Black History Commons^™

The New Deal In Georgia: Oral History Research Collection, Zach S. Henderson Library Special Collections

Finding Aids

This collection contains materials from an oral history research project on the New Deal in Georgia conducted in 1987 by Marchanita R. Coleman as part of Dr. R. Frank Saunders’ historiography course. Materials include a typed final report, oral history interview audiocassette tapes, and one photograph. Interviews are with African American residents of Liberty and Chatham County who lived during the Great Depression or remember the New Deal era in Georgia.

Incorporating Principles And Wisdom From Hospital Chaplaincy And Pastoral Ministry To Create A Ministry Model To Address Social Isolation And Loneliness In Black Churches, Albert A. Kemp

Doctor of Ministry Projects and Theses

To address the growing and widespread epidemic of social isolation and loneliness, with special focus on Black churches, this dissertation developed a program with the following areas of application: 1) how healthcare trained chaplains can coordinate with churches to positively impact individuals identified as lonely and socially isolated with better social and physical health, 2) how principles of chaplaincy and pastoral care can mitigate and intervene competently when such people are identified, and 3) how the project’s model can be organized, taught, and incorporated into existing arenas of church ministry.

The purpose of the project was to create a ministry …

Queer Ballroom In 1980s-90s New York City: Connections To Joy And Education, Maya A. Gary

Masters Theses, 2020-current

This master's thesis project delivers a concise history of the development of Queer Ballroom in the 1980s–1990s in Harlem, New York City, primarily focusing on low-income Black and Latino queer individuals and how they created spaces of belonging and joy during the HIV/AIDS crisis. This work illustrates how ballroom culture functioned as both a space of refuge and a network for mutual aid, outreach, and advocacy. In addition to the historical analysis, this project includes a free-to-use educational website and lesson plans aligned with the Virginia Standards of Learning for grades 6 and 11. This work demonstrates the importance of …

When Healing Becomes Horror: Medical Malpractice And Institutional Fear, Taryn Prater

COD Library Student Research and Award Symposium

I studied medical malpractice through the lens of Monster Theory, examining how systemic failures, institutional silence, and cultural ideals shape harm in healthcare. I learned that malpractice is not only a legal issue, but a structural and ethical one, where fear and lack of transparency erode trust and impact both patients and providers.

Monstrous Medicine website

Faculty Sponsor: Professor Aleisha Balestri

Care, Control, And The Racial Regulation Of Black Women’S Reproduction In American Medicine, Rheya K. Wilk

Honors Thesis

Black women in the United States continue to experience disproportionately high rates of maternal mortality, negative reproductive healthcare experiences, and documented disparities in medical treatment. From slavery through the twenty-first century, American medicine has repeatedly positioned Black women’s reproduction as a site of regulation, rather than care, making medical mistrust among Black women a rational response to a long history of institutional conflict embedded in American medicine. Drawing on medical history and bioethical analysis, this thesis traces reproductive abuse across distinct, yet connected, eras. Beginning with antebellum gynecological experimentation on enslaved women, it demonstrates how racialized assumptions about pain and …

Beyond The Bricks: The Friends Of The Burns-Belfry Online, Madeline M. Webb

Honors Theses

This capstone project was completed to offer a new website to the members of the Friends of the Burns-Belfry Museum and Multicultural Center. This project entailed research into the importance of a museum’s digital presence, the significance of community and cultural spaces for historically marginalized groups, and the role of community engagement initiatives for students and community leaders. All findings were considered and implemented into the website and website manual deliverables.

