African American Studies Commons^™

Pura Belpré’S Puppetry At The Nypl Children’S Rooms: 1921-1982, Lisa Sánchez González

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

An extraordinary public intellectual of the Puerto Rican diaspora, Pura Belpré was born in Cidra, Puerto Rico in 1899 and died in New York City in 1982 after a prolific career as a children’s author, librarian, advocate, and puppeteer. Among other firsts, Belpré wrote the first mainstream Latino storybook in U.S. publishing history: Perez and Martina (House of Warne, 1932). The American Library Association has named a major children’s literature (now including Young Adult fiction) medal in her honor. In many ways, Belpré is the Zora Neale Hurston of Afro-Caribbean American literary history—with a flamboyant, polyglot twist.

This essay discusses …

Itsy, Dirk Joseph

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

The famed Itsy Bitsy Spider realizes that climbing up the spout only leads to a rain gutter, and so goes off on a sidewalk journey to find a better life. After encountering two men arguing about money, a fraudulent salesman, and a girl afraid of spiders, Itsy finds a tree in a meadow where it can build a web and catch flies.

Alma W. Thomas: “The Marionette Show As A Correlating Activity In The Public Schools”, Jonathan Frederick Walz

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

The wider world primarily knows Alma W. Thomas as an African American visual artist who, despite the challenges of race, gender, and age, produced a coherent body of brightly colored nature-based abstractions that made her world famous in the late 1970s. What remains virtually unknown, however, is the artist’s involvement with puppet theater and related professional activities. During the summers of 1925, 1930, and 1934, Thomas studied at Columbia University’s Teachers College, where she earned an M.A. in arts education; post-graduate coursework with acknowledged marionette expert Tony Sarg followed. The pedagogical theories of John Dewey, who taught at Columbia 1905–1930, …

Teeth, Tau Bennett

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Brooklyn-based puppeteer Tau Bennett’s shooting script for a television puppet comedy employs dark humor and surreal slapstick to tell the story of a man whose offhand wish to lose his “pesky teeth” becomes unfortunately true, thanks to larger-than-life forces, two bumbling hoodlums, and a boss looking for teeth.

Puppetry And Inside Change, Al Tony Simon, Tychist Baker

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Al Tony Simon and Tychist Baker describe their experiences as formerly incarcerated individuals, and their work with puppetry through the group Inside Change. Simon became involved in theater in prison, and then with prison activism through RAPP (Release Aging People from Prison), and Milk Not Jails’ efforts to reform New York State parole boards. Great Small Works theater company introduced Simon to puppetry, which he has used in his work with young people in youth detention centers, schools, and at-risk communities through the One Foot In and One Foot Out program, and later the creation of Inside Change. During his …

Shape-Shifter, Tarish Pipkins

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Tarish Pipkins’s early experiences with the “shape-shifting beast” of racism as he grew up near Pittsburgh, and later his growing awareness of African American history, have influenced his poetry, visual art, and puppetry: a “weapon of mass destruction to fight the beast.” His work with puppets and special-needs children led him to create larger puppet productions such as Just Another Lynching and 5P1N0K10: The Android Who Wants to be Real b boy, which allow him to “[fight] back using puppets as my swords.”

Five-Star Review And Other Responses, Sheila Gaskins, Tau Bennett, Nate Puppets, Akbar Imhotep

Living Objects: African American Puppetry Essays

Living Objects Festival and Symposium attendees Sheila Gaskins, Tau Bennett, Nate Puppets, and Akbar Imhotep offer their appreciation of the events, illustrated with photographs by Gaskins.

"'Texas On The Record': Church Of God In Christ (Cogic) Determination To Possess The Land, 1907-1935, Karen Kossie-Chernyshev

Department of History, Geography and General Studies

While members of the COGIC shunned being "of" this world, property records affirm that they were consciously and progressively "in" it. Property records literally grounded the COGIC in the material world and linked their concept of a "royal priesthood and a holy nation" to the bedrock of wealth in capitalist America--real estate, the COGIC's most visible sign of prosperity.

How Did Coalitions Form During The Civil Rights Era In Mississippi?, Kenyatta L. Mitchell

Posters-at-the-Capitol Presentations

Over the past century, African Americans took part in building organizations to bring about equal rights and social change. Many organizations formed before Jim Crow but reached prominence during the Civil Rights Movement. The Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s was built on long-term strategies for gaining the right to vote, education, housing, and freedom from discrimination. Through organized nonviolent protests, the Civil Rights Movement broke the pattern of segregation at a national level through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Inviting Others In: How Oppression Affects The Self, Mylo Apollo Parker-Emerson

Senior Independent Study Theses

Broadly, the focus of this thesis is to consider how oppression affects the self. More specifically, this project supports the claim that there is a conflicting imposition (by being oppression) placed on queer folk in black (American) Christian spaces that affects the self. The position is elucidated through a four-chapter structure. In the first chapter, I provide a charitable reading to Mead’s theory of the self. I end the chapter by considering how a dissonance may occur. In chapter two, I define identity through a hermeneutical lens and supplement this theory by considering the ways identity can be imposed and …

That They May All Be One: Historical And Contemporary Ideologies Of Regional Conferences In The Seventh-Day Adventist Church, Debbie-Ann Francis

