This dissertation is an analysis of four plays of August Wilson--Ma Rainey's Black Bottom, Fences, Joe Turner's Come and Gone, and The Piano Lesson--that are part of his dramatic documentary of the experience of black Americans in the twentieth century. / Each play is set in a different decade of the twentieth century, and depicts the struggles of blacks to deal with prejudice and discrimination in a white society. This analysis attempts to show how Wilson uses the themes of separation, migration, and reunion to depict the physical and psychological journeys of ex-slaves as they traveled from the plantations of the South in search of new identities as free men and women in the industrial cities of the Northern United States. / Intertwined with these themes are three other important clues to the identities of blacks--their music, the conflict between the Christian tradition and their African roots, and the question of whether or not they should have stayed South instead of migrating North. First, the blues are the emotional muse hovering over all the plays. In Ma Rainey they are an integral part of the subject, and in The Piano Lesson they take on a more symbolic role, but in all the plays they are a vital element of the atmosphere. Next, Wilson investigates the effects of Christianity on the African identity of blacks. Finally, the plays probe the decisions that led to the Great Migration North, asking if it might have been better for blacks to stay South on the farms they knew and understood, rather than go North into the unfamiliar milieu of industrial America. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 52-06, Section: A, page: 1946. / Major Professor: Stuart Baker. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1991.

The vehement defense of the African slave trade by Georgia and South Carolina in United States Congress during the trade's constitutionally protected period cannot be fully explained by a Lower South planter concern for the security of slavery. Honor and state character were critical considerations in shaping the arguments raised by Lower South representatives in defense of African importation. Accordingly, the debates were as much about honor and character as they were protection of slavery. Because of importation, antitrade congressmen attacked the Lower South's character as inconsistent with purported American ideals and republican values. Georgia and South Carolina representatives struggled to reconcile the trade with honorable conduct and the evolving American character by crafting constructions of republicanism, the United States Constitution, and American character that protected state reputation within the national community embodied by the Congress. The Lower South's proffered interpretations of republicanism, the Constitution, and American character sought to minimize the trade as an appropriate standard by which to judge South Carolina and Georgia. The trade was consistent with republican values as access to slaves was the only means by which the two states could develop their economies and thus gain sufficient economic independence to maintain their equality with the other states. Moreover, this productivity benefited the young nation as a whole through the export of its slave-based agricultural products to world markets. Lower South representatives argued that the region could not be disparaged morally for importation as the Constitution guaranteed that privilege. They saw anti-trade forces' attacks on moral grounds as an attempt to invest the Constitution with moral standards external to that document which were inappropriate to judging a member of the union by the federal government or other states. The rights provided by the Constitution were the only ones by which the region could be judged with regard. Georgia and South Carolina possessed an American character in spite of slave importation. Each had participated in the American Revolution and otherwise contributed to the country's well-being. Lower South representatives focused on patriotism and loyalty as the fundamental criteria by which the region should be judged.

Beginning with the emergence of Fort Bend County, Texas, as an antebellum plantation society, this thesis examines the effects of emancipation and reconstruction within this community. The Jaybird-Woodpecker War, which culminated in August 1889, brought a violent end to a unique twenty-year period of biracial government in Fort Bend County, notable for outlasting reconstruction in the rest of the former Confederacy. Through the auspices of the Jay Bird Democratic Association of Fort Bend County, an all white political organization, county whites established one of Texas' first white primaries, effectively negating black political involvement at the county level. Between 1869 and 1889 blacks and whites experienced a revolutionary period of political equality; on August 16, 1889, county whites revolted against post-war changes in their society, restoring white supremacy as the guiding principle of Fort Bend County politics.

From November 1864 to April 1865, the Confederacy conducted an open, often-heated debate concerning the introduction of slaves into the Confederate Army. Southerners in all sections of the Confederacy-Upper South, Deep South, and Trans-Mississippi West-seriously considered the introduction of black men into the gray ranks. This debate forced southerners to ask again why they were fighting. Focusing upon the news items, editorials, and letters to editors appearing in local newspapers, this work examines the evolving views of common men and women in Virginia, Georgia and Texas. Despite the desperate situation, these southerners explored the proposal to arm the slaves and its long-term implications fully. As the debate unfolded, individual men and women struggled with each other and within themselves to decide what it meant to be a southerner. In this final crisis, many discovered that slavery could be sacrificed much more easily than southern independence. By comparing the depth, sincerity, and significance of the debate concerning arming the slaves in Virginia, Georgia, and Texas, a clearer picture of the importance of slavery in white southern society and of the strength of Confederate nationalism emerges.

This thesis attempts to provide a better understanding of the urban black experience in the first decade and a half following the war by focusing on the development of a single black neighborhood called Freedmantown in Houston's Fourth Ward. In the post-Civil War period, the black population in Houston increased dramatically. Through blacks' efforts to establish themselves as property owners, Freedmantown developed into a stable, black residential neighborhood quickly after the war's end. Black residents of Freedmantown, however, did not form their own separate social community, nor did Freedmantown become the focus for the rest of the ward's black community institutions. Instead, the residents of Freedmantown remained actively involved in the larger black community of the Fourth Ward. As a result, Freedmantown's residents formed only one part of a multi-neighborhood black community, indicating that individual neighborhoods could develop and prosper without threatening the cohesiveness of the city's larger black community.

