In-depth interviews were conducted with ten Black male administrators. The interviewing process used a phenomenological approach which focused on the meaning that Black male administrators at predominantly White four-year institutions of higher education make of their work experiences. The meaning made by the participants is based on their personal interpretations and evaluations of their experiences. The in-depth phenomenological interview procedure utilized three ninety-minute interviews with each of the participants. The first interview asked the participant to reconstruct significant experiences in his life that led him to his current position. In the second interview participants reconstruct aspects of their current experiences in order to give the researcher a better understanding of the participants' work. The third interview is a culmination of the previous interviews where now participants reflect and make meaning of their work. The interviews were audio tape-recorded and later transcribed verbatim in order to maintain accuracy. To do justice to the data the researcher presents the material in two ways: first, as summarized narratives of the participants' experiences at predominantly White four-year institutions of higher education and their work experiences in their own words; and second, as a narrative outlining important themes that connect these individuals experiences to the body of literature presented in this study. Themes are analyzed by comparing the profiles (Appendices A-J) of senior administrators, junior administrators, as well as administrators who have institutional responsibilities versus those who have minority-focussed responsibilities. The common themes that emerged from the data are grouped under eight different headings: Work Environment, Work Experiences, Relationships with Whites, Relationships with Blacks, Mentoring/Support Networks, Being Black, Job Performance, and Issues of Diversity. These headings serve as an organizing framework for discussing institutional implications. The data as well suggests areas of consideration for Black male administrators at predominantly White institutions of higher education.

Library history provides a biographical account of libraries, which includes information concerning the establishment, benefactors, significant collections, services rendered, outstanding achievements, and other points of interest. However, records of library service to African Americans in the South prior to 1900 are rare or non-existent. Not until the early 20th century did the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program begin to offer library service to the black and white residents in the rural South. Through the analysis of archival documents, this dissertation explores the impact of the library program on Southern libraries and the role of the library in the life of the African-American user. In its attempt to educate the reader about the early African-American struggle for library access, this study highlights the lack of emphasis on library history research in the field of Library and Information Science (LIS) and its risk of losing a valuable sub-discipline. In addition, the field potentially forfeits invaluable insight and understanding of library service to African Americans in the 20th century. This could jeopardize future planning for adequate service to underrepresented populations. Using archival analysis, the study utilizes preset categories to investigate library practices of Rosenwald-funded libraries with anticipation for unanticipated concepts to emerge. This exploratory, archival analysis unveils the variety of approaches and practices the Julius Rosenwald Fund Library Program incorporated to improve library service not only to African-Americans users, but to the entire American South. / A Dissertation submitted to the School of Information in partial fulfillment of the Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester, 2015. / April 3, 2015. / Includes bibliographical references. / Paul Marty, Professor Directing Dissertation; Suzanne Sinke, University Representative; Kathy Burnett, Committee Member; Gary Burnett, Committee Member.

The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between early familial racial/ethnic socialization and the self-efficacy and academic achievement of African American children during the elementary years, and across the transition to middle school. In particular, the mediatory effects of self-efficacy were examined longitudinally. The Early Childhood Longitudinal Study Kindergarten class of 1998 - 1999 (ECLS-K) was used to examine the impact of kindergarteners' at-home exposure to racial/ethnic socialization on levels of school-related self-efficacy and academic achievement of the same children in fifth and eighth grades. African American students (N = 3224) from this nationally representative dataset were a part of this study. Albert Bandura's Social Cognitive Theory (also referred to as the Social Learning Theory) with particular focus on his conceptualization of Self-Efficacy, was used as a guiding framework for this study. Analyses were conducted using Structural Equation Modeling (SEM). Results showed that there was a significant and positive relationship between early childhood racial/ethnic socialization and the later academic achievement of pre-adolescent and adolescent African American school children in both fifth and eighth grades. However, the results also indicated that that self-efficacy had only minimal and insignificant mediating effects on the relationship between racial/ethnic socialization and academic achievement. The implications from these findings include impetus for marriage and family therapists and other practitioners and educators to include more family-centered and ethnically/racially relevant strategies and interventions to support families faced with school-based difficulties. Additional implications for therapists, educators, and researchers, were discussed. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of Family and Child Sciences in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Fall Semester, 2014. / October 22, 2014. / Academic Achievement, African American, Ethnic Socialization, Racial Socialization, Self-Efficacy / Includes bibliographical references. / Lenore McWey, Professor Directing Dissertation; Ming Cui, Committee Member; Wayne Denton, Committee Member.

