This study of the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) investigates the operations of the national office and examines its interactions with local branches, particularly in St. Louis. As the organization's president, A. Philip Randolph and members of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) such as Benjamin McLaurin and T.D. McNeal are important figures in this story. African American women such as Layle Lane, E. Pauline Myers, and Anna Arnold Hedgeman ran MOWM's national office. Of particular importance to this study is Myers' tenure as executive secretary. Working out of Harlem, she corresponded with MOWM's twenty-six local chapters, spending considerable time espousing the rationale and ideology of Non-Violent Goodwill Direct Action, a trademark protest technique developed and implemented alongside Fellowship of Reconciliation members Bayard Rustin and James Farmer. As a nationally recognized African American protest organization fighting for a "Double V" against fascism and racism during the Second World War, MOWM accrued political capital by the agitation of its local affiliates. In some cases, like in Washington, D.C., volunteers lacked the ability to forge effective protests. In St. Louis, however, BSCP official T.D. McNeal led a MOWM branch that was among the nation's most active. David Grant, Thelma Maddox, Nita Blackwell, and Leyton Weston are some of the thousands joining McNeal over a three-year period to picket U.S. Cartridge and Carter Carburetor for violating the anti-discrimination clause in Executive Order 8802, lobby Southwestern Bell Telephone to expand employment opportunities for African Americans, stage a summer of sit-ins at lunch counters in the city's largest department stores, and lead a general push for a "Double V" against fascism and racism. This study of MOWM demonstrates that the structural dynamics of protest groups often include a discrepancy between policies laid out by the organization's national office and the activity of its local branches. While national officials from MOWM and National Organization for the Advancement of Colored People had an ambivalent relationship with each other, inter-organizational tension was locally muted as grassroots activists aligned themselves with whichever group appeared most effective. During the Second World War, this was often MOWM.

This dissertation investigates the role of company executives‘ racial ideology in the relegation of black workers to inferior, lower paying jobs in the Pullman Railroad Company (1858-1969). I argue that it is important to recognize that employers, like white workers, were not driven simply by material interest; rather their actions were often guided by their ideologies and deep seated beliefs and prejudices. My argument that employers‘ racial ideology was a causal factor in black workers‘ marginalization is developed through a historical analysis of the Pullman Railroad Company archives.

Promising Black males are an understudied and underserved population in the field of higher education. The purpose of this study was to understand how promising Black males define academic success and to identify the factors that affect academic success at a large predominately White public institution of higher education located in the Northeast. The participants in this study are nine self-identified Black males who were not eligible to enter the Honors College upon admittance into the University, but were recruited to enroll in the Honors College following the completion of their freshmen year or were students that successfully enrolled into the Honors College after transferring from another college. The study implemented an inductive grounded theory methodology with interview data and data from an Academic and Personal Profile Assessment Form. The data were then transcribed and analyzed for major themes. The primary research questions that guided this study were: (1) How do Black male promising scholars define academic success? (2) What factors affect their academic success at a predominately White institution of higher education? The study found that participants define academic success by their grades, learning for the sake of learning, and the ability to transfer what they learn in the classroom into practical everyday life applications. Parents, mentors, peers, and community and professional oriented goals served as the primary influences in defining success for this population of students. The study also found that (1) Black males attributed a number of personal qualities possessed and study strategies incorporated for their academic success; (2) being Black was a salient social-identity; (3) there were several commonalities and distinctions among disaggregated Black ethnic-groups; (4) debunking stereotypes about Black males, high parental expectations to attend college, the hope of transforming negative situations into positive outcomes, and community-oriented responsibilities served as primary motivators for academic success; and (5) group-specific academic support programs were a significant contribution to the academic success for this group of students. Results from this study may be useful for practitioners, administrators, and faculty members within higher education institutions who are seeking to enhance the academic experiences of this population of students.

This dissertation considers the role biography can play in analyses of past landscapes and, conversely, how those landscapes can help us better understand the lives of individuals. It focuses on one person, David Ruggles—a blind, African American, journalist, doctor, businessman, and antislavery activist—and a specific landscape, that of western Massachusetts during the mid-19th century. The questions that guide this dissertation concern the extent to which understanding past landscapes can reveal the previously unconsidered dimensions of the lives of people who experienced them. The landscape is considered through multiple scales in this dissertation. It draws on historical research as well as the modern-day Florence, Massachusetts landscape to reveal how Ruggles' experience was mediated by his race, physical ability, and social position. It also incorporates ethnographic data obtained from questionnaires and in-depth interviews to interrogate the role knowledge of local history plays in contemporary life. This research makes important methodological contributions to the field of historical archaeology. First, it demonstrates the utility of a biographical approach to analyses of the landscape and the past. Second, it highlights a dimension of the human past that is often overlooked in historical archaeology: the lives of people with disabilities. Third, in considering the life of a blind man, it recognizes that the landscape is experienced multi-sensorily and, furthermore, that the experience of walking through the landscape implicates one in a multitude of socio-historical processes that alter the landscape and influence the circumstances in which people interact. Finally, the ethnographic data reveal how knowledge about historical landscapes and the people who inhabited them come to be combined with contemporary experiences and interests to create new meanings and understandings.

