African American Studies Commons^™

What Faith Teaches Us: An Essay On Faith Adiele, Rochelle Spencer

Publications and Research

Essay on the writer Faith Adiele and women's bodies.

Feeding Memories: A Conversation With Writers Who Write About Food, Rochelle Spencer, Tara Christina, Dera R. Williams, Shannon Holbrook

Publications and Research

Rochelle Spencer interviews Tara Christina, a writer and educator with degrees in holistic nutrition and is the founder and CEO of Tara’s Teas, an artisanal line of organic, loose leaf tea blends; Dera R. Williams whose work appears in several anthologies and you can find her food-related writing on her blog; and Shannon Holbrook, a writer and wine and food consultant who has organized prominent food-writing events throughout the Bay Area.

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 …

Habeas Corpus As A Means For Economic Freedom In The Progressive Era, Janana Khattak

Digital Legal Research Lab

Habeas corpus protects individual freedom by allowing detained individuals proper trial. Economic liberty, or the “right to earn a living in an occupation of choice without unnecessary government interference,” is a key component of individual freedom. Following the depression of 1893, the Progressive Era ushered in a sharp increase in productivity. This was in part because of an immigration boom. While immigrants sought economic opportunities for the betterment of themselves and their families, ideologies of nativism rose.

Advisor: Katrina Jagodinsky

Jemimas, Jockeys, And Jolly Banks: The Racial Discourse Of Black Collectibles, Conrad Pruitt

CGU Theses & Dissertations

Over the last thirty years, an industry in black racist memorabilia has resurged. Bolstered by online commerce, social media trade, and a robust reproduction market, racist collectibles continue to circulate despite their functional obsolescence or presumed incongruity with current views of race. Many of these objects originated in the late nineteenth century, where the emergence of black citizenship was seen as a threat to a racial caste structure that ensured white supremacy. Following the impetus for supremacy that defined the Jim Crow era, the collectibles sought to crystallize conceptions of inherent black inferiority. The presumption that these originary conditions and …

Above-Average Student Loan Debt For Students With Disabilities Attending Postsecondary Institutions, Kim Bullington, Kaycee L. Bills, David J. Thomas, William L. Nuckols

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Black students with disabilities face more hurdles to academic success and completion than do their non-Black non-disabled peers. With an increased reliance on student loans to finance higher education, this double-at-risk population is even more vulnerable than either Black or disabled students individually. This study examines whether there is an additional debt burden to this intersectional population. The Baccalaureate and Beyond public dataset was used to explore student debt for students who graduated in 2017. This analysis found that Black students with disabilities graduated with significantly higher debt burdens than either non-disabled Black students or students with disabilities from other …

An Exploratory Analysis Of How Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, And Patrisse Cullors Radicalized The Meaning And Practice Of Self-Care, Melanie Marie Lindsay

CGU Theses & Dissertations

My dissertation, “An Exploratory Analysis of How Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors Radicalized the Meaning and Practice of Self-Care”, hypothesizes that we can conceive a practice of self-care using an abolitionist lens to examine the writings and performances of three Black feminists Maya Angelou, Audre Lorde, and Patrisse Cullors. Abolitionist self-care is a response to the political structures that directly affect marginalized communities, and it evaluates the numerous ways that Black women have used their voice to challenge systems of oppression. If we examine their thinking as expressed through their poetry, their performances (including activism), and their self-life-writing, …

Outside Literary Studies: Black Criticism And The University, Andy Hines

Staff Scholarship

This striking contribution to Black literary studies examines the practices of Black writers in the mid-twentieth century to revise our understanding of the institutionalization of literary studies in America. Andy Hines uncovers a vibrant history of interpretive resistance to university-based New Criticism by Black writers of the American left. These include well-known figures such as Langston Hughes and Lorraine Hansberry as well as still underappreciated writers like Melvin B. Tolson and Doxey Wilkerson. In their critical practice, these and other Black writers levied their critique from “outside” venues: behind the closed doors of the Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, in …

