Doctor of Education / Department of Educational Leadership / Gerald D. Bailey / The role and function of museums in education has been debated along several lines of inquiry. For the majority of museum institutions, the most vital, consistent audience they have comes from the public and private schools in their communities. This is critical for museums trying to maintain relevancy in the national education climate that has increased emphasis on curriculum and testing standards. Founded in 1990, the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) in Kansas City, Missouri has preserved and taught African American baseball history from the late 1800s through the 1960s. Although the museum had received positive commentary from visitors, and well received attention from the international press, it had not undergone any major changes to its design since it opened its permanent facility in 1997. Of chief concern to the museum was its ability to attract school age learners with their teachers to the institution. The museum had a number of layers by which it presented historical information and each layer needed some level of evaluation. There were a number of informative examples of museum evaluation and assessment available for review, but no tool or model existed specifically designed to assist museums in evaluating exhibition content for educational value. This study reports on methods by which the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum (NLBM) could improve and enhance exhibitions. It explored the current trends and scholarship involving museums and education, museum exhibition evaluation, and Negro Leagues historical scholarship. A multi-step research processed evolved for use in the study, featuring detailed literature reviews and interviews from educators, historians, museum professionals, and a grant awarding foundation expert. This study targets museum professionals responsible for interpretation and creation of exhibitions, including curatorial staff and museum educators. The study also informs other museum leaders regarding the process by which high quality educational material is created for the museum environment. A set of important themes and evaluation questions were formed as a result of the interviews and literature review. The study offered critical thinking questions for the evaluation process and suggests recommendations for implementation. The study also implies action plan strategies for implementation of an evaluation process.

Doctor of Philosophy / Department of History / Mark P. Parillo / ABSTRACT Historians of the integration of the American military and African American military participation have argued that the post-World War II period was the critical period for the integration of the U.S. Navy. This dissertation argues that World War II was “the” critical period for the integration of the Navy because, in addition to forcing the Navy to change its racial policy, the war altered the Navy’s attitudes towards its African American personnel. African Americans have a long history in the U.S. Navy. In the period between the French and Indian War and the Civil War, African Americans served in the Navy because whites would not. This is especially true of the peacetime service, where conditions, pay, and discipline dissuaded most whites from enlisting. During the Civil War, a substantial number of escaped slaves and other African Americans served. Reliance on racially integrated crews survived beyond the Civil War and the abolition of slavery, only to succumb to the principle of “separate but equal,” validated by the Supreme Court in the Plessy case (1896). As racial segregation took hold and the era of “Jim Crow” began, the Navy separated the races, a task completed by the time America entered World War I. The Navy paid the price in lost efficiency to maintain the policy. After the war, the Navy chose to accept African Americans solely for duty as messmen and stewards. Matters changed in World War II. The Navy eventually lifted its restrictions on African American enlistment and promotions, commissioned its first African American officers, and finally committed itself to a program of integration. The increased interaction between whites and African Americans had also led to white officers and policymakers re-assessing the value of African American sailors, a crucial sine qua non for the actualization of integration in the postwar years.