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Articles 361 - 390 of 77279

Full-Text Articles in United States History

Stopping The Buck: What Made The Truman Committee Uniquely Successful In Its Oversight Of World War Two Military Contracts, Victoria Kelley-Chiarelli Jan 2026

Stopping The Buck: What Made The Truman Committee Uniquely Successful In Its Oversight Of World War Two Military Contracts, Victoria Kelley-Chiarelli

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

During World War Two, Harry S. Truman led the Senate Select Committee to Investigate the National Defense Program, also known as the Truman Committee, in its oversight of military contracts and the war effort. The Truman Committee saved the U.S. government billions by identifying and discouraging waste, fraud, and abuse, and saved many armed forces personnel’s lives through identifying defective products. Truman’s background in World War One service and his time as a local official in Missouri show signs of the integrity and commitment to good governance that made the Truman Committee so successful. The Truman Committee’s membership, staff, principles, …

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A Poor Man's Cup: Chicory Experimentation In Nebraska,1890-1900, Rebecca Hupp Jan 2026

A Poor Man's Cup: Chicory Experimentation In Nebraska,1890-1900, Rebecca Hupp

Dissertations and Theses

“A Poor Man’s Cup” explores how Nebraskans actively confronted the problems of the late nineteenth-century through experimenting with new commodities. Prolonged severe drought, economic depression, and poor grain prices created a troublesome situation that grew in complexity as U.S. markets expanded globally and agriculture underwent professionalization. Some lay farmers, like Gabriel and Philomena Bazelman of Holt County, did not wait for new methods to find their way through the experiment station system and instead conducted trials themselves. Through piecing together the story of Nebraska chicory production with periodicals from the 1890s, experiment station bulletins, and Congressional reports, this thesis demonstrates …

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“A Loving And Faithful Wife”: A Study Of Dakota Territory Divorce Law And Marital Expectations In The Late Nineteenth Century, Cassidy Amanda Abfalter-Dial Jan 2026

“A Loving And Faithful Wife”: A Study Of Dakota Territory Divorce Law And Marital Expectations In The Late Nineteenth Century, Cassidy Amanda Abfalter-Dial

Dissertations and Theses

“A Loving and Faithful Wife” provides a procedural and gender-based analysis of twenty-five Dakota Territory divorce cases, from Clay County, ranging from 1867-1884. This analysis is based on an understanding of the procedural aspects of the territorial divorce court system, as well as nineteenth century gender ideologies, include the ideals of True Womanhood, and Separate Spheres. By employing a close reading method, this research analyzes the language in court filings, allegations used in complaints, and the outcome of the cases. This analysis reveals men and women used unspoken gender scripts to present their marriages to the court and attempt to …

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Hot Topic Of The Cold War: Analyzing The Bomb In American Media During The Late Twentieth Century, Ryan Lambert Jan 2026

Hot Topic Of The Cold War: Analyzing The Bomb In American Media During The Late Twentieth Century, Ryan Lambert

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This thesis explores nuclear war–related media (i.e., media involving “the Bomb”) from the late twentieth century, beginning in the early 1950s and ending in the late 1990s, although media from the 2000s and beyond are briefly touched on. Unlike other studies of nuclear war narratives, this analysis intends to explore this media through a rhetorical framework of an “eroding” society, and the “erosion” concepts of the 50s–70s paved the way for cumulative “erosion” storylines in the 80s (the height of the Cold War), and then “restoration” storylines in the 90s (after the end of the Cold War). This framework is …

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“None In Velvet Gowns”: Camp Followers And White Womanhood In Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Warfare, Angelica Labren Torres Jan 2026

“None In Velvet Gowns”: Camp Followers And White Womanhood In Eighteenth-Century Anglo-American Warfare, Angelica Labren Torres

History Theses

For over two hundred years, women who followed American and European armies during the long eighteenth century were popularly stereotyped and denigrated as prostitutes, burdens, and generally individuals of ill repute by both contemporaries and subsequent generations of historians. While recent scholarship has largely debunked this long-standing characterization as simplistic and inaccurate, the question remains: why exactly were these women so mischaracterized in their own time, particularly by commissioned officers and other members of Anglo-American middling and elite classes, when ample evidence existed of their material usefulness and comparative marital fidelity? This thesis seeks to address the ideological and cultural …

