<p> The thesis explores the ways in which residents of West Feliciana Parish, Louisiana experienced and altered race and class boundaries during the process of emancipation. Planters, laborers, and yeoman farmers all viewed emancipation as a jarring series of events and wondered how they would impact prevailing definitions of labor and property that were heavily influenced by slavery. These changes, eagerly anticipated and otherwise, shaped the experience of freedom and established its parameters, both for former slaves and their masters. Using the records of the Freedmen's Bureau and local planters, this paper focuses on three common responses to emancipation in West Feliciana: <i> flight, alliance,</i> and <i>violence,</i> suggesting ways in which those responses complicate traditional views of Reconstruction. </p>

<p> From 1880-1920 the United States struggled to incorporate former slaves into the citizenship of the nation. Constitutional amendments legislated freedom for African Americans, but custom dictated otherwise. White people equated power and wealth with whiteness. Conversely, blackness suggested poverty and lack of opportunity. Straddling the Color Line is a multi-city examination of influential and prominent African Americans who lived with one foot in each world, black and white, but who in reality belonged to neither. These influential men lived lives that mirrored Victorian white gentlemen. In many cases they enjoyed all the same privileges as their white counterparts. At other times they were forced into uncomfortable alliances with less affluent African Americans who looked to them for support, protection and guidance, but with whom they had no commonalities except perhaps the color of their skin. </p><p> This dissertation argues two main points. One is that members of the black elite had far more social and political power than previously understood. Some members of the black elite did not depend on white patronage or paternalism to achieve success. Some influential white men developed symbiotic relationships across the color line with these elite African American men and they treated each other with mutual affection and respect. </p><p> The second point is that the nadir in race relations occurred at different times in different cities. In the three cities studied, the nadir appeared first in Charleston, then New Orleans and finally in Cleveland. Although there were setbacks in progress toward equality, many blacks initially saw the setbacks as temporary regressions. Most members of the elite were unwilling to concede that racism was endemic before the onset of the Twentieth Century. In Cleveland, the appearance of significant racial oppression was not evident until after the World War I and resulted from the Great Migration. Immigrants from the Deep South migrated to the North seeking opportunity and freedom. They discovered that in recreating the communities of their homeland, they also created conditions that allowed racism to flourish. </p>

This thesis interrogates how Lawrence Hill’s The Book of Negroes represents histories of violence ethically by utilizing Emmanuel Lévinas’s philosophy of ethics as a methodology for interpretation. Traditional slave narratives like Olaudah Equiano’s autobiography and postmodern neo-slave narratives like Toni Morrison’s Beloved animate the violence endemic to slavery and colonialism in an effort to emphasize struggles in conscience, the incomprehensible atrocities, and strategies of rebellion. However, this project illustrates how The Book of Negroes supplements these literary goals with Hill’s own imagination of how slaves contested the inhumanities thrust upon them. Through his aesthetic choices as a realist, Hill foregrounds the possibilities of pacifism, singular identities, and altruistic agency through his protagonist Aminata Diallo. These three narrative elements constitute Lévinas’s ethical peace, which means displaying a profound sensitivity towards the historical Other whom imperial discourses and traditional representations of catastrophes in Black history might obscure. / Graduate / 0325 / 0328 / 0352 / jaslife12@hotmail.com

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 2945. Adviser: Peter A. Davis. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 247-263) Available on microfilm from Pro Quest Information and Learning.

The proposed work is grounded in research from two areas: (a) stress-resistant or resilient youth, and (b) victimology. These literatures have been combined to address the issue of resilience in Black college students, given their ethnic heritage of oppression. This cultural heritage is thought to produce assumptive world beliefs in Blacks similar to those of persons who have experienced individual incidents of victimization. Blacks as a group view the world as less benevolent than do Whites and report less felt control than do Whites over the distribution of good and bad events. The question arises then of characteristics of the individual or environment that allow a subset of young Blacks to maintain a high self-esteem and personal efficacy, particularly in the face of mainstream culture which continues to devalue Black status? The present research will attempt to explore Afrocentrism, presence of a close/confiding relationship, attributional style and family environ as variables which contribute to resilience in Black college students. Participants in the study will be Black undergraduate students. More versus less resilient subjects will be discerned on the basis of grade point average, leisure activities, social relationships, self-esteem and personal efficacy. Paper and pencil questionnaires will be utilized by this investigator in several group administrations. A group aggregate analysis will be used to report the results. It is predicted that Black students characterized as more resilient will manifest a more integrated personal (high self-esteem) and group (high racial esteem) identity, be more likely to have a close/confiding relationship with a significant adult figure, and have a more well defined sense of their own efficacy, than will Black students characterized as less resilient.

