African History Commons^™

Bound In Bermuda And Virginia: The First Century Of Slave Laws And Customs, Max Tiffany

All Master's Theses

This study looks at the differing early slave societies of colonial Virginia and Bermuda. Specifically, this study looks at how the first century of slave laws and customs in the respective colonies varied so greatly. Relatively speaking, slave laws and customs in colonial Virginia were harsh when compared to the laws and customs of colonial Bermuda. This difference was due to the difference in the type of labor slaves performed and in landowning patterns in the respective colonies during the seventeenth century. In Virginia, slaves labored under a harsh regime on plantations, while Bermudian slaves worked often in a maritime …

For The Good That We Can Do: African Presses, Christian Rhetoric, And White Minority Rule In South Africa, 1899-1924, Ian Marsh

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This research examines Christian rhetoric as a source of resistance to white minority rule in South Africa within African newspapers in the first two decades of the twentieth-century. Many of the African editors and writers for these papers were educated by evangelical protestant missionaries that arrived in South Africa during the nineteenth century. Most prior research on these presses has examined the importance of Christianity, but has not taken into account the evolution of its use over the entirety of the period. Without this emphasis on evolving utilization, the current scholarship lacks a complete understanding of African newspapers and their …

The Power Of The Periphery: Aid, Mutuality And Cold War U.S-Ghana Relations, 1957-1966, Moses Allor Awinsong

Masters Theses

This project interrogates how economic self interest motivated periphery states such as Ghana to use foreign policy as a vehicle to attract improved development assistance from superpowers, in this case the United States. While the United States viewed its aid program in Ghana in stringently Cold War terms, Kwame Nkrumah and his advisors were less inclined to get deeply concerned about Cold War ideology. This project shows that Ghanaian agency was manifested in the Cold War through the new state's construction of a foreign policy image that made it a prominent African voice globally. It then examines how that image …

Ancient Egyptian Figurines: An Investigation Into Manufacture, Use, And Culture., Kristina B. Donnally 2455289

UROP Posters

I will analyze the social and religious role of figurines in Egyptian society. I will delve into the differences in the figurines in both manufacture and purpose between the Old, Middle, and New Kingdoms. I hope to look at religious, political, and other figurines to get a broad spectrum of usage for the artifacts. The main purpose of the research is to identify the time period, purpose, and usage for the figure donated to VCU by Professor Waybright. Questions I have is if the changes in political structure and minute changes in religion between each Kingdom affected the manufacture and …

Spiritual Journeys: A Study Of Ifá /Òrìṣà Practitioners In The United States Initiated In Nigeria, Tony Van Der Meer

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

The purpose of this study is to understand the culture of one of the newest branches of traditional Yorùbá Ifá/Òrìṣà practice in the United States from practitioners born in the United States that were initiated in Nigeria, West Africa.The epistemology of the Ifá/Òrìṣà belief system in the United States has been based on the history and influence of Regla de Ocha or Santeria that developed out of Cuban innovation and practice.This is an ethnographic and auto-ethnographic study that pulls from participant observation, field notes, interviews, and photos as data.The central question of this dissertation is what are the challenges and …

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 …

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 …

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 …

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.

South Sudan : A New History For A New Nation, Douglas H. Johnson

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Africa’s newest nation has a long history. Often considered remote and isolated from the rest of Africa, and usually associated with the violence of slavery and civil war, South Sudan has been an arena for a complex mixing of peoples, languages, and beliefs. The nation’s diversity is both its strength and a challenge as its people attempt to overcome the legacy of decades of war to build a new economic, political, and national future.

Most recent studies of South Sudan’s history have a foreshortened sense of the past, focusing on current political issues, the recently ended civil war, or the …

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 …

Modern Muslims : A Sudan Memoir, Steve Howard

Ohio University Press Open Access Books

Steve Howard departed for the Sudan in the early 1980s as an American graduate student beginning a three-year journey in which he would join and live with the Republican Brotherhood, the Sufi Muslim group led by the visionary Mahmoud Mohamed Taha. Taha was a religious intellectual who participated in the early days of Sudan’s anticolonial struggle, but quickly turned his movement into a religious reform effort based on his radical reading of the Qur’an. He was executed in 1985 for apostasy.

Decades after returning to the life of an academic in the United States, Howard brings us this memoir of …

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 …

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 …

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

Genocide Studies and Prevention: An International Journal

No abstract provided.