African American Studies Commons^™

A Cleave Within The Piney Woods: Nacogdoches, Stephen F. Austin State University And How Racial Integration Divided The Town And Gown, Caitlin Hornback

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Stephen F. Austin State University was once the pride and joy of the city of Nacogdoches, Texas. When the Texas State Legislature began to look for a location for their new state normal school, the people of the East Texas town fought to have it built there and the Stephen F. Austin Teacher’s College opened its doors in September 1923 to a proud community. Through the trials and tribulations of early twentieth century events, the school managed to stay afloat and grow in numbers. Dr. Ralph W. Steen became the president of the college in 1958 and he oversaw a …

Autherine Lucy & The University Of Alabama Integration At U Of A 1952-1956, Tamera Lott

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Located in Tuscaloosa, Alabama, the University of Alabama was chartered in 1820 and is Alabama’s oldest public university. Prior to 1956, the University was segregated; admission was limited to white men and women. On February 3, 1965, Miss Autherine Lucy stepped foot on campus for the first time to attend classes at the University; history was made as she was the first African American present. Lucy’s attendance stirred conflict throughout campus and the state of Alabama. Unbeknownst to many, Lucy’s attendance garnered both national and international attention. The central argument here is that Lucy’s experiences at the University of Alabama …

International Connection, Domestic Radicalization: The Connection Between East Asia And Black Radicals, Randy O. Felder

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

Utilizing newspapers, journals and pamphlets, this thesis examines the ways that the Black Power movement, primarily in the 1960’s connected with East Asian countries.

Differentiating between the Black Power and the Civil Rights groups, this thesis will show why and how the Black Power movement needed international allies such as China and Vietnam.

Showing that the connection between the East Asia and Black Power groups was due to racism, imperialism, and Maoism, I argue that Black Power individuals/groups were influenced by East Asia and saw these countries as a blueprint for revolution in America. This thesis also analyzes the significance …

“Madam” Elizabeth: Elizabeth Hobbs Keckley’S Sisyphean Attempt To Join The “Cult Of True Womanhood”, Bella Biancone

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

Nineteenth century notions of femininity and etiquette were governed by strict societal standards. “True Womanhood” was defined by four fundamental virtues– piety, purity, submissiveness, and domesticity. However, there was another pre-requisite for joining this revered cult¬: whiteness. No matter how pious or domestic a woman of color was, she could never hope to be considered a proper lady by Victorian standards. In discerning what it meant to be a member of that “cult of True Womanhood,” Black women were used to determine the boundaries of white womanhood; a “True Woman” was to be the antithesis of the stereotypical sexual and …

“Mecca For The Colored People”: Reexamining The Demolition Of Pittsburgh’S Lower Hill District, Avishek Acharya

Undergraduate Research and Scholarship Symposium

The Hill District of Pittsburgh is a neighborhood of national importance, having hosted jazz legends, nationally renowned newspapers, and artists. However, the Hill of today is much smaller than it has ever been; the destruction of the Lower Hill effectively separated the neighborhood from not only another part of the previously collectively one singular neighborhood but separated the neighborhood and its residents from the economic hubs in both down and uptown. The wholesale destruction of the Lower Hill District can be attributed to both the national trend of “urban renewal,” a series of misguided, often explicitly racist attempts to undo …

Reevaluating The Pension System: The Struggles Of Black Widows Following The Civil War, Samantha E. Carney

Swarthmore Undergraduate History Journal

Following the Civil War, the United States government invested heavily in the U.S. Pension Bureau: a government agency that distributed monetary aid to wounded veterans. This paper discusses the impact of race and gender with regards to pensions in black communities, as evidenced by the pension files of the 34^th Regiment of the South Carolina United States Colored Troops. In particular, it addresses the lack of education and documentation amongst black widows which was largely due to their enslavement, in concert with the inherent racist and sexist prejudice of white Special Examiners hired by the Pension Bureau. This combination …

John B. Cade’S Project To Document The Stories Of The Formerly Enslaved, Susanna Ashton

Publications

No abstract provided.

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

2022 Mlk Keynote Address: Eddie Glaude Jr. Pre-Event Presentation, Center For Social Equity & Inclusion, Eddie Glaude Jr.