Exploring Systemic Reform In Criminal Justice For Afro-Americans Based On Critical Policy Ethnography, Cozetta Butts Lamore

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The persistent disproportionate rates of Afro-American involvement within the criminal justice system at all levels have resulted in historic levels of unexplained mass incarceration. Despite federal guidance, the pandemic of unexplained mass incarceration persists. Some studies have noted that the lack of academic attention may be one of the primary reasons for the lack of change. Others have noted the need for centering and lifting the perspective of those who have been most impacted by these racial disparities. The intent of this study was to offer a qualitative close-up examination and analysis from the perspective of impacted populations. The ecological …

Lived Experiences Of Black Women With A History Of Hypertensive Disorders Of Pregnancy Regarding Self-Care Practices, Cecile Alberta West

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Hypertensive disorder of pregnancy (HDP) is the leading cause of maternal deaths in the US and Black women are at significantly greater risk than other ethnicities. The purpose of this study was to develop a deeper understanding of what the Black pregnant women with HDP experience that may have contributed to their illness. The self-care nursing theory (SCNT) and the health belief model (HBM) were used as this study's conceptual framework. This research used a hermeneutic phenomenological qualitative approach. The research question is; "What are the experiences of Black women with a history of HDP regarding self-care practices. A purposive …

Attainment Of Superintendent Roles For African American Women In Rural U.S. School Districts, Likisha Tamese Coleman

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

African American women are underrepresented in the attainment of superintendent roles from a racial and gendered standpoint. African American females hold only 1% of superintendent positions in a field in which 27% of superintendents are women and 8.6% of superintendents are African American. The purpose of this qualitative case study was to describe the barriers and supports experienced by African American women in their attainment of superintendent roles in rural U.S. school districts. Black feminist thought and intersectionality provided the conceptual frameworks for this qualitative study. Data were collected from semistructured interviews with eight African American female superintendents from rural …

Carving Out Space: Black Feminist Theory, Morgan Barnes-Whitehead

History - Master of Arts in Teaching

I. Synthesis Essay………………………………..3

II. Primary Documents and Headnotes………..18

III. Textbook Critique……………………………..29

IV. New Textbook Entry…………………………..34

V. Bibliography………………………………….....35

Professional Black Men And Their Developmental Relationships With Career Mentors And Sponsors, Alfred Javier Hawkins

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

A literature gap exists in research using a layered account approach that positions and deconstructs Black men's narratives of developmental relationships with career mentors and sponsors who offer access to promotion opportunities. The purpose of this qualitative, narrative inquiry study was to gain a deeper understanding of how professional Black men view their daily experiences in building developmental relationships with career mentors and sponsors. The narrative inquiry method was used to address the problem and answer the research question using interview data from nine professional Black men holding a high-ranking position within their industry sector and being mentored during their …

Family Factors In Career Decisions To Enter Education Amongst Black Urban Millennials, Christian Jacobs

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

AbstractThe interactions a student has with a teacher help form their relationship with the educational experience. Importantly, a lack of representation can greatly impact the future impression of oneself and the world. For students of color, the balance of teachers who represent their ethnic and cultural diversity in the education field is greatly skewed toward White educators. The purpose of this quantitative correlational study, which was rooted in the self-determination theory, was to examine if and to what extent various factors, including parental, household, environmental, gender, and ethnicity impact Black millennials’ decision to go into the educational field. Participant criteria …

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 …

Racial Spatial Relationships In Claudia Rankine’S Citizen, Thomas Jenson

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

In Citizen: An American Lyric, Claudia Rankine addresses topics from segregation to police brutality to indicate the extreme spatial relationships between racial groups. Her work reveals the geographic mechanisms that confine African Americans to certain locations as well as the coerce them to violently share space with their white counterparts. Drawing upon spatial theory, which exposes the structures of unjust geography, my analysis also considers language as an additional spatial force that harms the black community as much as more physical phenomena.