Between Authenticity And Exploitation: Rethinking The Intended Audience Of Sean Baker's Tangerine, Ava Brandt

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Sean Baker's Tangerine (2015) has generated genuinely divided responses among trans critics, and for good reason. This paper takes that division seriously, using two reviews published on Autostraddle within six weeks of each other to frame a central question: who is Tangerine actually for? Existing scholarship on trans cinema has tended to evaluate films on a spectrum from exploitative to affirming, but this paper argues that framework is insufficient for a film like Tangerine, which operates as both simultaneously. Through close reading of the film alongside its production history, paratexts, and reception, and drawing on Paige Macintosh's scholarship on trans …

Tracings, Masie Sophia Love

Theses and Dissertations

In this paper, the artist wonders what it means to remember a time and place that she has not experienced- what would this look like visualized in a painting? Love studies the histories and similarities between cartography and quilting using the two as a kind of channel to understand, record, and remember land. She explores inherited memory and the clues left behind in the form of quilts made by ancestors to create abstracted landscapes and maps of Tennessee where they lived for generations.

New Clubs: Taking Roots, Diorama, 1981

Documents

Article with photographs describing the 1981 introduction of four new campus organizations: Delta Sigma Theta, Ascending Voices, Fashion Forum, and the University of North Alabama Film Society. The article is derived from the Diorama, the student yearbook.

Girlhood, Interrupted: An Intersectional Feminist History Of Decolonizing And Reclaiming Womanhood, Ayden Kelly

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

In the past few decades, social and political discourse surrounding womanhood and who is considered a "real" woman has led to the execration of transgender women. This work will explore how recent discourse and rhetoric surrounding who is and who is not a “real woman” can be traced to nineteenth century notions of “true womanhood” that excluded women of color. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, with westward expansion, settler colonialism, residential schools, slavery, and post-emancipation serving as backdrops, this work will also analyze how ideologies of womanhood have interrupted and suppressed women of color throughout Western American …

The Geography Of Race: A Spatial Analysis Of Free People Of Color In The City Of Charleston (1790-1861), Alexandra Ullman

All Theses

In Charleston, South Carolina, for all but one year from 1790 to 1860, the enslaved and free Black population outnumbered that of the white. Through manumission, the process of an enslaved person gaining their freedom, the free Black population grew substantially and reached a peak in South Carolina during the nineteenth century. This large community of free people of color (FPOC), shifted the social climate by upsetting the balance of white power, thus increasing racial conflict, tension, and legislation that aimed to control the movement of FPOC.

Despite FPOC comprising a significant portion of the total population of Charleston, there …

Disney's Illusion Of Inclusion, Marissa Davis

All Theses

Walt Disney’s films were not simply entertainment, but a use of racial stereotypes as a profit strategy. Even scholarship that explores these tactics and critically analyzes his most problematic misrepresentations do not to consider the role of Walt Disney, as a man, in creating and promoting these narratives. These depictions, while somewhat in line with the culture when he first entered the business, failed to evolve as society changed. Rather, they were deliberate choices to attract white audiences and increase revenue.

Over time, these tropes became socially unacceptable, yet Disney maintained them for public consumption. While Disney and his company …

Prevalence Of And Hindrances To Abolitionism In Buffalo And Erie County, 1830-1860, Lauren V. Kausner

History Theses

When Americans think of abolition and abolitionists, they most likely think of Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison or Harriet Tubman. Those names are associated with New England and Rochester, New York. Many accounts of abolitionism mention Buffalo, but only in passing. As a terminus on the Underground Railroad, Buffalo was on the route to freedom in Canada and played a vital role in the nation’s journey towards eliminating slavery. This thesis endeavors to discover the depth of abolitionist tendencies in Buffalo by looking at specific individuals and events between 1830 and 1860. There were politicians and trends that most likely …

No Color Line In The Coal Mine: The Role Of Black Coal Miners In The Umwa Strikes Of 1893 And 1899 In Southeast Kansas, Brent Mcdowell

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

In 1890 the United Mine Workers of America was established as a national union for coal miners in the United States. One of the prominent founding principles of the UMWA was to not discriminate against coal miners wanting to join and participate in the union regardless of their race, or ethnicity. Throughout the first decade of its existence, the UMWA was tested several times by the actions of coal mine operators using Black coal miners as strikebreakers, and in some scenarios, the UMWA failed to uphold their own declarations of nondiscrimination. Twice, in 1893 and 1899 the coal miners of …

