African American Studies Commons^™

Supporting Caste: The Origins Of Racism In Colonial Virginia, Patrick D. Anderson

Grand Valley Journal of History

In 17th century Virginia, lower class whites and blacks coordinated on multiple occasions to resist the power of the ruling class elites. By the late 19th century, white laborers viewed the newly freed slaves through racist precepts and the two groups clashed on a regular basis. The aim of this essay is to explain how the shift from racial solidarity to racial antagonism occurred. Racist ideology originated in the minds of the elites and they attempted to separate the restless lower class along racial lines, first, by legal reforms, second, by creating a separate class of enslaved blacks. Anti-black racism …

Negro Business League Of Jacksonville Florida Letterhead, Negro Business League Of Jacksonville Florida

Eartha M. M. White Textual Material

The letterhead stationary of the Negro Business League of Jacksonville Florida. The letterhead lists the officers and the executive committee.

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.

Aa Ms 06 Home Is Where I Make It - Oral History Collection Finding Aid, Marieke Van Der Steenhoven

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

Description:

This oral history project was directed by Dr. Maureen Elgersman Lee, of USM, and Rachel Talbot Ross. The interviews were conducted by local high school students. The Collection includes transcripts, photographs and audiotapes from the two phases of the project, which documented African American life in the Greater Portland and Lewiston-Auburn areas.

Date Range:

2001-2003

Size of Collection:

1 ft.

Unity In The Black Community, Cecilia Uhlezipi Shamis Dzingira

Black Issues Conference

Dzingira, Cecilia

Black Issues Conference 2012

Unity in the Black Community

Abstract

Background: As an African American student who attends a pre-dominantly White Institution, I’ve found that the importance of unity is much more greater than we allow it to appear; by “We” I am referring to the African-American population that rests within the University’s community. When a new student is admitted into the University, it is not difficult that not only is there segregation between all races of students, but also within the different races lays a much deeper separation. Because of these issues that rise within communities …

Attica State Correctional Facility: The Causes And Fallout Of The Riot Of 1971, Kathleen E. Slade

The Exposition

Everyone has heard the rallying cry “Attica! Attica!” These are words shouted in protest by many in the 1970s including John Lennon in his song “Attica State” in 1971 and Al Pacino in the movie “Dog day Afternoon” in 1975. But what happened at Attica State Correctional Facility in the rural town of Attica, NY in 1971 to cause the bloodiest day in American history up to that time? A prison built to be escape proof and virtually riot proof in 1931 exploded just forty years later in a violent four day riot that ended in a bloody massacre of …

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 …

A. Philip Randolph And Boston's African-American Railroad Worker, James R. Green, Robert C. Hayden

James R. Green

On October 8, 1988, a group of retired Pullman car porters and dining car waiters gathered in Boston's Back Bay Station for the unveiling of a larger-than-life statue of A. Philip Randolph. During the 1920s and 1930s, Randolph was a pioneering black labor leader who led the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. He came to be considered the "father of the modern civil rights movement" as a result of his efforts to desegregate World War II defense jobs and the military services. Randolph's importance as a militant leader is highlighted by a quote inscribed on the base of the statue …

Tupac In The Classroom: From Cointelpro To Critical Consciousness, Jesse Benjamin

Jesse Benjamin

No abstract provided.

Mccartt-Jackson, Sarah (Fa 578), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

FA Finding Aids

Finding aid and full text (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Folklife Archives Project 578. Paper by Sarah McCartt-Jackson titled “Narrative Compromise: African American Representation at Henry Clay’s Ashland Estate.” Paper provides analysis of the inclusion and accuracy of the history of slavery at Ashland, and slavery’s depiction in tour narratives, brochures, exhibit signage, advertisements, and websites. This project won the 2011Folklife Archives Award competition at Western Kentucky University.

Race, Memory, And Historical Responsibility: What Do Southerners Do With A Difficult Past?, Larry J. Griffin, Peggy G. Hargis

Catalyst: A Social Justice Forum

Newly emerging, transitional societies –– that is, societies that traded dictatorial or authoritarian rule for some form of open or liberal polity –– face at least three interdependent problems of what is called in legal scholarship and social science “transitional justice”: the first is how (if at all) to hold the old regime’s autocratic, often violence-laden leadership responsible for its wrongdoings while in power; the second is what (if anything) to do with thousands upon thousands of ordinary folk whose participation in, or compliance with, the old regime helped legitimate and thus perpetuate the wrongdoing; and the third task how …

Helm, Thomas (Sc 19), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 19. Indenture between Thomas Helm, Clerk of the Lincoln County, Kentucky Court, and Edmond B. Taylor, regarding an apprenticeship for Rhoda, a free girl, mulatto, aged 13 years old. Taylor was to teach Rhoda the trade of spinning and weaving.

Two Tales Of A City: Nineteenth-Century Black Philadelphia, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] In the tension between Forging Freedom and Roots of Violence certain themes present themselves for further research and thought. Neither volume successfully analyzes the historical roots of the African-American class structure. This is especially evident in each book's treatment of the black middling orders. While neither defines the category with clarity, their basic assumption that small shopkeepers and regularly employed workers were critical to the community's ability to withstand some of the worst shocks of racism is important. The clash between these books also raises questions concerning the role of pre-industrial cultural values in the transition to industrial capitalism. …

Preface To Singing In A Strange Land, Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

Salvatore delves into the life of the one of the most influential clergyman in twentieth-century African-American religious life, from his 1915 origins as a poor Mississippi farmboy to his early years as a preacher in Tennessee to his 1950s rise to acclaim in Detroit. Along the way, Franklin's charismatic preaching style revolutionized the sermon yet he was no saint away from the pulpit. His encouragement to proclaim both faith and dignity in the black community helped bolster the civil rights movement.