Understanding The Role Of Race In American Medicine, Fariel C. A. Lamountain

Honors Theses

Long running inequity in health care and outcomes in the United States stem from failure to acknowledge the underlying role of the Transatlantic slave trade as it manifests in all facets of American society and commerce. This paper focuses specifically on the American medical system and its foundations to understand the precursors to generational trends in lack of access to healthcare and poor health for Black communities. This paper uses a three-pronged approach to understand the racist cycle of inequity, highlighting the history and origins of racism in American medicine, personal accounts and statistical evidence of inequity, and community and …

Contemporary Films And Contemporary Issues: An Introductory Film Class Curriculum, August W. Liguori-Chien

Liberal Studies (MA) Final Essays

Teachers spend years teaching students to interpret texts. This interpretive skill is deemed vital in our education system, but little time is devoted to developing students’ ability to interpret film, the most popular media students engage with. Film is an incredible amalgamation of words, motion, and music. The world of film offers students incredible opportunities to interpret, analyze, and be moved. If our students must be able to interpret literature shouldn't they also be able to do the same in the immense world of film.

This class will not focus exclusively on the history of film or the classically taught …

Physical Spaces In The Digital Age: Legacies, Narratives, And Memory Of Plantation History, Em Miller

Undergraduate Honors Theses

In recent years, plantation tourism has become a prominent concern for many researchers, with studies being done on how plantations use these sites and the ways that they incorporate enslavement into their narratives as a historical site. The current research used a textual analysis approach to explore the themes and language that plantations use when discussing enslavement via the analysis of 16 plantations in nine states. There are three themes that are apparent in the plantations analyzed: the visibility of Enslaved history, the promotion or rejection of Lost Cause memory, and the use of plantations as event spaces. While many …

The Complexity Of "The Hate U Give", Esosiye Alexander

Emerging Writers

"The Complexity of 'The Hate U Give'" discusses significant cultural and societal aspects of the 2018 N.A.A.C.P. award-winning film, "The Hate U Give." As part of evaluating the film, this essay analyzes the film's portrayal of police brutality in the black community, its long-term consequences, complex discussions that black adults have with youths and themselves, and how difficult it is to get justice for the victim.

America’S Forgotten Laborers: The World Of Enslaved Craftsmen, Zack Dow

Emerging Writers

This article examines the underrepresented world of enslaved artisans in the American south. In the minds of many, enslaved Americans were confined to unskilled plantation labor. While such labor constituted a large part of the work of the enslaved, master craftspeople go unrecognized, perpetuating an imagine of unskilled, nominal workers that undermines the accomplishments of the millions of black artisans working at the time.

Being Black In Sports, Vongai Kwenda

Emerging Writers

This essay examines how black sportspeople aren’t sheltered from racism, though they are famous and loved. In the past, black players faced segregation and more overt, aggressive forms of racism. But today, the sports world has come a long way with integration, stricter policies, and protests going global. Racism is perpetuated by racist fans online and in the stands, and sports commentators who use racial tropes rooted in biological racism. More awareness and debunking are needed. White players can take a stand in the heat of an incident to send a stronger message too. It worked in the past, so …

The Loop Of Trauma, Jayden Miller-Jones

Emerging Writers

"The Loop of Trauma" is a piece that was written in response to the various BLM protests and police attacks that took place during 2020. The author responds to memories of being shrouded in a deep depression with no sense of how to escape. After entering their English 1101 class they were finally able to properly describe the feelings. This piece covers their beliefs on mental health in the black community and how it is often shelved for a later date, a date that more often than not, never comes.

