This study concerns the organized activity of African American railroad workers in Deep South states such as Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. The study opens with a broad discussion of wage labour as an aspect of the political economy of the Mississippi Delta and the Piney Woods of Mississippi. By establishing wage labour as a vital aspect of the Deep South economy, the opening chapter sets the scene for the main discussion on the activities of African American railroad workers. This study shows that African American railroad workers protested various racial impositions on them, including their exclusion from white dominated craft unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the ongoing push from white railroad trainmen to have them removed from lucrative posts in the train service, as well as railroad employers’ insistence on keeping them as lowly paid substitutes for white labour. They also took good advantage of federal wartime control over the railroads to challenge prejudiced notions of their skills and experience as workers. African American railroaders were persistent fighters for fair employment practices well before the legendary A. Philip Randolph came on the scene. They engaged their employers and white workers in varying ways. African American railroad shopmen did not hesitate to join subordinate locals of the white-dominated craft unions in the AFL. They participated with white shopmen in the important railroad shop strikes of 1911 and 1922. Their counterparts in the train service tended to build independent organisations and used subtle forms of protest such as letters, petitions and legal suits in preference to strike action. Although organized African American trainmen used seemingly unconfrontational approaches to making their grievances heard, the study cautions against the presumption that these organizations were either weak or unassertive. Careful organisation and preparation for a court appearance or filing a petition with an employer such as the Illinois Central, involved a collective will that cannot be pigeonholed within a dichotomy of militancy versus conformity. African American railroad workers resisted their domination and exploitation on railroads in the Deep South by building effective organizations often within the fold of the AFL. Acknowledgements The road toward this dissertation has been a journey that has seen my transformation from a dilettantish South African intellectual to a serious-minded historian of African American labour and social history. This transformation has neither been a huge nor dramatic leap. Thanks to my thesis supervisor Rick Halpern, with his own interest in collaborative research on race and labour in the U.S and South Africa, I have constantly been aware of the spiritual affinity between the struggles of African Americans for democratic freedoms in the U.S and African people’s struggles against racial domination in South Africa. I have gained enormously from the sure guidance of my committee - Rick Halpern, Dan Bender and Michael Wayne. Rick has been the perfect mentor and thesis supervisor. He supported me in finding focus for my ideas and ensured that I maintained meticulous attention to detail and allowed me to pursue my intellectual goals independently. Dan has been there to provide supportive feedback with sharp insights into the various ways I could widen the horizon of the possible uses of sometimes unyielding primary resource material. Michael has alerted me to the necessity of clear and effective writing, and during my time working with him as a teaching assistant, he was a model of eloquence in teaching. I am grateful for the advice and direction I received from other scholars working in the field of Southern labour and social history, including Michael Honey, Laurie Beth Green, Charles W. Crawford and Eric Arnesen. Eric’s pioneering work on race and labour on U.S railroads has provided this study a key point of critical engagement. I wish to acknowledge my intellectual debt to his skilfully-handled work on relations between African American and white workers in the early twentieth century South. Numerous librarians and archivists inevitably had a hand in the completion of this study. At the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library, I’m especially grateful to Jane L. Lynch, resource sharing specialist, for her quiet but ever efficient support. Retired director of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at Cornell University, Richard Strassberg guided me to the best available material on railroad labour. Richard also spent time chatting and sharing his wide knowledge of the field of U. S labour history. He was on hand to steer me away from too hasty judgements that could have led me down quite unfruitful research paths. Kheel Center staff, reference archivist Patrizia Sione and administrative assistant Melissa Holland gave assistance with a generosity that went beyond the call of duty. Other