African History Commons^™

Takun J Fought The Gbagba, Zach E J Williams

Capstones

Liberia's most famous rapper has embarked on a quest to save democracy in Africa's oldest republic. This challenge faces Jonathan "Takun J" Koffa after a nine-year reign as the king of HiCo — a local form of Hip Hop music defined by the local patois. A local form of corruption called "Gbagba" makes for a formidable enemy, but Takun J has a plan to defeat it.

Link to capstone project: https://zachjournalism.com/2016/12/12/takun-j-fought-the-gbagba/

A Political Ecology Of Copper Production And Environmental Degradation In Zambia, Chalwe C. Mwansa

Master's Theses

Zambia has been producing copper for more than a century. Over the past three decades, the country has attracted large scale investments within the mining sector making it one the formidable destination for investment in Africa. However, the relationship between copper production and environmental degradation is intrinsically linked and further hampered by socioeconomic, political and developmental factors.The case of Zambia is used to empirically validate and authenticate how environmental management resulting from copper production has adversely affected the country. The nation's copper production was initially under private ownership in the colonial era; Post Independence, nationalization of copper production was initiated …

Establishment Of The Nigerian Railway Corporation, Tokunbo A. Ayoola

Journal of Retracing Africa

Making use of previously unused Colonial Office records at the National Archives in Kew, including newspaper reports, interviews with staff of the Nigerian Railway, and debates in the Federal House of Representatives, this study examines the forces that dictated the establishment of the Nigerian Railway Corporation. It argues that the primary reason why the British colonial government established the corporation was to assist foreign interests in Nigeria by distancing itself from the direct management of labor relations between the Nigerian colonial state and the militant trade unions in the Nigerian Railway and other commercially oriented government departments. By placing the …

“God Was With Us:” Child Labor In Colonial Kenya, 1922 - 1950s, Samson K. Ndanyi

Journal of Retracing Africa

Contentious debates about the allowable minimum age of child laborers informed the discourse of child labor in colonial Kenya between 1922 and the 1950s. Beginning with the Harry Thuku Uprising of 1922 that instigated the discussion over labor policy concerning juvenile wage laborers and heightened the tension between the British colonial administration and African adult workers, the British government in Kenya struggled to forge coherent labor policies concerning the ages of African child workers. Frequent changes in labor laws made it easier for labor recruiters and employers to manipulate the system by recruiting younger children for work thus drawing them …

"The Most Patient Of Animals, Next To The Ass:" Jan Smuts, Howard University, And African American Leandership, 1930, Robert Edgar, Myra Ann Houser

Articles

Former South African Prime Minister Jan Smuts’ 1930 European and North American tour included a series of interactions with diasporic African and African American activists and intelligentsia. Among Smuts’s many remarks stands a particular speech he delivered in New York City, when he called Africans “the most patient of all animals, next to the ass.” Naturally, this and other comments touched off a firestorm of controversy surrounding Smuts, his visit, and segregationist South Africa’s laws. Utilizing news coverage, correspondence, and recollections of the trip, this article uses his visit as a lens into both African American relations with Africa and …

Paris Calling: Typical And Untypical Experiences Of Latin American And African Diasporas, Kian-Harald Karimi

CALL: Irish Journal for Culture, Arts, Literature and Language

A metropolis such as Paris may provide a common ground for the experiences of migrants coming from Africa and Latin American. The traditional capital of Latin American literatures is also considered to be the greatest agglomeration of African immigrants mostly coming from former French colonies. But a common ground does not necessarily mean that they have a great deal in common. Two novels, Café Nostalgia by the Cuban author Zoé Valdés and Black Bazar by the Congolese writer Alain Mabanckou, not only define the topographic base of their exile. They also discuss the special reasons for their residence in a …

Rail: African & African American Labor And The Ties That Bind In The Atlantic World, Benjamin David Wendorf

Theses and Dissertations

As was intended, the construction of railways transformed the landscape and societies of the Atlantic World. Great fortunes and forces emerged in the directions of the tracks, sufficient to create structures of economy and organize communities in ways that persisted long after a railway’s use had diminished. In this dissertation, the author argues that the connections and reorganization effected by railway construction created new economic paths in the American South, Panama, and Gold Coast West Africa; the transformations were marked by struggles for power along racial lines, enslavement and coercion in labor, and the interchange between communities and their existing …