The Heroic Slave, Frederick Douglass

Zea E-Books in American Studies

Frederick Douglass based this story on the real-life heroism of Madison Washington, who led the largest successful slave revolt in U.S. history in 1841. His story is told through the eyes and words of two white men. First, Mr. Listwell from Ohio sees Madison enslaved in Virginia, then a fugitive in Ohio, and finally a recaptured returnee bound from Richmond to the slave markets of New Orleans. Lastly, Tom Grant, the mate on the slave transport Creole, describes the ship’s takeover by its human cargo and its passage to the British Bahamas, where 128 men and women stepped out …

Healing Through Mother Earth, Taylor A. Russell

Dance (MFA) Theses

This thesis deals with mental health, with a focus on Black women. Historically, Black women are often so compromised, being constant caregivers and helping everyone else, that they forget to help themselves, not having the time and financial means to do so. If we go back in the time of slavery, many Black women were taking care of slave owners' children and suckling the white women’s babies instead of their own. By the time they got home and after diligently caring for other people’s children they were focused on their own children, who they had been away from for hours …

"With All The Majesty Of The Law": Systemic Racism, Punitive Sentiment, And Equal Protection, Darren L. Hutchinson

Faculty Articles

United States criminal justice policies have played a central role in the subjugation of persons of color. Under slavery, criminal law explicitly provided a means to ensure White dominion over Blacks and require Black submission to White authority. During Reconstruction, anticrime policies served to maintain White supremacy and re-enslave Blacks, both through explicit discrimination and facially neutral policies. Similar practices maintained racial hierarchy with respect to White, Latinx, and Asian-American populations in the western United States. While most state action no longer explicitly discriminates on the basis of race, anticrime policy remains a powerful instrument of racial subordination. Indeed, social …

Blockchain And The Genesis Of Creative Justice To Disintermediate Creativity, Tonya M. Evans

Lewis & Clark Law Review

Historically, the art market has been shrouded in opaqueness and exclusivity, permissioned access and asymmetry of information that rivals the systemic ills of legacy financial markets that led to the Great Recession. Moreover, legacy art market stakeholders have, through the centuries, been entrenched in elitist and inequitable notions of art that excluded Black artists. These legacy intermediaries have also consistently demonstrated a deep and enduring disdain for any art connected to the digital world. That is, until the age of COVID-19 and the dramatically increasing value and dominance of the non-fungible token (NFT) market.

This Essay explores why, and how, …

A Look At Race, Skin Tone, And High School Students' Perceptions Of Teacher-Student Relationship Quality, Kala Burrell-Craft, Danielle R. Eugene, Juterh Nmah

Educational Leadership & Workforce Development Faculty Publications

Racial disparities in education have put a spotlight on the role of teachers and the school environment that is created for students. As teachers are seen as a vital element of school climate, the interactions between teachers and students can have a significant effect on students’ success. The purpose of this study was to examine the associations between race, skin tone, and teacher–student relationship (TSR) quality. Data drawn from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study included 995 ethnically and racially diverse adolescents. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that being Black, Hispanic, or Multi-racial was significantly associated with TSRs. However, there …

Most White People Just Don't Trust A Black Business Very Much: How The Walker Family Overcame Economic And Racial Discrimination To Become Successful Professional Business Owners In Memphis In The Twentieth Century, Leslie Pleasants

Master's Theses or Doctor of Nursing Practice

ABSTRACT

Joseph Edison (J.E.) Walker was an African-American man born to an impoverished, sharecropping family in the heart of the Mississippi Delta after the Civil War in 1879. Even from an early age, he was determined to break out of the station his family had been relegated. There were few educational and occupational opportunities for Walker in Tillman, Mississippi, but against all odds, he received his undergraduate degree from Alcorn State College and a medical doctorate from Meharry Medical College. After graduating, Walker opened a medical office to help the people of the town; however, his local community mistreated him. …

Racial And Cultural Competence Through The Eyes Of Public-School Educators, Laquita Mcmillion

Dissertations

The discussion of racial and cultural competence in public schools today is necessary. The student population of public schools across the United States has significantly grown racially and culturally diverse. Through the use of a narrative inquiry and a critical lens, this study explored the perception and experiences of public-school educators focused on the topic of racial and cultural competence as it relates to their classroom practice and educational policies. The focus of this research (1) describes and analyzes my personal experiences through the use of qualitative approaches, (2) shares the experiences and perceptions of three public-school educators, and (3) …