This research project has embarked upon the investigation of the representation of Africa in the media and its impact on the way African American perceive Africa and identify with it. Findings from this investigation indicate that not only is Africa consistently represented negatively (with a colonial metaphor) in the media, but such a representation is ideologically embedded in the manner the African continent and its denizens have been portrayed in the West for centuries. This representation of Africa with the colonial metaphor projects the continent and its denizens into the evolutionary past. That is, Africa is a place of primitivism where civilization has eluded humanity, and where crises fester day in day out. In a second disquisition, findings from this investigation project subsequently reveal that television exposure has a negative influence on how African Americans perceive Africa and identify with it. Explicitly, the more African Americans watch television, the more they have a negative perception of Africa, and the less they identify with it (Africa). African Americans' level of education is another contributing, significant factor to their perceptions of, and identification with, Africa. The less African Americans are educated, the more they perceived Africa negatively, and the less they identify with Africa. The association between perceptions of, and identification with, Africa is an indication that media (particularly television) representation of Africa can thwart the building of coalition between continental Africans and African Americans (diasporan Africans in America).

The purpose of this research project is to expand Harter and Pike's Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance to include physical and cognitive competencies that are specific to African American children. Two pictorial tests were administered to a group of African American preschoolers (n = 30) (Harter and Pike's Pictorial Scale of Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance and Boykin and Allen Revised Afro-cultural dimensions). Observations of seven of the children during structured and unstructured periods of the day were formulated into mini case studies of “acting up” or “acting out behavior” (Boykin's 1992 Prescriptive Pedagogy for African American children). Parent interviews explored African American child-rearing practices. Teacher questionnaires provided teacher perspective on children's physical and cognitive competencies. The results of the study suggest that Harter and Pike's Perceived Competence and Social Acceptance Scale can be combined with the Boykin and Allen Revised Scale to create a culturally appropriate scale. Mean and standard deviations in both instruments indicate that children in this study feel competent. The subscales attained adequate reliability using Cronbach's alpha level .79. Multiple regression findings reveal spirituality as the significant predictor strongly correlated on the cognitive subscale (Harter & Pike). The spirituality and movement expression subscales from the Boykin and Allen Revised Scale were moderately correlated with the physical subscale from Harter and Pike. The teacher/child correlations showed weak agreement between tested behavior of children and teachers assessment of children's cognitive development. The physical domain from Harter and Pike showed agreement between tested behavior and teachers assessment. The seven mini-cases showed four steps of teacher interventions in “acting up” or “acting out” behaviors in young children: verbal and or physical guidance, ignoring inappropriate behavior, time out, and removal of child to another classroom for part of the day. Movement expression, verve, communalism, and spirituality are concepts to include when assessing African-American children's competence development.

This dissertation traces the early origins of Shirley Graham Du Bois, a well known Negro achiever in the 1930s and 1940s, from the decades preceding her birth in 1896 up through the mid-twentieth century when she has reached mid life and achieved a number of successes. It attempts to reclaim from obscurity the significant cultural production that Shirley Graham contributed to American society. Her artistry and activism were manifested in many ways. As a very young woman she conducted, throughout the northern and eastern parts of the U.S., musical concerts extolling the beauty and significance of spirituals. While attending school at Oberlin College, she wrote a musical opera that was regarded during its time as the world’s first race opera. In 1936 she assumed the role of Director for the Chicago Black Unit of the Federal Theatre Project (FTP). After the FTP phased out, she attended Yale School of Drama to learn the craft of playwriting, and proceeded to write several plays that were staged and viewed by interracial audiences. As the country prepared for WWII, she was selected to head USO activities in Fort Huachuca, Arizona where the largest aggregation of Negro soldiers were stationed before being sent off to battle. She subsequently became a field secretary for the NAACP during this period of tumultuous change in the nation and the world. The early 1940s would see Graham reach the pinnacle of success during this phase of her life by writing biographies for a national children’s audience. This success was short lived due to the political climate of red-baiting that became fashionable during the political reign of Senator Joseph McCarthy. Graham’s progressive politics, communist affiliation and marriage to W. E. B. Du Bois placed her on the wrong side of the establishment. Each chapter develops the varying forms her activism took shape in each given situation. Following the example of fore-parents who were politically and socially engaged during their lifetimes, Graham follows suit. Her efforts reveal a woman who educated, inspired and empowered others while demonstrating the different ways one could use her abilities to confront racism.

My project explores the impact of the great Orishas (Yoruba: "deities") of the crossroads, Eshu-Elegguá, on the thriving literary and visual arts of the African diaspora. Eshu-Elegguá are multiple figures who work between physical and spiritual realms, open possibilities, and embody unpredictability and chance. In chapter one I explore the codes, spaces, and functions of these translating, intermediary deities through cultural anthropology, religious studies, and art history. Chapter two explores patterns in the artistic employment of Eshu-Elegguá by analyzing these figures' appearance in visual arts and then in four texts: Mumbo Jumbo (Ismael Reed, 1972), Sortilégio: Mistério Negro (Abdias do Nasicmento, 1951), Chago de Guisa (Gerardo Fulleda León, 1988), and Brown Girl in the Ring (Nalo Hopkinson, 1998). Chapter three explores how those patterns converge in Midnight Robber (Nalo Hopkinson, 2000) by looking closely at the novel's narrators and translators, Eshu and Elegguá. I argue that Midnight Robber, when read through the literary theories and poetry of Kamau Brathwaite, is a novel "possessed" by the Orishas and that they take on authorial roles. Chapter four analyzes the translation of Midnight Robber into Spanish ( Ladrona de medianoche, Isabel Merino Bode, 2002); presents a way of translating the novel's multiple languages; and puts contemporary translation theories in dialogue with Eshu-Elegguá's translative and interpretive functions. Chapter five argues for a way of reading Wide Sargasso Sea (Jean Rhys, 1966) through the figures of Eshu-Elegguá. ^ The objective is to explore the aesthetic codes and philosophies that the figures of Eshu-Elegguá carry into the texts; trace their voices across multiple forms of cultural expression; and navigate the dialogues that these intermediary figures open between a group of literary texts that have not yet been studied together. The dissertation extends the critical work on the selected literary texts; uses the arts to further understand the nature of these deities of communicability; and analyzes Afro-Atlantic texts through figures and interpretive systems from within the tradition. By surveying contemporary translation theories and based on my close reading of the translating capacities and metaphors that Eshu-Elegguá embody, I offer a new model for translation.^

This dissertation seeks to examine the schooling experiences of African American males attending predominately White independent schools in California. Using Critical Race Theory as a theoretical framework and the factors contributing to schooling experiences, this qualitative research explores the role of student self-perception, teacher expectations, and parent involvement as contributing factors to participants overall schooling experiences. Utilizing counterstorytelling as a means of capturing the rich narratives shared by the participants, data analysis included holistic content coding based on themes that emerged from narrative examination. Findings indicate how parent involvement became the overarching critical component that was most significant in positive schooling experiences for Black males. These findings also support the need to continue to examine the shortage of literature examining the schooling experiences of Black males in predominately White independent schools.

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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.

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No description available.

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.