Book Review: A History Of Rwandan Identity And Trauma: The Mythmakers' Victims, James J. Snow

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

The African American Community In Ogden, Utah: Teaching Local History Within A National Framework, Michelle Braeden

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports, Spring 1920 to Spring 2023

Historical Background:

Beginning in 1869, the newly built Union Station in Ogden Utah became a major terminal for the transcontinental railroad. Around that same time George Pullman began recruiting emancipated slaves as employees on his luxury railroad cars. As a result a sizeable number of African Americans began working on the railroad. Many African Americans found residence in Ogden since it was a major railroad hub. As a result a small African American neighborhood that was six blocks long and two blocks wide formed in the city.[1] Businesses and organizations formed to support the emerging African American community within …

Defying Convention: Atypical Perspectives Of Slavery In Antebellum New Orleans, Amanda N. Carr

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the first half of the nineteenth century, slavery became a vital economic component upon which the success of the southern states in America rested. Cotton was king, and slavery was the peculiar institution that ensured its dominance in the domestic and international markets of America. Popular portrayals, however, often neglect the complicated dynamics of American slavery and instead depict the institution in simplistic terms. The traditional view has emphasized an image of white southerners as slaveholders and blacks as slaves. In New Orleans, the lives of three men—all of whom were tied to slavery in varying capacities—reveal a much …

Research And Study Of Fashion And Costume History Spanning From Ancient Egypt To Modern Day, Kaitlyn E. Dennis Miss

Posters-at-the-Capitol

Through a generous donation to Morehead State University, research has been conducted on thousands of slides containing images of artwork and artifacts of historical significance. These images span from Egyptian hieroglyphs to the inaugural dress of every first lady of the United States. The slides are in the process of being recorded and catalogued for future use by students in hopes of furthering academic comprehension and awareness of the influence of fashion and costume history through the ages. Special thanks to the family of Gretel Geist Rutledge, faculty mentor Denise Watkins, as well as the Department of Music, Theatre, and …

Screwing The Assembly Line: Queerness, Art-Making And Mandela's Mercedes-Benz, Elliot James

History Publications

This article analyses the bed installation in Simon Gush’s Red exhibit to draw attention to the ‘sleep-in’ aspect of the 1990 East London Mercedes-Benz strike. It shows how the strike narrative’s emphasis on the shop workers and Nelson Mandela’s flawless red Mercedes-Benz automatically insulates the strike’s central sleep-in component from the topic of queer desire. By revealing Red’s beds and the acts thereon as the strike narrative’s ‘queer limit’, the article uses Gush and Emma Sulkowicz’s techniques to reinvent the sleep-in as a complex space of homosociality and queer self-discovery. Doing so builds on Gush’s installations and uses performance to …

Book Review: Clan Cleansing In Somalia: The Ruinous Legacy Of 1991, Rebecca M. Glade

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Alleged Insanity: Frank Johnson Sr., Racial Injustice, And The Failure Of The Mental Health Care System In South Carolina, Jonathon P. Johnson

Senior Theses

This thesis is about Frank Johnson Sr. and the circumstances that led to his downfall as a farmer and father of six, to his tragic death in the isolation of a racially segregated mental institution 18 miles away from his home. Using his life and incarceration at the South Carolina State Park mental health facility, I argue that racial injustice contributed to his tragic death and the woefully inadequate treatment thousands of African Americans in South Carolina received during Jim Crow. Additionally, I argue that the tragic circumstances around my great grandfather’s institutionalization and death were part of an enduring …

Analysis Of Media In Rwanda: Internship With The New Times, Rhiannon Snide

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

This report examines the effects and expectations of media in Rwanda today, specifically in reference to the New Times daily newspaper. I spent one month interning with the New Times as a news writer, spending approximately 45 to 50 hours a week with the institution. Within this month, I was able to use both primary research and secondary research to analyze the role of media in Rwanda’s society today. Interviews with head editors of the New Times and conversations with paid journalists from the New Times provided me with much of the information specific to the news outlet, while desk …

