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C.C. Bryant: A Race Man Is What They Called Him, Judith E. Barlow Roberts Jan 2012

C.C. Bryant: A Race Man Is What They Called Him, Judith E. Barlow Roberts

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Many historical contributions have been made to Civil Rights movement history in Mississippi. Thus far, historian John Dittmer's, Local People: the Struggle for Civil Rights in Mississippi has provided the most thorough account of lesser known movement activist. There still exists a need for scholarship from the perspective of community leaders. Curtis Conway Bryant, better known as C.C. Bryant served as the McComb Pike County chapter president of the NAACP from 1954 to 1984. During the summer of 1964, McComb was known as the bombing capital of the world. Throughout the nineteen fifties Bryant worked with national and local NAACP …


Masculinity In Comparative Black Literatures, Latoya Renee Jefferson Jan 2012

Masculinity In Comparative Black Literatures, Latoya Renee Jefferson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project examines the ways in which Black men in Africa and throughout the African Diaspora define themselves as gendered beings in their fiction and drama beginning with Richard Wright's publication of Native Son in 1940 to Mariama Ba's So Long a Letter published 1980. Black men created a transnational dialectic concerning their masculinity which involved the creation and criticism of several types of masculinity. In Chapters 1 and 2, I discuss the theoretical and the historical framework for this project. In Chapter 3, I discuss the first type of Black masculinity which was based in opposition to Euro-American stereotypes …


Nothing Less Than An Activist: Marge Baroni, Catholicism, And The Natchez, Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Eva Elizabeth Walton Jan 2012

Nothing Less Than An Activist: Marge Baroni, Catholicism, And The Natchez, Mississippi Civil Rights Movement, Eva Elizabeth Walton

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis is a religious and social history of the life of Natchez, Mississippi Catholic activist Marjorie R. Baroni (1924-1986). The study examines Baroni's Catholic faith-driven activism as a counter-narrative to the dominant Protestant narratives of religious motivations in the greater civil rights movement. In analyzing Baroni's story as a lived theological drama, I offer Baroni as a vessel for studying often overlooked Catholic influences in the movement: (1) The activist Catholic faith promoted by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker Movement (2) The effects of the more inclusive decrees of the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965) on the Catholic Church …


Deeds, Not Words: African American Officers Of World War I In The Battle For Racial Equality, Adam Patrick Wilson Jan 2012

Deeds, Not Words: African American Officers Of World War I In The Battle For Racial Equality, Adam Patrick Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates the relatively untold story of the black officers of the Seventeenth Provisional Training Regiment, the first class of African Americans to receive officer training. In particular, this research examines the creation of the segregated Army officer training camp, these men's training and wartime experiences during World War I, and their post-war contributions fighting discrimination and injustice. These officers returned to America disillusioned with the nation's progress towards civil rights. Their leadership roles in the military translated into leadership roles in the post-war civil rights movement. Through their efforts, foundations for the modern Civil Rights movement were created. …


Nonviolent Bodies And The Experience Of Breakdown In The American Movement For Civil Rights, Danielle Andersen Jan 2012

Nonviolent Bodies And The Experience Of Breakdown In The American Movement For Civil Rights, Danielle Andersen

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the experience of personal breakdown in the American Civil Rights Movement. It proposes that breakdown was triggered in individuals by the practice of nonviolence and contends that breakdown precipitated the Movement's shift away from nonviolence toward the more self-protective tactic of black power.


Six Days Of Twenty-Four Hours: The Scopes Trial, Antievolutionism, And The Last Crusade Of William Jennings Bryan, Kari Lynn Edwards Jan 2012

Six Days Of Twenty-Four Hours: The Scopes Trial, Antievolutionism, And The Last Crusade Of William Jennings Bryan, Kari Lynn Edwards

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The academic study of the Scopes Trial has always been approached from a traditional legal interpretation. This project seeks to reframe the conventional arguments surrounding the trial, treating it instead as a significant religious event, one which not only altered the course of Christian Fundamentalism and the Creationist movement, but also perpetuated Southern religious stereotypes through the intense, and largely negative, nationwide publicity it attracted. Prosecutor William Jennings Bryan's crucial role is also redefined, with his denial of a strictly literal interpretation of Genesis during the trial serving as the impetus for the shift toward ultra-conservatism and young-earth Creationism within …


Maintaining Intact Our Homogeneousness: Race, Citizenship, & Reconstructing Cherokee, Rachel Purvis Jan 2012

Maintaining Intact Our Homogeneousness: Race, Citizenship, & Reconstructing Cherokee, Rachel Purvis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The history of the Cherokee Nation from 1866 to 1907 provides a new framework for the story of Reconstruction that expands the periodization and geographical scope of the effects of the postwar period on both mainstream America and those regulated to its margins. Although the historical narrative marks the end of Reconstruction with the political compromise of 1877, the process continued in the Cherokee Nation until Oklahoma statehood was achieved in 1907. The Cherokee Nation serves as a window of analysis that demonstrates how the process of Reconstruction was a national phenomenon. The experience of the Cherokee people and their …


Only Nixon Could Go To China: L. Q. C. Lamar And The Politics Of Reconciliation, Richard Brian Wilson Jan 2012

Only Nixon Could Go To China: L. Q. C. Lamar And The Politics Of Reconciliation, Richard Brian Wilson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lucius Quintus Cinncinatus Lamar was a statesman with an almost unmatched career, serving on the President's Cabinet, in Congress, and on the Supreme Court. Lamar's work in government spanned one of the most tumultuous times in American history, and his transformation from secessionist to advocate for reconciliation in the post-Civil War period illustrates the complexity of politics at that time. This thesis examines Lamar's life and provides an historiographic survey of Lamar scholarship to date. From this review, the thesis moves to new and necessary areas of inquiry, including Lamar's relationship with black Reconstruction politicians, his role in the early …


Perfect Harmony: The Myth Of Tupelo's Industrial Tranquility, Wendy D. Smith Jan 2012

Perfect Harmony: The Myth Of Tupelo's Industrial Tranquility, Wendy D. Smith

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Despite a vast amount of research on Southern labor in the 1930s, historians paid little attention to Northeast Mississippi. This predominantly rural area, though, boasted some of the largest garment factories of the period. Local businessmen established a cotton mill and three clothing manufacturing companies in Tupelo, the seat of Lee County. Town boosters boasted of harmonious relations between workers and management at each of the industrial facilities. In the spring of 1937, however, the cotton mill hands undertook a sit-down strike. Five days later, the women in the Tupelo Garment Company tried to initiate a strike. Both efforts failed. …