The Colonial Williamsburg Foundation began in 1926. Within four years after its initial construction, the need to begin some means of presenting information to a growing population of visitors became apparent. In this study, an attempt will be made to answer the question, "How has the history of interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg influenced its teaching of black history?".;The major research question and the subsidiary questions were prompted by the recent inclusion of a black history program at the foundation. In this study, primary focus will be given to the history of interpretation at Colonial Williamsburg. An attempt will be made to assess the extent to which social, economic, political and cultural norms, within American society, affected the Foundation's decision to exclude the interpretation of black history until the late 1970's.;The major method of analysis will be done by comparing and contrasting the various decisions that were made regarding the teaching of history in Williamsburg and national trends. Focusing on ten-year increments, each period will be contrasted with the development of Colonial Williamsburg so that conclusions can be made concerning the extent to which the Foundation was affected by societal norms of the period.;Evidence for the proposed study will be primary sources found in three major areas: the Colonial Williamsburg Foundation Archives, the Rockefeller Family Archives, and interviews of current and former employees of the Foundation.

A sophisticated exploration of the intricacies of motherhood and health care practices of people of African descent, especially the enslaved population of Virginia, can shed light on their notions of a well-lived life and the factors preventing or contributing to these principles. I situate my dissertation within this ideal as I examine how the health and well-being of enslaved people were linked to broader issues of economic exploitation, domination, resistance, accommodation, and cultural interactions. Historical and archaeological studies have shown that the living and working conditions of enslaved people were detrimental to their health. Building on these findings, I explore how aware were blacks of these impediments to their well-being and the pursuit of a wholesome life, and what means these populations employed to change the negative tangibles and intangibles of slave societies. These questions are best studied from a multi-disciplinary perspective and by using a variety of evidence.;Therefore, I collate and wed diverse selections of documentary evidence---a complex assortment of texts covering history, oral tradition, and narratives---with material cultural evidence, mainly from archaeological excavations and historic landscapes, to show the complex web of objects, beliefs, and practices that constituted this arena of well-being and autonomy. I discuss how issues of well-being intertwined with gender and race relations and how these were played out in many acts of motherhood and child care, struggles over foods and health care, other verbal and physical fights, and how the landscape and objects were implicated in social relations. I focus on Virginia but use examples from other slave societies for comparative purposes.;Blacks juxtaposed their cultural ways with those of whites and, at times, found the latter below black standards for a wholesome life. Therefore, while being open-minded toward some practices and beliefs from whites, blacks continued to maintain separate activities. This dissertation presents and interprets the ideals and practices of enslaved blacks and their descendants and shows how they created and reinforced their identity as a people capable of caring not only for themselves, but for whites as well.

In the years following the Civil War, southerners struggled to adapt to the changes wrought by the war. Many, however, worked to resist those changes. In particular, southern men fought the revised racial and gender roles that resulted from defeat and emancipation. Southern men felt emasculated by both events and sought to consolidate the control they had enjoyed before the war. In their efforts to restore their pre-war hegemony, these men used coercion and violence with regularity.;White southern women were often as adamant as their male counterparts. Women of the elite classes were most eager to bolster antebellum ideals of womanhood, the privileges of which they enjoyed and guarded carefully. In keeping with the turmoil of the war, however, white women endorsed, encouraged, and engaged in acts of racial violence alongside their men. Such behavior may have been intended to preserve the antebellum order, but it served only to alter it.;In addition, black women were as determined to carve out a measure of womanhood for themselves as powerfully as white women worked to keep it from them. Black women asserted their rights as mothers, wives, and independent free women in the post-war years. Ironically, they too participated in acts of intimidation and racial violence in an effort to safeguard their rights. Such activities did not simply force the inclusion of black women in white definitions of womanhood, but altered the meaning of womanhood for both races.;The fields of battle on which these men and women engaged included the struggle for land and labor immediately following the war's end; the rise of black politicization and the reaction of white Democrats; the creation of the Ku Klux Klan as an agent of both gender and politics; the election of 1876 in which men and women of both races used the political contest to assert their competing gender definitions; and the rise of lynching as the final, desperate act of antebellum white manhood. Despite the reactionary nature of white women's activism, the fact of their activism and the powerful presence of black women in these violent exchanges reshaped the nature of southern gender roles forever.

This dissertation examines the feminized and racialized strategies of women organizers in the struggle for freedom. The lives of Lucy Randolph Mason and Ella Jo Baker suggest much about the ways in which women reject and change traditional leadership roles in order to create, build, and maintain the momentum of mass movements. Both women believed in the fundamental necessity of local people determining the responses to their oppression. This work, therefore, is an attempt to offer a description of Mason and Baker's organizing strategies and leadership styles, a description which can be read as a manual for creating social change.;Each woman functioned from a particular position---of privilege and/or protection---yet both chose to devote their lives to the struggle for racial and economic justice. Mason used her position as a Virginia aristocrat to reform the South, acting as a liaison between those who suffered and those in positions of authority she believed could assist them. Unlike Lucy Mason, Ella Jo Baker used her invisibility to organize working-class people because she was aware that politically active black voters threatened power structures. Each woman offers a glimpse into the contested world of women's activism and leadership---contested because it was largely prohibited by social conventions which privileged white males. Whether white or black, privileged or poor, each woman lived in a culture that proscribed leadership and activism for women. Given these prohibitions, each woman chose a path of leadership and organization that used her life experience as a strategy for social change. They each used tools provided by their specific vantage points for challenging racism, ultimately fashioning complementary archetypes for creating social change. The women were "neither bedecked nor bebosomed," as Ella Baker declared, meaning they both refused to remain constrained by any construction of women's work or identities that limited them to a pedestal, a kitchen, or a bedroom. Instead, they used prescribed roles to help undermine a system of racial supremacy that continues to haunt us. They show concretely that organizers are made, not born. We, too, can learn to change oppressive systems.

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