United States History Commons^™

The Classic Muscle Car Era, William Mckinney

All Theses

Big and bold, loud and brash, mighty and proud, the classic American muscle car is in many ways a reflection of America at a time in history when we were on top of the world and everything seemed to be going our way. This work will examine the classic muscle car era of 1964-1974, including how it started, who helped it along, what cars were involved, how it ended, and what it meant. What the future holds for a car such as a muscle car is also examined.

“Consolidating The New Position (1938-1940)”: A Study Of The Tenure Of Robert H. Jackson: March 5, 1938 To January 18, 1940, Nicholas John Stamato

Dissertations - ALL

Robert H. Jackson’s service as Solicitor General has attained mythic status, prompting academics and commentators consistently to rate him as one of the greatest appointees to that office. In part, his stature reflects his extraordinary skill as an attorney. In some measure, Jackson’s legend draws upon the Supreme Court’s growing liberalism, which occurred upon his watch. As Peter Ubertaccio argues in his history of the office, Learned in the Law and Politics, the stature of the Solicitor General suffered during the early 1930s, when the court generally ruled against the government, then improved as the court sided with the Roosevelt …

But Not In Vain: The Civil Rights Movement In San Luis Obispo, California 1947–1969, Joshua M. Harmon

Master's Theses

Civil rights have long been an important focus of historical scholarship. As the United States continues to grapple with issues of racism and the complicated legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, it is imperative that a variety of perspectives are incorporated into scholarship on the subject. Traditional scholarship on the subject has focused on the large organizations, individuals, marches, and activities that have come to characterize the Civil Rights movement. This study seeks to integrate the perspectives of a case study population, African Americans in San Luis Obispo, California, to assess the ways in which African Americans away from large …

Jubal Early’S Trains: The Battle Of Lynchburg In Historical Memory, John G. Marks

Undergraduate Theses and Capstone Projects

On June 18, 1901, Charles Minor Blackford, brother of Battle of Lynchburg veteran Eugene Blackford, made a speech commemorating the thirty-five year anniversary of the Lynchburg Campaign. In the Battle of Lynchburg, as a part of the wider Shenandoah Valley campaign of 1864, General Jubal Early and the Confederate force defended the city from General David Hunter and the Union in a two-day engagement, marked mostly by skirmishing. Blackford stated in this speech that, “During the night of the 17th, a yard engine, with box cars attached, was run up and down the Southside Railroad, making as much noise as …

Twenty Miles To Rome: The Story Of South Carolina's First Medal Of Honor Winner In World War Ii, Charles Taylor

All Theses

This thesis, which has encompassed my life for the last several months, began as sort of an afterthought. A graduate course that I was taking in fall 2008 required the students to produce a prospectus for a new biography that should be added to the historical record. Looking to find a subject that I did not mind researching, I chose to write a proposal on my great uncle Furman L. Smith, who was South Carolina's first Congressional Medal of Honor winner in World War II. I had always had an interest in family history, but felt guilty that I knew …

Stigma Cities: Dystopian Urban Identities In The United States West And South In The Twentieth Century, Jonathan Lavon Foster

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

This dissertation examines how historical events and representation of those events relative to the wider historical context have allowed the media, opinion setters, and the ordinary public to use the names of San Francisco, California, Birmingham, Alabama and Las Vegas, Nevada as denigrating adjectives and the effect of this usage on those cities. Exploration of Birmingham’s image as a racist city, San Francisco’s as a gay Mecca, and Las Vegas, Nevada’s as an adult playground or sinful city serves this purpose. These case studies support a central argument that the nature of place-based stigmatization’s influence depends upon ever-shifting cultural values …

The Origins Of The Modern Religious Lobby In Virginia, 1968-1980, Kenneth Skipper

All Theses

The 1960s conservative movement of Barry Goldwater gave rise to a politically active and influential block of voters that came to be known as the religious Right. Disillusioned with the direction of America and a government that seemed hostile to their views and values, religious-minded Americans began to organize to fight for the issues that were important to them. Virginia was an important battleground in the fight over these important social issues due to its unique demographic make-up with a more liberal and urban northern part with the rest of Virginia more conservative and rural. The organization of politically minded …

American Friends Service Committee Efforts To Aid Japanese American Citizens During World War Ii, Theodore Wilbur

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

During World War II countries throughout the world were focused on domination, not only over their neighbors or other enemies further abroad, but over their own people as well. Across the world governments removed civil liberties, imprisoned citizens based on their race or religion, and executions became commonplace for anyone perceived as a threat or simply stood in their way. Throughout all of this the United States seemed like the “white knight” from North America, with a willingness to fight the forces of fascism overseas and the strength and courage to restore peace around the globe. While Americans sacrificed so …

