Oral History Commons^™

Serving In The Air Force With James Hixson, Diana Mendoza

Cold War

No abstract provided.

Estela Flores-Becerra, Csusb

South Colton Oral History Project Collection

No abstract provided.

Jeremiah Cline, Jeremiah Cline, Maria Brescia-Weiler, Sarah Aguilar

Stories of Knox County Interviews

No abstract provided.

Benji Ballmer, Benji Ballmer, Catherine Wessel, Alana Zack

Stories of Knox County Interviews

No abstract provided.

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 …

Contributors To Indian Catholicism: Interventions And Imaginings, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

Contributors to Indian Catholicism: Interventions and Imaginings, the inaugural issue of the Journal of Global Catholicism.

The Tying Of The Ceremonial Wedding Thread: A Feminist Analysis Of “Ritual” And “Tradition” Among Syro-Malabar Catholics In India, Sonja Thomas

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article presents a feminist analysis of patriarchy persisting in Catholicism of the Syro-Malabar rite in Kerala. The article specifically considers the impact of charismatic Catholicism on women of the Syro-Malabar rite and argues that it is important to interrogate this new face of religiosity in order to fully understand how certain rituals are allowed to change and be fluid, while others, especially concerning female sexuality, are enshrined as “tradition” which often restricts the parameters for women’s empowerment and may reinforce caste and patriarchal hegemonies preventing feminist solidarity across different religious- and caste-based groups.

Dalit Catholic Home Shrines In A North Indian Village, Mathew Schmalz

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article examines three Catholic home shrines in a Dalit community in North Indian and argues that it is misleading to think that home shrines and other collections of material objects are somehow static conveyors of meaning. “Meaning” can mean many things or nothing at all, depending upon the terms we are using and the scholarly methods we deploy. The crucial aspect of Dalit Catholic home shrines is that they are literally open to interpretation and reinterpretation, to touching and being touched. Their significance—their meaning—depends not on decoding their structure or symbolic logic, but interacting with them as part of …

The Grace Of God And The Travails Of Contemporary Indian Catholicism, Kerry P. C. San Chirico

Journal of Global Catholicism

This essay discusses the challenges faced by Indian Catholicism, particularly as it seeks to adapt to and in contemporary, post-colonial India through the process or program of what is called inculturation, a self-conscious program of adaptation to Indian religion and culture. Since Indian Catholicism is constituted by so many irreducible persons-in-relation, the article focuses on the life of the Catholic priest, Swami Ishwar Prasad in whose life we may chart something of the inculturation movement and the Catholic tradition as it is found in North India region, in one rather long and rich lifetime connecting two centuries. The article seeks …

In Continuity With The Past: Indigenous Environmentalism And Indian Christian Visions Of Flora, James Ponniah

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article considers whether Indian Christianity can be said to have a distinctive ecological vision. The first two parts of the article examine Christian environmentalism in two native forms of Indian Christianity: Tamil Christianity and Tribal Christianity. Continuing with the theme of conformity to the local culture—though of the elite—the third part of the article investigates how Christian Ashrams function as dynamic centers for ecological praxis. The last part of the article considers how contemporary Indian Christian communities can respond to the ecological challenges confronting them.

Antoniyar Kōvil: Hindu-Catholic Identity At The St. Anthony Shrine In St. Mary’S Co-Cathedral, Chennai, Pj Johnston

Journal of Global Catholicism

This article combines ethnographic description of the practices of Hindu and Christian visitors of the St. Antony Shrine in Chennai with the observation that this material cannot be understood using the standard world religions paradigm that essentializes Christianity as exclusivistic. Drawing upon the visual and material culture of the shrine in light of premodern and Vatican II templates for inculturation and the negotiation of religious difference, the article highlights overlap between Tamil Hinduism and the Tamil Popular Catholicism of the site to argue that the beliefs and practices documented should inform descriptive and normative accounts of Catholic Christianity. Because Tamil …

"Black And White Together, We Shall Win": Southern White Activists In The Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Olivia Bethany Moore

Master's Theses

During the Civil Rights Movement, Mississippi has often been characterized as a simple battle of white racists against black activists. Drawing heavily on oral histories, personal publications, and Mississippi Sovereignty Commission reports, this thesis examines the unconventional stories of white southerners who transcended the segregationist environments in which they were born. As southern white activism took many forms, this work offers biographical insights to three individuals who have received little scholarly attention: journalist P.D East, National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) activist Buford Posey, and William Carey president Ralph Noonkester. While their contributions between 1950-1971 differed, being …

