Thesis (Ph.D.)--Indiana University, Dept. of History, 2009. / Title from PDF t.p. (viewed on Jul 14, 2010). Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 70-12, Section: A, page: 4827. Adviser: Wendy Gamber.

This dissertation explores the portrayal of Negro folk culture in concert performances of the Hall Johnson Choir and in Hall Johnson’s popular music drama, Run, Little Chillun. I contribute to existing scholarship on Negro spirituals by tracing the performances of these songs by the original Fisk Jubilee singers in 1867 to the Hall Johnson Choir’s performances in the 1920s-1930s, with a specific focus on the portrayal of Negro folk culture. By doing so, I show how the meaning and importance of performing Negro folk culture changed over time during this period. My dissertation also draws on Hall Johnson’s lectures, radio broadcasts, and published essays on Negro folk culture. By tracing the performance of the Negro spirituals to those of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers during the Reconstruction period, it becomes clear that without the path-breaking work of the original Fisk Jubilee Singers, there would be no Hall Johnson Choir. Hall Johnson was devoted to composing works about African Americans that preserved and accurately portrayed Negro folk culture because he believed that Negro folk culture was an essential part of American cultural identity. I posit that Run, Little Chillun employs the ideals of the New Negro Renaissance, strategically capitalizing on what many white American cultural critics believed to be primitive—and therefore genuine—black culture while promoting a unique version of black empowerment through the speech of an Oxford Educated black male character who espoused an Afrofuturistic theology. With an interdisciplinary approach, I draw on musicology, African American studies, and sociology to place Hall Johnson’s writings on Negro spirituals within the context of the greater discussion of Negro spirituals during the 1920s-1940s. My primary methodology is historical and includes archival research, musical analysis, and reception history. The writings of black intellectuals and leaders of the New Negro Renaissance such as W.E.B Du Bois, Alain Locke, William Work, and John Rosamond Johnson provide the primary theoretical framework for this dissertation. / Music

Abstract not available.

The specific purposes of this study were to identify and highlight the many and varied contributions Black people made in providing schooling for their children in the South from 1865 to 1954, and thereby, make a significant contribution to the literature on this subject. This study added weight to the historical importance Blacks have placed on the education of their children. Ignorance of this history affects how Black children are viewed, treated, taught, encouraged, or discouraged in the process of acquiring an education in this society. Fifty-one autobiographies were used as the primary data source. They spanned three major periods--Reconstruction, Post-Reconstruction and the period after World War I to the Brown decision. They were selected on the following criteria: the life of individuals who lived in the Southern region of the United States; and, individuals whose own personal experiences related to formal schooling as students, parents, teachers or community activists. This research, historical and largely descriptive, was designed to investigate the role Black parents and the Black community played in providing schooling for Black children in the South, from 1865 to 1954. These authors, in their own words, reported that their parents and communities placed high value on education and made many sacrifices in order to have their children acquire an education. It is clear from this study that the white authorities in control of the education of all children in America were primarily interested in the education of white children and this fact adversely affected the education of Black children. The research demonstrated that across the periods studied Black children did not have the same educational advantages that white school children had. Further, this study suggests the need to re-examine the issues related to why Black children are not given an equal educational opportunity. To monitor this process, Black parents, as the first teachers, must become more involved in the education of Black children. However, in order to do that the schools must bring Black parents into the system.