Working For The "Working River": Willamette River Water Pollution, 1926 To 1962, James Vincent Hillegas

Dissertations and Theses

Efforts to abate Willamette River pollution between 1926 and 1962 centered on a struggle between abatement advocates and the two primary polluters in the watershed, the City of Portland and the pulp and paper industry. Throughout the twentieth century, the Willamette was by far the most heavily populated and industrialized watershed in Oregon. Like many other of the world's rivers, the Willamette was an integral part of municipal and industrial waste removal systems. As such, the main stem of the river carried the combined wastes from sewage outfalls serving hundreds of thousands of people and millions of gallons daily of …

“The Negro Speaks Of Rivers” An African Centered Historical Study Of The Selfethnic Liberatory Education Nature And Goals Of The Poetry Of Langston Hughes: The Impact On Adult Education, Sarah E. Howard

Dissertations

The purposes of this historical study were to 1) document the Selfethnic Liberatory adult education nature and goals of the poetry of Langston Hughes (from 1921 to 1933); and 2) to document the impact this poetry had on members of the African Diaspora. In addition, the goal of this research was to expand the historical knowledge base of the adult education field, so that it is more inclusive of the contributions of African Americans.

This study addressed the problem that the historical and philosophical literature of the field does not to any significant degree include the intellectual and adult education …

Computers For The Masses: The American Socio-Technological Change Of The 1970'S And 1980'S, Robert Bryan Goodman

Master's Theses

This thesis developed out of my personal curiosity on the subject of high-technological development. Specifically, high-technology’s shift from primarily a military tool to a consumer product raised several questions to answer since first taking an interest in the subject. My lifestyle, like many other Americans in my generation, incorporates computers, cell-phones, and video game consoles as not only an innovative tool, but a standard and necessary mode of production. In our contemporary society, technology is obtainable everywhere. As an entertaining tool in the form of video games to a productivity tool in our workplaces, most individuals have assimilated consumer electronics. …

The Power Behind The Constitution: The Supreme Court., Sallie Raye Trudden

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The framers of the Constitution designed a document to be the "Supreme Law of the Land" and within its pages a branch of government, a federal judiciary, never before envisioned. The Constitution, along with the Federal Judiciary Act of 1789, set the framework for building the strongest branch of government, the Supreme Court. Historical events and court decisions with few exceptions strengthened the power of the judiciary contributing to its authority. The Supreme Court Justices, by interpreting the Constitution and judging the legality of laws instituted by both state and federal legislatures, solidified its superior position in the government hierarchy. …

A Comparative Study Of America's Entries Into World War I And World War Ii., Samantha Alisha Taylor

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis studies events that preceded America's entries into the First and Second World Wars to discover similarities and dissimilarities. Comparing America's entries into the World Wars provides an insight into major events that influenced future ones and changed America.

Research was conducted from primary sources of Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Franklin D. Roosevelt. In addition, secondary sources were used that study the events preceding America's entries into World War I and World War II. Research was also conducted on public opinion.

In World War I, German actions angered Wilson and segments of the American public, persuading Wilson to ask …

The Anti-Federalists: Forgotten Founders Of Our Freedom, Sarah Elizabeth Wilson

Morehead State Theses and Dissertations

A thesis presented to the faculty of the College of Regional Analysis and Public Policy at Morehead State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Public Administration by Sarah Elizabeth Wilson on May 6, 2009.

Traditions In Transition: Basques In America, Alissa Peterson

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

The Basque Museum & Cultural Center’s newest corridor exhibit, Traditions in Transition: Basques in America, is an interpretive exhibit based primarily on material culture artifacts, photographs and literature. The exhibit provides a physical and thematic transition between the museum’s entryway exhibits and the main gallery exhibit. Traditions in Transition uses six corridor cases to exhibit six topics under an overarching theme of Basque migration and expression of their ethnicity through various cultural artifacts, practices, and traditions. This pattern is common largely among European immigrant groups’ later generations. The exhibit addresses how the Basque immigrants adapted these cultural practices to their …

Conservative Conservationists: Water Rights, Wilderness, And Idahoan Political Identity, Kelly M. Orgill

