Between 1877 and 1978, black reporters, publishers, and readers engaged in a never-ending and ever-shifting protest against American racism. Journalists' militancy oscillated as successive generations of civil rights activists defined anew their relationship with racism and debated the relevance of black radicalism in the fight for racial justice. Journalists achieved their greatest influence when their political perspectives aligned with the views of their employers and readers. Frequent disputes, though, erupted over the scope and meaning of racial justice within the process of reporting the news, compelling some writers to start alternative publications that challenged the assimilationist politics promoted by profit-minded publishers and middle-class community leaders.;This national network of news by, about, and for African Americans emerged in the late nineteenth century as the editor-proprietors of small, but widely circulated, newspapers defended the freedoms and rights gained during Reconstruction. In the early twentieth century, editors and publishers rushed to establish new publications aimed at African Americans leaving the southern countryside for urban industrial employment. Particularly in the North, many editors adopted militant editorial policies to win the loyalty of readers who might otherwise buy competing publications. During the interwar years, reporters and readers infused black journalism with an unprecedented racial militancy and political progressiveness by endorsing the politics and sensibilities of Harlem's radical orator-editors, New Negro authors and artists, and Popular Front activists. This style of racial advocacy extended beyond the restoration of civil rights as writers condemned Western colonialism, criticized American capitalism, and explored black separatism. During World War II, journalists' progressive outlook propelled black newspapers to their peak popularity and national influence.;By the early 1950s, the ascendancy of anticommunism moved publishers to jettison writers associated with the politics of anti-colonialism, anti-capitalism, and black separatism. They were replaced by younger journalists who accepted the narrower mission of fighting for domestic civil rights. In the 1960s, African Americans infuriated by the slow pace of desegregation accused commercial publishers of being too ready to compromise their militancy. Radical writers and editors tapped into this frustration by creating an alternative press that defined and debated the merits of Black Power. In the 1970s, journalists began to broaden the reach of black journalism by fighting to integrate white newsrooms. They ultimately transformed, albeit fitfully, how mainstream media covered and portrayed African Americans and other minority groups.;This dissertation complicates and challenges the historiography of black journalism. It supplants scholarship that depicts press protest as unchanging and driven by publishers by arguing journalistic agitation was continually reconceived by journalists and readers. It broadens the definition of who was a journalist by foregoing a narrow focus on the "black press" for a more inclusive examination of "black print culture." It characterizes black radicals and their publications as integral, not marginal, in shaping commercial black journalism. It argues the tenets of black journalism, while diluted, gained greater salience as black journalists integrated white-owned media.

Through my dissertation, I embark on a biographical, cultural and historical study of artist and abolitionist Nathaniel Jocelyn (1796-1881), primarily known as a nineteenth-century portrait painter and engraver in New Haven, Connecticut. Although Jocelyn received little formal training, he sought to become a preeminent portrait painter. Together with his younger brother, Simeon Smith Jocelyn (1799-1879), he established a successful engraving firm designing banknotes, maps, atlases, and book illustrations.;Jocelyn lived in an age of evangelical revivalism commonly called the Second Great Awakening. He was a devout Congregationalist and saw the various aspects of his life embedded in his religious convictions. Jocelyn's diary chronicles his beliefs, social views, hopes, fears, daily struggles, and his plans to develop and attain artistic acclaim and economic success.;My dissertation reveals an artist not unlike other enterprising men of the New Republic or most portrait painters of his era who struggled to earn a living. Yet Jocelyn was extraordinary because he created the most important portrait of an African in the nineteenth-century, Cinque (c.1813-1879), leader of the Amistad rebellion of 1839. This portrait challenged Jacksonian-era concepts of portraiture and became one of the most significant icons for the abolitionist movement. For Jocelyn the portrayal of Cinque was the galvanizing event of his life as an artist, abolitionist, and Christian.;Jocelyn not only challenged the concept of conventional portraiture, but also nineteenth-century racial stereotypes by depicting a black man as a man of dignity. Jocelyn used Cinque's portrait to dissociate black skin and African-ness from traditional depictions of black men that linked them with slavery. Jocelyn was not afraid to show an African as a man of power, independence, and intelligence---traits portraitists generally associated with white people.;His depiction of Cinque as an idealized hero was intentional, and it aided the abolitionist cause. Nathaniel Jocelyn created a visual abolitionist language in his portrayal of Cinque by crossing the boundaries of race and imbuing the portrait with an iconography rich with abolitionist and Christian symbolism.;Jocelyn led a multifaceted life as a Christian, abolitionist, portrait painter, inventor, engraver, and esteemed teacher. He had the confidence, admiration, and respect of his peers and the New Haven notables as he maintained intimate ties with the world of art and abolition.