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Divided Loyalties: Military Recruitment And Emancipation In Kentucky, Jacob Joseph Klinger Jan 2026

Divided Loyalties: Military Recruitment And Emancipation In Kentucky, Jacob Joseph Klinger

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

This dissertation explores how Unionist Kentuckians leveraged their military recruitment to negotiate the scope of federal emancipation during the American Civil War. By 1863, the War Department’s need for troops superseded the racial sensitivities of inhabitants in loyal slave states like Kentucky by promising to free and enlist Black men if white recruits failed to fill the quota. Kentucky’s proslavery Unionists responded and white volunteerism surged by 23 percent, 10 percent more than the national average, to fill the quota and negate military emancipation. Kentucky leaders heralded the recruiting effort but struggled to sustain it alongside an uncredited militia which …

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Continental Violence And The "Oregon Question": George Frederick Ruxton And The Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest, Rory Orion Johnson Jan 2026

Continental Violence And The "Oregon Question": George Frederick Ruxton And The Nineteenth-Century Pacific Northwest, Rory Orion Johnson

Graduate Student Theses, Dissertations, & Professional Papers

This paper builds on recent efforts to depict Indigenous polities across North America in their international relations with European and Euro-American colonists and their centralized governments. It examines George Frederick Ruxton, a private English citizen and former army lieutenant, as he developed his response to the U.S.-British Oregon dispute while living in London in early 1846. He concluded that continental warfare was imminent and took overt steps to influence British policy, which he believed could halt U.S. expansion and definitively resolve the “Oregon Question.”

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“This, To Me, Was My Town”: How Segregation Shaped Huntington, West Virginia’S Black Community, Jillian Alexis Kendall Jan 2026

“This, To Me, Was My Town”: How Segregation Shaped Huntington, West Virginia’S Black Community, Jillian Alexis Kendall

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)

Using Huntington, West Virginia as a case study to examine Black urban-Appalachian communities, this thesis analyzes Huntington’s Black “city within a city” from 1934–1961, exploring how city-sanctioned segregationist practices shaped the community. In 1929, The Herald Dispatch asserted that Black Huntingtonians were able to thrive due to racial harmony facilitated by the “tolerant” attitudes of white Huntingtonians. However, closer inspection reveals that the city’s Black population survived in spite of persistent racial intolerance from white citizens, as well as city, state, and federal authorities. Though Huntington was not technically segregated by de jure means, it is apparent that the city …

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Lifting The Political Fog: People, Power, And Antislavery Politics In Upstate New York, 1848-1861, Nicholas Thony Jan 2026

Lifting The Political Fog: People, Power, And Antislavery Politics In Upstate New York, 1848-1861, Nicholas Thony

Electronic Theses & Dissertations (2024 - present)

This work details the ascendance of the political antislavery movement in upstate New York, focusing on the roles a diverse array of actors played in constructing an unlikely Republican coalition of conservatives, reformers, black New Yorkers, nativists, prohibitionists, and abolitionists in the years preceding the Civil War. In weaving together the parallel and inextricable stories of powerful newspaperman Thurlow Weed, female reformers like Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and black communities across the state, I argue the success of the political antislavery movement resulted from their combined efforts. Thurlow Weed was one of the most important politicians of …

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Contesting Conservatism: Neoconservatives, Evangelicals, And Foreign Policy In The Reagan Era, Emily B. Kissel Jan 2026

Contesting Conservatism: Neoconservatives, Evangelicals, And Foreign Policy In The Reagan Era, Emily B. Kissel

All Master's Theses

This thesis explores how foreign policy shaped and destabilized the conservative coalition during the Reagan era. Although historians often portray the conservative movement of the 1980s as unified by anti-communism, this study argues that foreign policy debates exposed significant ideological divisions between neoconservatives, evangelical Christians, and the broader conservative base. These groups shared common goals but disagreed over the moral and strategic direction of American foreign policy. Neoconservatives and evangelical Christians wanted the same muscular assertion of American power abroad, but the factions framed foreign policy differently to appeal to their supporters. These policies and aggressive anti-Soviet rhetoric struck widespread …

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Review: The Humanity Archive: Recovering The Soul Of Black History From A Whitewashed American Myth, Shady Radical Phd Dec 2025

Review: The Humanity Archive: Recovering The Soul Of Black History From A Whitewashed American Myth, Shady Radical Phd

Provenance, Journal of the Society of Georgia Archivists

Review: The Humanity Archive: Recovering the Soul of Black History from a Whitewashed American Myth. By Jermaine Fowler. (New Egypt, NJ: Row House Publishing, 2025), 448 pp. Reviewed by Dr. shady Radical.