In nineteenth-century New England, Sarah Remond was one of many who distinguished themselves as ardent supporters of freedom and justice as members of the abolitionist movement. Although her name is less familiar, her contributions were most significant. This dissertation examines the role Sarah Remond played in the abolitionist movement. One of a few African-American female lecturers, she made her greatest contributions to the cause in the British Isles. Going beyond moral issues of slavery and immediate emancipation, Remond was also aware of the larger problems affecting all people of color in the United States; problems of prejudice and discrimination. This work examines the circumstances in Sarah Remond's life that contributed to her views and influenced her actions. It provides evidence of the impact of prejudice and discrimination on Remond's decisions. Additionally, it chronicles the Salem, Massachusetts, community and her family's influence there. The Remond family was a cohesive unit, bound by a spirit of enterprise and a strong sense of the rights of individuals which was kept alive for three generations. The family also embraced a strong activist tradition that reached beyond the confines of their immediate surroundings. Remond accepted an invitation to lecture in the British Isles in the late 1850s. Her arrival there came at a time when English interest in American slavery had waned. However, Sarah Remond's oratorical skills drew attention. Her use of feminist/familial arguments garnered support from British women. Remond's impact on the British abolitionist movement, and the contacts she made while residing there, are also studied. There were others who added their voices to the abolitionist cause, some of whom were Remond's models and contemporaries. They are also reviewed here in light of Remond's life circumstances and contributions to abolitionism. This work describes the life of Sarah Remond and her participation in a reform movement directed at abolishing slavery. It reflects on the effects of familial activism and cohesion on the choices she made in life. It chronicles her separation from patriarchal institutions represented in Antebellum American social and family life.

During the first half of the twentieth century, Mordecai Wyatt Johnson was one of the most notable leaders and orators in the African American community. He was best known as the first Black president of Howard University, a post he held from 1926 to 1960. But throughout this public life, he was also a forceful defender of Black civil rights, a vocal critic of colonialism in Africa and Asia, and an opponent of American militarism during the Cold War. This dissertation examines the intersections between Johnson's roles as an educator at a federally-funded Black institution and his political stances on behalf of civil rights, economic justice, and self-determination. In particular, it seeks to determine the extent to which the competing demands from Johnson's various constituencies—White federal officials, Howard University students, faculty and alumni, the larger African American community, and other Black leaders—affected the expression of his political ideas during his tenure as Howard president. Given Johnson's long public career as a Baptist preacher, civil rights activist, orator, and educator, this dissertation will examine a number of important themes, including the role of the Black church in early civil rights movements; the effect of anti-Communism on African American protest; academic freedom in historically-Black colleges and universities; African American perspectives on United States foreign policy; and the impact of White funding on Black institutions of higher education. In this manner, the career of Mordecai Johnson is used to illustrate a number of important themes in the development of Black political movements from the 1910s through the 1960s.

