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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in African American Studies
This Is A Man’S World: The Lived Gendered Experiences Of Blues People., Anthony Christopher Brown
This Is A Man’S World: The Lived Gendered Experiences Of Blues People., Anthony Christopher Brown
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
American Blues is known for playing a role in the foundation of the country’s music. The ingredient of the musical tradition has roots going back to West Africa and was brought to the United States through the of transatlantic slave trade. During the period of slavery, it formally developed with plantation work songs which later continued after emancipation with sharecropping until the early to mid-twentieth century. During the early twentieth century, W.C. Handy in Tutwiler, Mississippi, and musicians formally popularized Blues music were being recorded. The first Blues superstars were women such as Ida Cox, Bessie Smith, and Ma Rainey …
Forging Community In The Ouachita Foothills Of Southwest Arkansas: Duckett Township, Homesteading, Distilling And Race, Lisa C. Childs
Forging Community In The Ouachita Foothills Of Southwest Arkansas: Duckett Township, Homesteading, Distilling And Race, Lisa C. Childs
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Community was key to successful subsistence agriculture in Arkansas, especially in the Ouachita foothills in southwest Arkansas (including Polk, Howard, Montgomery, Pike, Garland Counties) and Oklahoma (McCurtain, Pittsburgh, LeFlore Counties) until the 1940s. Nearly a quarter of Arkansas’s land remained in the federal government’s name twenty years after statehood, and even more of the land in the western Ouachita foothills. Much remains unknown about how farming communities were formed in this area from the end of the Civil War until approximately World War II. As seen in the Duckett community in northern Howard County, while family connections were important to …
Through The Heart Of The City: Interstates And Black Geographies In Urban America, Airic Hughes
Through The Heart Of The City: Interstates And Black Geographies In Urban America, Airic Hughes
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Federal urban renewal projects changed the landscape of numerous American cities throughoutthe twentieth century. Many of these projects worked cohesively in tandem with discriminatory urban planning policies such as redlining. The conclusions of this project demonstrate how U.S. Interstate 630 (I-630) intentionally re-segregated Arkansas' capital city, following the U.S. Supreme Court’s 1954 national desegregation order and the infamous desegregation of Little Rock Central High School in 1957. I further contend that I-630 was constructed using the racialized language and tactics of urban renewal and was fundamental to improving Little Rock’s national reputation by purging the city's social memory and legacy …
Nba: No (Anti-) Blackness Allowed, Rontaye M. Butler
Nba: No (Anti-) Blackness Allowed, Rontaye M. Butler
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This paper serves as the foundational pillar in my art practice. This paper combines my experiences, influences, motivations, hopes, dreams, methodologies, historical research and contemporary analyses into a single document ripe for revisions. This document lives and breathes; its contents are constantly evolving, and should be continually challenged and evaluated for relevancy and validity. Part memoir, part manifesto, and part artist statement, it establishes where my work sits in the canon of fine art, even as I don’t know yet what that means. My writings, visual artworks and all other creative actions are tethered to this document and vice versa. …
[Dis]Assembling Race: The Fepc In Oklahoma, 1941-1946, Arley Ward
[Dis]Assembling Race: The Fepc In Oklahoma, 1941-1946, Arley Ward
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
On the World War II home front in Oklahoma the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) succeeded in securing defense jobs for African Americans. The efforts of the committee, The Oklahoma Eagle, the Oklahoma City Black Dispatch, and the State Conference of Branches of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) advanced civil rights in Oklahoma throughout World War II and beyond. The efforts of the FEPC in Oklahoma connect civil rights efforts in the 1940s directly to Brown v Board of Education, (1954) and the classic civil rights movement.
