Thesis (D. Min.)--Ashland Theological Seminary, 1992. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 212-218).

Between 1784 and I8l6, all four Barbary nations had captured and enslaved Americans. Generally the pirates treated the imprisoned Americans harshly, but the aid the United States forwarded to them alleviated much of their suffering. During this period the prisoner issue played an important role in formulating American foreign policy in the Mediterranean because of America's keen commercial interest in that region and its benevolent attitude toward its own citizens. In return, those captive Americans in North Africa supplied their government with valuable intelligence, and, after liberation, some continued to serve their country in the Mediterranean area.

Bonnie Singleton, wife of United States Air Force helicopter rescue pilot Jerry Singleton, saw her world turned upside down when her husband was shot down while making a rescue in North Vietnam in 1965. At first, the United States government advised her to say very little publicly concerning her husband, and she complied. After the capture of the American spy ship, the U.S.S. Pueblo by North Korea, and the apparent success in freeing the naval prisoners when Mrs. Rose Bucher, the ship captain's wife, spoke out, Mrs. Singleton changed her opinion and embarked upon a campaign to raise public awareness about American prisoners of war held by the Communist forces in Southeast Asia. Mrs. Singleton, along with other Dallas-area family members, formed local grass-roots organizations to notify people around the world about the plight of American POWs. They enlisted the aid of influential congressmen, such as Olin "Tiger" Teague of College Station, Texas; President Richard M. Nixon and his administration; millionaire Dallas businessman Ross Perot; WFAA television in Dallas; and other news media outlets worldwide. In time, Bonnie Singleton, other family members, and the focus groups they helped start encouraged North Vietnam to release the names of prisoners, allow mail and packages to be sent to the POWs, and afford better treatment for prisoners of war.

My dissertation is an ethnographic analysis of a public high school in Southeast Los Angeles County. My research analyzes three issues that make major contributions to issues of race and gender within anthropology. First, my ethnography examines the linkages between the prison and public education systems. Second, I argue that as a means to control the movement of black bodies on campus, the public education system denies black students access to traditional spaces of black cultural autonomy. Third, I address the manner in which the public education system constructs and reinforces a particular type of deviant black masculinity with respect to black male youth. Building upon the school-to-prison pipeline scholarship, my dissertation examines the micro-processes by which public education as a state structure facilitates the movement of black male bodies into the labyrinth of the prison system. However, departing from the body of literature, I detail how the public education structure is an ideological and pragmatic extension of the organizational logic of prison. / text