Interview No. 1688, Lucía Martinez

Combined Interviews

Lucía was born in El Paso, Texas in 1960 and was raised in the Barrio Chamizal. She has two younger sisters, Rosalva and Angelica. Her mother is from Troncoso, Zacatecas, Mexico and her family had moved to Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico because of a drought. Her paternal grandmother, Carmen was born in El Paso in 1910 but when she was fifteen she went back to Torreon, Coahuila, Mexico. Her father was born there in 1932 and his family eventually came to Juárez to La Chaveña. Around the mid-fifties they came to El Paso. They bought a house by San Antonio Street …

Interview No. 1689, Rebeca Pimentel

Combined Interviews

Rebeca was born in Cuidad Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. Her family would move between Guadalajara, Jalisco, Mexico and Las Nieves, Durango, Mexico and eventually crossed into El Paso, Texas. Her father left them when she was four years old and went to El Monte, California. She has three younger siblings. When she was nine years old, they moved to El Paso where her mother worked as a waitress. Rebeca started going to seventh grade at Guillen Middle School when she was fifteen years old. She did not have any schooling before and had only been in the third grade in Juárez. …

Interview No. 1690, Emma S. Villa

Combined Interviews

Emma was born and raised in El Paso, Texas in 1935. She had two brothers and one sister. One of her brothers has passed away. She is the youngest. Her father was from Mexico and crossed illegally into the United States. He had no education but had his own business building houses around Austin School. Only her sister graduated from Bowie School because her brothers had to quit in order to run the business when their father got sick. Emma was around ten years old. Both of her brothers went into the service and the oldest was in the Korean …

Interview No. 1691, Luis M. Villa

Combined Interviews

Luis was born in El Paso, Texas. He grew up with his parents in his grandparents’ house. His grandfather would grow corn and sweet peas and had fruit trees. He lived there until he was about fourteen years old. His grandmother was raising her brother’s daughter, his aunt who was about three years older than Luis. One day her mother scolded his aunt. His grandmother did not like this so she hit and slapped her. Soon after, his father decided for them to move out. They moved into his mother’s comadre’s house because they were moving to California. He had …

Interview No. 1686, Jesus Zamora

Combined Interviews

Jesus was born in El Paso, Texas in the Segundo Barrio. He recalls living in an apartment complex facing the Franklin Canal on 7th and Virginia Street. There were a lot of gangs around including Los Equis Sietes and Los Catorces. He recalls coming home late from Armijo when he was about 6 years old. The gangs would fight on the corner of 7th and Virginia with chains and knives. He came out to run home and got hit with a chain. A lady in her seventies was watching and she came out to tell them to go home. He …

Interview No. 1687, Mary Zamora

Combined Interviews

Mary was born in Ysleta, Texas in 1955. She grew up in Socorro, Texas and lived there until she was seventeen years old. Her paternal grandfather was a Comanche from San Elizario, Texas and her grandmother was an Apache from Ruidoso, New Mexico. They met in San Elizario, got married, and had fourteen children. Eventually they moved to Socorro, Texas. Mary attended Socorro Elementary School. She spoke mostly Spanish but had to learn English quickly because they would swat them for speaking Spanish. Her father worked building houses, was a janitor in the Ysleta School District, and would cultivate cotton. …

Interview No. 1685, Salvador Avila

Combined Interviews

Salvador was born in Juárez, Chihuahua, Mexico. All of his siblings were born in the United States. They came to El Paso, Texas in 1967 when he was in seventh grade and arrived to Canutillo, Texas where he went to school. His father was a farm worker and his mother was a home keeper that would work in Mountain Pass Cannery during the summers. His siblings and he would work in the fields picking mostly onion but also weeds and chilies. He had seven siblings but one has passed away. He had a terrible time in school. He did not …

Interview No. 1711, Beatriz Villegas

Combined Interviews

Beatriz was born in Torreon Coahuila, Mexico. She arrived in El Paso when she was 25 years old because she got married, but she used to visit El Paso frequently because she lived in Juarez with her family. Her stepdad made the family moved to Juarez because he thought that it was cheaper living there.

Beatriz has always considered herself a Mexican woman, but she knew that in reality, she was an American citizen. Throughout the years she has work as a community activist and spiritual activist when Beatriz was asked about her being a leader she mentioned that she …