African American Studies Commons^™

A Noble Duty: Ladies’ Aid Associations In Upstate South Carolina During The Civil War, Elizabeth Aranda, Carmen Harris

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

The contributions of women during the American Civil War have been typically examined within the broader picture of a nation or state-wide mobilization of citizens during a time of war. In this paper, I seek to show the mobilization of women during the Civil War from a regionalized perspective limited to the Upcountry of South Carolina and the effect their development of aid societies had on the war as well as on their place as white women in the Confederacy. Female-run aid societies began for the purpose of gathering supplies for soldiers. Within two years they had founded hospitals and …

Agricultural Service Disparities Between White And Non-White Farmers Provided By The Federal Extension Service During The Jim Crow Era, José Leonel Ramírez Solís, Ben Montgomery

University of South Carolina Upstate Student Research Journal

The Federal Extension Service (FES) of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) was segregated during the Jim Crow era. FES farm agents provided agricultural education and outreach; they answered questions in office, hosted meetings, and made farm visits. Agents also ran 4-H, which educated youth about agriculture through camps, and demonstrated farming activities carried out by participants. This study investigated whether segregation of services led to disparities between white and non-white (mostly African American) farm operators and families among four South Carolina regions. We compared the level of service provided to white and non-white operators and youth based on …

Maternal Educational Experiences And Academic Expectations For Adolescent Daughters, Brandie Tanille Lee

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The National Center for Education Statistics indicated that the number of African American females who have enrolled in undergraduate and postbaccalaureate programs since 2000 has increased significantly. Enrollment numbers do not provide a deeper understanding of what factors inform females’ academic aspirations or their desire to attend college. Through the use of a generic qualitative approach and the application of the role theory conceptual framework, this study was conducted to explore the beliefs and attitudes of African American mothers age 30 to 40 regarding their educational experiences, the formation and communication of the academic expectations for their adolescent daughters, and …

Black Mothers’ Birthing Center Experiences And Exclusive Breastfeeding Practices, Natashia King-Conner

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The persistence of racial disparities in breastfeeding is associated with a range of interconnected factors, such as historical, cultural, social, social, and psychological. The current gap in the prevalence of exclusive breastfeeding among Black mothers and White mothers has led to rising concerns in the United States. A basic qualitative approach was used to conceptualize the multidimensional constructs of the social–ecological model to investigate the individual, interpersonal, institutional, and community-level structures and existing policies in birthing centers that inadvertently harbor biases that impede care for Black mothers. Data were gathered through purposeful sampling and semistructured interviews with 10 Black mothers …

Nonacademic Factors Affecting Retention And Academic Success At Historically Black Colleges And Universities, Charlene Denise Mallory

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractRetention rates for African American students attending historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) have been low compared to rates of predominantly White institutions. The problem investigated was the retention rates of African American students enrolled at degree-granting Title IV HBCUs. The absence of research focused on African American students and retention at HBCUs leaves more to be learned about how institutions can improve retention rates for this population. The purpose of this correlational study was to examine the association between nonacademic factors (enrollment status, residency status, SES, and family income) and retention rate (full-time and part-time) for African American full-time, …

"To Claim That Greatness For Themselves”: A History Of The Kentucky Horse Park, Emily Elizabeth Libecap

Theses and Dissertations--History

The Kentucky Horse Park describes itself as the world’s only equine theme park. However, the park is not entirely without historical precedent; instead, world’s fairs, amusement parks, and theme parks all form a century-long pedigree chart through which the park can trace its ancestors. The Kentucky Horse Park’s links to these predecessors deepen our understanding of how the park is a reflection of the world around it and the motivations for how and why it was built. From its inception in the late 1960s, to when it opened in 1978, through the present day, the Kentucky Horse Park was and …

“They Did This Work”: Black Activism, Education, And The Rosenwald Rural School-Building Program In Kentucky, Le Datta Denise Grimes

Theses and Dissertations--History

This study examines what Black Kentuckians did on their own behalf to educate themselves in the early twentieth century. I argue that Black Kentuckians’ agency and activism formed the bedrock of the Rosenwald movement in Kentucky. From 1917 to 1932, they built 158 Rosenwald Schools across the Bluegrass by welding together multiple strategies of resistance. Such agitation included voluntarily taxing themselves, waging legal battles, deploying military-style fundraising campaigns, and building institutions to support their schools. Seeking first-class citizenship, they also volunteered labor, donated land, and bought supplies to uplift themselves and their community through education. This work took place against …

Empowerment Pathways: A Mitigation Approach To Adolescent And Youth Racial Stress In Marginalized Populations, Lauren B. Robins, Megan Cannedy, Rachel Kerrigan, Brittany G. Suggs