My dissertation argues that Spain was as important to the development of African American literary consciousness as more studied locales such as Paris, Harlem, or Chicago. I argue that a literary idea of Spain gave African American writers a conceptual space for thinking about race in the past and the future, and for considering the intersections between race and religion. Drawing on the work of Arthur Schomburg, Langston Hughes, Dorothy Peterson, and Richard Wright, I contend that mid-twentieth century African American writers adapted a broader trend of Anglophone historiography that viewed Spain as a quintessentially “medieval” country (feudal, agrarian, and Catholic), set in opposition to the essentially “modern” United States (democratic, industrial, and Protestant). This historiography appropriated Spanish history to position Spain as the physical site of the pre-modern history of the United States, creating what I call “geographic temporality,” where a physical space is associated with a specific time period.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze twelve contemporary fiction books dealing with Negro-white relationships and to draw tentative conclusions as to their influence for better understanding between the white Southerner and the Negro. The danger of unchecked prejudice and discrimination cannot be minimized or ignored in the South today. On the contrary there is a desperate urgency, a frantic need for abatement of the seemingly headlong plunge toward the chasm created by the 1954 and 1955 Supreme Court decisions in the public school segregation cases. / Typescript. / "August, 1956." / "Submitted to the Graduate Council of Florida State University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science." / Advisor: Dwight L. Burton, Professor Directing Paper. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 46-48).

This thesis explores the politics of Black Power leader H. Rap Brown through a genealogical materialist lens. I argue that by addressing class and race as inextricably-bound systems of oppression, Brown synthesized competing ideological strains, the existence of which had long divided black radicals. His anti-capitalist, anti-racist vision located the key ingredients of revolutionary ideology in the experiential knowledge of dispossessed people (of whom he considered black Americans to be the vanguard). As chairman of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee, he honed his analysis in a heated political environment characterized by factionalism, violence, paranoia, and state repression. Such factors are taken into account as I seek to contextualize and historicize Brown’s views. / A Thesis submitted to the Department of History in partial fulfillment of the Master of Arts. / Fall Semester 2016. / October 3, 2016. / Black Marxism, Black Power, H. Rap Brown, Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin, Nonviolent Action Group, Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee / Includes bibliographical references. / Maxine D. Jones, Professor Directing Thesis; Katherine C. Mooney, Committee Member; Robinson Herrera, Committee Member.

A growing impulse in American black female fiction is the reclamation of black female sexuality due to slavery's proliferation of sexual stereotypes about black women. Because of slave law's silencing of rape culture, issues of consent, will, and agency become problematized in a larger dilemma surrounding black humanity and the repression of black female sexuality. Since the enslaved female was always assumed to be willing, because she is legally unable to give consent or resist, locating black female desire within the confines of slavery becomes largely impossible. Yet, contemporary re-imaginings of desire in this context becomes an important point of departure for re-membering contemporary black female subjectivity. "What's Love Got to Do With It?" is an alternative look at master-slave relationships, particularly those between white men and black women, featured in contemporary slave narratives by black women writers. Although black feminist critics have long considered love an unavailable, if not, unthinkable construct within the context of interracial relationships during slavery, this project locates this unexpected emotion within four neo-slave narratives. Finding moments of love and desire from, both, slaveholders and slaves, this study nuances monolithic historical players we are usually quick to adjudicate. Drawing on black feminist criticism, history, and critical race theory, this study outlines the importance of exhuming these historic relationships from silence, acknowledging the legacies they left for heterosexual love and race relations, and exploring what lessons we can take away from them today. Recognizing the ongoing tension between remembering and forgetting and the inherent value in both, this study bridges the gap by delineating the importance of perspective and the stories we choose to tell. Rather than being forever haunted by traumatic memories of the past and proliferating stories of violence and abuse, Barbara Chase-Riboud, Octavia Butler, Gayle Jones, and Gloria Naylor's novels reveal that there are ways to negotiate the past, use what you need, and come to a more holistic place where love is available. / A Dissertation submitted to the Department of English in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy. / Spring Semester 2017. / March 10, 2017. / Includes bibliographical references. / Maxine L. Montgomery, Professor Directing Dissertation; Maxine Jones, University Representative; Dennis Moore, Committee Member; Susan Candace Ward, Committee Member.