This dissertation discusses some issues related to the verb system in African American English. The meaning associated with aspectual markers is investigated, and the representations of the meaning are given in a semantic framework. The properties of finite auxiliaries and aspectual markers are discussed in the context of the principles and parameters approach of verb raising in Pollock (1990). Chapter 2 distinguishes finite auxiliaries and aspectual markers by describing their functions in question formation, negation, and VP deletion. Chapters 3 through 5 focus on the semantics of aspectual markers, showing how interpretations of habitual, remote past, and completive constructions are represented. Aspectual be constructions are analyzed as referring to generalizations with respect to eventualities which occur or hold on particular occasions. BIN is analyzed as situating the initiation or completion of an eventuality in the remote past. The completive (done) is analyzed in the underlying events framework of Parsons (1990) and compared to the perfect in Standard American English. The semantic analysis shows how these aspectual markers differ in meaning from those in Standard American English, even though they are identical in form. Chapter 6 investigates the restrictions on aspectual marker raising. The behavior of these markers is compared to that of finite auxiliaries, which are analyzed as being base generated along with aspectual markers and retained and deleted under certain conditions. Auxiliary and aspectual marker sequences are investigated in wh- and indirect questions as a means of identifying the conditions under which the auxiliaries are retained and as a means of showing further that aspectual markers are confined to their base generated positions in surface structure. Chapter 7 discusses the BIN + modal construction and the quantificational negative NP + negative auxiliary construction and raises some questions which should be addressed in future studies in African American English.

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is a deadly and costly cancer, especially among African Americans. The purpose of this quantitative, retrospective, cross-sectional study was to examine African Americans' health behaviors that may have an association with CRC. The Health Belief Model was used to guide this study. The study addressed whether there is a statistical association between fruit intake, vegetable intake, and physical activity, and the occurrence of CRC while controlling for confounders, such as body mass index, smoking status, and income level. After conducting an overall analysis, the final research question examined if the association varied by race. In this study, data from 14,451 people in the Health Information National Trends Survey database were analyzed using binary logistic regression analysis. There was no association between the intake of fruits and vegetables and the occurrence of CRC in this population. Physical activity had a statistically significant association with CRC, with physical activity being protective against the occurrence of CRC among the whole sample population (adjusted OR = .671, 95% CI = [.458-983], p = .040). When stratified by race the association between Physical activity and CRC was only significant among Whites. The findings of this study have positive social change implications for practitioners designing CRC prevention programs, who should focus on increasing physical activity levels yielding healthier living in general. Future research should focus on addressing other possible risk factors in the African American population including genetic predispositions and gene-environment interactions.

No description available.

In 1904, a wealthy black lawyer described Boston as “the paradise of the Negro”. With the state legislature having enacted and reinforced civil rights laws several times after the Civil War, African Americans in Massachusetts (over a third of whom lived in Boston in 1900) could enjoy the same political, civil, and social rights as whites by the turn of the twentieth century. Nevertheless, the economic conditions of most black Bay Staters did not change much. They were confined as ever to menial jobs, and, unlike European immigrants, had little possibility for upward mobility. As one black porter in Boston said, blacks “are given…the work that white folks don't want”. Owing to the civil rights acts, they could “go most anywhere with the white man…and spend [their] dollar”, but they could not “go anywhere with the white man and earn it”. This study attempts to elucidate how African-American leaders in post-bellum Boston defined racial “equality”. It examines class-consciousness of black “elites” and points out their tendency to distance themselves from the masses. Having sincere faith in the doctrine of equal opportunity and laissez-faire, “elite” black Bostonians believed that the “fittest”, regardless of color, should survive in the world of competition. And in the process of uplifting themselves and identifying with the white elite and its values, these college-educated, light-skinned “aristocrats of color” came to view the lower classes of their own race as different and inferior. Proud of acquiring their present status by themselves, they only advocated equality before the law and did almost nothing else but urge the masses to work hard enough to uplift themselves just like they had done, dismissing those who could not as either idle or without ambition. The dissertation concludes that although intended as a weapon against racism color-blind meritocracy advocated by the black “elites” turned into an ideology for the status-quo. By demanding equal opportunity alone in an overtly discriminatory society, “elite” leaders not only failed to ease but in fact unwittingly fostered the ever-increasing oppression against African Americans in Boston after the Civil War.

No description available.

In the United States, African American fathers are incarcerated at a disproportionate rate and have a poor prognosis of success. Although researchers have considered how crime, paternal abuse, poverty, and social disparities have affected African Americans, they have not adequately studied how formerly incarcerated African American fathers experience parenting. The purpose of this qualitative transcendental phenomenological study was to bridge this gap in knowledge by exploring the parenting experiences of formerly incarcerated African American fathers on parole. The research question focused on the parenting experiences of African American fathers obligated to mandatory supervision following an incarceration. A criterion-based sample of 9 African American fathers from the Midwestern region of the United States completed 2 in-depth interviews. Interviews were analyzed using phenomenological techniques, resulting in 9 central themes focused on social objectification, survival, change, the agency of fatherhood, and parent-child relations. Despite difficulties and challenges, the quality of the fathers' lives hinged on the quality of their relationship with their children. The findings and recommendations from this study may advance positive social change by stimulating and guiding the efforts of human service practitioners working to develop culturally relevant interventions, and raising the awareness of advocates working to influence legislators toward comprehensive policy reform. The application of this study's findings may provoke community members to strengthen their support for African American fathers returning to the community following incarceration.