This study shows that the school census is dropping rapidly in rural areas. It must be remembered that with the introduction of more labor saving farm machinery and the consolidation of small farms that the end is not in sight. A greater percentage of children are enrolled in our schools. The percentage of attendance is higher and will continue to slowly improve. As consolidation of small schools progresses, school plants and physical equipment will improve. Over one-half of the children in average daily attendance are transported. Percentage of enrollment and percentage of attendance are much better in the transported group. The average number of college hours of teachers is less but a greater number have degrees. More children are taught by teachers of more training and experience. More teachers use modern teaching aids and devices than those a decade ago. Illiteracy of parents is less due to compulsory school attendance, increased subscription to newspapers and the almost universal presence of radios in the homes. Administration of our schools is not all corrupt; teachers are not all incompetent; children are being taught the same things by newer and improved methods and our school systems are doing excellent jobs despite many difficulties.

Nashville, Tennessee, is known as the Athens of the South because of its reputation as a center of learning. The city’s commitment to education goes back to the days of its founding as a village on the extreme Western frontier of the United States. In 1785, five years after Nashville was first settled, Davidson Academy, an advanced classical school, was established. At the same time, numerous private schools operated in the Nashville area, providing many of the region’s children with a basic education. During the first quarter of the nineteenth century Nashville moved closer to becoming a major educational center. In 1806 Davidson Academy was rechartered as Cumberland College. Financial problems forced Cumberland College to suspend operation in 1816, but it reopened in 1825 and was rechartered as the University of Nashville the following year. In 1817 the Nashville Female Academy, which by 1860 was the largest and one of the most renowned schools for females in the nation, opened. Other private schools served Nashville as well; most were simple grammar schools that taught the basics, but some advanced schools operated as well. During the 1820s and 1830s, there were some efforts to establish state supported schools for the poor, but they failed because many poor parents refused to send their children to these “pauper’s schools,” as the state supported schools were commonly called. By 1850 Nashville’s educational landscape was on the verge of change. Financial difficulties forced the University of Nashville to close in 1850, but in 1855 it resumed operation after merging with the Western Military Institute and flourished until the Civil War. During the 1850s, the Medical Department of the University of Nashville and Shelby Medical College opened. Both schools enjoyed great success, and by 1860 Nashville was second only to Philadelphia as a center of medical learning. Also, during the 1850s Nashville established a successful system of public schools for all the city’s children. However, the Civil War would interrupt the city’s progress in education. Despite Nashville’s prominence in education, no comprehensive study of the city’s antebellum educational development exists. Based on several primary sources, most of which are available in the Tennessee State Library and Archives, and numerous secondary sources dealing with antebellum Nashville, this thesis represents an attempt to describe antebellum Nashville’s educational development.

The purpose of writing about the Greens of Falls of Rough is to record the extraordinary lives of three generations of a prominent, but somewhat neglected, Kentucky family that contributed greatly to the history of the Commonwealth. This family’s activities parallel that history in social, economic and political aspects from the state’s inception to the 1960s. In addition, this thesis should alleviate a pervasive misunderstanding regarding the identity of Willis Green, founder of the Greens of Falls of Rough. Mr. Green, a prominent Kentuckian in his own right, has been confused with another Kentuckian, a Willis Green of Danville. The misidentification has indicated that they were either the same man or father and son. This research offers evidence that they were neither the same man nor father and son; they were apparently not even related, or at most, only very distantly so. The Greens of Falls of Rough follows the lives of the three generations of Greens and spans the years 1795 through 1965. The principal issues addressed fall into four main categories: politics – Kentucky (1827-1845; 1859-1860; 1881-1884) and United States (1839-1845); Falls of Rough businesses, 1830s-1960s – farming, milling (saw and grist), and merchandising; domestic activities, 1860s-1960s; and social life, 1860s-1960s. Political subjects include some movements of Kentucky’s militia in the War of 1812, the national political campaigns of 1840 and 1844, Whig issues, and Willis Green’s relationship with Henry Clay. Business-related information includes entrepreneurial land acquisition activities in Kentucky’s Grayson and Breckinridge Counties (1820s-1830s), procedures of sawmilling and related transportation (river and railroad), farm commodities trading (1818-1900), and farm and business practices and their economic ramifications. Domestic issues encompass food-related procedures/habits and household practices – servants, remodeling/decorating, cleaning (1870-1890). Social aspects revolve around courtship (1860s) and rearing a family (1860s-1900), especially educational (Kentucky Military Institute, Centre College, Princeton Collegiate Institute) and moral training. In additions, some details of family disease/area epidemics and their treatments are discussed as well as entertainment activities. Materials for this thesis were obtained almost entirely from political and family correspondence with some contribution from military and business records. More than six thousand items of correspondence were thoroughly studied and analyzed in this research. These materials are located in the Kentucky Library, Western Kentucky University, Bowling Green, Kentucky; Filson Club, Louisville, Kentucky; University of Louisville Library, Louisville, Kentucky; National Archives, Washington, D.C.; M.I. King Library, Lexington, Kentucky; and Eastern Kentucky University Library, Richmond, Kentucky. Some materials are in the possession of Mrs. Mary O’Neill (owner of Green property), Falls of Rough, Kentucky and Hugh Ridenour (author of this work), Hanson, Kentucky.

