Thesis (Ed.D.)--Boston University / PLEASE NOTE: Boston University Libraries did not receive an Authorization To Manage form for this thesis or dissertation. It is therefore not openly accessible, though it may be available by request. If you are the author or principal advisor of this work and would like to request open access for it, please contact us at open-help@bu.edu. Thank you. / The purpose of this study was to discover why African-American parents, traditionally supportive of public school education, are seeking private schooling for their children in growing numbers. In particular, this study addressed the question of "What are the factors, variables, or conditions that contribute to African-American parents selecting Parkside Christian Academy as their school of choice?" Both qualitative and quantitative methods were used to find out how and why African-American parents select schools for their children. The findings of this study suggest that parents make choices regarding their children's early elementary school years many times based on the parents' own personal school experiences. As a result ofthe interviews and the survey, a new model called the Parent Concern Model was created. This model has ten dimensions that correspond to factors that might influence the way parents select schools for their children. The ten dimensions that emerged from the twenty qualitative interviews shape and affect the way African-American parents think and select schools. The ten dimensions, identified as the Parent Concern Model were financial concerns, performance concerns, equity concerns, self-esteem concerns, transportation concerns, safety concerns, displacement concerns, teacher concerns, parental involvement concerns, and emotional distress concerns. / 2031-01-01

This dissertation delves into both archaeological evidence and firsthand written sources in order to examine the material constitution of European slave traders' social life in the last years of existence of the Spanish colonial city of Panama, burnt down to the ashes following a piratic attack in 1671. It is based on the well-established and widely recognized premise that African captives played a transforming and profoundly disruptive role in Spanish colonial society, despite the dehumanized social status slaves were given in the early modern world. On the one hand, enslaved Africans were seen as necessary tradable objects without which the Spanish colonial enterprise could not have been sustained; on the other, colonial documents indicate that these captives were perceived as dangerous subjects seriously compromising the cultural basis of the colonial order. This work aims at demonstrating that the life trajectories of African slaves cannot be dissociated from those of their captors: it offers an alternative and indirect vision of the rich cultural experience of African people in the Americas by evaluating, both historically and archaeologically, the extent to which the cultural threat slaves manifestly represented for Western colonists in the New World determined or regulated the configuration of slave traders' lived spaces. This research builds upon an important legacy of archaeological investigation that has, at least since the 1960s, provided Afro-descendant communities in the Americas with powerful historical and material referents indispensable to recreate strong and socially significant ties with their own past. However, taking some distance from more traditional studies focusing on the development of creolized lifestyles in plantation and maroon contexts, this works offers an innovative perspective on the painful memories of the slave trade by interrogating the nature and scope of the consumption practices through which Western slavers defended their nowadays unthinkable commercial enterprise. In order to address this fundamental, but overlooked question in the archaeology of slavery, this study strongly engages with recent theorizations on the rich and complex concept of materiality, one which has contributed to reactivate material culture and social archaeology studies by empowering dormant, classic visions of the fascinating and unstable social bond relating people with the physical objects they create. In this study, archaeological and historical data testifying to colonial networks of material exchange are, thus, not simply described as mere reflections of past social performances; they are revealed as constitutive components of meaningful systems of sociability in which African slaves were inevitably trapped.

This dissertation excavates the print and archive culture of diasporic and continental Africans who forged a community in Cape Town between 1900 and 1946. Although the writers I consider write after the Victorian era, I use the term "black Victorian" to preserve their own political investments in a late nineteenth-century understanding of liberal empire. With the abolition of slavery in 1834 across the British Empire and the Cape Colony's qualified nonracial franchise of 1853, Cape Town, and District Six in particular, took on new significance in black radicalism. By writing periodicals, pamphlets and autobiographies, black Victorians hoped to write themselves into the culture of empire. These recovered texts read uncannily, unsettling the construction of official archives as well as contemporary canons of South African, African and diasporic African literatures. By turning to the traffic of ideas between Africa and its diaspora in Cape Town, this dissertation recovers a vision of (black) modernity that had not yet succumbed to the formulations of anti-imperial nationalisms.