The French Revolution In The French-Algerian War (1954-1962): Historical Analogy And The Limits Of French Historical Reason, Timothy Scott Johnson

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation examines the use of the French Revolution as an explanatory device for discussing the French-Algerian War (1954-1962). Anticolonial intellectuals in France invoked the French Revolution to explain their reasons for supporting colonial reform as well as their solidarity with Algerian nationalist aims. Through an examination of intellectuals’ public interventions alongside French and Algerian historical narratives, I examine the ways in which historical alignment signaled political and cultural distance between France and Algeria. Making an independent Algeria analogous to eighteenth-century revolutionary France lent political and conceptual legitimacy to Algerian claims to an independent national identity while also reinforcing the …

Youth…Power…Egypt: The Development Of Youth As A Sociopolitical Concept And Force In Egypt, 1805-1923, Matthew Blair Parnell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This study focuses on youth as a symbol, metaphor, and subject involved in processes related to Egypt’s modernization, colonization, and liberation from the beginning of the nineteenth century through the 1919 Egyptian Revolution. It demonstrates that youth was not simply an unchanging stage of development between childhood and adulthood, but a construct reflecting the political, Social, and cultural interests of specific eras and perspectives. I critically analyze the local and global discourses on Egypt’s modernization, colonialism, and nationalist movement to understand how changing power relations within and outside the country affected conceptions of youth and youthfulness. Additionally, I suggest by …

A Gentleman's Burden: Difference And The Development Of British Education At Home And In The Empire During The Nineteenth And Early-Twentieth Centuries, Jeffrey Willis Grooms

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A Gentleman's Burden is a comparative analysis of state-funded primary education in Britain, Ireland, West Africa, and India during the nineteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Starting with early-nineteenth century theories on primary education, this dissertation traces the evolution of state-funded educational ideology alongside Britain's domestic and imperial development. Key innovations in educational ideology are considered alongside the core moments of educational change during this period, specifically the major policies and reforms that shaped British state-funded education at home and abroad. Through this lens, education is shown to be a central component in how British officials and educationists perceived, categorized, and ruled …

Les Passerelles De La Réécriture: Des Transpositions De "Soundjata" Aux Autoadaptations D'Ousmane Sembène, Elhadji Moustapha Diop

Electronic Thesis and Dissertation Repository

Le présent travail porte sur une série de questions liées au transfert de formes narratives et expressives, d’un médium à un autre, d’un texte ou contexte à un autre. On suit un parcours se déclinant en deux mouvements : parti d’une discussion des théories de l’adaptation, de la réécriture, et des recherches sur la littérature orale, on en arrive à l’étude des pratiques effectives de la transposition et de l’autoadaptation. La Première Partie, « Discussions Théoriques », est consacrée à la littérature critique sur l’adaptation, y compris ses récents prolongements postmodernes et postcoloniaux. Dans la Deuxième Partie, « Études …

World Churches Vertical File, Mcgarvey Ice

Center for Restoration Studies Vertical Files Finding Aids

This set of files is especially useful to scholars of the history missions, particularly among Churches of Christ in the twentieth century. Students and researchers interested in applied missiology among Restorationist traditions, Stone-Campbell movements, and Churches of Christ will also find them helpful. For assistance with specific files or items, contact Mac Ice - mac.ice@acu.edu, or 325.674.2144.

Towards A Theory Of Displacement Atrocities: The Cherokee Trail Of Tears, The Herero Genocide, And The Pontic Greek Genocide, Andrew R. Basso

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

This article examines how displacement is used as a tool of atrocity perpetration and offers initial observations that will be used to create a future typology of Displacement Atrocities. Perpetrators' uses of forced population displacement coupled with systematic deprivations of vital daily needs (i.e., food, water, clothing, shelter, and medical care) combine to kill targeted victims through primarily indirect methods. A preliminary theoretical framework of Displacement Atrocities is offered and the critical elements that comprise this crime are explored. I argue that the Displacement Atrocity crime is a new way of understanding lethal forced population displacement. This theoretical framework is …

Models Of Reconciliation: From Conflict Towards Peace In Northern Ireland And South Africa During The 1990s, Alec Timberlake Bishop