Counseling & Human Services Faculty Publications

Racial unrest recently has been incessant. In response, this conceptual contribution explores a prevention-based program for African American adolescents and youth to aid in their navigation through ubiquitous racial unrest and persistent mental health adversities. This article provides a comprehensive literature review on racial injustice and presents information regarding race-based traumatic stressors and adverse mental health outcomes. The prevention-based program that was created in response to the apparent racial unrest among African American youth and adolescents is presented and explored. The goal of this conceptual article is to raise awareness of this issue, provide practical steps to combat racial injustice, …

Reimagining The Black Body Through Portraiture: Interpreting The Functional And Societal Roles Of Photography And The Reconstructive Power Of Camera Technology And Photographic Images For African American Self Image, Robert Cain

CMC Senior Theses

This thesis addresses the multiple ways in which the medium of photography, and specifically the portrait photograph, enabled African Americans to visually contest degrading portrayals of blackness and reclaim stolen agency in producing depictions of self throughout the media and popular culture. The societal reverberations of camera technology on the emergence of black photographers like Richard Samuel Roberts, James VanDerZee, and Gordon Parks are analyzed, and the images taken by these artists are read against a history of racist stereotypes, reconsidered for their aesthetic contributions to the art world, and interpreted within the tradition of African American photography. A brief …

Modeling Black Literature: Behind The Screen With The Black Bibliography Project, Brenna Bychowski, Melissa Barton

Library Staff Publications

The Black Bibliography Project (BBP) plans to produce a bibliographic database of printed works by Black writers from the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries. With the support of the Beinecke Library and a grant from the Mellon Foundation, project co-PIs and codirectors Jacqueline Goldsby and Meredith McGill collaborated with a team of librarians from Yale to develop the data model for their database. Drawing on Beinecke’s James Weldon Johnson Memorial Collection to pull case studies, the team of librarians developed a Linked Data model for BBP in an instance of Wikibase and trained and supported a group of graduate student …

Evaluating The N/Ne Preference Policy, Amie Thurber, Lisa K. Bates, Susan Halverson

School of Social Work Faculty Publications and Presentations

North/Northeast Portland has long been the heart of Portland's Black community. By 2010, the area had lost two-thirds of its Black residents to displacement. In response, the City adopted a Preference Policy that prioritizes displaced affordable rental and homeownership applicants. This report describes findings from the first phase of a study to understand what difference this policy is making in the lives of residents.

Race And Labor In Saint Domingue: "Let Us Die Rather Than Fail To Keep This Vow", Monet Massac

Scripps Senior Theses

My thesis explores the development of racial capitalism in Saint Domingue, today’s Haiti, and how different sectors of colonial society handled and worked with the tools they were given by their oppressors. By “tools,” I mean the ideology of race that devalues and degrades Blackness and gives value to whiteness. Though I am using terms of race, it is impossible to separate racial politics from economics. The scope of my thesis is within the early modern period starting with European and specifically French travel writers from the 1500s on until right after the Haitian Revolution. The investigation is relatively chronological …

A Musical Analysis Of William Grant Still's Songs Of Separation: The Chamber Arrangement, Michael Preacely

Theses and Dissertations--Music

William Grant Still was given the title “The Dean of African American Music” because of the many firsts he accomplished as an African American musician in the early twentieth century. He is known for fusing his African American musical tradition of Jazz and blues with the classical European musical tradition. This study explores one of Still’s most famous song cycles, “Songs of Separation,” in the arrangement for string quartet, voice, and piano. This document considers the instrumentation of the string quartet arrangement and how Still uses the instrumentation to enhance the character OF the poetry. This document also provides a …

America’S Presidential Crisis Of Legitimacy: How The Electoral College Became Obsolete And How We Can Fix It, Julia Rose Foodman

Scripps Senior Theses

The goal of this thesis is to critique the current American Presidential electoral system, the Electoral College, and to show what an alternative could potentially mean for the American people. This paper seeks to answer the following questions: What are the main arguments for the Electoral College, why are they troubling, and how can we mend American Presidential elections for the greater purposes of political equality, democracy, and freedom? To do so, core arguments made by conservative pundits in favor of the Electoral College are outlined in order to bring attention to their logical, political, and moral inconsistencies. The inequalities …

Being In The Black Queer Diaspora: Embodied Archives In A Map To The Door Of No Return, Alexandria Naima Smith