This project examined the extent to which psychosocial or personal variables moderated the relationship between exposure to violence and use of violence in adolescents. The relationship between exposure to violence and use of violence was examined within a sample of adolescents, ages 13 -18. The major goals of this study were to examine some possible correlates of violence use and to determine the extent to which certain personal variables (i.e., locus of control, social skills, feelings of despair, and certainty of being alive at age 25) operate as protective or vulnerability factors for those adolescents at risk for violence. The conceptualization of this study was based on the framework of the compensatory and protective vs. vulnerability models. As hypothesized, a strong relationship between exposure to community violence and use of violence was found in this study. In addition, level of despair was also correlated with use of violence. No relationship was found between use of violence and the following variables: exposure to domestic violence, certainty of being alive at age 25, social skills, or locus of control. Further, none of the psychosocial variables tested in this study were found to moderate the relationship between use of violence and exposure to domestic and community violence combined. However, when exposure to community and domestic violence were analyzed separately, two interaction effects were found. Social skills did appear to have a slight moderating effect on the relationship between exposure to domestic violence and use of violence. Also, certainty of being alive at age 25 was found to interact with exposure to community violence to influence use of violence. Specifically, the belief that one would not live to be age 25 operated as a vulnerability mechanism. The findings of this study best supported the compensatory model as one conceptualization of use of violence. / Master of Science

The relationship between racial identity attitudes derived from Crossis (1978) theory of Racial Identity Development, the cognitive correlates of social anxiety, and indices of psychological functioning were explored. Subjects were 101 African American college students. Preencounter, Encounter and Immersion attitudes were all positively related to increased personal distress as indicated by positive relations to fear of negative evaluation, social avoidance and distress, and negative relation to indices of healthy psychological functioning. Internalization attitudes were indicative of healthy psychological functioning as indicated by negative relations to measures of social anxiety and positive relations to indices of healthy psychological functioning. Implications for future research and service delivery to African American populations are discussed. / Master of Science

Individuals who experience bipolar disorder may have difficulty acquiring and maintaining relationships due to the stigma associated with mental illness. The purpose of this generic qualitative study was to examine the attitudes and perceptions of African American men and women regarding their experiences of dating and relationships with individuals who suffer from bipolar disorder. The theory used in this study was equity theory. The research question for this study explored how African American adults experience relationship acquisition and maintenance with a partner who has been diagnosed with bipolar disorder. For this generic qualitative study, there were 12 respondents. Participants were African American adults who had dated or been in a relationship with an individual diagnosed with bipolar disorder. Themes that emerged from this study were sense of relief, sense of fear, unmodified affection, benefits of the relationship, resolution of unfair situations, reluctance to participate in a relationship with an individual diagnosed with bipolar disorder again, and race intensified the relationship. The participants associated acquisition, or the early stages of the relationship, with challenges, especially if they were unaware of the diagnosis in the beginning and could not explain certain behaviors. The results of this study can be used to promote understanding about bipolar disorder and the impact of mental illness on relationships.