspectives aligned with the views of their employers and readers. Frequent disputes, though, erupted over the scope and meaning of racial justice within the process of reporting the news, compelling some writers to start alternative publications that challenged the assimilationist politics promoted by profit-minded …
A Bold Promise: Black Readjusters And The Founding Of Virginia State University, Leigh Alexandra Soares
A Bold Promise: Black Readjusters And The Founding Of Virginia State University, Leigh Alexandra Soares
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Liberty, Bondage, And The Pursuit Of Happiness: The Free Black Expulsion Law And Self-Enslavement In Virginia, 1806--1864, Edward Downing Maris-Wolf
Liberty, Bondage, And The Pursuit Of Happiness: The Free Black Expulsion Law And Self-Enslavement In Virginia, 1806--1864, Edward Downing Maris-Wolf
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
This dissertation seeks to explain why more than 110 African American individuals proposed to enslave themselves (and, in some cases, their children as well) in Virginia from 1854 to 1864. I examine the act of the Virginia legislature in 1856 "providing for the voluntary enslavement of the free negroes of the commonwealth" and suggest that this law provided some free Afro-Virginian individuals with an alternative to removal from the state and separation from their families (as called for by the sporadically enforced 1806 expulsion law, passed in part to discourage manumissions). I argue that if receiving legal freedom threatened a …
Bondage On The Border: Slaves And Slaveholders In Tazewell County, Virginia, Laura Lee Kerr
Bondage On The Border: Slaves And Slaveholders In Tazewell County, Virginia, Laura Lee Kerr
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
C.C Spaulding & R.R Wright---Companions On The Road Less Traveled?: A Reconsideration Of African American International Relations In The Early Twentieth Century, Brandon R. Byrd
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Dunmore's New World: Political Culture In The British Empire, 1745--1796, James Corbett David
Dunmore's New World: Political Culture In The British Empire, 1745--1796, James Corbett David
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Despite his participation in the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745, John Murray, fourth earl of Dunmore, eventually became royal governor of New York (1770-1771), Virginia (17711783), and the Bahama Islands (1787-1796). His life in the British Empire exposed him to an extraordinary range of political experience, including border disputes, land speculation, frontier warfare and diplomacy, sexual scandal, slave emancipation, naval combat, loyalist advocacy, Amerindian slavery, and trans-imperial filibusters, to say nothing of his proximity to the Haitian Revolution or his role in the defense of the British West Indies during the French Revolutionary Wars. Quick to break with convention on behalf …
Anthony Burns And The North-South Dialogue On Slavery, Liberty, Race, And The American Revolution, Gordon S. Barker
Anthony Burns And The North-South Dialogue On Slavery, Liberty, Race, And The American Revolution, Gordon S. Barker
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Revisiting the Anthony Burns drama in 1854, the last fugitive slave crisis in Boston, I argue that traditional historical interpretations emphasizing an antislavery groundswell in the North mask the confusion, chaos, ethnic and class tensions, and racial division in the Bay city and also treat Virginia's most famous fugitive slave as an object rather than the Revolutionary and advocate for equal rights that he was. I contend that it was far from clear that antislavery beliefs were on the rise in midcentury Boston. I show that antislavery views had to compete with other less noble, sometimes racist, sentiments and with …
Agrarian Reform And The Slave System: A Case Study Of James Galt's Point Of Fork Plantation, 1835-1865, Stephen John Legawiec
Agrarian Reform And The Slave System: A Case Study Of James Galt's Point Of Fork Plantation, 1835-1865, Stephen John Legawiec
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Sarah's Song: How Folk Music Shattered Slaveholding Ideology In Antebellum Alabama, Charles Allen Wallace
Sarah's Song: How Folk Music Shattered Slaveholding Ideology In Antebellum Alabama, Charles Allen Wallace
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
A World In Miniature: James Butcher And The Transformation Of African American Politics & Society In Washington, D.C, 1900-1940, Maria Alexandria Kane
A World In Miniature: James Butcher And The Transformation Of African American Politics & Society In Washington, D.C, 1900-1940, Maria Alexandria Kane
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Roses In December: Black Life In Hanover County, Virginia During The Era Of Disfranchisement, Jody Lynn Allen
Roses In December: Black Life In Hanover County, Virginia During The Era Of Disfranchisement, Jody Lynn Allen
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
In 1902, Virginia's revised constitution was proclaimed by the all-male, all-white delegates who had met in Richmond, the state capitol, for over a year. While they reviewed and revised the entire document, their main goal was to disfranchise black males. For the next seven decades, most black men, and, after 1920, black women found it difficult, if not impossible, to participate in the electoral process.;This dissertation looks at the effect of this event on blacks living in Hanover County, Virginia. Black Hanoverians steadily chipped away at the walls that enclosed them and limited their opportunities for success. First, they worked …