Journal of Feminist Scholarship

Poet, novelist, and essayist Dionne Brand’s unconventional memoir, A Map to the Door of No Return (2001) provides a method for identifying how the embodied experiences of Black queer subjects form an archive for understanding operations of power within Black queer diasporas. Using the analytic of sensual worldmaking, a term I use to describe Black feminist narrative writing that locates embodied erotic and sensual experience as an authorizing source of knowledge about identity-based power dynamics, I illustrate how A Map to the Door of No Return offers a Black queer archive of experiences and narratives in the Black diaspora. Brand …

Black Grocers, Black Activism, And The Spaces In Between: Black Grocery Stores During The Mississippi Freedom Struggle Movement, Keon Ahmad Burns

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis explores the role of Black-owned grocery stores and their owners during the Mississippi Freedom Struggle Movement. The thesis highlights four Black grocery store owners, and the impact they had on the movement. Grocery stores played a vital role and were often sites of contestants. Black-owned grocery stores served as meeting spaces for Black activism, targets of White domestic terrorism, and safe havens for Black Mississippians. These spaces provided a space for political agency, leisure, and safety. Likewise, this thesis centers Black grocery store owners as fundamental to the progress of the movement. It explores an array of ways …

Where Am I?: The Absence Of The Black Male From The E-Suite, Brian Bedford

University of the Pacific Theses and Dissertations

According to current U.S. labor statistics, Black male executives are underrepresented in every major industry in the United States. Common impediments preventing Black males from occupying executive positions include workplace white supremacy, biculturalism, repressive structures, and disparate career development. Using critical race theory as a framework, this basic qualitative study investigated the experiences of eight male executives, five Black and three white, from various industries to understand their perceptions and perspectives on race and racism, and examined their workplace lived experiences to study why there are not more Black males in the e-suite. Moreover, strategies to increase Black male representation …

Songs For High Voice: An Annotated Guide To African Romances, Op. 17 By Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, Makeda Danielle Hampton

Theses and Dissertations--Music

African Romances, Op. 17, composed in 1897 by African-British composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (1875-1912), is a collection of seven songs for high voice that is uniquely both African and American. The lyrics of this song cycle were first published in the book Majors and Minors, a collection of poems published in 1895 by Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906).

An analysis of resources supports that academic discourse in Black vocal music has been underrepresented due to the absence of centralized information, such as published scores, recorded materials, catalogs, and guides for study and performance. While in depth research focusing on the art …

Treatment Barriers Confronted By African American Women In Past Abusive Relationships, Akhirah Shahidah Lewis

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Intimate partner violence (IPV) is a widespread problem that impacts 5.3 million women annually in the United States, and African American women experience IPV at a 35% rate higher than Caucasian women and 2.5 times higher than other races. The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to examine the treatment barriers confronted by African American women in past abusive relationships. This research addressed the extent to which IPV affected African American women regarding the challenges resulting from IPV, the relevant impacts, and the treatment barriers. The ecological systems theory developed by Bronfenbrenner in 1979 was used as the theoretical …

Qualitative Examination Of Noncustodial African American Fathers' Involvement In Their Children's Education, Christy Ann Wallace

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractParent involvement in children's school experience has been shown to be important to academic success. Although African American parents approach their parenting in culturally unique ways, these have not been adequately explored or described. Many African American children grow up in a household with a single mother and an involved but nonresident father; the purpose of this study was to explore the lived experiences of these fathers with their grade school children's schools and education. Bronfenbrenner's ecological systems theory underpinned the research. Using a qualitative phenomenological design, data was collected from a sample of 10 nonresident African American fathers using …

African American, Adult Men Reared By Their Single, African American, Custodial Fathers, Christopher Eugene Joe

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A vast number of researchers have studied the impact that African American father absence has on the developmental outcomes of African American, male children. Others have noted the steady increase of single, African American, custodial fathers and have suggested African American, male children who grow up in these households are likely to experience positive developmental outcomes. However, their research stopped short of examining how this unique family structure impacted child development from the son’s perspective. The purpose of this qualitative study was to provide an understanding of how the childhood well-being of sons was affected by growing up with a …

Effective Strategies For Recruiting African American Males Into Teacher Education Programs, Fredrick Wellington Snodgrass

Online Theses and Dissertations

In today’s society, the teaching workforce should be more diverse. However, it still consists of majority white females. From a survey reported by Education Week in 2017-2018, the teaching workforce consisted of 79.2% white teachers. The same data reported that the teaching workforce consists of 7% African-Americans (Will, 2020). From that 7% of African-Americans, African-American males consists of 2% of the teaching workforce (Bell, 2017). Some school districts are seeking to attract more minority teachers to reflect their student demographics. In 2018, data reported from statista.com shows the following student demographics in K-12 public schools across the U.S.: 47% White, …