archivists who provided attentiveness and outstanding service include: Ed Frank, curator at the Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Library; Walter B. Hill of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC; Guy Hall at the South-eastern region office of the National Archives and Records Administration in Morrow, Georgia; and G. Wayne Dowdy at the Shelby County Public Library in Memphis. Various archivists at the Shelby County Archives, Memphis, Tennessee; at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; and the Mississippi Department of Archives & History in Jackson, Mississippi, also deserve special mention for their responsiveness and enthusiasm to provide support. My debts, even before the outset of research for this project are numerous. Thanks to the University of Toronto for the fellowship funds and the research travel grants that have sustained me throughout my time as a graduate student. The love, care and patience of my partner Darryl Gershater has been indispensable in helping me keep perspective during my early years in Toronto when the environment seemed frosty and alienating. The completion of this dissertation is by no means sufficient or just compensation for her devotion and tireless support, or for the loss of dreams that she has had to set aside while I drilled away at my studies. I am deeply appreciative of the Gershater family, especially Adele, Josh and Lee-Anne. Their friendship and the tenderness of their home have helped me find in Canada a place of belonging and hope. Personal debts that I particularly wish to mention include Peter Alexander and Carolyn O’Reilly in Johannesburg, South Africa, who encouraged me to apply for the PhD programme in History at the University of Toronto. Stephen Greenberg, Stacey Haahjem and Tina Smith, your steady friendship over the distance of oceans has been a vital source of inspiration. I wish also to thank Bill Freund, emeritus professor in Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, for his advice, persisting confidence and long-standing support. I am grateful also to Peter Brock, the late founder of the University of Toronto’s Carmen Brock Fellowship. Though Peter has not seen this project to the end, he always checked on my progress with a warmth and friendship that I always cherish. I wish finally to mention two people who remind me that even strangers in a bitter and estranged world are capable of basic kindliness. Elton Weaver, a PhD graduate in the History Department at Memphis State University, shines out as an example of African American fraternal feeling and openness. Katherine Bowers, a graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, Northwestern University, Chicago, treated me to the friendliest atmosphere I could possibly have expected over the month of my stay in Chicago. To my mother, Doris Kelly, and my brood of siblings, nieces and nephews back in South Africa – you are with me on this excursion into a small part of the past of a people – African Americans – whom I believe do share with you and others back home, a common resource of spirit and optimism in the face of great adversity.

This study concerns the organized activity of African American railroad workers in Deep South states such as Mississippi, Arkansas and Louisiana. The study opens with a broad discussion of wage labour as an aspect of the political economy of the Mississippi Delta and the Piney Woods of Mississippi. By establishing wage labour as a vital aspect of the Deep South economy, the opening chapter sets the scene for the main discussion on the activities of African American railroad workers. This study shows that African American railroad workers protested various racial impositions on them, including their exclusion from white dominated craft unions within the American Federation of Labor (AFL), the ongoing push from white railroad trainmen to have them removed from lucrative posts in the train service, as well as railroad employers’ insistence on keeping them as lowly paid substitutes for white labour. They also took good advantage of federal wartime control over the railroads to challenge prejudiced notions of their skills and experience as workers. African American railroaders were persistent fighters for fair employment practices well before the legendary A. Philip Randolph came on the scene. They engaged their employers and white workers in varying ways. African American railroad shopmen did not hesitate to join subordinate locals of the white-dominated craft unions in the AFL. They participated with white shopmen in the important railroad shop strikes of 1911 and 1922. Their counterparts in the train service tended to build independent organisations and used subtle forms of protest such as letters, petitions and legal suits in preference to strike action. Although organized African American trainmen used seemingly unconfrontational approaches to making their grievances heard, the study cautions against the presumption that