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Something To Say: Nativism, Prohibition, And The Loss Of Political Alignment In Davenport, Iowa’S German-American Community 1848-1922, Clayton R. Schuler Dec 2025

Something To Say: Nativism, Prohibition, And The Loss Of Political Alignment In Davenport, Iowa’S German-American Community 1848-1922, Clayton R. Schuler

Graduate Masters Theses

This thesis ends with the municipal elections of 1920 in Davenport, Iowa. Amid the First Red Scare, the Socialist Party was swept into power. The party won under inauspicious national conditions thanks in part to a successful campaign on local concerns; the party had something to say. An examination of the years prior to the election, however, reveals that other factors contributed to political unalignment for the city’s large German descended population. Frustrated with Republican and Democratic parties that seemed to have no place for them, these voters had something to say as well. Ultimately the opportunity that this unalignment …

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The Homemaker's Guide To Happiness: A Comparison Of Methods Used By Dissatisfied Mid-Twentieth Century American Housewives In Their Pursuit Of Fulfillment, Kristen Thompson Dec 2025

The Homemaker's Guide To Happiness: A Comparison Of Methods Used By Dissatisfied Mid-Twentieth Century American Housewives In Their Pursuit Of Fulfillment, Kristen Thompson

Graduate Masters Theses

In the mid-twentieth century, the United States of America had an unsung problem.The country had emerged from World War II as a superpower and the high of victory was still fresh, but under the surface the nation was desperately searching for stability to cope with the trauma of war. This search saw a cultural push back to traditional values and gender roles and a heavy focus on the nuclear family as the heart of society. As such, a great amount of pressure was placed on the shoulders of the American housewives who were at the center of the home and …

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The 1973 Detroit Teachers' Strike And Its Long-Term Effects On Labor Negotiations, Jacob Staten Dec 2025

The 1973 Detroit Teachers' Strike And Its Long-Term Effects On Labor Negotiations, Jacob Staten

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This paper examines the efforts made by Detroit educators in 1973 to secure better wages and smaller class sizes as well as Board of Education decision-making processes in response to budget cuts imposed by the city. Further, this research traces concurrent socio-economic issues that were morphing into political issues, helping define not only the labor struggles of teachers but also reflecting struggles felt by citizens in Detroit and other U.S. industrial cities. This study aims to contribute to research on how local budgets and federal policy have impacted and continue to impact public education nationwide to the present day.

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“I Thought We Were Past That”: Questioning Coleman Young’S Conflicting Ideologies Of Tough On Crime And Police Reform In Reference To The Malice Green Killing, 1974-1994., Carsen Troub Dec 2025

“I Thought We Were Past That”: Questioning Coleman Young’S Conflicting Ideologies Of Tough On Crime And Police Reform In Reference To The Malice Green Killing, 1974-1994., Carsen Troub

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

This paper seeks to historicize conflicting tough on crime and police reform ideologies of Detroit Mayor Coleman Young. These policies help explain the events that culminated in the killing of Malice Green, as well as police brutality in Detroit. This paper argues that attributing the death of Malice Green to Coleman Young is irresponsible, and further, it is important to understand that Young's tough on crime policies and lack of investment in fundamental police reform played a role in the attitudes that led to the death of Malice Green and many others.

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Under The Influence: New York’S Crisis Of Addiction, Exploitation, And Drug Policy Within Depression-Era Films, Simone White Dec 2025

Under The Influence: New York’S Crisis Of Addiction, Exploitation, And Drug Policy Within Depression-Era Films, Simone White

Rushton Journal of Undergraduate Humanities Research

During the 1930s, New York City stood at the center of media innovation and cultural influence. It was also the center of the continuing opioid epidemic and a pivotal site for the reception and promotion of addiction films. This article argues that Depression-era films, The Struggle (1931), Narcotic (1933), and Assassin of Youth (1938), reflected economic, political, and moral anxieties surrounding drug abuse. Using National Board of Review records, studio pressbooks, and contemporary periodicals, this study examines how cinematic portrayals of addiction influenced ideologies, criminalized users, and deepened social stigma.

