<p> The purpose of this qualitative phenomenological study was to explore and describe the lived experiences and perspectives of 4 elementary school principals and 4 instructional leaders committed to social justice practices who have improved and sustained grade level performance in reading with Black students for the duration of 3 consecutive years.</p><p> Four research questions guided this study and included: What strategies are used by elementary principals and instructional leaders to advance equity, access, and opportunity, to improve core teaching and curriculum, address barriers faced, and develop resilience when leading the work of social justice? Data were collected through semi-structured interviews with the intention of learning specific leadership strategies used to create, promote, and sustain equitable learning environments where Black students meet and exceed proficiency rates in reading.</p><p> Key findings suggest that leaders who accomplish and sustain high academic achievement at their schools hold high expectations for their students, immerse themselves in culturally responsive professional development trainings, seek community supports to enhance curricular programs, and invest in professional study and self-care practices to sustain themselves both professionally and personally. Recommendations for future policy demonstrate the need for principal preparation programs dedicated to addressing social justice leadership practices as a means to advocate equity, access, and opportunity for marginalized and oppressed students everywhere.</p><p>

The purpose of this study was to examine the creation of Huey P. Newton, founder of the Black Panther Party in 1966. I argued that Huey P. Newton was a creation of several elements: the black ghetto of Oakland; the rise of Black Power and the death of non-violence in the civil rights movement; the New Left and its factions; and, the Black Panther Party through the "Free Huey" campaign. The "Free Huey" campaign that arose from Newton's imprisonment in 1968, constructed an iconic image of Newton that he inherited on his release in 1970. This study will contextualize Newton and refute the claims of Hugh Pearson, author of the 1994, The Shadow of the Panther, who deemed Newton as a common criminal, not worthy of historical debate.

<p>Encumbered Existence is a three-movement programmatic work for jazz orchestra that uses specific events in African-American history to capture the struggle of African- Americans and emotions provoked by these events. The first movement, ?The State of the World,? and last movement, ?Between the World and Me,? capture painful events such as the shooting of Trayvon Martin. ?Between the World and Me? uses the dates of Martin?s birth and death as set classes to guide the piece. The second movement, ?The Dream,? portrays a hopeful attitude and is inspired by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the ?I Have a Dream? speech. Encumbered Existence is 314 measure long. Prior to the score, an analysis of the piece provides an outline of the overall structure of the work as well as illustrations of the musical quotations used throughout the piece. The compositional decisions made during the creative process are explained by highlighting individual musical moments in the piece and then examining their correlation to the work. All inspirational material is also discussed.

Abstract not available.

This dissertation articulates the ways in which black (e)migration to the territorial frontier challenges the master frontier narratives as well as African American migration narratives, and to capture how black frontier settlers and settlements are represented in three contemporary novels. I explore through the lens of cultural geography the racialized landscapes of the real and symbolic American South and the real, symbolic and imaginary black territorial frontier. Borrowing perspectives from cultural and critical race studies, I aim to show the theoretical and practical significance of contemporary literary representations of an almost forgotten historical past. Chapter I traces the sites of history, memory and imagination in migration and frontier narratives of enslaved and newly freed black people in the Oklahoma Territory. Chapter II addresses an oppositional narrative of masculinity in frontier narratives depicted in Standing at the Scratch Line by Guy Johnson. Chapter III examines how the black frontier landscape can be created and recreated across three generations who endure racial threats, violence and the razing of Greenwood during the Tulsa Riot of 1921 in Magic City by Jewell Parker Rhodes. Chapter IV scrutinizes the construction of black frontier subjects and exclusive black communities in Paradise by Toni Morrison. My dissertation seeks to add to and expand the literary studies of migration and frontier narratives, taking into account two popular novels alongside a more academically recognized novel. The selected novels mobilize very different resources, but collectively offer insights into black frontier identities and settlements as sites of a past, present and future African American collective consciousness.

This dissertation undertakes a comparative analysis of the musical, written, and spoken production of Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti with respect to the larger African Atlantic intellectual environment, situating the two artists as both shapers of an Atlantic intellectual culture as well as artists who were, in turn, shaped by that culture. Through a reading of their creative work, the dissertation argues that, even given the obvious cultural, temporal, and temperamental differences between Sun Ra and Fela, both artists' orientations toward musical composition and performance share similar preoccupations with the recitation of cultural memory and the dialogic creation of historical narratives which is called Composing the African Atlantic. In the dissertation the concept Composing the African Atlantic is proposed as a means of describing an African diasporic version of musical composition which includes many of the so-called extramusical elements of text and performance—audience participation and dialogue being key—as constitutive elements of composition such that, in their absence, the music is not fully realized. Stated in the active present tense (Composing), identified as culturally rooted (African), and formed within a broad and discursively contested space (Atlantic), Composing the African Atlantic describes the means by which composers such as Sun Ra and Fela Anikulapo-Kuti conceive of performance as an essential part of composition, enabling the musicians and audience to craft the true Text of the music through the activation of communal memory and the dialogic contestation of history. The result, in the case of both artists, is the creation of a singular compositional and performative style which maintains its connection to its core audience through the use of ritualized concert performance, the challenging of historical myths, and the performance of historical narratives which refute the Hegelian contention that Africa is "no historical part of the world." In the process, both artists assert that there is a common African cultural memory which exists throughout the African diaspora as a result, fundamentally, of the Atlantic slave trade, but which is also a living, contemporary, cosmopolitan dialectic of representation and re-presentation.