Racial Terror Lynching In Northwest Arkansas: Recounting Of The Story Of Three Enslaved Males Lynched In 1856 In Washington County - Documentary, Obed Lamy
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
While Northwest Arkansas is considered as diverse and progressive today, it also shares a common history of racial violence, and yet almost unknown, with the Southern United-States. Little is being said about the slave plantations in Elkins, racial cleansing in Springdale, or public spectacle lynchings in Fayetteville. This is because white people who hold political and economic power also control how history is written and decide what is to be learned from their perspectives. Marginalized communities, especially Black people, have not always had agency to tell their own stories. The lynchings of three enslaved males, Anthony, Aaron, and Randall, in …
The Shallow End Of The Deep South: Civil Rights Activism In Arkansas, 1865-1970, Sarah Riva
The Shallow End Of The Deep South: Civil Rights Activism In Arkansas, 1865-1970, Sarah Riva
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
On April 7, 1968, Governor Winthrop Rockefeller claimed that “Arkansas today stands at the threshold of leading the nation...for a better America,” The Republican Arkansas Governor spoke on the steps of the state capitol at a memorial for the beloved civil rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr. who had been assassinated three days earlier. Rockefeller’s claim that Arkansas could lead the nation came just two years after the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) formally ended its work in the state to improve racial equality. Their efforts had seen widespread acceptance of integrated public facilities, increased voter registration and more meaningful …
'The Once Peaceful Little Town:' Edmondson, Arkansas, And The Decline Of African American Landownership, Samuel Morris Ownbey
'The Once Peaceful Little Town:' Edmondson, Arkansas, And The Decline Of African American Landownership, Samuel Morris Ownbey
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
This thesis examines the systematic dispossession of African American property by white planters in the Arkansas Delta. It argues white planters, backed by a legal system favorable to their interests, expropriated the black land in the once flourishing community of Edmondson, Arkansas. Founded in 1902 by African American business and political leaders, the Edmondson Home and Improvement Company purchased farmland and town lots and began to sell or rent the land to African Americans coming to the area. Located in Crittenden County, Edmondson represented black defiance in the face of Jim Crow laws and white supremacy. The town consisted of …
The Farmers’ Federation: Regional Racial Mythologies As Agricultural Capital, Jama Mcmurtery Grove
The Farmers’ Federation: Regional Racial Mythologies As Agricultural Capital, Jama Mcmurtery Grove
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In 1927, the Farmers’ Federation agricultural cooperative in Western North Carolina launched an organization to solicit funds from wealthy donors. The money raised through philanthropic campaigns enabled the cooperative to fund large-scale agricultural projects, which helped members navigate the dramatic agricultural transformations of the early twentieth century. Although the cooperative advocated a progressive program of business-minded, scientific farming, its leadership modified programs to reflect farmer members’ limited resources and the realities of mountain production. As a result, the co-op provided a crucial bridge between white farmers and new methods of agricultural production that reached deep into peoples’ familial and productive …
Irish Whips And German Suplexes: Professional Wrestling And The American Immigrant And Minority Experience, Colin Rush Walker
Irish Whips And German Suplexes: Professional Wrestling And The American Immigrant And Minority Experience, Colin Rush Walker
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Trends within sports and popular entertainment have long been regarded as great indicators of larger transitions in the social, political, and economic landscape of the United States. Repeatedly mined and often used for context, sports have become intrinsically linked to the broader discussions of people, their beliefs, ideals, and actions occurring in the historiography of American culture. However, one sport has regularly been passed over in these examinations. I argue that the modern day entertainment monolith of professional wrestling serves as one of the most important indicators of socioeconomic change in the history of the U.S., and that it plays …
Black Islamic Evangelization In The American South, Chester Warren Cornell
Black Islamic Evangelization In The American South, Chester Warren Cornell
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Broadly speaking, my research focus is on African American religion, with particular interest in the various manifestations of black Islam in the United States. I am particularly interested in the question “Has religion served as an opiate or stimulant for black political protest?” And my research attempts to answer it by chronicling the experiences of black Muslims in southern prisons. My dissertation builds on Michelle Alexander’s groundbreaking book The New Jim Crow: Mass Incarceration in the Age of Colorblindness (2010). Alexander argues that African Americans were not over-represented in America’s prisons in the 1970s, but with President Reagan’s War on …
And They Entered As Ladies: When Race, Class And Black Femininity Clashed At Central High School, Misti Nicole Harper
And They Entered As Ladies: When Race, Class And Black Femininity Clashed At Central High School, Misti Nicole Harper
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
“And They Entered as Ladies: When Race, Class and Black Femininity Clashed at Central High School,” explores the intersectionality of race, gender and class status as middle-class black women led the integration movement and were the focal point of white backlash during the 1957 Little Rock Central High School crisis. Six of the nine black students chosen to integrate Central High School were carefully selected girls from middle-class homes, whose mothers and female family members played active parts in keeping their daughters enrolled at Central, while Daisy Gatson Bates orchestrated the integration of the capital’s school system. Nevertheless, these women …
Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon
Refusing To Be Dispossessed: African American Land Retention In The Us South From Reconstruction To World War Ii, Camille Goldmon
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
African Americans in the South were tied to the land during slavery and after emancipation. Many felt that land ownership was the key to freedom. For decades, black farmers strove for land ownership, in many cases falling prey to sharecropping and tenancy agreements in the meantime. Despite this drive toward independent farming, however, since 1920, there has been a steady decline in the number of black farm owners. This trend is especially prevalent in the Southern United States. The black farm owners who persevered through periods of economic, social, and political turmoil were able to, for varying reasons, navigate those …
Initiating Race: Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, And Public Discourse In American Culture, 1865-1917, John D. Treat
