Thesis advisor: Dennis L. Shirley / This research study is a historical analysis of Boston school desegregation viewed through the lens of Black Bostonians who gave rise to a Black Education Movement. Its purpose is to place Boston’s school desegregation history in a markedly different context than many of the narratives that evolved since Morgan v. Hennigan (1974). First, it provides a historical connection between the 18th and 19th century long road to equal schooling and the 20th century equal educational opportunity movement, both led by Black activists who lived in Boston. Second, it provides a public space for the voices of 20th century activists to tell their accounts of schooling in Boston. The narrators in this study attended Boston public schools and became leaders and foot soldiers in the struggle to dismantle a racially segregated school system. Ten case studies of Boston’s Black activists provide the foundation for this study. They recount, through oral history, a community movement whose goal was to save children attending majority Black schools from a system that was destroying them. Two theoretical perspectives, Critical Race Theory and Resiliency, inform the research design and findings. The findings shed light on agency from within the Black community, what changes were expected in the schools, the range of views regarding the intent of desegregation, and how systemic racism was the force that drove this community to dismantle a system that violated the 14th Amendment rights of Black students. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2017. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Teacher Education, Special Education, Curriculum and Instruction.

In Is Spirituality an Intelligence? Motivation, Cognition, and the concern of Psychology of Ultimate Concern, Robert Emmons develops a case for spirituality as a form of intelligence. His thesis claims that spiritual intelligence is a “set of capacities and abilities that enable people to solve problems and attain goals in their everyday lives”: “the capacity for transcendence; the ability to enter into heightened spiritual states of consciousness; the ability to invest everyday activities, events, and relationships with a sense of the sacred; the ability to utilize spiritual resources to solve problems in living; and the capacity to engage in virtuous behavior. I use spiritual intelligence and these frameworks throughout to address these common themes within the Black community beginning in the Second Great Awakening. I use these five components to illuminate the rise of the revolutionary streams of Spiritual Intelligence within unique works of two Black activists: David Walker and Maria Stewart. I then contextualize these developments in the experiences of my family and my own experiences as a Black activist. I argue for the recognition of religious thinking and illustrate the structural embodiment of this form of spiritual intelligence through multiple generations of Black Activism. I argue that Spiritual Intelligence is one way this particular community fights adversity in greater America society. In valuing religion through understanding these actions of resistance black activism is realized in the larger epistemic landscape. Particularly arguing against the secularization of resistance and activism.