Making It Work For The Future: Enslaved Contributions To Southern Baking And The Rise Of Black Culinary Entrepreneurship, Christiana Bell

Honors Theses - Providence Campus

This thesis investigates the two roles African Americans have in shaping Southern baking: first, as the foundational yet historically erased creators of techniques, ingredient traditions, and signature dishes; and second, as contemporary entrepreneurs reclaiming this heritage through the baking industry. Using a conceptual framework of Culinary Justice, Critical Race Theory (with a focus on counter-narratives), and Culinary Entrepreneurship, this study analyzes historical knowledge, cookbooks, and primary source narratives, alongside present-day interviews with Black culinary and pastry professionals. The research tests two hypotheses: first, that the contribution of enslaved Africans was significant and measurable across specific techniques, ingredient adaptation, and “making …

Patriotism, Philia, And Stereotyping During World War Ii: Correspondence Between Black Composers, Selise Phillips, Joi Carr

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

The 20th century was a monumental time for Black composers, especially for those in the UK. Rudolph Dunbar was the first black musician to perform at Royal Albert Hall in London, England. During this time, correspondence between him and William Grant Still, a famous black composer based in America, exists. Still’s rhetorical choices in these letters demonstrate the attitudes of these composers, specifically Still, and how these choices reflect the success of Dunbar’s career. Still, whose compositions started gaining traction in the 1930s, often praised Dunbar for his achievements. These letters all take place during World War II and during …

Hotels As Placemakers In Downtown Los Angeles, 1890-1950, Chrissie Alea Rensing, Megan Kendrick

Seaver College Research And Scholarly Achievement Symposium

Early twentieth-century Los Angeles is often characterized as a rapidly expanding metropolis shaped by informal segregation along lines of race, class, and gender. Yet within this landscape, hotels and lodging houses sometimes functioned as unexpected sites of inclusion and community for marginalized populations. This project investigates how these spaces of hospitality served women and racial minorities between 1890 and 1950 in Los Angeles. Drawing from recent scholarship from Natalia Molina and others, we set out to examine the role of vernacular hotel architecture and the “placemakers” who operated them.

The project involved examining hundreds of handwritten census pages and original …

Black Migration From Arkansas To Detroit: The Promise Of Prosperity, Justin Ripley

ATU Scholars Symposium

This presentation examines the experiences of Arkansans in the Great Migration of African Americans from the U.S. South during the twentieth century. My research examines Detroit, Michigan census records spanning from 1900-1950 along with archival records from Wayne State University’s Walter P. Reuther Library and Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs. These records tell a story that highlights and reveals the struggles along with familiar patterns which define migration experiences that many southern African American laborers faced in migrating to northern industrial cities such as Detroit. This presentation aims to reveal how African Americans adjusted and overcame trials while simultaneously …

"Black History Is Black Horror": Hauntology And Cultural Trauma In 20th And 21st Century Black Women's Gothic Horror, Destini S. Beckwith

Theses

Octavia Butler’s Afrofuturistic, gothic horror, neo-slave narrative Kindred (1979) vividly illustrates the story of a woman, Dana, involuntarily time-traveling from her home in 1976 Los Angeles, California, to a plantation in 19th-century Maryland. The interactions that she has with her ancestors, such as Alice, a free Black woman, and Rufus, a white man who enslaves Alice, leave Dana mentally and physically scarred. The 20th-century novel is meant to graphically reflect on the horrors of enslavement and the mental and physical effects that Black people endured/still endure because of it (i.e., grief, racial violence, and post-traumatic stress disorder). Furthermore, the novel’s …

Review Of Belle Da Costa Greene: A Librarian's Legacy, Raegan Stearns

LWLC Faculty Research

Belle da Costa Greene: A Librarian’s Legacy is a 303-page catalog for the Morgan Library and Museum’s exhibition of the same name, which ran from October 25, 2024, through May 4, 2025. Both the catalog and exhibition explore the life and professional contributions of Belle da Costa Greene (1879–1950), the museum’s first director upon its establishment as a public institution in 1924.