This dissertation examines the first three decades of a missionary encounter that began under the auspices of the Congo Inland Mission (CIM – later renamed as Africa Inter-Mennonite Mission [AIMM]) in Belgian Congo. As Africans, North Americans, and Europeans entered into relationship with each other through mission, they developed an identity as global Mennonites. They began to embrace a catholic ecclesial imagination – that is, a commitment to shared membership within the church as a political body capable of transcending competing claims of race, ethnicity, gender, or nation-state. Using both an ecclesiological lens of analysis and a global history framework, this dissertation traces the ways in which ecclesial institutions, practices, discourses, and performances functioned to support or undermine a social imagination that embraced expatriate missionaries and local believers within a single church, in both its local/congregational and trans-local manifestations. During the period covered by the dissertation, expatriate and Congolese Mennonites struggled to define what the church was, and to determine who could participate in it and how. Factors that helped to promote a shared ecclesial imagination among Congolese and expatriate believers included an inter-denominational vision, faith mission principles and practices, Pentecostal revivalism, a Mennonite congregational polity, shared experiences of work and worship, and friendships that crossed boundaries of race and gender. However, CIM missionaries’ assertions of ethnic Mennonite control over mission strategy and structure, and their complicity with colonial labor exploitation, promoted a two-tiered understanding of the church that entrenched racial segregation and squelched the aspirations of white missionary women and Congolese evangelists. An ecclesiological lens of analysis thus offers new insights into the relationship between missions and colonial regimes, into the role of mission in American Mennonite denominational formation, and into the interactions among gender, race, and ethnicity in mission. The dissertation traces the contested memories of early CIM “pioneers,” such as Alma Doering, Aaron and Ernestina Janzen, and L.B. and Rose Haigh, and retrieves the missional agency of the many Congolese Mennonites who worked alongside them. In this way, it both uncovers the struggles for catholicity that shaped the missionary encounter at its inception, and calls attention to the ways in which such struggles continue to play out on the terrain of memory and knowledge production, coming to light through the competing efforts and uneven ability of Congolese and North American Mennonites to tell stories about their shared past. The historical narrative at the core of the dissertation thus serves as a case study for a broader exploration of theological and historiographical themes of memory and catholicity in relation to mission. The dissertation develops an ecclesiological framework for the study of the missionary encounter in which an explicit commitment to catholicity guides the task of writing world Christian history. It identifies ways in which such an ecclesiological mode of remembering can contribute to greater unity and catholicity within the global church.

Revisiting the Anthony Burns drama in 1854, the last fugitive slave crisis in Boston, I argue that traditional historical interpretations emphasizing an antislavery groundswell in the North mask the confusion, chaos, ethnic and class tensions, and racial division in the Bay city and also treat Virginia's most famous fugitive slave as an object rather than the Revolutionary and advocate for equal rights that he was. I contend that it was far from clear that antislavery beliefs were on the rise in midcentury Boston. I show that antislavery views had to compete with other less noble, sometimes racist, sentiments and with white Bostonians' concerns about law and order. Many white Bostonians sought to conserve the Union as it was; they did not seek to extend the fruits of the Revolution to a fugitive slave or to their black neighbors. The message that many black Bostonians took from the drama was that they could not depend on their white neighbors, including supposedly friendly abolitionists; they had to unite and look out for their own interests. Reexamining the link between Anthony Burns and the coming of the Civil War suggests that the most significant impact of the crisis was on the white South, not the North. Events in Boston seemed to confirm white Southerners' suspicions that antislavery feelings were on the rise in the North, which fueled their anxiety about the future protection of their interests in the Union. The crisis also accentuated differences between Northern and Southern societies, and white Southerners saw their society, with slavery at its center, as distinctly good. The Burns crisis thus encouraged their defense of slavery as a positive good. Finally, I demonstrate that when Anthony Burns moved to Canada West and joined St. Catharines' vibrant black community, he did not relinquish his fight against slavery; he fled America but not the fight against human bondage.