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Idahoans' unique and contradictory history of conservation politics reveals deep tensions between expectations of individual water rights, a shared regard for natural beauty, and a deep-seated fear of government intervention. From its earliest settlers to its Sagebrush Rebels to its modern day miners and lumber crews, Idaho has teemed with those eager to profit from the state’s natural resources. The post-war interest in recreation and the environmental movement of the 1970s, however, promoted concern and support for preservation in Idaho. Coupled with the Idahoan obsession with water rights, Idaho environmentalism prompted the conservative Republican state to elect environmentally-minded Democrats Cecil …

Race, Class, And Herman Melville, Joan A. De Santis

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Analyzes two of the short stories in Herman Melville's The Piazza Tales, "Bartleby the Scrivener: a Story of Wall Street" and "Benito Cereno" and argues that these stories are highly critical of the bourgeois class structure of American society that inform Wall Street, as well as the slave trade, in mid-Nineteenth-Century America. Posits that in these works Melville addresses the questions of hierarchical power in the workplace and the effects of racism and slavery in the colonization of America.

The Plunge Into Secession: The Presbyterian Schism Of The Reverends. Charles Hodge, James Henley Thornwell And Benjamin Morgan Palmer, Deborah Jane Rayner

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

The Presbyterian Church had one of the largest pro-slavery clergy of any antebellum Protestant church. These men extracted verses and passages from the Bible to prove God sanctioned slavery. Many Southern Presbyterian ministers including Charles Hodge, James Henley Thornwell and Benjamin Morgan Palmer used the pulpit to defend slavery and advocate secession, collapsing political and religious boundaries. I focus on the 1855-1861 debates about slavery in the Presbyterian Church led by Charles Hodge, James Henley Thornwell, and Benjamin Morgan Palmer. I reorient the argument from the usual political and economic accounts of the antebellum secession discussions and build upon current …

That Others May Live: The Cold War Sacrifice Of Ellenton, South Carolina, Samuel Ritchie

All Theses

The forced evacuation of Ellenton, South Carolina, beginning in November 1950 was the direct result of increasing international tension following the Soviet acquisition of an atomic weapon. Facing the loss of the American monopoly on nuclear weapons and an increasing Communist threat, the Truman administration authorized the construction of a nuclear facility near Ellenton, South Carolina, which would prove vital in the development of a hydrogen bomb. The people of Ellenton and the surrounding towns of Dunbarton, Meyers Mill, Robbins, and Leigh were required to sacrifice their homes and communities to provide land for the Savannah River Plant. The reaction …

Investigating The Mind With Heller, Vonnegut, And O'Brien: Psychological Trauma And Narrative Structure In The American War Novel, Daniel Trump

Theses & Honors Papers

The 'American war novel' is an exceedingly broad genre. If taken at its simplest form, it can encompass titles ranging from James Fenimore Cooper's The Spy to Tom Clancy's latest addition to his Rainbow Six series. Joseph Heller's Catch-22, Kurt Vonnegut's Slaughterhouse-Five, and Tim O'Brien's Going After Cacciato are novels that very simply could be filed away somewhere in that American war novel ether that exists between a high-school library and an airport bookstore, but that would be a disservice to Heller, Vonnegut, and O'Brien. What sets their novels apart from the general milieu of the American war novel …

Hiding Hiroshima, Adam T. Fernandes

Master's Theses, Dissertations, Graduate Research and Major Papers Overview

Explores the representation of nuclear weapons in Japanese anime and US live action cinema in the 1980's, using methods from cultural studies. Examines, specifically, the silences and contradictions of the selected films to reveal the cultural ideologies of Japan and the United States during the time in which the films were produced. Analyzes the Japanese animated films, Barefoot Gen, Barefoot Gen 2, and Grave of the Fireflies, and the American live action films, The Day After, Testament, and Miracle Mile.

Homeland Security And Terrorism In Selected European States, Eric M. Deutcher

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In the wake of the 9/11 attacks on the United States, the responses to terrorism increased throughout the world. The face of Homeland Security is now heavily focused on the prevention, preparedness, response and recovery of terrorist attacks not only in the United States, but also amongst some of America's oldest allies. This thesis studies the level of change in homeland security strategy of European NATO members after the 9/11 attacks in the United States. The analysis of strategic components within each NATO member's homeland security strategy (history, laws, counterterrorism agencies and budget support) shows significant change. The international community's …

The Armor Of Democracy: Volunteerism On The Home Front In World War Ii California, Christopher Michael Head

Master's Theses

This paper is an in-depth study on the role of Home Front Volunteerism in California during World War II. It argues that Volunteerism was integral to America’s eventual victory. This paper fills a gap in historical writings on World War II and shows that Volunteerism is a topic worthy of study. Volunteerism played a major role in California. It helped to keep morale high even when the war was progressing poorly. Volunteerism also helped to create new communities out of those shattered by the upheaval of the Great Depression. It provided a patriotic outlet for Americans desperate to aid the …