Master's Theses

The Seventh-day Adventist (SDA) Church has been known for its wide diversity along with its struggles in racial relations within the Black SDA community in the United States. The SDA Church established regional conferences for Black SDA leaders as an alternative to full integration within the denomination. For this analysis, an ideological criticism was performed on two videos that focused on the topic of regional conferences. The hegemonic ideology that surfaced was that separation within the church organization based on race is necessary in order to fulfill the mission of the SDA Church and that issues such as racism will …

How Change Started To Come: Examining Rhythm And Blues And Southern Identity, Jennifer Davis

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This project seeks a better understanding on how blackness has been peripheral to our understanding of the term Southerner. The purpose of this work is to examine an area where the intersection of race and region exists to more fully understand how blacks in the South have presented their sense of Southern identity. The chosen area of examination is the music of rhythm and blues. Rhythm and blues as a genre rose to prominence in the years following World War II. The main reason for analyzing rhythm and blues as an intersecting point of race and region is that the …

Making Our Voices Heard: Power And Citizenship In Central Florida's Black Communities, Gramond Mcpherson

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis examines the impacts of government policies on community mobilization in Orlando's Parramore neighborhood and the all-black town of Eatonville in Central Florida. The scope of this thesis covers the history of both communities from their formation in the 1880s to the end of the twentieth century. This research reveals the relationships between the predominantly black residents of Parramore and Eatonville and the largely white government officials over the development and maintenance of each community. By understanding the social creation of both communities during the era of Jim Crow, this thesis reveals the differing levels of power each community …

A Phenomenological Study Of Black Fathers In Child Welfare, Tamaru N. Phillips

Department of Family Therapy Dissertations and Applied Clinical Projects

Each year thousands of children are removed from their homes and placed in foster care where they lose connections with their family, community, and friends. Coakley (2007) points out that children of color are overly represented within the child welfare system, and there is a lack of research on Black fathers and their involvement when their children become a part of the system. Studies have suggested that most families that encounter the child welfare system have adult males who are actively involved with their families, however, child welfare workers do not engage these men (Coady, Hoy, & Cameron, 2013). The …

Mills Brothers (1924-1981), John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

The Mills Brothers were the first African American group musical group to enjoy popularity with white audiences, and had a career that lasted over fifty years.

Latimer, Lewis Howard (1848-1928), John A. Drobnicki

Publications and Research

Lewis Howard Latimer was an inventor, engineer, draftsman, and patent expert who helped to make the electric light more widespread and affordable.

The New White Moderate: Bearing Witness To The Differend Of Race, Ethan T. Ashley

Honors Theses

As Frantz Fanon demonstrates in his text, Black Skin, White Masks, Sartrean existentialism fails to account for differences in racialized existence. Quite simply, the notion that “existence precedes essence” is reversed in the case of the black subject; he/she is living in a world that has rendered the black subject subservient to a predetermined essence. Ultimately, the fact that the white subject exists and may freely determine his/her essence while the black subject may not further demonstrates this gap or a chasm between black and white subjects that calls for further examination. In the first chapter, I will use …

The What If Collection, Aisha J. Daniels

Theses and Dissertations

The What If Collection is a visual narrative that confronts white supremacy, the social, economic, and political ideology used to subjugate black civilization via colonial rule and enslavement in history and via structural racism today. Many white people have been socialized into a racial illiteracy that fosters white supremacy. This racial illiteracy fails to realize and understand the destructive effects of Western dominance on the rest of the world, particularly on past and present Africa and her diaspora. In response, utilizing discursive design, the collection constructs a counter-story that depicts a shift in the power structure in which the white …

Ua1c3/6 Student/Alumni Small Group Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of small groups of identified students.

Ua1c3/1 Administrator Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of administrators of Western Kentucky University and its founding institutions.

Ua1c3/3 Student/Alumni Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of students and alumni of Western Kentucky University and its founding institutions. Individual portraits and small identified groups.

Ua1c5/6 Football Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of football teams, games, individual players and coaches, includes College High, Ogden College and Southern Normal School teams.

Ua1c5/5 Cheerleader Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of cheerleaders including College High cheerleaders.

Ua3/8/2 President's Office-Meredith Athletics, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Athletics subject file created by the President's Office during Thomas Meredith's tenure as president of WKU.

Ua1c4/2 Faculty/Staff Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of faculty and staff groups and associations of Western Kentucky University and its founding institutions.

Ua11/4 Public Affairs Administration, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the administration of Public Affairs.

Ua12/2/17 Black Student Union, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Records created by and about the Black Student Union.

Ua1c4/9 Sororities Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of sorority groups.

Ua1c5/3 Basketball - Womens Photos, Wku Archives

WKU Archives Collection Inventories

Images of women's basketball teams and games.

Maroon Colonies And New Orleans Neutral Grounds: From A Protosuburban Past To A Postsuburban Future, Lynnell L. Thomas

American Studies Faculty Publication Series

This essay examines New Orleans maroon colonies as a precursor to the postsuburban constellations that shape the contemporary urban landscape. These communities served as the original neutral grounds where Africans, Afro-Creoles, and Native Americans created spaces beyond the purview of slave owners and government authorities. These protosuburban enclaves anticipated the vibrancy and prolificacy of the “global urban periphery” that Roger Keil describes in his research. They also inform twentieth- and twenty-first-century efforts by black New Orleanians to carve out their own urban neutral grounds: spaces resistant to the hegemonic forces of neoliberalism and neo-Bourbonism, as manifested in the traditions of …