African American Studies Commons^™

Black Power In River City: African American Community Activism In Louisville, Kentucky, 1967-1970, Zack G. Hardin

Theses and Dissertations--History

The impact of Black Power rhetoric and ideology in Louisville, Kentucky in 1967-1970 is explored. The role of Black Power in shaping the discourse of Louisville’s black counter-public and civil rights counter-public is analyzed in the context of the 1967 open housing demonstrations, the May, 1968 riot, and the trial of the ‘Black Six’. Black Power played a vital role in community organizing and in displays of black national and cultural pride. It actively challenged the city’s mystique of Southern white paternalism embraced by the mayoral administration of Kenneth Schmied. Despite that administrations allegations, Black power rhetoric in the West …

Approaches To Black Power: African American Grassroots Political Struggle In Cleveland, Ohio, 1960-1966, David M. Swiderski

Open Access Dissertations

Black communities located in cities across the country became sites of explosive political unrest during the mid-1960s. These uprisings coincided with a period of intensified political activity among African Americans nationally, and played a decisive role in expanding national concern with black political struggle from a singular focus on the Civil Rights movement led by black southerners to consider the "race problem" clearly present in the cities of the North and West. Moreover, unrest within urban black communities emerged at a time when alternate political analyses of the relationship between black people and the American state that challenged the goal …

Who We Are: Incarcerated Students And The New Prison Literature, 1995-2010, Reilly Hannah N. Lorastein

Honors Projects

This project focuses on American prison writings from the late 1990s to the 2000s. Much has been written about American prison intellectuals such as Malcolm X, George Jackson, Eldridge Cleaver, and Angela Davis, who wrote as active participants in black and brown freedom movements in the United States. However the new prison literature that has emerged over the past two decades through higher education programs within prisons has received little to no attention. This study provides a more nuanced view of the steadily growing silent population in the United States through close readings of Openline, an inter-disciplinary journal featuring …

Discriminating Tastes: How Advertisements Taught Consumerism And Race To Gilded Age Youths, Jaclyn Schultz

Theses and Dissertations

Commercial and social trends of the Gilded Age combined to give a unique and novel power to colorful advertising trade cards that were collected, exchanged, and preserved in scrapbooks by middle-class children living in the Northeast. These children were members of one of the earliest generations to grow up with mandatory co-educational schooling and to be part of a distinctive youth culture created through peer interactions. After 1876, advertising trade cards became ubiquitous and were a significant component of that peer culture. The cards were also innovative in that they were the first example of colored images to be made …

The Price Of Change: Historiographical, Fiscal, And Demographic Considerations Of The Milwaukee Movement, 1966, Jonathan Charles Bruce

Theses and Dissertations

The work presented in this thesis argues for a new schema with which to approach the civil rights literature. Arguments for the necessity of this new approach utilize Milwaukee as a case study, analyzing the texts considered canonical to the city and offering a critique that will begin to break away from a lionized individual in favor of an egalitarian approach to history, specifically through the use of non-traditional methods such as quantitative analysis. Perhaps most important to the literature, this thesis addresses a fundamental, long-ignored aspect of the Civil Rights Movement by analyzing fiscal realities that face a grassroots …

"And So We Moved Quietly": Southern Methodist University And Desegregation, 1950-1970, Scott A. Cashion

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Southern Methodist University was the first Methodist institution in the South to open its doors to African Americans in the early 1950s. There were several factors that contributed to SMU pushing for desegregation when it did. When SMU started the process of desegregation in the fall of 1950, two schools in the Southwest Conference had already admitted at least one black graduate student. University officials, namely then President Umphrey Lee, realized that because other schools had desegregated, it would not be long before SMU would have to do the same. Lee started the path towards desegregation in 1950, and it …

Whiteness In Africa: Americo-Liberians And The Transformative Geographies Of Race, Robert P. Murray

Theses and Dissertations--History

This dissertation examines the constructed racial identities of African American settlers in colonial Liberia as they traversed the Atlantic between the United States and West Africa during the first half of the nineteenth century. In one of the great testaments that race is a social construction, the West African neighbors and inhabitants of Liberia, who conceived of themselves as “black,” recognized the significant cultural differences between themselves and these newly-arrived Americans and racially categorized the newcomers as “white.” This project examines the ramifications for these African American settlers of becoming simultaneously white and black through their Atlantic mobility. This is …

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

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 …

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

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 …

The African-American Struggle For Equality: Two Divergent Approaches, Steven Washington

Honors College Theses

This paper focuses on two leaders and how their divergent strategies for one goal led to them working together without actively coordinating their efforts. The research conducted in the paper is based primarily on the writings of Booker T. Washington and W. E. B. Du Bois. It examines their upbringing and their views on education, labor and voting rights.