This thesis explores how a group of Caribbean and African American activist-intellectuals became global race women in the early to mid twentieth century. Global race women, is the term I use to describe middle-class, public women of African ancestry who were committed to aiding the progress of the darker races, especially, but not exclusively, blacks. They frequently travelled, both literally and imaginatively, which allowed them to develop a cosmopolitan sensibility, forge multiracial coalitions with Africans, Asians, Caribbeans, and Europeans, and practice transnational activism. Their globalism saw them identify, think, and act on a global basis that was tied to the global African diaspora. But it did not distract them from the local considerations that shaped their politics. For global race women, the global and the local were intertwined. This study centres on three protagonists including the Jamaican writer and broadcaster Una Marson (1905-1965), the Martiniquan journalist Paulette Nardal (1896-1985), and the American anthropologist and writer Eslanda Robeson (1895-1965). While the three women did not call themselves global race women, they embodied its characteristics. Their identities as global race women saw them grapple with the race and gender problem as a global phenomenon. They participated in race-based civil rights organisations, anti-fascist campaigns, the League of Nations, United Nations, feminist, and women’s groups. By embracing a range of strategies, they forged networks that crossed ideological, religious, racial, and gendered divisions. The original contribution this thesis makes is the argument that physical or imagined travel and overlapping global social and professional networks were critical to the practice of becoming a global race woman. The significance of this work lays in its placing of black women at the centre of globally connected conversations about cosmopolitanism, anti-fascism, transnational activism, feminism, the end of empires, and the long global freedom struggle between the 1920s and 1960s.

Gwendolyn Sawyer Cherry, school teacher, author, attorney, and a Florida legislator, was born August 27, 1923, in Miami, Florida, to Dr. William B. and Alberta Sawyer. Dr. Sawyer was one of the first African-American physicians in Dade County and Alberta Sawyer was a hotel owner at a time when businesswomen were exceptional. Therefore, Cherry's trailblazing parents had a profound effect on her adult life. / Cherry was a trailblazer in her own right for she opened doors of opportunity previously closed to African-Americans and women. Her most noteworthy "first," occurred in 1970, when she became the first African-American woman ever to serve in the Florida legislature. / In the legislature, Cherry submitted bills and supported legislative issues for African-Americans, women, and the disadvantaged. However, Cherry's greatest, yet most underrated achievement, was her ability to be both a civil rights activist and a feminist at a time when the leaders of both movements were at odds with each other. Unfortunately, her life was cut short on February 7, 1979, in an automobile accident behind Doak Campbell Stadium on the Florida State University Campus in Tallahassee. She was fifty-five years old. / The purpose of this dissertation is to show how the progress made by the civil rights and women's movements and Cherry's background enabled her to be elected to the Florida house. Also discussed are the challenges and achievements she had as a legislator, and the progress made by African-American politicians since her untimely death. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 55-08, Section: A, page: 2524. / Major Professor: Joe M. Richardson. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1994.

This dissertation deals with a series of events occurring in central Georgia in the late 1890s, which culminated in the lynching of Sam Hose. Hose, a black man accused of rape and murder, was burned at the stake at Newnan, about thirty miles southwest of Atlanta. Another black man, Lige Strickland, said to have been named by Hose as his accomplice, was hanged. Whites later claimed that Hose and Strickland had plotted to avenge the deaths of five black men lynched in an earlier arson case. These related events were the perhaps inevitable results of an atmosphere of distrust, hatred, and fear in a region that lacked a tradition of respect for the law. The spectacle at Newnan was widely and graphically publicized in the national press, and was discussed in the European press as well. The South was subjected to intense scrutiny from every quarter as politicians, church, and civic leaders debated the problem of racial violence in the region. The lynching and its aftermath spawned similar crimes in the region as blacks and whites reacted to the event and were further polarized by it. There is great interest in the role of violence in Southern history, but the story of Sam Hose's macabre and brutal death has not been fully researched before now. This study examines these events and their surrounding circumstances in an effort to determine their impact on racial conditions in the South, and on how the South was perceived elsewhere. It also looks at the extent to which the Hose lynching (and related incidents) typified and reflected the state of black/white relations in the late nineteenth century South. Furthermore, it examines the underlying conditions and motivations that resulted in the horror of lynching. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 53-10, Section: A, page: 3650. / Major Professor: Valerie Jean Conner. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1992.

