Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Drive Toward Freedom: African American: The Story Of Black Automobility In The Fight For Civil Rights, Xavier Macy

Masters Theses, 2010-2019

Looking across the 20^th century, this thesis seeks to understand the relationship African Americans developed between automobility and the fight for civil rights, filling a gap left in the historiography of both the automobile and the Civil Rights Movement. Historians of the automobile have almost exclusively focused their lens on white suburbia and the “autotopias” that Americans created, while historians of the Civil Rights Movement ignored the automobile entirely. This thesis hopes to begin to fill that void by explaining how African Americans exploited the technological system of the automobile to create forms of transportation accessible to African American …

Being Left Behind, Not Staying Behind: A Look At College-Aged African American Males, Lauren Fortune

Educational Specialist, 2009-2019

The purpose of this Ed.S. project is to examine the barriers African American males face and their resiliency factors. The information will be used to educate others about the issues faced by this group and what factors positively impact their success. The participants consisted of six African American Males who attend James Madison University and are between the ages of 18-22. A qualitative research design was used. The interviews were semi-structured with a five-question interview protocol. There were specific themes that emerged from the research that were barriers as well as resiliemcy factors. Barriers included the impact of fathers and …

I Will Not Wear A Muzzle, Tiarra L. Riggins

SURGE

Students are sent abroad to “become sensitive leaders in our changing world,” states the Gettysburg College Center for Global Education’s mission statement. We are asked to “foster global thinking and to instill a compassionate respect for others and our world.” Many students use this time to explore their true selves with hopes of not having to think too deeply about the life that they’ve left behind. [excerpt]

The Literary Significance Of Herman Melville’S Benito Cereno: An Analytical Reflection On Benito Cereno As A Fictional Narrative, Dani Kaiser

4997 English: Capstone

In Herman Melville’s Benito Cereno (1855), Captain Amasa Delano discovers a distressed slave ship in need of aid, only to later find out that his perception of the dire situation was completely incorrect. Melville’s novella is derived from Delano’s nonfiction account of the experience, titled Narrative of Voyages and Travels in the Northern and Southern Hemispheres (1817). This paper focuses on three questions that demonstrate why Melville wrote a novella almost completely derived from a nonfiction account of the events aboard the ship. In order to understand why Melville’s novella is powerful, one must ask, as an overarching question why …

Who Can Afford To Improvise? James Baldwin And Black Music, The Lyric And The Listeners [Table Of Contents], Ed Pavlic

Literature

More than a quarter-century after his death, James Baldwin remains an unparalleled figure in American literature and African American cultural politics. In Who Can Afford to Improvise? Ed Pavlić offers an unconventional, lyrical, and accessible meditation on the life, writings, and legacy of James Baldwin and their relationship to the lyric tradition in black music, from gospel and blues to jazz and R&B. Based on unprecedented access to private correspondence, unpublished manuscripts and attuned to a musically inclined poet’s skill in close listening, Who Can Afford to Improvise? frames a new narrative of James Baldwin’s work and life.

The route …

Dreams Deferred: A Critical Narrative Analysis Of African American Males In Pursuit Of Higher Education, Martinique Starnes

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Many studies have been conducted on the achievement gap between Caucasian and minority students (Bankston & Caldas, 1998; A. Brown & Donnor, 2011; Howard, 2008; O’Conner, Lewis, & Mueller, 2007; Osborne, 1999), as this gap has been a persistent problem for decades. However, despite more students of color gaining access to institutions of higher education, there is still a severe gap in college graduation rates (National Center for Education Statistics [NCES], 2011), with African American males being the least likely group to be found on college campuses (Dunn, 2012), and thus, possessing the lowest college graduation rate. St. Peter Claver …

Sacred Spaces: A Narrative Analysis Of The Influences Of Language And Literacy Experiences On The Self-Hood And Identity Of High-Achieving African American Female College Freshmen, Michelle Flowers Taylor