these organizations were either weak or unassertive. Careful organisation and preparation for a court appearance or filing a petition with an employer such as the Illinois Central, involved a collective will that cannot be pigeonholed within a dichotomy of militancy versus conformity. African American railroad workers resisted their domination and exploitation on railroads in the Deep South by building effective organizations often within the fold of the AFL. Acknowledgements The road toward this dissertation has been a journey that has seen my transformation from a dilettantish South African intellectual to a serious-minded historian of African American labour and social history. This transformation has neither been a huge nor dramatic leap. Thanks to my thesis supervisor Rick Halpern, with his own interest in collaborative research on race and labour in the U.S and South Africa, I have constantly been aware of the spiritual affinity between the struggles of African Americans for democratic freedoms in the U.S and African people’s struggles against racial domination in South Africa. I have gained enormously from the sure guidance of my committee - Rick Halpern, Dan Bender and Michael Wayne. Rick has been the perfect mentor and thesis supervisor. He supported me in finding focus for my ideas and ensured that I maintained meticulous attention to detail and allowed me to pursue my intellectual goals independently. Dan has been there to provide supportive feedback with sharp insights into the various ways I could widen the horizon of the possible uses of sometimes unyielding primary resource material. Michael has alerted me to the necessity of clear and effective writing, and during my time working with him as a teaching assistant, he was a model of eloquence in teaching. I am grateful for the advice and direction I received from other scholars working in the field of Southern labour and social history, including Michael Honey, Laurie Beth Green, Charles W. Crawford and Eric Arnesen. Eric’s pioneering work on race and labour on U.S railroads has provided this study a key point of critical engagement. I wish to acknowledge my intellectual debt to his skilfully-handled work on relations between African American and white workers in the early twentieth century South. Numerous librarians and archivists inevitably had a hand in the completion of this study. At the University of Toronto’s Robarts Library, I’m especially grateful to Jane L. Lynch, resource sharing specialist, for her quiet but ever efficient support. Retired director of the Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation & Archives at Cornell University, Richard Strassberg guided me to the best available material on railroad labour. Richard also spent time chatting and sharing his wide knowledge of the field of U. S labour history. He was on hand to steer me away from too hasty judgements that could have led me down quite unfruitful research paths. Kheel Center staff, reference archivist Patrizia Sione and administrative assistant Melissa Holland gave assistance with a generosity that went beyond the call of duty. Other archivists who provided attentiveness and outstanding service include: Ed Frank, curator at the Special Collections Department, University of Memphis Library; Walter B. Hill of the National Archives and Records Administration in Washington, DC; Guy Hall at the South-eastern region office of the National Archives and Records Administration in Morrow, Georgia; and G. Wayne Dowdy at the Shelby County Public Library in Memphis. Various archivists at the Shelby County Archives, Memphis, Tennessee; at the Newberry Library, Chicago, Illinois; and the Mississippi Department of Archives & History in Jackson, Mississippi, also deserve special mention for their responsiveness and enthusiasm to provide support. My debts, even before the outset of research for this project are numerous. Thanks to the University of Toronto for the fellowship funds and the research travel grants that have sustained me throughout my time as a graduate student. The love, care and patience of my partner Darryl Gershater has been indispensable in helping me keep perspective during my early years in Toronto when the environment seemed frosty and alienating. The completion of this dissertation is by no means sufficient or just compensation for her devotion and tireless support, or for the loss of dreams that she has had to set aside while I drilled away at my studies. I am deeply appreciative of the Gershater family, especially Adele, Josh and Lee-Anne. Their friendship and the tenderness of their home have helped me find in Canada a place of belonging and hope. Personal debts that I particularly wish to mention include Peter Alexander and Carolyn O’Reilly in Johannesburg, South Africa, who encouraged me to apply for the PhD programme in History at the University of Toronto. Stephen Greenberg, Stacey Haahjem and Tina Smith, your steady friendship over the distance of oceans has