Based on the research questions employed in this study, the Nigerian immigrant community first began with student sojourners and is currently more effective within the African-American context. This community would perhaps have been much slower in evolving but for the crisis of institutional instability back in the Nigerian homeland as well as the policies of two American presidents. The major features of the Nigerian immigrant community with varying degrees of influences in America are: the Nigerian offspring, the Nigerian church, the Nigerian community media, the Nigeria women association, the Nigerian attorneys and physicians. The Nigerian offspring represent a conciliatory generation to Black America, the Nigerian homeland, Euro-America, and the most favorable orbit of incorporating Nigerian indices into the American mosaic. Houston, Dallas, and Atlanta exhibit one of the strongest evidences of the Southern typology of Nigerian immigrants in the U.S. Within this same setting, the generational and socio-cultural experiences of Nigerians and African-Americans are closely related. Both in their American agenda as well as aspirations toward the homelands, Nigerians are replaying the generational schemes of Black America. Analyses of the relationships between the generations of forced migration and voluntary migration in the Nigerian-U.S. based community media conform to a greater degree of understanding than misunderstanding. The benefits derived from the two historic migrations of black Africans to the U.S. are lopsided. Predisposed to neither assimilation nor integration, the Nigerian diaspora in particular exhibit a carefully selective pattern of socioeconomic identification which corresponds with segregated incorporation into society. Generally, the incorporation of the African diaspora in America favors a north to-east to-south thrust of the races of Africa. Africans from West and Central Africa, where a majority of the forced migrants were taken, are more likely to occupy an unfavorable orbit of American incorporation. Due mostly to American slavery, the Nigerian-African variable represents the most distinctive phase of reactive-global migration into the U.S. after decolonization. The predicted problem of "color line in the twentieth century" also corresponded with the reactive patterns of cross-cultural migrations particularly of the races of color and mostly at the intersection of the fifth wave of global migration. Sustained exchanges between Nigeria and the U.S. after colonialism therefore began with the fifth wave of reactive global migration. This marks an important new phase in the development and integration of Nigerian-African indices into the modern world.

The purpose of my study is to investigate, through in-depth phenomenological interviews, the methods or strategies African American artists have employed to either: (1) survive in a Eurocentrically biased art world; (2) combat a Eurocentrically biased art world; or (3) challenge or change a Eurocentrically biased art world. The methods these artists use to survive, combat, or attempt to change the art establishment affects what we see as observers of the artist's visual expressions. The same methods also give us clues to how African American artists survive in contemporary society. The nine artist participants were Lois Mailou Jones, Calvin Burnett, Richard Yarde, Kofi Kayiga, Cheryl Warrick, Nelson Stevens, Paul Goodnight, Michael Borders, Shirley Whitaker. Each interview was conducted in three parts, with each session lasting at least 90 minutes. Part I focused on the past experiences of the participants. This could involve childhood experiences as well as those relating to their artistic training. Part II concentrated on present experiences, what is it like to be an African American artist in the northeastern United States in the 1990s. Also, how these artists go about finding exhibition opportunities, how their work has been received, and in their opinion why. Part III centered on meaning, what the participant's experiences as an African American artist, communicator, and individual mean to them. The interviews were audio tape-recorded and later transcribed and analyzed. It is the written transcript that formed the foundation of the participants' profiles. The artist profiles have made it clear that these artists do indeed reflect a microcosm of African American society, with all its biases, dreams and aspirations. The study has reaffirmed that a given racial group can have a common goal, but the means to achieve that goal can be viewed with all the variations of hues that make up the African American community. When the concept is understood, that we are all individuals, categorization by race or sex seems quite an inadequate means for understanding who African American artists are as people or as image makers. These artists are a mirror of society in general, and their art is a catalyst for the discussion of larger issues that affect the entire African American community.