LMU/LLS Theses and Dissertations

Late-adolescent African American students face unique difficulties on their journey to womanhood. As members of a double minority (i.e., African American and female) (Jean & Feagin, 1998), certain limiting stereotypes relevant to both race and gender pose challenges to these students. They must overcome these challenges in order to excel within the various and changing environments they move through on a daily basis (hooks, 1981, 1994). Within the context of social justice, this dissertation provides insight into the role that language and literacy practices play to help enable the positive and affirming development of self-hood of African American college freshmen. …

33rd Annual African American Commencement, 2015, San Jose State University, Associated Students

African American Commencement

33rd Annual African American Commencement

"Black Grad: Striving Today to Create a Better Tomorrow." The 2015 African American Commencement ceremony was held on Friday, May 22, 2015 in the Student Union Ballroom at San Jose State University.

Trauma Of The Heart: Augmenting The Family Paradigm To Stem The Spread Of Hiv/Aids And To Facilitate Healing And Recovery In The Wake Of Hiv/Aids, Gibson Danjuma

CTS Faculty Publications and Creative Activity

This article briefly reflects on the HIV/AIDS epidemic in the African American community. The article suggests an alternative paradigm that views the high-risk behaviors that contribute to the spread of the virus as a reaction to ‘trauma of the heart’ as opposed to viewing the epidemic solely in terms of a lack of HIV and sexually transmitted disease awareness. It further suggests a pastoral intervention of expanding the paradigm of family beyond the classical nuclear construct to family as a system of individuals committed to embracing and ‘adopting’ individuals who have experienced trauma of the heart. This augmented understanding of …

Experiences Of African American Female First Generation College Students, Ashley Green

Dissertations

The purpose of this qualitative phenomenology study was to gain a better understanding of the experiences of African American, female, first generation college students attending a large, predominantly White research university and to understand what motivates them. The major research question guiding this study was: How do African American, female, first generation college students (in good academic standing) describe their college experience? The researcher asked the participants to discuss their challenges, how they responded to challenges, sources of motivation, and factors that contributed to their success in college.

Through individual, face to face, interviews with 10 African American, female, FGC …

Assessing Reconstruction: Did The South Undergo Revolutionary Change?, Lauren H. Sobotka

Student Publications

With the end of the Civil War, came a number of unanswered questions Reconstruction would attempt to answer for the South. While the South underwent economic, political and social changes for a short period, old traditions continued to persist resulting in racist sentiment.

Magic City Gospel, Ashley M. Jones

FIU Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Magic City Gospel is a collection of poems that explores themes of race and identity with a special focus on racism in the American South. Many of the poems deal directly with the author’s upbringing in Birmingham, Alabama, the Magic City, and the ways in which the history of that geographical place informs the present. Magic City Gospel confronts race and identity through pop culture, history, and the author’s personal experiences as a black, Alabama-born woman. Magic City Gospel is, in part, influenced by the biting, but softly rendered truth and historical commentary of Lucille Clifton, the laid-back and inventive …

"Town Of God": Ota Benga, The Batetela Boys, And The Promise Of Black America, Karen Sotiropoulos

History Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Link Racial Past To The Present, Jill Ogline Titus

Civil War Institute Faculty Publications

Americans have been putting a great deal of energy into commemorating the 50th anniversary of some of the key moments of the civil rights movement. This burst of memorialization has inspired one new museum in Atlanta and the redesign of another in Memphis. The Smithsonian and Library of Congress are launching a new oral-history initiative, and films like Selma bring the movement to life for those who rarely read a history book or visit a museum.