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Studio Museum Harlem Excursion: A Study Of How Resources Are Utilized For Expressing A Message, Sarah Neiman Dec 2025

Studio Museum Harlem Excursion: A Study Of How Resources Are Utilized For Expressing A Message, Sarah Neiman

Occasional Essays

Museums have a unique ability to situate themselves in the present moment while also commemorating the past and imagining the future. Studio Museum Harlem (SMH) does this, especially on the day of its reopening. The museum originally opened in 1968, amongst many Civil Rights and Black Power demonstrations occurring across the country. This innovative spirit is still visible today despite the museum closing and reopening again. The museum made its grand reopening on November 15th, 2025, after seven years of having its doors closed for construction. The Bronx African American History Project team had the special opportunity to visit SMH …

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From Guardsmen To Doughboys: The Lynchburg Musketeers In World War I, Timothy W. Brophy Dec 2025

From Guardsmen To Doughboys: The Lynchburg Musketeers In World War I, Timothy W. Brophy

Montview Journal of Research & Scholarship

“From Guardsmen to Doughboys: The Lynchburg Musketeers in World War I” traces the development of a local company of men from Lynchburg, Virginia, that went from the National Guard to the U.S. Army during World War I. The Lynchburg Musketeers was a small militia organized in the fall of 1915 that became Company L of the National Guard’s 1st Virginia Infantry Regiment in the summer of 1916. The article centers around the firsthand account of Edley Craighill, a member of the Lynchburg Musketeers, in his 1931 work, The Musketeers. After training in Lynchburg and service on the Mexican border …

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Visualizing Religion In American Culture: Comics As Tools For Deep Learning In The Lipscomb Life Program, Robbie Spivey, Josh Fleer, Kynnedy Gilbert, Sierra Chagnon French, Cindy Valentine Dec 2025

Visualizing Religion In American Culture: Comics As Tools For Deep Learning In The Lipscomb Life Program, Robbie Spivey, Josh Fleer, Kynnedy Gilbert, Sierra Chagnon French, Cindy Valentine

Student Scholar Symposium

This session explores how visual learning is used in the course Religion in American Culture (HI 4013), part of the Lipscomb Initiative for Education (LIFE) Program, which provides higher education for incarcerated students. The program follows the Inside-Out model, bringing together Lipscomb University students and incarcerated students in a shared learning space. Instead of a traditional research project, this session highlights how the LIFE Program creates a unique learning community where all students engage deeply with course topics. A panel of students and professors will share how the class's creative assignment—drawing comics to illustrate key themes from each course unit—puts …

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Stonewall:The Spark Of Queer Culture, Mariah M. Geisler Dec 2025

Stonewall:The Spark Of Queer Culture, Mariah M. Geisler

Undergraduate Research Symposium

The rebellion classified as Stonewall didn’t birth the gay liberation movement but spread it farther than it had gone before. Stonewall challenged people’s understanding of the laws pertaining to gender expression. The history was portrayed as being a reflection of white centralism, while the reality is that the event was built off the backs of racial minorities. Through a further understanding of 1960s gay counterculture, people can better realize the reasons for Stonewall. Stonewall was the historical event that popularized the spread of gay liberation movements, it gave people hope for a more accepting future. The present still feels the …

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Visible And Invisible Empires: The Revival Of The Ku Klux Klan 100 Years Ago, Christian Molina Dec 2025

Visible And Invisible Empires: The Revival Of The Ku Klux Klan 100 Years Ago, Christian Molina

Theses

Hatred and violence breed division, and division breeds more hatred and more violence. In an America where our politics has become name-calling, finger-pointing, scapegoating, and whataboutisms, and violence, unfortunately, it is safe to say our nation has entered this self-perpetuating cycle. A place for malicious groups concerned with growth, power, and profit to capture the angry, the stressed, and the less informed in their webs of elaborate lies and misleading, misinterpreted numbers the way they have in decades past.

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Healing Through History, Nancy Baker Jones Dec 2025

Healing Through History, Nancy Baker Jones

Journal of Texas History

This is the written transcription of the author’s closing plenary address to the inaugural conference of the Alliance for Texas History, May 17, 2025. Its purpose is to put into both broad and personal historical contexts the events of 2023 and 2024 that led to the founding of the Alliance for Texas History. It concludes that, despite the difficulties of those events for her and for many other historians of Texas, history offers a potentially healing context for moving forward.