Martin Luther King, Jr. Series

One of the nation’s most prominent scholars, Eddie Glaude, Jr. is an author, political commentator, public intellectual and passionate educator who examines the complex dynamics of the American experience. His writings, including his most recent—the New York Times bestseller Begin Again: James Baldwin’s America and Its Urgent Lessons for our Own—take a wide look at Black communities, the difficulties of race in the United States and the challenges we face as a democracy.

In his writing and speaking, Glaude is an American critic in the tradition of James Baldwin and Ralph Waldo Emerson, confronting history and bringing our nation’s …

Fashioning The Flapper: Clothing As A Catalyst For Social Change In 1920s America, Julia Wolffe

Honors Program Theses

Fashion has been a catalyst for social change throughout human history. Fashion in 1920s America in particular reflects society's rapidly evolving attitudes towards gender and race. Beginning with how corsetry heavily restricted women for nearly four hundred years up until the twentieth century, this thesis explores how clothing has acted as a tool for societal progression following World War I and Women's Suffrage and during the Jazz Age and The Harlem Renaissance. Specifically, this thesis examines how the influence of jazz music and dance that originated from Black American communities led to the creation of the flapper evening dress. The …

Towards A Psychological Science Of Abolition Democracy: Insights For Improving Theory And Research On Race And Public Safety, Cynthia J. Najdowski, Phillip Atiba Goff

Psychology Faculty Scholarship

We call for psychologists to expand their thinking on fair and just public safety by engaging with the “Abolition Democracy” framework that Du Bois (1935) articulated as the need to dissolve slavery while simultaneously taking affirmative steps to rid its toxic consequences from the body politic. Because the legacies of slavery continue to produce disparities in public safety in the U.S, both harming Black people and the institutions that could keep them safe, psychologists must take seriously questions of history and structure in addition to immediate situations. In the present article, we consider the state of knowledge regarding psychological processes …

Crossing The 'Color Bar': African American Soldiers In Britain And Australia During The Second World War, Joseph A. Dickinson

War, Diplomacy, and Society (MA) Theses

During the Second World War, African American soldiers were stationed all over the world as part of the American war effort. During these deployments, African Americans encountered a number of white societies, such as those in Britain and Australia, which they generally interacted with cordially. Good relations between African American soldiers and the local white populations angered many white servicemembers, who saw the lack of Jim Crow style segregation as a threat to the racial status quo, and attempted to enforce segregation overseas themselves. These attempts were often resisted fiercely by African American soldiers and the local white populations, both …

Reframing Leadership Narratives Through The African American Lens, Marion Missy Mcgee

Antioch University Dissertations & Theses

Reframing Leadership Narratives through the African American Lens explores the context-rich experiences of Black Museum executives to challenge dominant cultural perspectives of what constitutes a leader. Using critical narrative discourse analysis, this research foregrounds under-told narratives and reveals the leadership practices used to proliferate Black Museums to contrast the lack of racially diverse perspectives in the pedagogy of leadership studies. This was accomplished by investigating the origin stories of African American executives using organizational leadership and social movement theories as analytical lenses for making sense of leaders’ tactics and strategies. Commentary from Black Museum leaders were interspersed with sentiments of …

Colonial Markets, Consumers, And Trade: A Comparative Analysis Of Historic Ceramics From The Bluefields Bay Area, Westmoreland, Jamaica, Lacy Risner

Murray State Theses and Dissertations

The ceramic assemblages from a British colonial settlement in Bluefields Bay, Jamaica, provide a unique window into the market availability, exchange routes, and consumption patterns of the eighteenth century. This study compares the historic ceramics collected from two sites in Bluefields Bay to one another and to other intra-island (Jamaica), intraregional (Lesser Antilles), and international (North America) colonial and postcolonial sites to reveal patterns of individual and global ceramic consumption and distribution in the emergent capitalist networks and markets of the colonial era. Integrating small British colonial sites into the networks of other more extensive studies focusing primarily on plantations …

Aa Ms 19 Eugene Jackson Papers, Emily Margaret Newell

Search the Manuscript Collection (Finding Aids)

This collection is comprised of family photographs, photo albums, bibles, hymnals, and newspaper from the early 20th century onward. The collection is organized into three series:

Series 1: Photographs

This series includes the personal photographs of Eugene Jackson’s friends and family as far back as the early 1900s. The most common themes and activities found in these photographs are leisure activities such as trips to the beach or the mountains, family get-togethers, professional portraits, and Christmas greeting cards.