Resistance, Education, And Rites: An Ethnographic Study On Afrocentric Community Education, Micala Darcel Evans

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

In 2016, the Detroit Independent Freedom School Movement (DIFS) was established out of the need for positive educational activities for children of the dismantled Detroit Public Schools (DPS). The movement was organized by Detroit community members who created grassroots organizations in response to decades of destruction created by State Emergency Management. This empirical ethnographic study explored the historical evolution of freedom schooling and how volunteers empower residents with community education in Detroit, Michigan. Through a narrative inquiry of volunteer community organizers, the analysis explored the use of Afrocentric methods as a means for political resistance while grounding the experience in …

Ascension To The Presidency: A Narrative Inquiry Of African American Women, Konya Monique Sledge

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This narrative inquiry study examined the lived experiences of African American women serving as community college administrators to gain perspectives on how they overcame obstacles to career advancement and strategies used to achieve the presidency. Narrative inquiry is used to restory field texts, is applied to underscore their lived experiences, and establishes a timeline detailing their early career experiences. Only one president sought to lead a community college; all others arrived at the presidency by non-traditional paths. Three themes emerged from responses provided by presidents during their interviews and are as follows: (a) nontraditional pathway to presidency; (b) heightened awareness …

Henry Adams: An Education In Autobiography, Marcellus Richie

Dissertations and Theses

This essay will begin by breaking down Henry Adams’s starting sentence in his autobiography word by word, piece by piece – pondering its meanings and permutations in the context of subsequent chapters of this iconic memoir. The essay will then consider whether Adams’s Education should still be regarded as a classic of American autobiography or seen merely as an irrelevant and out-of-date artifact. In a nation radically transformed since Adams’s time, does the book still deserve its high flung reputation? In other words, which of the images cited above is most relevant to The Education: an image of optimistic youth …

The Space Between “Seen” And “Unseen:” Queer People And The 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance, Claudia R. Campanella

Dissertations and Theses

In November 1926, a group of Black artists, writers, and activists created the first and only edition of Fire!!, edited by novelist Wallace Thurman. Fire!! was created by a younger generation of New Negroes and “devoted to the younger Negro artists” who dissented from the mainstream ideas of the New Negro Movement and used the magazine to spread their own views on the 1915-1945 New Negro Renaissance. Fire!! and other texts speaking to this dissent against a Black intellectual middle class image of the movement will be studied in reference to showcasing the multi-faceted elements of the movement touching …

Harlem To Infinity: An Intellectual History And Critique Of Historical Frameworks On The New Negro Renaissance, Jeryl Raphael

Dissertations and Theses

No abstract provided.

Does Electoral Or Institutional Climate Affect The Success Of Minority Politicians?, Kendra N. Escudero

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

Although there is literature on the overarching political behaviors of Americans, what about the motivation of individual minority actors looking to hold state office? What has the literature contributed to the specific experience of those of color? Why do we not see a more representative amount of Black and Latinx Americans in office representing their constituencies? Using the 2020 Cost Of Voting Index, and pairing it with election outcome data from 1996-2020, I looked deeper into the story behind the lack of proportional representation for growing populations of American minorities. I found that when the COVI values are higher in …

The Transcorporeal South: Bodies And Ecologies In Twentieth-Century Southern Literature, Tiffany Morgan Messick

Graduate Research Theses & Dissertations

This dissertation proposes that transcorporeality offers an alternative to Cartesian dualistic modes of embodiment in Walker Percy’s, The Moviegoer, Zora Neale Hurston’s, Their Eyes Were Watching God, Richard Wright’s, Native Son, and Carson McCullers’s The Heart is a Lonely Hunter. Opposing the division between mind and body as theorized by René Descartes, transcorporeality advances the body’s porosity, maintaining that the individual is enmeshed within the material world and that this entanglement consubstantiates consciousness. Examining the works of Descartes, focusing especially on the ways that Cartesian ideas have been applied in Southern culture, I contend that a Cartesian definition of subjectivity, …

Developing A Lifestyle Modification Tool To Prevent And Manage Elevated Blood Pressure Among African Americans, Magdalene Oziwo

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Hypertension is a national medical problem that has been predominantly seen amongst African Americans. Within this community, hypertension has been associated with obesity, a sedentary lifestyle, and poor nutrition. It is for this reason that lifestyle modifications can be used as applied tools in the field of nursing in the prevention and management of hypertension among African American patients. This doctoral project was conducted to address the gap in nursing practice that currently exists for the African American population with regards to hypertension. The project focused on a nursing staff education program with 10 participants to promote the implementation of …