This dissertation argues the South’s system of Jim Crow segregation, exploitation, disfranchisement, and violence was both embedded in and evolved through the successive reorganizations of the region’s forests. In turn, it tells a three-hundred-year history of black resistance and resilience in the forests of the Deep South. In the longleaf pine and bottomland hardwood forests along the Gulf of Mexico, water proved just as important as soil in determining the contours of the colonial and antebellum plantation regimes. This project follows the water to show how African Americans drew on deep environmental knowledge to form maroon communities in the colonial era, create a free, politically engaged Afro-Creole culture in the antebellum period, and build successful farming communities after Emancipation. From New Orleans to Mobile, African Americans deployed skills in shipbuilding, sailing, agriculture, and cattle herding to engage in trade that brought them to ports like Havana and Tampico. These economic relationships created enduring patterns of black land ownership on the coast. The deep history of African American autonomy along the forests of the Louisiana and Mississippi Gulf Coast – an area I define as the Piney Woods Littoral – makes the region an opportune space in which to analyze the ways in which environmental relationships inflected the economic, legal, and political history Jim Crow. While this study shows how white supremacy hastened the collapse of the Deep South’s forests just as reforestation perpetuated Jim Crow, it also broadens our understanding of the connections between human domination and environmental change. Some of the most important battles over race and the rights of citizenship in the South, from the 1875 and 1890 Mississippi Plans to Plessy v. Ferguson (1896), were part of broader contests over land and access to resources between white and black farmers, planters, and industrialists. Twentieth century efforts to transform Gulf Coast politics and modernize its economy helped break the environmental connections that had long supported African American self-determination. In turn, they inscribed patterns of inequality on the landscape that persisted well beyond the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

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The purpose of this study was to determine if there were any differences in stress levels for African-Americans working in technical and non-technical based occupations. In order to adequately address the differences in stress levels for African-Americans, this study examined the data from an existing study called the Jackson Heart Study. Based on the weekly stress of individuals when performing their occupations, information and data were collected from 3 questionnaires that were correlated with stress and occupations of African-Americans in Mississippi. These questionnaires were the Household Enumeration Form, Personal Data and Socioeconomic Form, and the Stress Form. The research design for this study was descriptive and correlational. The study was made-up of 4451 participants (3371 females and 1935 males). The average age of the participants was 55 for females and 54 for males. 57% of the participants in this study indicated that their occupation was not stressful. After the data were collected and analyzed, this study found that there was a significant relationship between occupation traits and stress levels for African-Americans working in Mississippi. This study also found that there was a statistical relationship between stress on the job and technical occupations, which suggests higher stress was found in technical based occupations. In addition, this study found that females had a 40% higher odds of stress while working in technical occupations and men. Also, this research study found that older people had lower odds of stress on the job than younger people. Overall, Jackson Heart Study participants who identified as working in technical occupations were more stressed than participants in non-technical occupations. Based on the results of this study, it was recommended for future studies to use a broader national population of Caucasian, Asia Americans, and African-Americans in the North, East, and West that were made up of diverse occupations and backgrounds to examine if there was any difference in stress levels. Also, it was also recommended that future studies use a more in-depth investigation of health issues of employees caused by the job.

Children learn about their world through books used in the classroom. Research about the portrayal of African Americans in children?s picture books is essential because picture books introduce some children to African American culture, and all children need to see characters like themselves in books. Since previous studies analyzed the characterizations of African Americans in children?s picture books from 1900 through 1995, the significance and purpose of this study were to add to the literature by examining children?s picture books from 1996 through 2005. The research questions were: (a)How are African Americans portrayed in the written texts of African American children?s picture books awarded the Coretta Scott King Award or distinguished as Caldecott Medal honor books or Coretta Scott King honor books from 1996 through 2005? (b)How are African Americans portrayed in the illustrations of African American children?s picture books awarded the Coretta Scott King Award or distinguished as Caldecott Medal honor books or Coretta Scott King honor books from 1996 through 2005? To be included in the sample of books, (a) each book had to be an African American children?s picture book, (b) all characters or the protagonist had to be African American, and (c) each book had to be an award-winning book, which had been awarded the distinguished Coretta Scott King Author or Illustrator Award or noted as Caldecott Medal or Coretta Scott King Award honor books during the years 1996 through 2005. The sample consisted of 28 books. The instrumentation consisted of nine evaluation criteria which were used as categories. The data yielded documentation used to conclude that African Americans were portrayed positively in most of the African American children?s picture books employed in the study that were awarded the Coretta Scott King Award or distinguished as Caldecott Medal or Coretta Scott King honor books from 1996 through 2005.

The purpose of this study is to identify the factors that most influence African Americans to enroll in agricultural science programs at 1890 and 1862 Land Grant universities. This study used a quantitative approach in researching the problem of identifying the factors that led minorities to enroll in agricultural science programs at 1862 and 1890 land-grant institutions. A survey instrument was designed which collected the factors, demographics, and attitudes that influenced minority enrollment in agricultural sciences at 1890 and 1862 universities. The setting for the data collection in this study is 1890 and 1862 land grant universities in the southern states of Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and Florida. These states were chosen because their close proximity to Mississippi State University and their willingness to participate in this study. The population in this study consists of African American undergraduate students at 1890 and 1862 Land Grant universities. The students were selected from colleges within the university where the agriculture component is taught. The findings were based on the data collected from the 172 undergraduate African American students enrolled in agriculture majors at 1890 and 1862 land grant universities.

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