Initiating Race: Fraternal Organizations, Racial Identity, And Public Discourse In American Culture, 1865-1917, John D. Treat
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Drawing on ritual books, organizational records, newspaper accounts, and the data available from cemetery headstones and census records, this work argues that adult fraternal organizations were key to the formation of civic discourse in the United States from the years following the Civil War to World War I. It particularly analyzes the role of working-class white and African-American organizations in framing racial identity, arguing that white organizations gave up older, comprehensive ideas of citizenship for understandings of Americanism rooted in racism and nativism. Counterbalancing this development, now-forgotten African-American fraternal organizations were among the earliest advocates of Afrocentrism. These organizations, form …
A Light In Darkness, Oscar Micheaux: Entrepreneur Intellectual Agitator, Airic Hughes
A Light In Darkness, Oscar Micheaux: Entrepreneur Intellectual Agitator, Airic Hughes
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Oscar Micheaux was a luminary who served as an agent of racial uplift, with a unique message to share with the world on behalf of the culturally marginalized African Americans. He produced projects that conveyed the complexity of the true black experience with passion and creative courage. His films empowered black audiences and challenged conventional stereotypes of black culture and potential. The legacy of Oscar Micheaux is historically unparalleled among his contemporaries. He transcended traditionally held perspectives about what black people could accomplish. The consciousness within his work still heavily influences black entertainment today. This study seeks to add to …
The Peculiar Institution On The Periphery: Slavery In Arkansas, Kelly Eileene Jones
The Peculiar Institution On The Periphery: Slavery In Arkansas, Kelly Eileene Jones
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Slavery grew quickly on the western edge of the South. By 1860, more than one quarter of Arkansas's population was enslaved. While whites succeeded remarkably in transplanting the institution of slavery to the trans-Mississippi South, bondspeople used the land around them to achieve their own goals. Slaves capitalized on the abundance of uncultivated space, such as forest and canebrake, to temporarily escape the demanding crop routine, hold secret parties and religious meetings, meet friends, or run away for good. The Civil War created upheaval that undermined the slave regime but also required those African-Americans still in bondage to carefully navigate …
Cherokee Freedmen: The Struggle For Citizenship, Bethany Hope Henry
Cherokee Freedmen: The Struggle For Citizenship, Bethany Hope Henry
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
In 2011, the Cherokee Nation Supreme Court voted to exclude freedmen (descendants of former slaves) from voting, overturning a constitutional amendment that gave freedmen tribal rights. Cherokee freedmen argue that the Cherokee Nation is ignoring the Treaty of 1866 which granted all freedmen "rights as Cherokee citizens", and they call upon federal support to redeem their rights as equals. The Cherokee Nation, however, claims they are exercising tribal sovereignty and have a right to determine who is a member of their tribe. Using a comparative historical approach, the goal of this paper is to explore the institution of slavery among …
"And So We Moved Quietly": Southern Methodist University And Desegregation, 1950-1970, Scott A. Cashion
"And So We Moved Quietly": Southern Methodist University And Desegregation, 1950-1970, Scott A. Cashion
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Southern Methodist University was the first Methodist institution in the South to open its doors to African Americans in the early 1950s. There were several factors that contributed to SMU pushing for desegregation when it did. When SMU started the process of desegregation in the fall of 1950, two schools in the Southwest Conference had already admitted at least one black graduate student. University officials, namely then President Umphrey Lee, realized that because other schools had desegregated, it would not be long before SMU would have to do the same. Lee started the path towards desegregation in 1950, and it …
"It Was Awful, But It Was Politics": Crittenden County And The Demise Of African American Political Participation, Krista Michelle Jones
"It Was Awful, But It Was Politics": Crittenden County And The Demise Of African American Political Participation, Krista Michelle Jones
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
Despite the vast scholarship that exists discussing why Democrats sought restrictive suffrage laws, little attention has been given by historians to examine how concern over local government drove disfranchisement measures. This study examines how the authors of disfranchisement laws were influenced by what was happening in Crittenden County where African Americans, because of their numerical majority, wielded enough political power to determine election outcomes. In the years following the Civil War, African Americans established strong communities, educated themselves, secured independent institutions, and most importantly became active in politics. Because of their numerical majority, Crittenden's African Americans were elected to county …
Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, And Africans In Colonial Mississippi Valley, Sonia Toudji
Intimate Frontiers: Indians, French, And Africans In Colonial Mississippi Valley, Sonia Toudji
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Historians have agreed that the French were more successful than their competitors in developing cordial relations with Native Americans during the conquest of North America. French diplomatic savoir faire and their skill at trading with Indians are usually cited to explain this success, but the Spaniards relied upon similar policies of trade and gift giving, while enjoying considerably less success with the Indians. Intimate Frontiers proposes an alternative model to understand the relative success of French Colonization in North America. Intimate Frontiers, an ethno-historical examination of the colonial encounters in the Lower French Louisiana, focuses on the Social relations between …
"The Africans Have Taken Arkansas": Political Activities Of African-American Members Of The Arkansas Legislature, 1868-73, Christopher Warren Branam
"The Africans Have Taken Arkansas": Political Activities Of African-American Members Of The Arkansas Legislature, 1868-73, Christopher Warren Branam
Graduate Theses and Dissertations
African-American lawmakers in the Arkansas General Assembly during Radical Reconstruction became politically active at a time when the legislature was addressing the most basic issues of public life, such as creating the infrastructure of public education and transportation in the state. They were actively engaged in the work of the legislature. Between 1868 and 1873, they introduced bills that eventually became laws. Arkansas passed two civil rights laws at the behest of African-American lawmakers. Education, law and order, and economic development--issues that reflected the southern Republican agenda that dominated the state's politics between 1868 and Democratic Redemption in 1874--also drew …