American Studies Commons^™

‘Following The Line Of Least Resistance’: African American Women In Domestic Work, 1899–1940, Taylor Simsovic

Armstrong Undergraduate Journal of History

This paper examines the challenges faced by African American women employed in domestic service between 1899 and 1940, with a focus on how race, class, and gender intersected to shape their experiences. Specifically, the study investigates how these women continued to perform reproductive labor as they migrated from the South to Northern states during the Great Migration. Drawing on a range of primary and secondary sources, the analysis argues that Black women's persistent employment in undervalued labor within white American homes was driven by the mutually constitutive systems of capitalism, white supremacy, and patriarchy. These systems channeled Black women into …

“Did Emmett Till Die In Vain? Organized Labor Says No!”: The United Packinghouse Workers And Civil Rights Unionism In The Mid-1950s, Matthew Nichter

Faculty Publications

Emmett Till’s mangled face is seared into our collective memory, a tragic epitome of the brutal violence that upheld white supremacy in the Jim Crow South. But Till's murder was more than just a tragedy: it also inspired an outpouring of determined protest, in which labor unions played a prominent role. The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) campaigned energetically on behalf of Emmett Till, from the stockyards of Chicago to the sugar refineries of Louisiana. Packinghouse workers petitioned, marched, and rallied to demand justice; the UPWA organized the first mass meeting addressed by Till’s mother, Mamie Bradley; and an …

Colonized Loyalty: Asian American Anti-Blackness And Complicity, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstadt

Faculty Publications

In this essay, Reshmi Dutt-Ballerstad argues that solidarity between and within communities of color remains our only chance to fight against the brutal and insidious forces of racism, white supremacy and racial capitalism.

Stress And Coping In Food-Insecure African Americans In Clark County, Nevada, Johanna Andrews

UNLV Theses, Dissertations, Professional Papers, and Capstones

African Americans have the highest rates of food insecurity than any other racial/ethnic group in the nation as a result of poverty, low household income, unemployment, food injustice, food mirages, and racial segregation. This consistent uncertainty in food access demonstrably results in poor mental health outcomes for food-insecure African Americans. Thus, the Transactional Model of Stress and Coping provides a theoretical framework to investigate how African Americans cope with food insecurity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate processes of coping with food insecurity and determine their impact on emotional well-being for African Americans in Clark County, Nevada. A …

The Enigmatic "Cross-Over" Leadership Life Of Dr. Mary Mcleod Bethune (1875-1955), Greer Charlotte Stanford-Randle

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

The dissertation is a deep study of an iconic 20^th century female, African American leader whose acclaim developed not only from her remarkable first generation post-Reconstruction Era beginnings, but also from her mid-century visibility among Negroes and some Whites as a principal spokesperson for her people. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune arose from the Nadir- the darkest period for Negroes after the Civil War and three subsequent US Constitutional Amendments. She led thousands of Negro women, despite social adversity, to organize around their own aspirations for improved social and material lives among America’s diverse citizens., i.e. “the melting pot.” The …

"Listen To The Wild Discord": Jazz In The Chicago Defender And The Louisiana Weekly, 1925-1929, Sarah A. Waits

University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations

This essay will use the views of two African American newspaper columnists, E. Belfield Spriggins of the Louisiana Weekly and Dave Peyton of the Chicago Defender, to argue that though New Orleans and Chicago both occupied a primary place in the history of jazz, in many ways jazz was initially met with ambivalence and suspicion. The struggle between the desire to highlight black achievement in music and the effort to adhere to tenets of middle class respectability play out in their columns. Despite historiographical writings to the contrary, these issues of the influence of jazz music on society were …

"Spectacular Opacities": The Hyers Sisters' Performances Of Respectability And Resistance, Jocelyn Buckner

Theatre Faculty Articles and Research

This essay analyzes the Hyers Sisters, a Reconstruction-era African American sister act, and their radical efforts to transcend social limits of gender, class, and race in their early concert careers and three major productions, Out of Bondage and Peculiar Sam, or The Underground Railroad, two slavery-to-freedom epics, and Urlina, the African Princess, the first known African American play set in Africa. At a time when serious, realistic roles and romantic plotlines featuring black actors were nearly nonexistent due to the country’s appetite for stereotypical caricatures, the Hyers Sisters used gender passing to perform opposite one another as heterosexual lovers in …

A Historical Narrative Of The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee's Freedom Schools And Their Legacy For Contemporary Youth Leadership Development Programming, Leslie K. Etienne

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

During what became known as the Mississippi Freedom Summer of 1964, the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) established alternative temporary summer "Freedom Schools" in communities throughout the state. SNCC was a civil rights organization led by young, mostly African American college students and ex-students that worked against racial discrimination during the Civil Rights Movement. In 1963, they were poised to lead Freedom Summer, a massive effort that aimed to transform the brutal white dominated power structure of Mississippi, a stronghold of extremely violent southern racism. During the planning for Freedom Summer, SNCC field secretary Charles Cobb suggested that the summer …

Ua12/2/1 College Heights Herald, Vol. 74, No. 52, Wku Student Affairs

WKU Archives Records

WKU campus newspaper reporting campus, athletic and Bowling Green, Kentucky news.

• Karen, Mattias. Complainant: I Felt Dirty – Wayne Jones, Sexual Harassment, Lawsuits
• Hutchins, Chris. Baptized In Beer – Banshee
• Harper, Molly. General Education Changing
• Back, Shannon. Mayor Seeks Investigation of Commissioners – Eldon Renaud, Sandy Jones, Joe Denning
• Karen, Mattias. Harassment Documents Released – Wayne Jones
• Wilkins, Erin. Pearce-Ford Tower Shower Arrest Imminent – Housing & Residence Life, Peeping Toms
• Swath of Scandal – Student Government Association, Elections
• Tabor, Chris. Editorial Cartoon Student Government Association Nasty Campaigns
• Emly, Karri. Make Time for Kindness, Compassion
• Matheis, Joe. Candidate Thanks Blacks …

African Americans And The Persian Gulf Crisis, Jacquelin Howard-Matthews

Trotter Review

This article addresses two issues: the African-American response to United States involvement in the 1990-91 Persian Gulf war and interrelated factors explaining the nature of that response. Despite the historical symbolism associated with African-American participation and disproportionate representation in the military, African Americans composed the most consistently identifiable strata either opposed to or suspicious of the deployment of U.S. troops and military equipment in the Gulf. The pattern of African-American response to the Gulf War is remarkably similar to its underlying reactions to military conflicts taking place in the recent past, including the Vietnam War and Laos invasion of the …

The Negro In California Before 1890, A. Odell Thurman

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

Because so little has been written concerning the Negro in California and because the dynamic and romantic sequences in the development of this country have always interested me, I have become interested in knowing what part the Negro, free and slave, played in this panorama of events. Were there Negroes with early expeditions? To what extent did they migrate to the West when "gold fever" had become a nation-wide epidemic? Did they find gold? Where did they settle? What did they do? What difficulty did they encounter politically, socially, and economically? These are questions that have filled my mind, and …