"Breaking with Tradition" is a study of slave literacy in eighteenth-century British North America, the era of the First Great Awakening and the American Revolution. Instead of highlighting the work of a few northern slave authors (the present emphasis in African American literary history), it focuses on the relationship between slave education in colonial Virginia and the social and political circumstances in which slaves acquired a knowledge of letters. A social history of life in the slave quarters, the "great house," and in towns, "Breaking with Tradition" is at once a case study of slaves reading and writing in the South and a counterpoint to current studies that paint a picture of early African Americans as being illiterate. Ultimately, this thesis explores the interplay between African American studies and the History of the Book.

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The history of European hegemony in the Western hemisphere has been marked by “objectivity” or a collective subjectivity in which European historians and scholars believe that their viewpoints and perspectives about the world are dominant, causing them to push their ideologies as universal. This objectivity is problematic because it leads to the deliberate omission and falsification of the histories and cultures of other groups of people. This is especially true for Africans who have been relegated to the margins in most European narratives about world history. The most apparent display of this marginalization occurs in the educational sector, specifically at U.S. public schools, where African children are indoctrinated to believe that they lack both a history and culture and therefore, must assimilate to European ideals in order to fare well in society. This narrative is detrimental because it aids in agency reduction. In order to restore African agency in the classroom and to correct the miseducation that African children receive in Eurocentrically grounded school systems, Black scholars and educators began creating Afrocentric schools, a branch of Independent Black Institutions (IBIs) that prioritize the history and culture of Africans across the diaspora, in the late 1960s. Although many of these schools have and continue to combat this successfully, many have collapsed and closed over time thus presenting a significant and alarming issue since they are still relatively new institutions and play a crucial role in unlocking the African genius. The purpose of this study then, is to Afrocentrically examine the history and effectiveness of Afrocentric schools in order to further advocate for their presence in the U.S. in light of these closures. This will be done by discussing the characteristics of Afrocentric schools as well as the ways that they have and continue to impact African people, by analyzing the criticisms that they receive from Eurocentrically aligned Africans and Europeans, by assessing literature from Afrocentric scholars who have explored the closing of some Afrocentric schools, and most importantly, by comparing Eurocentric and Afrocentric curricula to highlight the importance of agency restoration and cultural reclamation for Black children in centered learning. This study will also proffer suggestions for African community members, educators, and activists to promote Afrocentric education beyond institutional settings. This study is framed by several research questions, specifically: (1) What is an Afrocentric school and why are they important for African people? (2) What are the components of Afrocentric Education? and (3) What corrective measures can Afrocentric educators, scholars, activists, community members, and institution builders take to maintain the status and stability of Afrocentric schools and more importantly, promote Afrocentric education beyond institutional settings? / African American Studies

The purpose of this study is to provide an Afrocentric analysis of the ways in which Du Bois approaches African history in his text The World and Africa. The study contextualizes the experiences that shaped Du Bois’ thinking about Africa. This includes commentary on his college years as well as the experiences that continued to shape his opinions near the end of his life. Highlighted in this study is Du Bois’ Eurocentric approaches to history in regard to African people. The significance of focusing on the ideologies of Du Bois through this text is the fact that Du Bois is considered perhaps the most influential African American intellectual of the twentieth century. Thus, my aim is to provide an analysis of The World and Africa that is useful in illustrating the Eurocentric entrapments in regard to Africa and African people that have plagued even our most brilliant intellectuals. Secondly, Du Bois’ analysis of African history is limited by his concept of race or ethnicity being narrowed to general phenotypes. As such, Du Bois, though perhaps more nuanced in his approach to what defines a race than many in his day, often makes superficial and sometimes erroneous claims about what constitutes African people. African culture, though considerably discussed in the text, becomes however ancillary to the basis of Du Bois’ contentions about the past greatness of African people. My analysis centers the Afrocentric approach to African cultural cosmology and ontology as basis of my critique of Du Bois’ text. Further, as an example of how Du Bois could have strengthened his arguments for Pan-African unity using culture as a basis, I have created and utilized a methodology entitled African World Antecedent Methodology and provided within this study some minor examples of the overlapping cultural patterns of African Americans within the African cultural-historical matrix. / African American Studies