"From Eager Lips Came Shrill Hurrahs": Women, Gender, And Racial Violence In South Carolina, 1865--1900, Kate Fraser Gillin
"From Eager Lips Came Shrill Hurrahs": Women, Gender, And Racial Violence In South Carolina, 1865--1900, Kate Fraser Gillin
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
In the years following the Civil War, southerners struggled to adapt to the changes wrought by the war. Many, however, worked to resist those changes. In particular, southern men fought the revised racial and gender roles that resulted from defeat and emancipation. Southern men felt emasculated by both events and sought to consolidate the control they had enjoyed before the war. In their efforts to restore their pre-war hegemony, these men used coercion and violence with regularity.;White southern women were often as adamant as their male counterparts. Women of the elite classes were most eager to bolster antebellum ideals of …
"They Opened The Door Too Late": African Americans And Baseball, 1900-1947, Sarah L. Trembanis
"They Opened The Door Too Late": African Americans And Baseball, 1900-1947, Sarah L. Trembanis
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
During Jim Crow, the sport of baseball served as an important arena for African American resistance and negotiation. as a (mostly) black enterprise, the Negro Leagues functioned as part of a larger African American movement to establish black commercial ventures during segregation. Moreover, baseball's special status as the national pastime made it a significant public symbol for African American campaigns for integration and civil rights.;This dissertation attempts to interrogate the experience and significance of black baseball during Jim Crow during the first half of the twentieth century. Relying on newspapers, magazines, memoirs, biographies, and previously published oral interviews, this work …
Yorktown, Tobacco, And Slaves: The Rise And Decline Of A Colonial Port In Virginia, Kimberly Suzanne Renner
Yorktown, Tobacco, And Slaves: The Rise And Decline Of A Colonial Port In Virginia, Kimberly Suzanne Renner
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Breaking With Tradition: Slave Literacy In Early Virginia, 1680--1780, Antonio T. Bly
Breaking With Tradition: Slave Literacy In Early Virginia, 1680--1780, Antonio T. Bly
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
"Breaking with Tradition" is a study of slave literacy in eighteenth-century British North America, the era of the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution. Instead of highlighting the work of a few northern slave authors (the present emphasis in African American literary history), it focuses on the relationship between slave education in colonial Virginia and the social and political circumstances in which slaves acquired a knowledge of letters. A social history of life in the slave quarters, the "great house," and in towns, "Breaking with Tradition" is at once a case study of slaves reading and writing in the …
Between Black And White: The Religious Aftermath Of Nat Turner's Rebellion, Nancy Alenda Hillman
Between Black And White: The Religious Aftermath Of Nat Turner's Rebellion, Nancy Alenda Hillman
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
"I Looked To The East---": Material Culture, Conversion, And Acquired Meaning In Early African America, Jason Boroughs
"I Looked To The East---": Material Culture, Conversion, And Acquired Meaning In Early African America, Jason Boroughs
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Building "The Machine": The Development Of Slavery And Slave Society In Early Colonial Virginia, John C. Coombs
Building "The Machine": The Development Of Slavery And Slave Society In Early Colonial Virginia, John C. Coombs
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
Historians have, of course, long been aware of the importance of Virginia's seventeenth-century conversion from white to black labor. But while scholars have devoted considerable effort to explaining why this pivotal transition occurred, a detailed analysis of how it happened does not exist, nor by extension have scholars ever fully considered the repercussions of what one might call the "process of conversion.";Although Virginia's black population remained small throughout much of the seventeenth century, it was heavily concentrated on the estates of a relatively small circle of wealthy planters. By the middle decades of the century some members of the gentry …
The Men In Green: African Americans And The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, Michael Shane Hoak
The Men In Green: African Americans And The Civilian Conservation Corps, 1933-1942, Michael Shane Hoak
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Between Slavery And Freedom: African Americans In The Great Dismal Swamp 1763-1863, Edward Downing Maris-Wolf
Between Slavery And Freedom: African Americans In The Great Dismal Swamp 1763-1863, Edward Downing Maris-Wolf
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.
Desegregating Boston's Schools: Episode 1, Melisa Kate Nasella
Desegregating Boston's Schools: Episode 1, Melisa Kate Nasella
Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects
No abstract provided.