Subseries 1.1: Loose Photographs

Loose photographs are organized into topical folders.

Subseries 1.2: Ruby Family Photograph Album

The photograph album includes black-and-white …

A Workers' Paradise: Re-Integrating Newfoundland Into Colonial American History, Elena Hynes

Electronic Theses & Dissertations

The island of Newfoundland is conspicuous in colonial British and North American histories, most particularly and paradoxically, in its absence, a state of affairs which this study aims to help address. Multiple factors, including a paucity of documentary sources and various historiographic trends, have traditionally contributed to Newfoundland’s marginalization within colonial historical narratives. However, developments in recent years have made Newfoundland’s potential integration into the broader colonial dialogue more feasible including the advent of the Atlantic perspective, the expansion of available sources, and the work of multiple regional historians who have challenged enduring historiographic trends characterizing Newfoundland colonial settlements as …

Improving Veteran Access; Status Of Operations Of The United States Department Of Veteran Affairs Work-Study Program, Kirk Allen

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The usage status of The U.S. Department Veterans Affairs Work-Study Program is examined. Beneficiary numbers from the Global, Unites States, State, and Local/County perspective are reviewed. While of essential value, the program suffers from a lack of scholarly research and government oversight, and is further hindered by restrictive administrative rules lived first-hand. Research suggests that the program is operating outside of accountability to the taxpayer, presents as unnecessarily/overly-restrictive in accessibility, and is underutilized. The program appears to not be serving all veterans to full potential.

The Work-Study Program is codified in Veterans Benefits', Title 38 United States Code, Part III, …

[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.

An Intergenerational Photo Exploration Of Self Care Actions In Self-Identifying Strong Black Women, Vanessa Patrice Goodar

Dissertations

The current study sought to expand upon the Giscombé Superwoman Schema (2010) specifically exploring the role of vulnerability resistance and help obligation as potential barriers to changing comprehensive self-care health commitments in self-identifying Strong Black Women (SBW). The Superwoman Schema characteristics of vulnerability resistance and help obligation along with socio-economic factors of income, religious affiliation and marital status were assessed in the project using a visual-ethnography approach to Photo Voice methods and five intergenerational focus groups of SBW's born between 1946 and 2002. The collective self-care knowledge of these eighteen participants was analyzed using a participatory action research discussion framework …

“From The House Come Everything”: Macler Shepard And Jeffvanderlou, Inc’S Effort To Rebuild A North St. Louis City Neighborhood, 1966-1978, Mark Loehrer

Theses

This thesis charts the course of the JeffVanderLou (JVL) organization between the pivotal years of 1966 to 1976, using the life of a man named Macler Shepard as the primary lens of exploration. Born in Marvell Arkansas, Macler Shepard followed in the footsteps of tens of thousands of other Southern migrants to cities like St. Louis, hoping to find a new life in the industrial North. However, no sooner had he settled in, he was displaced by the construction of Pruitt-Igoe, one of St. Louis’ first large-scale urban renewal programs. In response, Shepard became involved in neighborhood organizing, focusing on …

Roots Of Justice: Historical Truth And Reconciliation In Lincoln And Nebraska, Veronica Nohemi Duran, Crystal Dunning, Kathleen A. Johnson, Paul Olson

Truth and Reconciliation History Project

A bibliography of resources about the history in Nebraska of Native Americans, African Americans, Latinos, Asian Americans and Recent Refugees

We hope that these five bibliographies will prove fruitful in helping us to understand what our history has been, where we have gone astray, and what we can do to help bring about reconciliation in our community and in our state.

The discovery of what has happened in Nebraska in the last hundred and seventy years is not an easy task, but it is our goal in putting together this bibliography to begin that task. By putting together a picture …

Through The Ivory Curtain: African Americans In Cleveland Heights, Ohio, Before The Fair Housing Movement, J. Mark Souther

History Faculty Publications

This article examines the largely neglected history of African American struggles to obtain housing in Cleveland Heights, a first-ring suburb of Cleveland, Ohio, between 1900 and 1960, prior to the fair housing and managed integration campaigns that emerged thereafter. The article explores the experiences of black live-in servants, resident apartment building janitors, independent renters, and homeowners. It offers a rare look at the ways that domestic and custodial arrangements opened opportunities in housing and education, as well as the methods, calculations, risks, and rewards of working through white intermediaries to secure homeownership. It argues that the continued black presence laid …

William "Bill" Austin Smith Sr., Kelli Johnson

Oral Histories – NPS AACR Civil Rights In Appalachia Grant

Kelli Johnson conducting an oral history interview with Bill Smith.