Honors Projects

This paper is a critical analysis of two case studies that serve several purposes. One, it familiarizes the reader who may have a cursory understanding of the historical events involving the peace processes in Northern Ireland and South Africa during the 1990s with the narratives of conflict and peace that occurred in these countries during this time. It also analyzes the distinction between a peaceful resolution of conflict and reconciliation, making the claim that within instances of conflict, positive and sustained contact is essential to moving beyond a peaceful resolution of conflict towards reconciliation. In this way, this work adds …

Editors' Introduction, Melanie O'Brien, Joann Digeorgio-Lutz, Lior Zylberman, Christian Gudehus, Douglas Irvin-Erickson, Randle Defalco, Hilary Earl

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Book Review: Remembering Genocide, Tony Barta

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.

Fallible Justice: The Dilemma Of The British In The Gold Coast, 1874-1944, Neal M. Goldman

Dissertations, Theses, and Capstone Projects

This dissertation studies the manner in which the British administered justice as a technique of colonial administration in one of its West African dependencies, the Gold Coast, during the first seventy years of formal colonial rule. In this study that covers the period from the creation of the Gold Coast Colony in 1874 to 1944, I argue that the British were caught between their honest desire to deliver prompt and fair justice to their Gold Coast subjects and their perceived need to support indigenous authorities through whom they wished to govern despite their recognition that those authorities were too often …

Restoring African Women To History: A History Of Pre-Colonial East African Baganda Women, Maria Matovu

History

In his narrative, colonial administrator Harold Ingram describes the perspective that many missionaries and colonial executives held towards the African peoples. The notion of the ‘White man’s burden’ to save the world from uncivilized, and animalistic customs coupled with the theory of Africa as the Dark Continent, is one of the main reasons why early explorers and missionaries placed women in subordinate positions. This move thus overlooked the critical significance of contributions that pre-colonial African women contributed to the political, economic and social developmental structure in African communities. Missionary C.W. Hattersley confirmed the same notion towards pre-colonial Baganda women when …

Editorial, Franziska Dubgen

Wagadu: A Journal of Transnational Women's & Gender Studies

Epistemic injustice gives a name to experiences that we struggle to articulate due to the injuries of hegemonic speech. This normative grammar seeks to enable social philosophers and activists alike to name experiences of injustice that have not been previously addressed as such. This includes experiences that we cannot make sense of because the society we live in does not provide a vocabulary to make them intelligible or because we are not entitled to give them a name due to our specific identity position, which supposedly disables us from judging matters objectively. By looking at epistemic injustice in practice, this …

Sino-African Relations In The 21st Century: Consistency And Complexity, Josh Tryon

Honors Theses

Sino-African relations will continue to impact global power trends as China continues to actively engage with African states. This thesis has contributed to the debate concerning the nature of Sino-African affairs in a number of distinct ways. First, the three dominant schools of understanding Chinese actions in Africa were outlined and explained in-depth, they include: Chinese Imperialism, Great Power Rivalry, and Economic Engagement. However, the flaws within these categorizations, namely that of researchers treating them as mutually exclusive, have resulted in the misinterpretation of evidence and researchers interpreting the same evidence to argue in support of different schools of Sino-African …

The World Of Elagabalus, Jay Carriker

History Theses

After his assassination in 222 the Roman Emperor Elagabalus served as Rome's whipping boy--an embodiment of all the vices that led to the decline and fall of Rome; but through placing his policies in the context of a a Julio-Severan Dynasty, the religious boundaries that he disregarded reveal a Varian Moment as a critical period in the Easternization of Roman religion which makes him one of the the most significant figures in Roman history.

Guess Who's Coming To Dinner?: Food Inequlaity And Black Americans, Christina Foster

Capstone Collection

Food insecurity is an issue that plagues many people throughout the world. It only requires a brief search on the United Nation’s (U.N.) World Hunger Map to determine that this is indeed a worldwide crisis. Conversely, within the United States, the issue of hunger is often treated as “minimal” in comparison to other countries. A deeper inquiry into hunger within the U.S. reveals an even more disturbing connection: the role of white supremacy and systemic racism in regard to hunger. Academic research pertaining to food access is quite recent. Be that as it may, it is of no surprise that …