been a vital source of inspiration. I wish also to thank Bill Freund, emeritus professor in Economic History at the University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, South Africa, for his advice, persisting confidence and long-standing support. I am grateful also to Peter Brock, the late founder of the University of Toronto’s Carmen Brock Fellowship. Though Peter has not seen this project to the end, he always checked on my progress with a warmth and friendship that I always cherish. I wish finally to mention two people who remind me that even strangers in a bitter and estranged world are capable of basic kindliness. Elton Weaver, a PhD graduate in the History Department at Memphis State University, shines out as an example of African American fraternal feeling and openness. Katherine Bowers, a graduate student in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literature, Northwestern University, Chicago, treated me to the friendliest atmosphere I could possibly have expected over the month of my stay in Chicago. To my mother, Doris Kelly, and my brood of siblings, nieces and nephews back in South Africa – you are with me on this excursion into a small part of the past of a people – African Americans – whom I believe do share with you and others back home, a common resource of spirit and optimism in the face of great adversity.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Bonnie Lynn-Sherow / Joseph LaFramboise’ life was the product of a rich milieu of ethnicities working, trading, and living together in the first half of the nineteenth century. His was a multi-cultural experience on the fur trade frontier. Born in 1805 and living through the first half of the nineteenth century, LaFramboise utilized multiple identities and strategies drawn from Odawa, Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota, and French Canadian cultures while integrating into the developing American identity. He maneuvered socially and economically during an unstable political period along the shifting margins between native and Euro-American cultures. His life-long vocation in the fur trade, and more specifically with the American Fur Company, was influenced by his family’s successful Michigan fur trade business, his friendships within the Company, and his experience as part of the Sisseton-Wahpeton Dakota community. The fur trade afforded him both relational and economic ties to the Eastern Dakota bands of Minnesota and to the other trade families of the American Fur Company. The trade also placed him on the cusp of American exploration into the continent’s mid-section allowing his local knowledge, built up by years of traveling the interior, to inform the explorations and writings of people like George Catlin, Joseph Nicollet, and John C. Fremont. By mid-century, ironically, LaFramboise, who had spent a lifetime building multi-ethnic relationships, found himself increasingly bound by rigid ideas about race, brought on by expanding American settlement. His business decisions and his familial ones became driven more by the expectations of an advancing Euro-American society. Even so, those decisions carried the distinctive character of a man used to living in a culturally complex world.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / As the 1950s began, Western European defense policy posed unique challenges for the United States. At the outset of the Cold War, U.S. officials recognized that maintaining a free Western Europe was vital to the long-term survival of the United States against the Soviet Union and its satellite nations. While America could rely on its long-range nuclear bombers (and, in a few years, its intercontinental ballistic missiles) as a deterrent to Soviet aggression against the continental United States, the situation in Europe was more complicated. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), first organized in 1949, was the defense pact designed to counter the Soviet Bloc in Eastern Europe. The NATO alliance, however, still recovering from the destruction of the Second World War, was in no condition to oppose Soviet aggression at the end of 1950. Yet by 1955, the situation in Europe was dramatically different. The NATO allies had transformed from a loose confederation of weak nations to a strong international alliance capable of confronting the Communist forces if necessary. At the center of this transformation was Dwight D. Eisenhower. In January 1951, Eisenhower assumed the position of NATO's first Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) and spent nearly two years strengthening the Western European alliance. Then, after entering the White House as president in 1953, Eisenhower used his experiences as SACEUR to reinforce several aspects of his own defense policy. Ultimately, several key aspects of Eisenhower's ―New Look‖ defense policy (such as the continued emphasis of the NATO alliance) had their antecedents in Eisenhower's service as NATO Supreme Commander.