The Hidden Help : Black Domestic Workers In The Civil Rights Movement., Trena Easley Armstrong

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

During the 1960's, nearly ninety percent of black women in the South worked as domestic servants. While much has been written depicting the dehumanizing and exploitative conditions in which they lived, their contributions to human rights garnered from their subtle acts of resistance and specifically, their involvement in the Civil Rights Movement, has either been undocumented or documented quite minimally. Despite their historical roles and socioeconomic disadvantages, their reach for human agency was beneficial to society. This thesis examines their labor as domestic workers and their participation in the Civil Rights Movement using the qualitative research method of interviews and …

How Is The Most Segregated City In The Country Addressing Disproportionate Minority Contact With A Juvenile Burglary Restorative Justice Program And What Implications Exist For Community Based Restorative Circles? : Conflict Analysis And Recommendations, Lauren Thrift

Capstone Collection

Milwaukee, Wisconsin is considered the most segregated city in the country and has the most disproportionate rate of minorities in Wisconsin’s juvenile justice system. The State of Wisconsin recognizes disproportionate minority contact (DMC) is a product of both differential offending by minorities and the racist differential processing by the juvenile justice system. Milwaukee’s residents are locked in a conflict about the role of racism in the high rates of minority crime and whether to address DMC with more stringent punishment or increasing alternatives to incarceration. The entrenched segregation between African American and Caucasian neighborhoods and social groups reinforces polarization, increasing …

"It Was Awful, But It Was Politics": Crittenden County And The Demise Of African American Political Participation, Krista Michelle Jones

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Despite the vast scholarship that exists discussing why Democrats sought restrictive suffrage laws, little attention has been given by historians to examine how concern over local government drove disfranchisement measures. This study examines how the authors of disfranchisement laws were influenced by what was happening in Crittenden County where African Americans, because of their numerical majority, wielded enough political power to determine election outcomes. In the years following the Civil War, African Americans established strong communities, educated themselves, secured independent institutions, and most importantly became active in politics. Because of their numerical majority, Crittenden's African Americans were elected to county …

The 1868 St. Landry Massacre: Reconstruction's Deadliest Episode Of Violence, Matthew Christensen

Theses and Dissertations

The St. Landry Massacre is representative of the pervasive violence and intimidation in the South during the 1868 presidential canvass and represented the deadliest incident of racial violence during the Reconstruction Era. Southern conservatives used large scale collective violence in 1868 as a method to gain political control and restore the antebellum racial hierarchy. From 1865-1868, these Southerners struggled against the federal government, carpetbaggers, and Southern black populations to gain this control, but had largely failed in their attempts. After the First Reconstruction Act of March, 1867 forced Southern governments to accept universal male suffrage, Southern conservatives utilized violence and …

Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, And Africans In Colonial Mississippi Valley, Sonia Toudji

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with Native Americans during the conquest of North America. French diplomatic savoir faire and their skill at trading with Indians are usually cited to explain this success, but the Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift giving, while enjoying considerably less success with the Indians. Intimate Frontiers proposes an alternative model to understand the relative success of French Colonization in North America. Intimate Frontiers, an ethno-historical examination of the colonial encounters in the Lower French Louisiana, focuses on the Social relations between …

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

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

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Making Of A Second-Class Citizen: A Case Study Of The Institutionalized Oppression Of Blacks In New Orleans, Andrew Stowe

Senior Independent Study Theses

New Orleans has been a cultural melting pot since the four centuries since its foundation. Along with all the mixing of cultures and races in the former slave city, racial divisions were created by the governments that controlled the city. This history of inequality and oppression has been a blight on the city's records and this paper will explore the three main injustices that have placed blacks into the role of being second-class citizens. These three issues are race-based violence, environmental injustice, and neighborhood segregation. This paper will chronicle events of the three injustices that have pushed blacks to be …