Negative sentences with two negatives are subject to locality conditions that prohibit negative concord interpretations in some cases. This phenomenon appears to be universal, whether negative concord is a part of the grammar with (+NEG) lexical feature overtly manifested phonetically as a copied (+NEG) element in African American English or whether it is a part of the default grammar with (+NEG) lexical feature marking or "negativizing" the indefinite as in Standard American English. The children in this study were presented with short stories followed by questions where the negative indefinite NO was hypothesized to have two possible sites of interpretation. One option is inside a VP PP adjunct where negative concord (NEG$\rm\sb{con}$) interpretations are expected and the other option is outside the VP in a noun complement clause or PP argument where true negative (NEG$\rm\sb{true}$) interpretations are expected. Other stories were also presented followed by questions where n-words (a term used here to avoid making a claim yet whether the words in question are negative polarity items or negative quantifiers) were expected to be interpreted as negatives. A cross-sectional study with 61 AAE and SAE children aged 5.2 to 7.11 and a smaller single language observational study with 5 younger AAE children aged 4.5 to 4.10 found that children 5 to 7 years of age clearly interpreted n-words as negatives and differentiated them from polarity NO in nonconcord environments. Two-thirds of the majority of the children differentiated the two possible structural environments for negative indefinite NO, and refused to extract it from inside a PP argument but allowed concord inside a VP PP adjunct. This confirms other findings that children's early grammars are sensitive to universal constraints on movement (deVilliers & Roeper, 1995). However, the remaining one-third of children allowed NEG$\rm\sb{con}$ in these more subtler barrier cases. Does this mean that some children 5 to 7 years of age do not understand barriers? If so, how are barriers considered a phenomenon of UG? Explanations for these findings are framed in terms of children's knowledge about negative concord and locality conditions on movement.

Problem: Distrust and socioeconomic barriers are widely recognized as contributors to disparities in the healthcare system, particularly as it relates to mental health care (Lindinger-Sternart, 2015; National Alliance on Mental Illness, n.d.). African Americans continually experience societal pressures to disassociate with African American culture and to assimilate into mainstream culture. Perhaps accessing mental health services via a counselor is an extension of that pressure. In this way, the traditional counseling model for mental health intervention is a culturally counterintuitive approach for developing mental health among African American men. Men are a subset of the African American community that tends to engage in mental health treatment at a significantly lower rate than the general population. Conversely, research suggests that their distress is as significant if not more so than that of majority groups (Mental Health America, n.d.; Roberson & Fitzgerald, 1992; Snowden, 2012). Research shows that cultural and systematic factors drive the underuse of mental health services among African American men (particularly counseling). Community-based psychoeducation spread by community members may be a means of making mental health information more accessible to this population in culturally congruent and enfranchised ways. Method: A quantitative, non-experimental survey design was employed to examine the relationship between 1) ethnic identity salience, 2) socioeconomic status (the exogenous variables), and 3) attitudes toward seeking mental health treatment (both endogenous and exogenous) as predictors of receptivity toward community-based psychoeducation (the dependent/endogenous variable) among African American men. ANOVA and Structural Equation Modeling were employed to consider the relationship between variables and the latent construct. Convenience sampling was used to recruit a nationally representative sample of 461 African American men from across the country through the employment of Qualtrics data collection servicer. Following data collection, data were screened and analyzed using SPSS and AMOS software programs to ensure valid interpretation. Results: The results indicated that African American men are most receptive to discussing/receiving mental health information with counselors, friends, and family, and in the corresponding settings (in counseling, social settings, or at home, respectively). Receptivity in those settings had no significant difference, which conveys comparable openness to discussing/receiving mental health information (i.e., psychoeducation). Such findings are indicative of community-based psychoeducation as an alternative to counseling. Overall, respondents were somewhat receptive to a variety of identified settings/individuals; however, barbershops/barbers were the least preferred option for discussing/receiving mental health information. Further, the original structural equation model poorly fit the collected data, so it was adjusted as informed by theory and supported by the literature. The final, good-fitting model explained only 18% of the variance in the dependent variable though it yielded unique insight into the relationship of the variables. Ethnic Identity Salience and Socioeconomic Status were meaningful predictors of Receptivity to Community-based Psychoeducation. Help-seeking Propensity was the only assessed Attitude toward Seeking Mental Health Treatment that was meaningful in the empirical model. Conclusions: The findings support the existing research that African American men are receptive to community-based psychoeducation when administered through the appropriate channels. Given issues with feasibility and access, community-based psychoeducation dispersed through families and friends at home and in social settings may be preferable to counseling as a means of increasing mental health literacy among the general U.S. population of African American men. Future studies should strive to conceptualize mental health intervention in culturally congruent ways, develop community-based intervention modalities, and study African Americans in novel exploratory ways to generate practical mental health advancement. They should also consider how the changing zeitgeist, individual attitudes, and meaningful personal relationships impact the discussion of mental health and utilization of services among African American men.