The first chapter of this dissertation is an introduction to the topics of community service-learning and Black women's intellectual history. The author outlines definitions, theoretical frameworks, guiding questions, and methodological approaches in this research. Here, Ms. Evans explains the contribution that Black women's educational philosophies can make to current practices of community service-learning. Chapter Two is a survey of the presence, oppression, contribution, and creative resistance of Black women in United States educational systems between Emancipation in 1865 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965. A comprehensive picture of research on Black women's educational experience in the United States is presented. Ms. Evans argues that Black women's educational experiences offer a rich historical context in which to comprehend the larger social conditions in which contemporary educators are working. In Chapter Three, the author presents four educators whose work provide clear examples of how Black women have theorized and practiced community-based education. The writing of Frances (Fanny) Jackson Coppin (1837–1913), Anna Julia Cooper (1858?–1964), Mary McLeod Bethune (1875–1955), and Septima Poinsette Clark (1898–1987) are presented. Connections are made between these educators' intellectual development and their work for local, national, and international community empowerment. In Chapter Four, the author details the contribution that this work makes to Black women's intellectual history. Ms. Evans analyzes the experiences and thoughts of the four Black women case studies, considers aspects of Black Feminist Thought, and outlines the impact of cultural identity on social experience. Recommendations are made about how to use historical analysis in order to practice community service-learning in a culturally appropriate manner. In Chapter Five, areas of future research are presented, specifically those areas that relate to the ideas of Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. Du Bois, and John Dewey. Lastly, Ms. Evans includes observations about her own experiences as a student and practitioner of community service-learning. In Chapter Six, “A Discussion on Sources,” the author reviews the most popular service-learning literature and surveys African American educational historiography that is relevant to those doing service-learning work.

This dissertation documents a generation of black women who came to politics during the 1940s in New York City. Ada B. Jackson, Pauli Murray, Anna Arnold Hedgeman, Bessie Buchanan, Jeanne Noble and Shirley Chisholm among others, worked, studied and lived in Harlem and Brooklyn. They seized the political opportunities generated by World War II and its aftermath and pursued new ways to redress the entrenched systems of oppression that denied them full rights of citizenship and human dignity. These included not only grassroots activism, but also efforts to gain insider status in the administrative state; the use of the United Nations; and an unprecedented number of campaigns for elected office. Theirs was a new politics and they waged their struggles not just for themselves, but also for their communities and for the broader ideals of equality. When World War II began, grassroots activists operated outside the halls of formal political power. Yet they understood the necessity of engaging the state and frequently endeavored to wrest power from it: the power that made life more bearable, that made the streets safer, that kept the roofs over their heads. These activists and others in women's clubs and civic organizations won favor in their communities and they increasingly pursued formal political positions. As the war drew to a close, a growing number of black women ran for elected office and sought political appointments. However, to attain political posts, they had to overcome the entrenched traditions of Tammany Hall's machine and the gendered and racialized nature of New York City politics. Most were unsuccessful, but by 1954, a few succeed. By the 1960s, black women had made their way into national politics. They were appointed to presidential commissions, the administration and won congressional office. Dorothy Height, Pauli Murray, Jeanne Noble, and Congresswoman and presidential candidate Shirley Chisholm represent the advancements black women made into the state structure. This study illustrates the kinds of political changes women helped bring about, it underscores the boundaries of what was possible vis-à-vis the state, and it traces how race, gender and the structure of the state itself shape outcomes.

During the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, academies and seminaries sprang up throughout America, but these institutions excluded African Americans. Around the same time, mobs began destroying schools for African Americans in various cities and towns in the free states and territories. Aware of this struggle over black education, quite a few African American and white women began to mobilize. This dissertation asks why African American and white women joined the struggle for black education and what they thought, said, and did to advance black education at a time of heightened racial hostility in the antebellum North. Drawing on historical methods and feminist theory, this dissertation shows that women were in the vanguard of black education during the antebellum era. Some of the women studied in this dissertation are Maria Stewart, Sarah Mapps Douglass, Prudence Crandall, Hannah Barker, Laura Haviland, Mary Ann Shadd Cary, Mary Miles Bibb, and Harriet Jacobs. These women educators pursued a range of initiatives, including building primary and secondary schools, establishing voluntary associations, organizing and fundraising, joining the teaching profession, and writing education-themed narratives, to secure educational opportunities for African Americans. Regardless of the particular vehicle for their educational work, some African American and white women educators organized and campaigned to promote equity in American education and to assert the changing status of African Americans in the nation. This study also situates women’s activism within the broader movement to abolish slavery, which allows for an analysis of the various discourses on African American education that circulated in the antebellum era. Following the lead of African Americans, women antislavery activists argued that education could help to overthrow the institution of slavery. Hence some women worked to build and strengthen alliances across race, gender, and class lines in order to realize a more inclusive and democratic nation. By examining women’s activism in the struggle for black education, this dissertation renders a dynamic representation of African American and white women as agents and thinkers in the fight against caste, oppression, and slavery.