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.

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 …

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.

"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.

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.

[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 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.

Dawson, Ella Mai (Randolph), 1892-1991 (Mss 397), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid only for Manuscripts Collection 397. Family correspondence, church materials, greeting cards and other personal papers of Ella Mai (Randolph) Dawson, a native of Logan County, Kentucky and resident of Clarksville, Tennessee. Includes voter registration and urban renewal materials relating to African Americans.

A Company Of Shadows: Slaves And Poor Free Menial Laborers In Cumberland County, Maine, 1760 – 1775, Charles P.M. Outwin

Maine History

Although slaves and poor, free menial laborers were by no means a majority of the population in late colonial-era Maine, they represented a culturally and socioeconomically significant part of commercial society there, especially at Falmouth in Casco Bay (now Portland) and in coastal Cumberland County. This essay uncovers the lives of the Falmouth’s small slave population and its larger poor menial laborer population from 1760 up to the port city’s destruction by the British in 1775. The author was granted a Ph.D. in history from the University of Maine in 2009. He is a member of the Maine Historical Society, …

Angel, E. M. (Sc 420), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "additional files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 420. Notice, Greensburg, Kentucky, to the African-American men of the 4th Congressional District, asking for recruits with bounties being offered, and stating that if they do not volunteer, they will be drafted. Signed by E.M. Angel, Deputy Provost Marshal, 4th Congressional District.

Warren County, Kentucky - Court Records (Sc 2529), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2529. Two slave bills of sale (1849, 1856) to Tobias S. Grider, and agreement (1861) of a family of emancipated African Americans to be enslaved by William Davenport.

Warren County, Kentucky - Court Records (Sc 2528), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scan (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2528. Summons to jury and witnesses and charge in the case of Lucy, an enslaved woman, accused of attempting to murder her owner’s wife with an axe in 1814.

Warren County, Kentucky - Court Records (Sc 2527), Manuscripts & Folklife Archives

MSS Finding Aids

Finding aid and scans (Click on "Additional Files" below) for Manuscripts Small Collection 2527. Warrant (1822) to sheriff to take custody of a free mulatto man found in Warren County; certificates (2) and appointment (1) relating to slave patrols in Warren County (1824-1825); and undated power of attorney authorizing apprehension of a fugitive slave from New Orleans, Louisiana.

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 …

American Commemorative Panels: Twentieth-Century Poets, United States Postal Service. Stamp Division

Rodney Lawrence Hurst, Sr. Stamp Collection

Informational pages for Twentieth-Century Poets (Gwendolyn Brooks) Commemorative Stamp – American Commemorative Panels, includes images of the stamps, information about the physical stamp and information about the Twentieth-Century Poets.. First issued April 21, 2012.