Over the twentieth century, Camille Lucie Nickerson excelled in her multi-faceted career as an educator, musician, and interpreter for the advancement of musical education for generations of black students in New Orleans and at Howard University in Washington D.C. Nickerson devoted herself to furthering her musical education through private instruction with her father, Professor William J. Nickerson. She then graduated with a diploma from Southern University and with a B.A. and M.A. in music from Oberlin College. Nickerson’s leadership in musical associations on a local and national level enhanced her ability to reach audiences of all ages through her performances. She dedicated her life to musical education and the sharing Creole folk music, both personal attributes passed down from her father. While Nickerson was determined to preserve Creole folk music through her lecture-recitals, her wider purpose argued for a distinct recognition for Creole culture, thus, acknowledgment of her culture.

Serving three times as president of the Cavalry Association, Camp Nine of the United Confederate Veterans (UCV), George Tichenor was instrumental in forging Lost Cause ideology into a potent social force in New Orleans. Though more widely remembered in New Orleans for his antiseptic invention, his support of Confederate monuments, Confederate activism, and his wife Margret’s role as vice-president of a chapter of the Daughters of the Confederacy (UDC) are lesser known aspects of Tichenor’s life in New Orleans. This paper examines the cultural changes taking place in New Orleans that allowed Tichenor to become a leader of the Lost Cause movement that transformed New Orleans, with a focus on social networking via the United Confederate Veterans and the collaborative nature of their work with the UDC in New Orleans, a collaboration that opened a cultural and societal pathway for Lost Cause ideology to permeate Southern cities and influence national thinking on how to interpret the history of the Civil War.

ABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION PENNSYLVANIA’S LOYALISTS AND DISAFFECTED IN THE AGE OF REVOLUTION: DEFINING THE TERRAIN OF REINTEGRATION, 1765-1800 by René José Silva Florida International University, 2018 Miami, Florida Professor Kirsten Wood, Major Professor This study examines the reintegration of loyalists and disaffected residents in Pennsylvania who opposed the American Revolution from the Stamp Act crisis in 1765 through the Age of Federalism in 1790s. The inquiry argues that postwar loyalist reintegration in Pennsylvania succeeded because of the attitudes, behavior, actions and contributions of both disaffected residents and patriot citizens. The focus is chiefly on the legal battle over citizenship, especially the responses of the disaffected to patriot legislative measures such as treason, oaths of allegiance, attainders, confiscation, and militia service laws that revolutionaries employed to sanction dissent in the state. Loyalists and the disaffected contributed to their own successful reintegration in three ways. First, the departure of loyalist militants at the British evacuation of occupied Philadelphia in June 1778 and later substantially lessened internal political tensions associated with the rebellion. Second, the overwhelming majority of the disaffected who stayed in Pennsylvania adopted non-threatening attitudes and behaviors towards republican rule. And third, the disaffected who remained ultimately chose to embrace the new republican form of government they had earlier resisted. Patriots contributed to the successful reintegration of the disaffected chiefly through the outcome of the factional struggle for internal political supremacy between revolutionary radicals and moderates. Pennsylvania radicals used the rule of law to deny citizenship to opponents of the Revolution and pushed for their permanent exclusion from the body politic. Moderates favored a reincorporation of those who had not supported the rebellion, utilizing the law to foster inclusion. Moderate electoral victories in the decade of the 1780s led to solid majorities in the state assembly that rescinded all repressive measures against former opponents, in particular the 1789 repeal of the Test Act of 1777. The analysis stresses the activities of loyalists and the disaffected, exploring elite loyalist militants such as Joseph Galloway and the sons of Chief Justice William Allen; ordinary loyalist militants like John Connolly and the Rankin brothers of York County; Quaker pacifists such as the Pemberton siblings; loyalists whom patriots perceived as defiant, such as the Doan guerrilla gang and British collaborators Abraham Carlisle and John Roberts; and the Penn family proprietors. Each of these protagonists epitomized a particular strain of loyalism or disaffection in Pennsylvania, ranging from armed resistance to pacifism. Reintegration experiences and outcomes are therefore assessed in relation to these Pennsylvanians’ conduct before, during, and after the Revolutionary War.