Black Policemen In Jim Crow New Orleans, Vanessa Flores-Robert

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

Although historians have done in-­‐depth researched on Black police in the South, before the Civil War and during Reconstruction, they seldom assess black policemen’s role in New Orleans between the Battle of Liberty Place and 1913. The men discussed here argue that despite the hardening racial attitudes in Post-­‐ Reconstruction South, in New Orleans opportunity still existed for Blacks to serve in positions of authority, perhaps a heritage of the city’s earlier tri-­‐partite racial order. The information obtained from primary sources such as police manuals, beat books, and newspapers, counters the widely held belief that African American presence in the …

Oscar James Dunn: A Case Study In Race & Politics In Reconstruction Louisiana, Brian Mitchell

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

The study of African American Reconstruction leadership has presented a variety of unique challenges for modern historians who struggle to piece together the lives of men, who prior to the Civil War, had little political identity. The scant amounts of primary source data in regard to these leaders’ lives before the war, the destruction of many documents in regard to their leadership following the Reconstruction Era, and the treatment of these figures by historians prior to the Revisionist movement have left this body of extremely important political figures largely unexplored. This dissertation will examine the life of one of Louisiana’s …

"Is This The Fruit Of Freedom?" Black Civil War Veterans In Tennessee, Paul E. Coker

Doctoral Dissertations

This dissertation explores the meaning of the Civil War in the South by examining the experience of Tennessee’s black Union army soldiers and veterans from the 1860s through the early twentieth century. Today historians almost reflexively agree that the black military experience took on an “ever larger meaning” in American society, but few scholars have given sustained attention to black soldiers’ lives in the postwar South. My dissertation finds that the black military experience profoundly disrupted Southern hierarchies and presented black men with unprecedented opportunities to elevate their political, economic, and social status; however, these aspirations rarely went uncontested. Nearly …

“A General State Of Terror”: The Enforcement Acts, The Ku Klux Klan, And The Struggle Over Education In The Post-Bellum South, Kathryn E. Murdock

Senior Theses and Projects

No abstract provided.

"The Africans Have Taken Arkansas": Political Activities Of African-American Members Of The Arkansas Legislature, 1868-73, Christopher Warren Branam

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

African-American lawmakers in the Arkansas General Assembly during Radical Reconstruction became politically active at a time when the legislature was addressing the most basic issues of public life, such as creating the infrastructure of public education and transportation in the state. They were actively engaged in the work of the legislature. Between 1868 and 1873, they introduced bills that eventually became laws. Arkansas passed two civil rights laws at the behest of African-American lawmakers. Education, law and order, and economic development--issues that reflected the southern Republican agenda that dominated the state's politics between 1868 and Democratic Redemption in 1874--also drew …

Detroit Blues Women, Michael Duggan Murphy

Wayne State University Dissertations

ABSTRACT

DETROIT BLUES WOMEN

by

Michael Duggan Murphy

August 2011

Advisor: Dr. John J. Bukowczyk

Major: History

Degree: Doctor of Philosophy

"Detroit Blues Women" explores how African American "women's blues" survived the twentieth century relatively unscripted by the image-makers of the male-dominated music industry. In the 1920s, African American blues queens laid out a foundation for assertive and rebellious women's blues that the many musical heirs who succeeded them in the twentieth century and into the first decade of the twenty first century sustained, preserved and built upon. The dissertation argues that women's blues, which encouraged women to liberate themselves …

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.

Bondage On The Border: Slaves And Slaveholders In Tazewell County, Virginia, Laura Lee Kerr

Dissertations, Theses, and Masters Projects

No abstract provided.

Beef, Mutton, Pork, And A Taste Of Turtle: Zooarchaeology And Nineteenth-Century African American Foodways At The Boston-Higginbotham House, Nantucket, Massachusetts, Michael Andrew Way

Graduate Masters Theses

In 1774, nearly ten years before slavery was abolished in Massachusetts, an emancipated African American weaver named Seneca Boston purchased a tract of land in the Newtown section of Nantucket, Massachusetts. It is here that over the next thirty years Seneca Boston and his Wampanoag wife, Thankful Micah, would build a house, now known as the Boston-Higginbotham House, and raise six children. The Boston-Higginbotham House was home to the descendents of Seneca Boston and Thankful Micah for over one hundred years. Throughout the 19th century a vibrant and active African American community was developing in Newtown, and several generations of …