Master of Arts / Department of History / Robert D. Linder / This thesis examines early Pentecostalism in light of the Populist Movement. There are two main arguments in this study. First, I maintain that early Kansas Pentecostalism, as seen in the teachings of Charles Fox Parham, was heavily influenced by Populist ideas and language. Parham displayed Populist tendencies in his attacks on the Protestant Establishment, which he believed had neglected to care for the spiritual and physical needs of “the people.” This failure on the part of the churches led Parham to believe that a major reform of the church was needed. Parham went beyond simply criticizing the establishment. He also developed a popular theology that empowered individuals, many of whom were poor and working-class, and created a strong sense of collective aspiration. The second argument of this study is that Populism fostered a sociopolitical environment in which Pentecostalism could thrive. Parham’s confrontations with the Protestant Establishment and his concern with the needs of “the people” was attractive to many individuals who tended to support movements that sought to disrupt the status quo. One event that can shed light on early Kansas Pentecostalism’s relationship with Populism was a revival in Galena, Kansas, a lead and zinc mining town in the southeast corner of the state, that took place from October 1903 to January 1904. By examining some of the connections between the Populist movement and early Kansas Pentecostalism, this study provides some insight into the development of one of the most popular expressions of Christianity in the world.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of railroad building. More track was laid in this period in North America than in any other period. The building of railroads was considered synonymous with nation building and economic progress. Railway workers were the single largest occupational group in the period and among the first workers to be employed by large-scale, corporately owned and bureaucratically managed organizations. While there is a rich historiography regarding the institutional and everyday lives of railway workers and the corporations that employed them, the unit of analysis has been primarily bounded by the nation. These national narratives leave out the north-south connections created by railroads that cut across geo-political boundaries and thus dramatically increasing the flows of people, goods and services between nations on the North American continent. Does the story change if viewed from a continental rather than national perspective? Railroad Crossings tells the story of the people and places along the route of the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada between Montreal, Quebec and Portland, Maine and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (and later of the Southern Pacific) between Benson, Arizona and Guaymas, Sonora. The study first takes a comparative view of the cross-border railroad development followed by a consideration of emerging patterns and practices that suggest a broader continental continuity. The evidence demonstrates that this broader continental continuity flows from the application of a certain “railroad logic” or the impact of the essence of railroad operations that for reasons of safety and efficiency required the broad standardization of operating procedures that in many ways rendered place irrelevant.

The last quarter of the nineteenth century is often referred to as the “Golden Age” of railroad building. More track was laid in this period in North America than in any other period. The building of railroads was considered synonymous with nation building and economic progress. Railway workers were the single largest occupational group in the period and among the first workers to be employed by large-scale, corporately owned and bureaucratically managed organizations. While there is a rich historiography regarding the institutional and everyday lives of railway workers and the corporations that employed them, the unit of analysis has been primarily bounded by the nation. These national narratives leave out the north-south connections created by railroads that cut across geo-political boundaries and thus dramatically increasing the flows of people, goods and services between nations on the North American continent. Does the story change if viewed from a continental rather than national perspective? Railroad Crossings tells the story of the people and places along the route of the Grand Trunk Railroad of Canada between Montreal, Quebec and Portland, Maine and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe Railroad (and later of the Southern Pacific) between Benson, Arizona and Guaymas, Sonora. The study first takes a comparative view of the cross-border railroad development followed by a consideration of emerging patterns and practices that suggest a broader continental continuity. The evidence demonstrates that this broader continental continuity flows from the application of a certain “railroad logic” or the impact of the essence of railroad operations that for reasons of safety and efficiency required the broad standardization of operating procedures that in many ways rendered place irrelevant.

The United States emerged from the destruction of World War II a superpower with burgeoning global interests. Nowhere was this more evident than in Iraq. US policymakers greatly expanded their relationship with the pro-Western regime in Baghdad during the 1950s. To examine these trends more closely, this dissertation analyzes the American relationship with Iraq during the presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower (1953 to 1961). This study discusses how American oil concessions, military aid programs, collective defense arrangements, and modernization initiatives shaped the US-Iraqi bilateral relationship of the 1950s. It also looks intensively at American intelligence assessments and covert action programs in Iraq in this period. An in-depth examination of the Eisenhower administration’s policies vis-à-vis Baghdad offers important lessons about the ways US officials understood and navigated complex political developments in the Middle East. In addition, this dissertation considers US strategies in Iraq in the context of ongoing developments in Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Jordan, Iran, and elsewhere in the region. This transnational lens yields fascinating insights into how American interests throughout the Middle East influenced US policies in Iraq. As with their partners in the Iraqi government, American officials privileged the pursuit of “order” and “stability” in Baghdad. When confronted with the prospect of “unrest” in Iraq, the Eisenhower administration decisively supported its Iraqi allies’ moves to clamp down on political dissent. The United States worked energetically to control Iraqi developments in channels favourable to US interests. However, the regime led by Abdel Karim Qasim fundamentally transformed the patterns of the US-Iraqi relationship following the July 1958 Iraqi Revolution. Qasim’s program calling for the “Iraqification” of national economic resources collided with larger American understandings of Washington’s power in Baghdad. The Eisenhower administration proved unable to control the disorderly nature of revolutionary rule in Iraq, suggesting (as with the pre-revolutionary period) the tangible limits to American power in Iraq and the Middle East in this critical period of the Cold War.