The anthropology of public policy critically examines policy and its processes and the myriad ways in which power is exercised. To explore these power dynamics, anthropologists studying policy often study up, or study through a particular policy field. This entails the risky work of studying powerful people, whose ability to retaliate against the researcher and others create methodological and ethical dilemmas and contradictions, as well as potentially harmful consequences. Politicians, bureaucrats, employees of powerful non-profits, and, in the public-private neoliberal reality, even the head decision makers within corporations are all prospective research participants--an intimidating prospect for most anthropologists. In contrast, engaged ethnography, with its presupposition that researchers will be aligned with politically marginalized groups, encourages the researcher to engage on a more transparent, reflexive, and expressly positioned level that attempts to make the researcher more exposed, thus equalizing the power differentials between the researcher and the researched. The inherent contradictions between engaged ethnography and studying up create a situation ripe for methodological and ethical dilemmas, but also for breaking new theoretical ground. This paper will critically examine my experiences with a dominant community development corporation involved in housing and urban development. As such, the purpose of this thesis is twofold. First, I aim to explore the theoretical contradictions, ethical dilemmas, and methodological quandaries that arise from pairing engaged anthropology with the studying up required by the anthropology of public policy. The aim of this query is to show how the difficulties that arose during my thesis research project expose gaps within each body of literature. Second, I hope to present engaging-up as a promising (not just problematic) method that can be employed to better understand a myriad of topical interests of anthropology. Because of its promise, it is important to document this failed attempt so that others may be better prepared. As such, my hope is that my consideration of the contradictions that were unable to be overcome will be described with enough ethnographic clarity and framed in broad enough methodological terms as to be helpful to other engaged ethnographers.

This dissertation examines the process of using oral history and digital video to revise interpretation and represent more inclusive histories at three rural Texas historic sites—-Washington-on-the-Brazos State Historic Site, the Lyndon Baines Johnson State Park, and Varner-Hogg Plantation—-21st century sites that, to varying degrees, have persisted to interpret a Texas master narrative that is no longer socially tolerable in its silencing of marginalized Texas voices. In particular, the dissertation focuses on complicated and rarely discussed ethical issues that surfaced during my work from 2001 to 2006 shooting, editing, and situating interpretive documentary videos at the each of the three sites. Historic sites in Texas, like others across the United States and worldwide, have been receiving increasing pressure from scholars and community groups to represent women, racial minorities, and other marginalized groups more prominently in the narratives they interpret. Oral history and digital media have played key roles in this ongoing movement. Oral history has widely been touted as a tool to democratize history, and advocates of digital video interpretation cite its affordability, relative ease of use, and its ability to “say so much in so little time.” These factors are all the more compelling for local, regional, and state-wide historic sites that are chronically under-funded, under-staffed, and that must often interpret multiple, complicated narratives with very little time or space in which to present them. However, little has been done to explore the unique and complicated ethical issues that arise from using oral history and digital video at historic sites. This dissertation takes a case study approach and uses as its intellectual framework ideas of reflective practice, part of the contemporary discourse among public history practitioners. Each case study introduces the site through a critical analysis of the images and texts produced by the site; presents the central historical silence at each site; describes the solution that oral history and digital video interpretation was expected to provide; and then uses the project’s process-generated video footage and records to examine key situations that led me to raise ethical questions about the individual projects and the overall enterprise. / text

Only seven years more than one hundred years ago, 1838, Kentucky’s public school system was established. Few Kentuckians conceived of a state-wide public school system. Many of the citizens were conservative and inclined to look upon a scheme of public education with doubt and disfavor; they were accustomed to the traditional plan of private education. In Nelson County, as in the rest of Kentucky, the early sponsors of public education were confronted with the problem of building sentiment for such a public service. Their task was one of establishing schools. Their chief goal was one of providing a school service, meager as it was, within reasonable reach of each child. Although skepticism and conservatism retarded the early growth of public schools, it is now evident that a system of public elementary and secondary education meets the approval of the citizenry of Nelson County. In recent years, educators have striven to check this growth in the number of schools and school districts. The present task is one of improving schools rather than establishing schools; one of broadening educational services to meet present-day demands; one of equalizing educational opportunities in order that all pupils may be equipped for more abundant living. Whenever possible the school authorities in Nelson County have reduced the number of one-room rural schools in a consolidation program. This study gives evidence in justification of these changes.

The Kelvin Grove Urban Village (KGUV) is a 16-hectare urban renewal redevelopment project of the Queensland Department of Housing and the Queensland University of Technology (QUT). Over the last century, the land has housed military and educational institutions that have shaped Brisbane and Queensland. These groups each have their own history. Collectively their stories represented an opportunity to build a multi-art form public history project, consisting of a creative non-fiction historical manuscript and a collection of digital stories (employing oral history and digital storytelling techniques in particular) to construct a personal sense of place, identity and history. This exegesis examines the processes used and difficulties faced by the writer/producer of the public history; including consideration of the artistic selection involved, and consequent assembly of the material. The research findings clearly show that: giving contributors access to the technology required to produce their own digital stories in a public history does not automatically equate to total participatory inclusion; the writer/producer can work with the public as an active, collaborative team to produce shared historically significant works for the public they represent; and the role of the public historian is that of a valuable broker--in actively seeking to maximize inclusiveness of vulnerable members of the community and by producing a selection of multi-art form works with the public that includes new media.