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Testing Tocqueville’S Troops: American Democracy At War In Mexico, Corbin V. Cali Dec 2025

Testing Tocqueville’S Troops: American Democracy At War In Mexico, Corbin V. Cali

History Theses

This thesis explores Alexis de Tocqueville's theory of democratic armies through the lens of the Mexican-American War (1846-1848), testing his predictions about how democratic social conditions influence military institutions and performance. Tocqueville argued that armies in democratic societies would face tensions between egalitarian ideals and military discipline, with citizen-soldiers resisting hierarchy while professional officers, often isolated from civil society, grew dangerously ambitious for war. He predicted that democratic armies would show energetic initiative but struggle with weak formal discipline, and that equality would fundamentally change the relationship between the military and the broader society. The Mexican-American War serves as an …

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King’S Wigwam: Atlanta’S Forgotten Black Summer Resort, Andrew J. Bramlett, Seneca Vaught Dec 2025

King’S Wigwam: Atlanta’S Forgotten Black Summer Resort, Andrew J. Bramlett, Seneca Vaught

Symposium of Student Scholars

From 1915 to 1920, the only summer resort for Black Atlantans was King’s Wigwam, located north of the small farming community of Kennesaw. Situated on over forty acres owned by Auburn Avenue entrepreneur Cornelius King, the summer resort saw a host of notable visitors during its short five years of existence. During the 1919 season, a guest named Bertram Hamilton was falsely accused of rape in nearby Cherokee County. He was taken to the county jail as an angry mob gathered. The county sheriff, who had been part of the mob that lynched Leo Frank four years before, believed Hamilton …

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Heroes By The Score, Owen J. Eastman Dec 2025

Heroes By The Score, Owen J. Eastman

Honors Projects

Historians have increasingly examined how media other than yellow journalism helped manufacture consent for American imperialism during the Spanish-American War, yet commercial sheet music—despite its ubiquity at the time—remains overlooked. This study addresses that gap by analyzing fifty pieces of sheet music published around the period, employing a mixed-methods approach that combines quantitative, qualitative, and comparative media analysis. The corpus reveals four dominant themes: memorializing the sinking of the Maine; Cuban “liberation” rhetoric that often referenced American ownership or influence over the island; military hero worship that personalized and justified expansion; and messages of national unity that permitted overseas territorial …

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The Eichmann Trial: The Challenge To Traditional Notions Of Humanity And Justice In Public Opinion That Shaped American Holocaust Memory, Josh Payne Dec 2025

The Eichmann Trial: The Challenge To Traditional Notions Of Humanity And Justice In Public Opinion That Shaped American Holocaust Memory, Josh Payne

Research Awards

In April 1961, Adolf Eichmann was put on trial in Jerusalem, after being taken from Argentina,  to face justice for the crimes he committed against Jews across Europe during World War II and the Holocaust. Yet, this trial was nearly two decades after these events. Questions arose in the United States about morality, justice, legality, and human nature in a trial prosecuting one man ultimately as a scapegoat for the crimes of numerous Nazi officials. While the United States was not involved in the prosecution of Eichmann, Americans advanced their opinions about these tenets that challenged traditional notions. These opinions …

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Back Matter, Editorial Team Dec 2025

Back Matter, Editorial Team

Journal of Texas History

No abstract provided.

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Queering The Lone Star State. Podcast. Hosted By Wesley G. Phelps.Produced By Sarah Lyngholm., Hannah Fuller Dec 2025

Queering The Lone Star State. Podcast. Hosted By Wesley G. Phelps.Produced By Sarah Lyngholm., Hannah Fuller

Journal of Texas History

No abstract provided.

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William Hanson And The Texas-Mexico Border: Violence, Corruption,And The Making Of The Gatekeeper State, Zaragosa "Mito" Diaz-Espinoza Dec 2025

William Hanson And The Texas-Mexico Border: Violence, Corruption,And The Making Of The Gatekeeper State, Zaragosa "Mito" Diaz-Espinoza

Journal of Texas History

No abstract provided.

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Texas: An American History, Walter L. Buenger Dec 2025

Texas: An American History, Walter L. Buenger

Journal of Texas History

No abstract provided.

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