During the second half of the twentieth century, the concepts of racial exclusion and inequality were impugned when the Civil Rights Movement undertook the challenge to bring about social and racial egalitarianism. The success of the Movement depended on contributions from many sources. This study focuses on the cultural entity of theatre to examine the contributions of selected plays to the Movement. It investigates key theatre-related issues that framed the ethnopolitical debate between white supremacists, Black Nationalists, and racial integrationists to show how the Movement gained from those groups. The thematic premise supports the clause that theatre, as a didactic instrument for change, championed prime Civil Rights Movement goals (public education, housing, and voting) while ascertaining how these goals were integrated in plays to help audiences internalize the political and social ideologies of the Movement. When the Movement brought about an increase in black voting, progress in school desegregation, and enhanced housing opportunities for African Americans, the profound changes ushered in a significant shift in sensibilities, attitudes, and outlooks, which had political ramifications around the world. Thus theatre played a progressive role in the amelioration of race problems through its dramatists. This study argues that this was the era when artists, particularly black theatre artists, fought for equality in American theatre, which resulted in the increased visibility of African-American performers, a proliferation of black theatre productions, a major rise in African-American dramatists, and most important, an explosion in black plays. African-American playwrights, using their dramatic voices to become cultural arbiters and myth-makers while simultaneously voicing their advocacy of the Civil Rights Movement's principles, set forth to elucidate and sanction the politics that characterized black grievances. As the Movement was a catalyst for cultural authenticity and literary legitimacy, this study evaluates how a blending of social, political, economic, and cultural factors was dramatized to educate audiences and motivate demonstrators. Methodological approaches consist of critical textual analyses of the plays, evaluations of critical writings on theatre-related civil rights issues, historical analyses of important events of the Movement, and interviews. Primary source materials from the archives of civil rights organizations will reveal how they assisted in promoting, supporting, and marketing these plays. Five notable plays, each endowed with a progressive politics, comprise the primary plays in this study. The introduction provides a historical overview of the Movement and its major goals, focusing on public education, housing, and voting. Chapter One examines Loften Mitchell's A Land Beyond the River (1957) and its connection to education. Chapter Two examines Lorraine Hansberry's A Raisin in the Sun (1959) to investigate the drama's advocacy for decent housing. Chapter Three relies on Ossie Davis's Purlie Victorious (1961) to reveal the role of humor and its connection to civil rights. Chapter Four examines Amiri Baraka's Dutchman (1964) to investigate black militancy. Chapter Five, which takes on the issue of voting, offers critical analyses of George Sklar's And People All Around (1966), which was inspired by real-life events. This study demonstrates how the achievements of theatre, through its texts, played a role in the cultural politics of the Civil Rights Movement.

An extraordinary number of scholarly works have been produced about community-level power in America. The focus of attention, however, has been primarily upon the Anglo-Saxon community. Virtually all these reports contained serious inaccuracies about black leaders. Where exceptions existed they were based solely upon data gathered during the legally sanctioned biracial system or immediately thereafter. Conclusions about contemporary blacks tend to rely upon these earlier, suspect explanations. The most persistent theme can be stated as "black leadership is chaotic, episodic, non-representative, ineffective and uncontrolled by the black community." This appalling lack of knowledge about contemporary black leadership has provided the framework for the case study of a medium sized southeastern United States city, Chattanooga, Tennessee. Twin (although not identical) hypotheses underlie the study: First, efforts made by black and white communities to designate and control the actions of black leaders resulted in a bifurcated leadership structure. The findings of the study were that the interpenetration between the black and white communities altered and affected the patterns of power and influence in each. Second, these two designated black leadership segments took different positions on issues because they represented the interests of different constituencies. The three operative variables--the years 1970-79, black leadership and designation sources--were measured with a range of data and methodologies. For example, modified-stratified samples of 29 white and 57 black respondents were used. Data extracted from newspapers and organization records were correlated with issues, events, and leaders and their activities. The research data supported the major hypotheses, revealing that whites employed five major strategies which weakened and, at times, defeated blacks' goals. Evidence emerged to substantiate the existence of a decidedly cohesive black leadership which fashioned a set of skillfully designed and executed strategies while simultaneously coping with a counter black leadership structure supported by the white leadership.