This year brings more anniversaries: the Selma-to-Montgomery March, the passage of the Voting Rights Act, and the Watts rebellion. And the commemorative stakes are …

Art, Artifact, Archive: African American Experiences In The Nineteenth Century, Shannon Egan, Lauren H. Roedner, Diane Brennan, Maura B. Conley, Abigail B. Conner, Nicole A. Conte, Victoria Perez-Zetune, Savannah Rose, Kaylyn L. Sawyer, Caroline M. Wood, Zoe C. Yeoh

Schmucker Art Catalogs

Angelo Scarlato’s extraordinary and vast collection of art and artifacts related to the Civil War, and specifically to the Battle of Gettysburg, the United States Colored Troops, slavery and the African American struggle for emancipation, citizenship and freedom has proved to be an extraordinary resource for Gettysburg College students. The 2012-14 exhibition in Musselman Library’s Special Collections, curated by Lauren Roedner ’13, entitled Slaves, Soldiers, Citizens: African American Artifacts of the Civil War Era and its corresponding catalogue provided a powerful and comprehensive historical narrative of the period.

This fall, students in my course at Gettysburg College “Art and Public …

The Experiences Of Black American Older Adults Managing Pain: A Nursing Ethnography, Sheria Grice Robinson

Wayne State University Dissertations

Introduction: Pain can negatively affect quality of life for Black elders. They are less likely to report pain concerns and have voiced pain needs adequately met. To better understand the pain management experiences and concerns of Black elders, an ethnographic study was completed within an urban, low-income, elder housing facility. Methods: 106 participants completed a questionnaire comprised of a demographic tool, the PROMIS Global Health Scale (PROMIS), the Brief Pain Inventory (BPI), and the Psychological Stress Measure (PSM-9). Additionally, participant observation, informal interviews, and 20 formal recorded interviews with individuals identified as having pain were completed. Qualitative and frequency analysis …

African Americans Speak To Spectacle Lynchings, Mary Beth Mathews

Classics, Philosophy, and Religion Articles

Donald Mathews’s “The Southern Rite of Human Sacrifice” both describes southern lynching as a lived interpretation of Christianity and claims a role for the religious study of lynching. Relying largely on historiography, Mathews contends that white southerners created this religion and ignored obvious parallels between lynched black men and the death of Jesus on the cross. But missing from this and other interpretations is a key voice: that of contemporary black evangelical pastors.

Learning The Fighting Game: Black Americans And The First World War, S. Marianne Johnson

The Gettysburg Historical Journal

The experience of African American veterans of the First World War is most often cast through the bloody lens of the Red Summer of 1919, when racial violence and lynchings reached record highs across the nation as black veterans returned from the global conflict to find Jim Crow justice firmly entrenched in a white supremacist nation. This narrative casts black veterans in a deeply ironic light, a lost generation even more cruelly mistreated than the larger mythological Lost Generation of the Great War. This narrative, however, badly abuses hindsight and clouds larger issues of black activism and organization during and …

A Mixed Method Study Of Diagnostic And Adaptive Functioning Challenges In African American Preschool-Aged Children With Autism Spectrum Disorders, Douglene Jackson

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are known to experience performance and participation challenges, with early diagnosis being critical for improved outcomes. Children from ethnic minority backgrounds tend to receive their diagnoses later, even when symptomatology is similar. This mixed methods study explored symptom severity, functional difficulties, and age at diagnosis for ASD and to describe the functional challenges encountered by preschool-aged children with ASD of African American descent. The International Classification of Functioning, Disability, and Health along with the Model of Human Occupation were the theories used for this study to conceptualize functional challenges and other potential factors. Research …

Health Care Seeking Behavior And Provider Responses For Hcv-Positive African Americans, Kathleen Susanna Bailey

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Of the 3.5 million persons infected with chronic HCV in the United States, the African American population is the largest racial group with chronic HCV. Disparities in access to care and treatment involve a complex set of individual, interpersonal, socioeconomic, and environmental factors that influence the course of HCV infection in the African American population, resulting in poorer outcomes and survival. Drawing upon both the theory of reasoned action and the theory of planned behavior, this study was conducted to determine whether the seeking of health care by HCV-positive African Americans and the responses of health care providers to HCV-positive …

The Impact Of Self-Imposed Barriers On African Americans Successes, Pennie L. Murray