An Improvised World: Jazz And Community In Milwaukee, 1950-1970, Benjamin Barbera

Theses and Dissertations

This study looks at the history of jazz in Milwaukee between 1950 and 1970. During this period Milwaukee experienced a series of shifts that included a large migration of African Americans, urban renewal and expressway projects, and the early stages of deindustrialization. These changes had an impact on the jazz musicians, audience, and venues in Milwaukee such that the history of jazz during this period reflects the social, economic, and physical landscape of the city in transition.

This thesis fills two gaps in the scholarship on Milwaukee. First, it describes the history of jazz in Milwaukee in a more comprehensive …

"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 …

American Commemorative Panels: Innovative Choreographers, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational page for Innovative Choreographers (Katherine Dunham) Commemorative Stamp – American Commemorative Panels, includes images of the stamps, information about the stamp and information about the Innovative Choreographers. First issued July 28, 2012.

U.S. President Barack Obama, Portland, Or, Svg Postal Corporation

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

"U.S. President Barack Obama speaks at a campaign fundraiser at the Oregon Convention Center", Mustique, sheet of 4 stamps, The President Obama International Stamp Collection.

American Commemorative Panels: Major League Baseball All-Stars: Larry Doby, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational pages for Major League Baseball All-Stars: Larry Doby Commemorative Stamp – American Commemorative Panels, includes images of the stamps, information about the physical stamp and biographical information for Major League Baseball All-Stars: Larry Doby. First issued July 21, 2012.

American Commemorative Panels: Major League Baseball All-Stars: Willie Stargell, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational pages for Major League Baseball All-Stars: Willie Stargell Commemorative Stamp – American Commemorative Panels, includes images of the stamps, information about the physical stamp and biographical information for Major League Baseball All-Stars: Willie Stargell. First issued July 21, 2012.

American Commemorative Panels: Major League Baseball All-Stars, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational page for Major League Baseball All-Stars Commemorative Stamp – American Commemorative Panels, includes images of the stamps, some information about the physical stamp and information about Major League Baseball All-Stars. First issued July 20, 2012.

Contribution Form For The Old Folks Home

Eartha M. M. White Textual Material

Form: Poem "Mother" and photograph of Mrs. Clara White printed on Contribution blank for donations to Old Folks Home Association. No date given.

[Review Of The Book William Johnson’S Natchez: The Ante-Bellum Diary Of A Free Negro], Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] To raise this issue of Johnson's silences and social isolation is not to engage in historical pity. He made choices from the options available to him and suffered the consequences as they developed. But his history underscores the fact that slavery generated a corresponding social system that was unforgiving to the individual caught in its contradictory currents. As Michael P. Johnson and James L. Roark suggest in Black Masters, their sensitive study of another slave owner and ex-slave, William Ellison of South Carolina, a purely personal solution to such volatile social relations proved impossible. What bound William Johnson to …

To Make A Better World Tomorrow: St. Clair Drake And The Quakers Of Pendle Hill, Andrew Rosa

History Faculty Publications

This article is part of a larger project by the author to record St. Clair Drake’s contribution to the black radical tradition. Here he examines Drake’s involvement with the Quakers in the early years of the Depression. Drawing on writings in African American and Popular Front periodicals of the time, it considers how a Quaker community shaped Drake’s identity as an intellectual activist and how his encounter suggests the ways in which black intellectuals engaged with non-violence as a philosophy and strategy for social change before he civil rights movement. Drake’s participation in non-violent campaigns for workers’ rights, world peace …

[Review Of The Book Meatpackers: An Oral History Of Black Packinghouse Workers And Their Struggle For Racial And Economic Equality], Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] The Halpern and Horowitz volume, Meatpackers, follows creditably in this oral history tradition, even if it does not approach the power and complexity of Rosengarten's work. Instead of focusing on one individual, the book presents selections culled from a massive collection of oral interviews conducted by the authors with more than 125 former members of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA). The interviewees are black, white, and Hispanic, male and female, with records of activism in the union as far back as the 1930s and as recent as the 1980s. The events they recount occurred in five cities, …

[Review Of The Book The Trials Of Anthony Burns: Freedom And Slavery In Emerson's Boston], Nick Salvatore

Nick Salvatore

[Excerpt] The intellectual core of The Trials of Anthony Burns explores the connection between Ralph Waldo Emerson and the New England Transcendentalists and the abolitionist cause. Ideas effect social life, von Frank insists, and he examines that point in a rich analysis that weaves intellectual, religious, political, and cultural perspectives into a sophisticated and detailed narrative. Emersonians came to embrace abolitionist activity as a central component of their philosophical idealism, particularly during the i850s. In an interesting way, the Burns case called upon many of New England's social and cultural elites to rethink their understanding of the relationship between idea …

Old Folks Home Card

Eartha M. M. White Textual Material

Card: Old Folks Home, Miss Eartha M. M. White, Jacksonville, Florida. No date given.

American Commemorative Panels: Miles Davis & Edith Piaf, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational pages for Miles Davis & Edith Piaf Commemorative Stamp – American Commemorative Panels, includes images of the stamps, information about the physical stamp and biographical information for Miles Davis & Edith Piaf. First issued June 12, 2012.

Underground Railroad, Oklahoma State University - Main Campus

Ethnic History

Bibliography and photographs of a display of government documents from Oklahoma State University.