Black History Commons^™

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 …

"By The Sweat Of His Brow"?: Master Mechanics And Class Position In Antebellum New Orleans, Caleb G. Roark

LSU Master's Theses

This thesis argues that New Orleans’s skilled laborers profited alongside or from enslaved laborers. Proponents of free labor ideology, largely relegated to the North, charged that the skilled mechanic was the prototypical “free laborer.” In contemporary and modern portrayals, the systems of free and enslaved labor were considered antithetical. This thesis posits that these views are incorrect. Free and enslaved labor flourished together in the Crescent City. Despite their absence in historical understandings of the antebellum South, skilled laborers succeeded in New Orleans. I track societal debates across Louisiana’s newspapers concerning the status and success of mechanics across the state. …

Brief Study Of Working Conditions Of Colored Citizens In New Orleans Louisiana, Ernest J. Wright

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis, submitted to the faculty of Xavier University in partial fulfillment of requirements for a bachelor's degree in 1933, documents the working and economic conditions of Black citizens in New Orleans, Louisiana during the Great Depression. The study presents occupational wage data across trades including bricklaying, carpentry, plumbing, and electrical work, as well as domestic service, professional fields, and the insurance industry. Unemployment relief statistics for the Black population of Louisiana are documented, including data on the number of workers receiving relief and average relief payments as of February 1933. The thesis examines the Longshoremen's Organization in detail, tracing …