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Researchers and economists have argued that the economic and social stagnation of African Americans is the result of their lack of self-confidence, initiative, and commitment toward their own advancement. This qualitative study examined whether historical conditioning and personal experiences have created a hypersensitivity in this population to events triggering behaviors that mirror the success fearing personality when seeking social, economic, and political advancement. It used Zuckerman and Allison's fear of success scale to identify the range of success fearing in 30 African American men and women aged 35 years or more; this group was also interviewed regarding their lived experiences …

How Spiritual Values Correlate With Hospice Use For African Americans, Latrina Dion Frazier

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

End of life hospice services have consistently been underused by African Americans. This disproportionate use of hospice has contributed to poor quality of life and a lack of cost-effective care for patients with terminal illness. Driven by the theory of reasoned action, the purpose of this quantitative study was to test associations between African Americans' perceptions of hospice, decisions to use hospice, and religiosity. A convenience sample of 154 African American adults was surveyed online. The survey instrument combined the AARP End of Life survey, Perception of Hospice survey, and the Religiousness Measure survey. The results of a multiple linear …

Quality-Of-Life Indicators For African American And European American Long-Term Survivors Of Early-Stage Breast Cancer, Cher De Rossiter

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

This meta-analysis investigated the difference in perceptions of health-related quality of life (HRQOL) among long-term early-stage breast cancer survivors (BCS). The comparison was between African American and European American women. Initial pilot searches suggested that enough studies existed for a meaningful meta-analysis of a BCS population at least 5 years post diagnosis. Only studies using the outcome measure HRQOL were included in the study; this yielded an initial sample of 212 study reports, with 56 reports entering the coding phase of the process. African American women were grossly underrepresented in this set of studies in comparison to the overall breast …

Review Of A Splash Of Red: The Life And Art Of Horace Pippin By Jen Bryant, Rebekkah C. Reisner

Library Intern Book Reviews

No abstract provided.

A Cross-Cultural Qualitative Study: The Differences In Attitudes And Opinions On Advance Care Planning Among African, Caucasian, And Latino Americans, Jennifer Sims

International ResearchScape Journal

The purpose of this study is to identify African American and Latino Americans’ beliefs and attitudes about advance care planning (ACP) and compare these with beliefs held by Caucasian Americans. The objectives are to identify if there are differences in opinions between racial groups and to provide relevant information for health and social service providers. African American and Latino American participants in this study indicated many factors that affect their hesitation to utilize ACP services: spiritual and religious beliefs; family caregiving; and lack of knowledge about ACP services. Implications for practice include providing easy-to-understand information about ACP to clients of …

The Effect Of Marriage Verses Cohabitation On Sexual Communication In Latino, African American, And Caucasian Adults, Erin Koosed, Danielle Mahaffey, Mckenzie Rand, Elizabeth Wagner, Dr. Heesoon Lee

International ResearchScape Journal

This study focuses on the effect of communication on sexual relationship satisfaction when comparing cohabiting couples with married couples. Communication is an important part of relational and sexual satisfaction. Research was conducted using scholarly journal articles and quantitative data from questionnaires. Fifty-four questionnaires were completed by males and females that were at least forty years, married or cohabitating, and identified as Latino, African American, or Caucasian. The data from the questionnaires found that both heterosexual and homosexual couples in domestic partnerships had better sexual communication than those who were married. People from diverse backgrounds can relate to the data collected …

'She Shall Not Be Moved': Black Women's Spiritual Practice In Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, And Home, Rondrea Danielle Mathis

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

‘She Shall Not Be Moved’: Black Women’s Spiritual Practice in Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye, Beloved, Paradise, and Home argues that from The Bluest Eye, Morrison’s debut novel, to her 2012 novel, Home, Morrison brings her female characters to voice, autonomy, and personal divinity through unconventional spiritual work. The project addresses the history of Black women’s activist and spiritual work, Toni Morrison’s engagement with unconventional spiritual practice, and closes with a personal interrogation of the author’s connection to Black women’s spiritual practice.