Black Americans have entered a new phase in the Civil Rights Movement. First they struggled for their legal rights. Then they struggled for equality, which meant integration and implementation of their legal rights. Now they struggle for power—“black power”. “Black power” is a metaphor which became part of the English language less than two years ago. Because of its newness, it has not been clearly defined nor its purposes clarified and evaluated. This paper is A Clarification and Evaluation of Black Power. Black power serves as a rallying call for unity and self-help among black people. But the words are more than a slogan. They stand for a mood and a program. The mood is one of worthiness—black is good, black is beautiful—not the inferiority of past generations. The program, although not well defined or organized, has three types of goals. They are cultural, economic, and political. The basic cultural goal is unity. The basic economic goal is to raise the black standard of living. Control or rightful share of control is the basic political goal. The masses of Black America are engaged in this Struggle for Power. They have lived through a “revolution of expectations”. Now they want tangible results. They want socio-economic gains, including, better jobs, housing, and education. They now believe the best way to achieve these ends is to work together as a group, not separately as individuals. They feel they were oppressed as a group, so they must leave the oppression as a group. As the group closes ranks, it is accused of racism and escapism. Actually, the separatism, which blacks are now advocating, is a realistic solution to a pluralistic society. Violent action and/or the threat of violent action are very real forces in America today. The ideology of black power does not call for this violence, but some of the advocates do. They see violence as a means to an end. It is unfortunate that black power has become so closely linked with violence, since this tends to mitigate its constructive value. The ideology and practice of black power needs to be clarified and evaluated, not by an academic, but by black people. The time for ambiguity is past. Black people need to define their goals. Then they need to organize their individual strengths into group action. A united Black America, with strong leadership and organization, may well be able to raise its standard of living and seize its rightful first class citizenship. The ideology and practice of black power does offer to black people an opportunity to raise their standard of living. Perhaps more important, however, black power allows black people to think well of themselves, which is, of course, psychologically healthy. Time may prove me wrong, but this writer feels history will pass a favorable judgment on the Struggle for Power—Black Power.

Generations of Americans believe that black political activism materialized in the decades of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Since this overwhelming view prevails, the history of local African Americans who made a means of not giving into racism in spite of the violent and recalcitrant oppression that had existed since the days of slavery is often overlooked. But blacks fought for, and at times secured, small victories on an individual or community level, although setbacks and challenges to those gains also occurred. The mis-impression that activism merely manifested itself in the days following either Emmitt Till’s murder or the Brown decision leaves generations of people missing, or erased, from the annals of history, and simply ignores the reality of making a movement on the ground. By expanding the parameters beyond the typical definition of the Civil Rights Movement, black activism from each successive generation after the Civil War emerges and provides a better understanding of race in America. Approaching the Southwest Georgia Movement through the lens of a longer evolving fight for racial equality, it becomes apparent that most of those involved were fighting against the ghost of Reconstruction. It was during this tumultuous episode that blacks had lost all gains garnered after the fall of the Confederacy (the Freedom Generation). Moreover, southerners found ways of restricting or erasing these liberties as the country transitioned into the Jim Crow era (the Terrorist Generation). The modern leaders, Martin Luther King, Jr. (MLK) and Ralph David Abernathy, for example, rose to prominence by fighting against these segregation statutes, but their ultimate goal was to reclaim many of the gains of Reconstruction (the Protest Generation). / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Summer Semester 2017. / May 1, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Maxine D. Jones, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine Montgomery, University Representative; Andrew Frank, Committee Member; Katherine Mooney, Committee Member.

Thesis (M.A.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Page Anderson, committee chair; Rod Watts, Leslie Jackson, committee members. Electronic text (101 p. : ill. (some col.)) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Dec. 5, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 76-85).

Thesis (M.A.) -- Central Connecticut State University, 2006. / Thesis advisor: Prescott "... in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Modern American History" Includes bibliographical references (leaves 146-151). Also available via the World Wide Web.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Delaware, 2006. / Principal faculty advisor: James M. Jones, Dept. of Black American Studies. Includes bibliographical references.