The Texas Volunteer Guard, created by the Militia Law of 1879, continued to allow African Americans to serve as citizen soldiers. From 1880 to 1906 over six hundred black men faithfully served in the various state militia companies of Galveston and San Antonio; yet, their service has rarely obtained scholarly attention. Often discounted by historians as mere social clubs or deemed too few and insignificant to warrant study, these men sought not only to demonstrate their citizenship, but to improve their social status during a period of racial segregation. The differences and similarities of these groups of African American men at the grassroots level are illuminated by using the comparative method to examine socioeconomic characteristics. Furthermore, this examination demonstrates how racial attitudes remained flexible enough during this period to allow these men to participate in military-type activities. An examination of these activities, both as citizens and as soldiers, makes evident what inspired this state military service. Framed within the network of local fraternal, social, religious, educational, and political organizations, coupled with a study of previous military service, the militia companies expose the aim of these African American men to improve their social status as citizens through militia participation. The Adjutant General of Texas issued firearms, ammunition, and equipment to the respective companies of African American militiamen from these cities, and coordinated training exercises, which involved the travel of armed black men over the state’s existing railroads. Despite their segregated status, the very presence of armed, uniformed black men officially sanctioned by the Democratic-controlled government of Texas suggests that race relationships still remained flexible enough during this time for African Americans to display their citizenship and manhood through state military service. Conversely, their dissolution in 1906 reveals the termination of that flexibility and solidified their status as second-class citizens. Even though they were unsuccessful in continuing their military organization, the heroic efforts of these men deserves inclusion in the written history of the long struggle for African American civil rights in this country.

The working alliance has received consistent empirical support relating the construct to psychotherapy outcome. There is no empirical research on any particular techniques that may prove useful at increasing the level of working alliance. In this study, the therapeutic compliment is defined, discussed, and compared with other therapeutic interventions to find its usefulness in therapy and its ability to impact the working alliance. 120 African-Americans from a large southwestern university and a medium southeastern university participated in this study by viewing one of six mock therapy sessions that had one of three different interventions: Therapeutic Compliment, Simple Compliment, and Advanced Accurate Empathy. The mock sessions were created to provide two levels of session relationship (high and low). The participants completed three measures, the Working Alliance Inventory, Hopefulness Scale, and Accurate Empathy Scale, to determine the perceptions of the different interventions. The study utilized multiple analyses of variances (ANOVAs) to compare the means of the three interventions.Statistical significance was not found with overall general working alliance scores from the Working Alliance Inventory (WAI). The individual subscales of the WAI, goals, tasks, and bonds, however; did reveal significance when comparing the interventions across one level of the session relationship (high). The interventions were not statistically different from each other in terms of perceived hopefulness and empathy. No significance was found when comparing the interventions with perceived hopefulness of outcome or level of perceived empathy. The implications from this study include a first look at the use of complimenting in therapy and a first attempt to analyze a specific technique to create an influence on the working alliance. Further research is still needed to understand which techniques are more beneficial at creating an affect on the working alliance.

The online dating industry is estimated to be worth 1.5 billion dollars. The growing trends in technology have resulted in African Americans logging on to the Web at astonishing rates. Therefore, the goal of this research project is to evaluate dating orientated interaction in the context of virtual communities. The theoretical perspective of this thesis is that of the concept of trust, and I examine the role that trust has on dating oriented interaction in the context of virtual communities. This study utilizes both ethnographic qualitative research methods along with the survey research method to explore the topic of African Americans and their use of the Internet as a tool to find “quality or compatible dates”. This study also provides an examination not only of dating patterns among African Americans via the Internet, but it also provides an examination of the role that technology plays in creating and mediating dating trends. An additional interest is to evaluate dating orientated interaction in the context of virtual communities.

This thesis explores the research questions: How did African Americans cope with the oppressive system of legal segregation? How did they survive and raise their families? What were African Americans’ everyday interactions with whites like during legal segregation? What coping and resistance strategies did they utilize to survive? Using case studies from nearly 100 in-depth interviews with elderly African Americans between the ages of 50-90 in the Southeast and Southwest, I use qualitative methods to detail and analyze the experiences of elderly African Americans. This thesis explores how the exploitation and oppression of African Americans during legal segregation were enshrined by means of racial violence and discrimination in every aspect of American society. Much of the racial violence was legitimized and essential to the routine operation of legal segregation in the United States. Building on the work of Jackman(2002), Blee(2005), and Feagin (2006) for this thesis, I conceptualize racial violence as physical violence, written violence, and/or spoken violence, including being called “nigger,” “boy,” and “uncle.” The racial violence can be individual or collective which, intentionally or unintentionally, inflicts or threatens to inflict physical, psychological, social, or material injury on African Americans who often resist. In addition, the racial violence can occur in any public or private geographical location including, the street, workplace, and home. Lastly, an individual does not have to witness or personally experience the racial violence to be psychologically injured or affected by it. During legal segregation the respondents faced actual everyday racial violence or the threat of racial violence in the form of lynchings, sexual abuse, house burnings, imprisonment, rape, and being incessantly called “nigger.” I argue that the psychological traumatic experiences of fear, anxiety, stress, anguish, humiliation, stigmatization and shame can affect a person’s life for a very long time. Every one of these injuries is apparent in the interviews with elderly African Americans who survived legal segregation. Thus, I suggest the important idea of a “segregation stress syndrome,” for the chronic, enduring, extremely painful responses to official segregation that are indicated by the respondents.

THESIS (D.N.P. (Doctor of Nursing Practice))--School of Nursing, University of San Francisco, 2009. / Title from p. 42 ("Informed consent" page). Bibliography: leaves 30-36.

The entire thesis text is included in the research.pdf file; the official abstract appears in the short.pdf file; a non-technical public abstract appears in the public.pdf file. Title from PDF of title page (University of Missouri--Columbia, viewed on January 26, 2010) Thesis advisor: Dr. Anand Prahlad. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Notre Dame, 2003. / Thesis directed by Richard Williams for the Department of Sociology. "April 2004." Includes bibliographical references (leaves 97-102).

Thesis (M.A.)--West Virginia University, 2008. / Includes bibliographical references (p. 183-195).

Thesis (Ph. D.)--West Virginia University, 2001. / Title from document title page. Document formatted into pages; contains iii, 310 p. Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (p. 301-310).

Thesis (Ph.D)--Virginia Commonwealth University, 2009. / Prepared for: Dept. of Maternal Child Nursing. Title from title-page of electronic thesis. Bibliography: leaves 120-159.