American Jacobins: Revolutionary Radicalism In The Civil War Era, Jordan Lewis Reed

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

This dissertation is an attempt to portray the revolutionary character of the American Civil War through a comparative methodology utilizing the French Revolution as both point of influence and as a parallel example. Within this novel context, subtle trends in the ideological development of the Republican Party's Radical wing undertake new meaning and an alternative revolutionary heritage takes shape around an idealization of the universalism of the French and Haitian Revolutions of the 1790s. The work argues that through a diffusion of ideas and knowledge of events from the streets of Paris into the fields of Haiti and onto the …

Political Piety: Evangelicals And The American Revolution In South Carolina And Georgia, David E. Hollingsworth

University of Kentucky Doctoral Dissertations

The study of southern evangelicals during the late colonial and revolutionary eras of American history has focused primarily on the social antagonisms that separated evangelicals from southern elites and has concluded that the rapid growth of post-war evangelicalism came as a result of evangelical acquiescence to southern gentry mores. Most study of southern evangelicals has concentrated on the upper South missing important developments in the Deep South which contradict historical assumptions of Separate triumph and the subsequent subversion of radical evangelicalism by evangelical leaders eager for societal acceptance. Evangelicals were not a monolithic movement. Key doctrines, primarily the need for …

[Black] Regional Conferences In The Seventh-Day Adventist (Sda) Church Compared With United Methodist [Black] Central Jurisdiction/Annual Conferences With White Sda Conferences, From 1940 - 2001, Alfonzo Greene, Jr.

Dissertations

This study compares the historical development of [Black] Regional Conferences in the Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church with [Black] Central Jurisdiction/Black Annual Conferences in Methodism (now known as the United Methodist Church) and White SDA Conferences--specifically through the prism of race, religion, and to a lesser degree gender. Secondly, emphasis is given to the salient events surrounding [Black] Regional SDA Conferences and [Black] Methodist Central Jurisdiction/Annual Conferences, and White SDA Conferences in order to discern the thread of historical development that emerged in these religious entities. What were the reasons the Methodist and Seventh-day Adventists decided it was essential to set …

You Are In The World: Catholic Campus Life At Loyola University Chicago, Mundelein College, And De Paul University, 1924-1950, Rae Bielakowski

Dissertations

Responding to Vatican concerns and Daniel A. Lord, S.J.'s national Sodality initiatives, in 1927 Loyola University administrators expanded the student Sodality's newly-established Catholic Action program into a hegemonic presence, not only on the Loyola Arts campus, but throughout Chicago's network of Catholic schools. By 1928 Loyola students headed a federation of 52 Chicago-area Catholic universities, colleges, and high schools, initially known as the Chicago Intercollegiate Conference on Religious Activities (CISCORA). Under Vatican pressure to reaffirm the bishop's catechetical role, six years later Chicago Auxiliary Bishop Bernard Sheil adopted the federation--renamed Chicago Inter-Student Catholic Action (CISCA)--as the official student Catholic Action …

The Challenge Of Toleration: How A Minority Religion Adapted In The New Republic, Joseph Filous

Masters Theses

This thesis examines the early American Catholic Church and how its first bishop, John Carroll, guided it through the first years of the American republic. The struggles Carroll faced were the legacy of the English heritage of the colonies. English Catholics who shaped colonial Catholic life made the community private and personal in response to the religious atmosphere in the English world. The American Revolution brought toleration for Catholics and they struggled to adapt their hierarchal religion to new republican language. Some congregations went as far as to deny episcopal power, a theory known as trusteeism. Different interpretations struggled to …

The Ports Of Secession: The Economics Of Florida Ports In The Secession Crisis, Michael P. Robbins

Master of Liberal Studies Theses

The root of large-scale human conflict is the protection of economic interests. The economic motivations for the South to secede clashed with the interests of the North in preserving the trade relationships that existed. In choosing the path that led to conflict over peace, decision-makers leaned towards what they believed would be most profitable on the margins. The financial viability of a southern Confederacy was contingent upon the successful separation of Gulf states from the Union. The economic interests generated by Florida's Gulf ports provided a strong incentive for the state to secede, for the emerging Confederacy to support that …

"--All United Like Sisters--": Education, Friendship, And The Bonds Of Womanhood At Litchfield Female Academy, 1782--1833, Amy E. Whelan

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.