This thesis explores the ways in which American and Canadian neurosurgeons fashioned their professional identity in the period between 1919 and 1950. This dissertation is an exploration of the ways in which American and Canadian neurosurgeons fashioned their professional identity in the formative period of the specialty’s history. Part I argues that an ethos of elitism and exclusionism structured the cultural landscape of the specialty and was reflected in the membership policy of the Society of Neurological Surgeons and the Harvey Cushing Society, which screened for certain moral and professional values. The meetings of the societies opened with surgical performances designed to encourage particular technical practices, to negotiate and standardize procedures, and to demonstrate the prowess of the neurosurgeon. In theatrical performances at these meetings the neurosurgeons also created a distinctive type of masculinity, which was inflected with a feminine resonance. Part II outlines the extraordinary professional success of the neurosurgeons in the 1930s and 1940s when they assumed leadership of neurological institutes. Wilder Penfield’s effort to build such an institute in Montreal led him to challenge the authority of clinical neurologists by claiming therapeutic superiority and by engineering a public debate about the future of these related specialties. Jurisdictional disputes between neurosurgeons and neurologists played out in animated rhetorical performances at the meetings of professional societies and illustrate the divergent ways in which these specialists envisioned medical specialization. Neurosurgeons cleaved neurology along therapeutic lines, while neurologists, attempting to regain conditions lost to neurosurgeons and psychiatrists, sought authority over all organic and functional disorders. Part III charts the neurosurgeons’ growing authority in popular culture. Although popular representations testify to an increasing glamorization of brain surgeons over the first half of the twentieth century, these narratives reveal culturally contingent tensions. The ideal cure for brain tumors was portrayed as medical, not surgical, while the public expressed an ambivalent reaction to the violence to both body and mind that brain surgery appeared to threaten.

This thesis explores the ways in which American and Canadian neurosurgeons fashioned their professional identity in the period between 1919 and 1950. This dissertation is an exploration of the ways in which American and Canadian neurosurgeons fashioned their professional identity in the formative period of the specialty’s history. Part I argues that an ethos of elitism and exclusionism structured the cultural landscape of the specialty and was reflected in the membership policy of the Society of Neurological Surgeons and the Harvey Cushing Society, which screened for certain moral and professional values. The meetings of the societies opened with surgical performances designed to encourage particular technical practices, to negotiate and standardize procedures, and to demonstrate the prowess of the neurosurgeon. In theatrical performances at these meetings the neurosurgeons also created a distinctive type of masculinity, which was inflected with a feminine resonance. Part II outlines the extraordinary professional success of the neurosurgeons in the 1930s and 1940s when they assumed leadership of neurological institutes. Wilder Penfield’s effort to build such an institute in Montreal led him to challenge the authority of clinical neurologists by claiming therapeutic superiority and by engineering a public debate about the future of these related specialties. Jurisdictional disputes between neurosurgeons and neurologists played out in animated rhetorical performances at the meetings of professional societies and illustrate the divergent ways in which these specialists envisioned medical specialization. Neurosurgeons cleaved neurology along therapeutic lines, while neurologists, attempting to regain conditions lost to neurosurgeons and psychiatrists, sought authority over all organic and functional disorders. Part III charts the neurosurgeons’ growing authority in popular culture. Although popular representations testify to an increasing glamorization of brain surgeons over the first half of the twentieth century, these narratives reveal culturally contingent tensions. The ideal cure for brain tumors was portrayed as medical, not surgical, while the public expressed an ambivalent reaction to the violence to both body and mind that brain surgery appeared to threaten.