The Harlem Renaissance was an important cultural event in African-American history. A great amount of work exists that showcases the talents of both visual and literary artists. Yet, unlike the literary artists, the Harlem visual artists have not been validated by modern art critics. Therefore, this study raises pertinent questions about the omission of these artists: (1) What are the reasons for exclusion of Harlem artists from major American modern art texts? (2) What criteria or standards contributes to modernism's absolutism? (3) Are the tools and assumptions of the modernist critique sufficient to define and evaluate Harlem Renaissance art? (4) If not, what critical, interpretative and theoretical approaches provide the most useful ways of defining that movement's art and its artists? / With reference to the first and second questions, this study will argue that the exclusion and depreciation of Harlem Renaissance art results from an unwillingness in art historical discourse to come to terms with "otherness." Also, certain aspects of primitivism, which received cult status in the 1920s, will be examined. / In addressing the third question, I will acknowledge the debt of African-American artists to European and American models. However, the choice of subjects and themes, iconography, and stylistic development were dictated by modes and ideologies specific to the black experience. / My methodology for exploring the fourth question will be based on apost-modernist critique. This post-modernist perspective will encompass post-structuralism, pluralism and multiculturalism. At the center of post-modernist methodology is protest. My argument will be aimed specifically at the absolutism of modernism. This argument for a pluralistic approach to art historical discourse will rest on "co-equality." Only through the existence of "co-equality" will these artists be properly validated in the history of art. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 54-09, Section: A, page: 3245. / Major Professor: Lauren Weingarden. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1993.

While students of recent American history often differ on when the civil rights movement began, all agree that the Brown v. Board of Education decision in 1954 was of pivotal importance. Prior to 1954 black Americans living in the South were second-class citizens in every respect. The public schools and public accommodations were segregated; there were no black public office holders, and only a token number of blacks were registered voters This dissertation is an examination of the legal career of Alexander P. Tureaud, primarily of his activities as legal counsel for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in Louisiana for more than three decades. Tureaud was one of the dominant figures who used the judicial system to transform the Brown decision into a reality for black Americans. Although his main efforts were made in the field of education, he also devoted time to securing voting rights for blacks, and integration of public accommodations. He handled civil and criminal cases involving the civil rights of blacks and discrimination in employment, and investigated incidents of rape and lynchings This study examines how and why Tureaud used the federal courts as the principal means of attack against a system of racial segregation which black and white alike accepted as a way of life. It tries to shed light on his relationship with the local and national leaders of the NAACP as well as with the local and state power structure and the judges of the federal courts. Lastly, the study clarifies and puts in perspective the contributions and role of Tureaud in the Civil Rights movement in the South in general, and in Louisiana in particular. As the leading lawyer of the NAACP in the state, Tureaud argued well over one hundred cases before the state and federal courts. These cases essentially comprise the totality of significant litigation involving the struggle for civil rights in Louisiana Tureaud's legal career reveals that it is possible though admittedly painfully slow, for blacks to achieve legal parity in American society within the framework of American constitutional law / acase@tulane.edu

The research approach governing my work is interdisciplinary, including religious history, hermeneutics, theology, and sociology of religion with an emphasis on the intersections of religion and culture. My dissertation uncovers notions of healing through an attempt to transform social and racial reality within African American Christian thought and life. Making the Wounded Whole challenges the dominant assumption that black Christianity, is governed by a primary theological focus on corporate liberation. Accordingly, it uncovers a deep concern with healing---in relation to bodily, political, spiritual, and social restoration---as a theological thrust fueling black Christian religion. I reveal this concern through an interrogation of the bio-political and socio-political significance of enslavement and its consequences. This theme of healing and identity (re)formation manifests itself within various aspects of religious life and activity---among them are ritual and worship, aesthetic presentation, Scriptural interpretation, and general resistance to racial oppression. I argue that such practices are in consequence therapeutic, in that social and political imagination is recast in ways more suitable for a healthy existence. I locate these practices as a particular style of religious life and therefore a way of understanding the nature of black Christian experience. Ultimately, this work connects these ideas to normative Christo-religious practices found within the black enslaved experience during the antebellum period.