Small towns fulfilled an important and unique role in southern life. After examining archival resources, public documents, and the architecture of the town of Clinton, Louisiana, two distinct but interlocking themes emerge. The first is the quest for order, respectability, and prosperity. The second is an outgrowth of those three goals, in that the social and economic infrastructure created by the townsfolk's activities acted as a catalyst to produce interactions that would not otherwise have occurred in a predominantly rural setting. Social, economic, and political interactions in small towns took place on a day-to-day and face-to-face basis. Village life allowed the citizens to interact with those outside their family groups and immediate neighbors for a broader social and economic base than country-dwellers yet did not provide the anonymity of large cities like New Orleans or Charleston. In the years before the American Civil War, wealthy and middle-class whites dominated Clinton's society and economy. By building railroads, establishing strong mercantile houses, and developing a varied corps of artisans, Clinton's elite made the town the center of a booming cotton region. One-third of the village's 1000 residents were slaves, and despite the lack of anonymity within the community, they were still able to create a semblance of a unique subculture away from whites' prying eyes. Following the Civil War, however, the small-town environment proved particularly stifling for the freed slaves, as white-supremacist attitudes prohibited free development of social and political organizations, with the notable exception of black churches. Whites in Clinton reacted violently to their loss of power, ultimately pursuing a massive campaign of terror against local Republicans during the contested presidential election of 1876. Small-town life is not incongruous within the framework of southern history; in fact, these villages incorporated the best and worst features of the southern rural and urban milieux.

Through examining the political, economic, and social developments of the Grenada Revolution, it is possible to view the revolutionary period as part of a continuum of Grenada's history. In most areas the Peoples' Revolutionary Government was unable to break away from its inherited constraints. An examination of the political control of the revolution reveals the continuity of authoritarian tendencies in Grenadian political culture emanating from the colonial period, while the PRG was unable to break successfully the ties of its dependent economy. The revolution did initiate considerable improvements in social conditions in Grenada, and its attempts at popular democracy provide some useful lessons for future policy makers in the Caribbean. The rigid imposition of an imported ideology, however, not designed for Grenada's unique historical conditions, meant that the revolution failed to change the complex and constricting barriers of class, race, and gender.

<p> The development of a Western identity, derivative and evolved from Northern, Midwestern, and Southern identities, played a significant role in determining the loyalty of the Pacific States on the eve of the Civil War. Western identity shared the same tenets as the other sections: property rights, republicanism, and economic and political autonomy. The experiences of the 1850s, though, separated Westerners from the North and the South, including their debates over slavery, black exclusion, and Indian policy. These experiences helped formulate the foundations of a Western identity, and when Southern identity challenged Western political autonomy by the mid-1850s, political violence and antiparty reactions through vigilantism and duels threw Western politics into chaos as the divided Democratic Party, split over the Lecompton Controversy, struggled to maintain control. With the election of 1860, Lincoln's victory in California and Oregon were the result of this chaos, and Westerners remained loyal to the North due to economic ties and Southern challenges to Western political autonomy. On the eve of the Civil War, the West was secured through the efforts of Republicans, but the belief in economic freedom from a slave labor system and federal aid for Indian campaigns played a significant role in forming a Western identity determined to remain in the Union. </p>

<p> Prior to the Civil War, the lives of free African Americans in Fairfax County, Virginia were both ordinary and extraordinary. Using the land as the underpinning of their existence, they approached life using methods that were common to the general population around them. Fairfax was a place that was undergoing a major transition from a plantation society to a culture dominated by self-reliant people operating small farms. Free African Americans who were able to gain access to land were a part of this process allowing them to discard the mantle of dependency associated with slavery. Nevertheless, as much as ex-slaves and their progeny attempted to live in the mainstream of this rural society, they faced laws and stereotypes that the county's white population did not have to confront. African Americans' ability to overcome race-based obstacles was dependent upon using their labor for their own benefit rather than for the comfort and profit of a former master or white employer. </p><p> When free African Americans were able to have access to the labor of their entire family, they were more likely to become self-reliant, but the vestiges of the slave system often stymied independence particularly for free women. Antebellum Fairfax had many families who had both slave and free members and some families who had both white and African American members. These divisions in families more often adversely impacted free African American women who could not rely on the labor of an enslaved husband or the lasting attention of a white male. Moreover, families who remained intact were more likely to be able to care for children and dependent aging members, while free African American females who headed households often saw their progeny subjected to forced apprenticeships in order for the family to survive. </p><p> Although the land provided the economic basis for the survival of free African Americans, the county's location along the border with Maryland and the District of Columbia also played a role in the lives of the county's free African American population. Virginia and its neighbors remained slave jurisdictions until the Civil War, but each government wished to stop the expansion of slavery within its borders. Each jurisdiction legislated against movement of new slaves into their territory and attempted to limit the movement of freed slaves into their jurisdictions. Still, in a compact border region restricting such movement was difficult. African Americans used the differences of laws initially to petition for freedom. As they gained access to the court system, free African Americans expanded their use of the judiciary by bringing their grievances before the courts which sided with the African American plaintiffs with surprising regularity. Although freed slaves and their offspring had few citizenship rights, they were able to use movement across borders and the ability to gain a hearing for their grievances to achieve increasing autonomy from their white neighbors. </p><p> No one story from the archives of the Fairfax County Courthouse completely defines the experience of free African Americans prior to the Civil War, but collectively they chronicle the lives of people who were an integral part of changing Fairfax County during the period. After freedom, many African Americans left Fairfax either voluntarily or through coercion. For those who stayed, their lives were so inter-connected both socially and economically with their white neighbors that any history of the county cannot ignore their role in the evolution of Fairfax.</p>

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2007. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 68-07, Section: A, page: 3108. Adviser: Claude Clegg. Title from dissertation home page (viewed Apr. 15, 2008).