This oral history is part of the National Park Service African American Civil Rights History and Appalachia Grant Program.

Ua3/10/4 Naming & Symbols Task Force Report & Recommendations, Wku President's Office - Caboni

WKU Administration Documents

Report of the Naming & Symbols Task Force concerning four major areas:

• Solicit input and perspectives from a broad range of constituencies and stakeholders that will guide us as we examine the origins of the names and symbols used on campus.
• Audit the names used on buildings and other campus symbols to determine which may be connected to exclusion, segregation, racism or slavery.
• Create a set of guiding principles and a range of options for how we should address any issues raised.
• Provide to University leadership a set of recommendations.

Understanding The Importance Of Statues: Symbols Of Racism In Modern Society, Theresa Vanwormer

The Review: A Journal of Undergraduate Student Research

Whether it is a monument, statue, plaque, or mural, the values and ideologies that are memorialized on public land reflect what reality the people of a country are choosing to remember. The United States’ political and racial history has led to the creation of controversial memorials, including memorials that honor the Confederacy and its leaders, influencing moral concepts based in racism, violence, and oppression. The continued veneration of these symbols on public land sends the message to the Black community that their oppressors are honored as heroes and that the society they live in still allows for their abuse. Annette-Gordon …

The Ill-Treatment Of Their Countrywoman: Liberated African Women, Violence, And Power In Tortola, 1807–1834, Arianna Browne

Master's Theses

In 1807, Parliament passed an Act to abolish the slave trade, leading to the Royal Navy’s campaign of policing international waters and seizing ships suspected of illegal trading. As the Royal Navy captured slave ships as prizes of war and condemned enslaved Africans to Vice-Admiralty courts, formerly enslaved Africans became “captured negroes” or “liberated Africans,” making the subjects in the British colonies. This work, which takes a microhistorical approach to investigate the everyday experiences of liberated Africans in Tortola during the early nineteenth century, focuses on the violent conditions of liberated African women, demonstrating that abolition consisted of violent contradictions …

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 …

Mapping Renewal: How An Unexpected Interdisciplinary Collaboration Transformed A Digital Humanities Project, Elise Tanner, Geoffrey Joseph

Digital Initiatives Symposium

Funded by a National Endowment for Humanities (NEH) Humanities Collections and Reference Resources Foundations Grant, the UA Little Rock Center for Arkansas History and Culture’s “Mapping Renewal” pilot project focused on creating access to and providing spatial context to archival materials related to racial segregation and urban renewal in the city of Little Rock, Arkansas, from 1954-1989. An unplanned interdisciplinary collaboration with the UA Little Rock Arkansas Economic Development Institute (AEDI) has proven to be an invaluable partnership. One team member from each department will demonstrate the Mapping Renewal website and discuss how the collaborative process has changed and shaped …

We Exist Series 1: Family - Quotes, Lance Gibbs Phd

Series 1: Family - Quotes

In this section, we have selected quotes that represent how Black residents in Maine view their family life. The quotes are taken from transcripts of the oral history project “Home Is Where I Make It”: African American Community and Activism in Greater Portland, Maine.” The interview subjects are all native to Maine or are longtime residents of Maine. The original intent of the “Home Is Where I Make It” project was to highlight Black residents’ history and struggle for community in southern Maine in both their formal organizational memberships and day-to-day activities. The interviews, however, unearthed a wealth …

“Yes, Separation! No, Integration!” A Historical Analysis Of Black Nationalist Groups Across The Decades: From The Civil Rights Era To The Contemporary Era, John Mcgee

Undergraduate Research Conference

As tens of thousands of protesters have taken to the streets with the chants of “Black Lives Matter!” Or “hands up, don’t shoot” issues such as police brutality and institutional racism have once again been thrust into the national spotlight. The strength, longevity, and occasional violence associated with these protests have made Americans from all backgrounds aware of the demands of the protestors. Unsurprisingly, these recent protests, often concerned with issues of race and justice, have drawn comparisons to the powerful protests of the civil rights era. As a result of the success of the civil rights movement and leaders …