A reexamination of the thirty-year period from 1730 to 1760 during which colonial South Carolina expanded into the back country, first described by Robert L. Meriwether in his 1940 study, The Expansion of South Carolina, 1729-1765. / It was during the initial three decades of frontier settlement that the demographic and social characteristics differentiating the back country from the tidewater first were established. Official concern for the internal (possible slave revolt) and external (attack by Indians or hostile European nations) security of South Carolina resulted in the creation of nine back country townships designed to attract white, Protestant farmers to the back country. / Unlike earlier attempts at expansion, these settlements were able to withstand the upheaval and destruction caused by the Cherokee War of 1759-1761 because back country society (despite its lack of cohesiveness) was firmly entrenched before its troubles began. Even after the severe dislocations of the Indian war, the back country basically remained the white buffer zone envisioned by Governor Robert Johnson and other provincial leaders in colonial South Carolina. / With the exception of the first chapter, which relates the history of the first thirty years of back country expansion, the study arranged by the demographic and social characteristics of the early South Carolina frontier. Contemporary statistics and demographic techniques have been used where possible and are supplemented by short biographies of representative settlers. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-01, Section: A, page: 0289. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1985.

This study presents the production history of the Children's Theatre Unit of the Federal Theatre Project in New York City from the start of the unit in November 1935 until the end of the Federal Theatre Project in June 1939. Chapter I gives background information on the early days of the Federal Theatre, an overview of work being done at that time by children's theatres throughout the country, and the early development and plans of the Children's Theatre Unit. Chapters II through V present the production histories of nine plays and three festivals produced by the Children's Theatre Unit: The Emperor's New Clothes, Horse Play (also produced by the Negro Theatre Unit), Flight, The Revolt of the Beavers, Jack and the Beanstalk, Pierre Patelin, Treasure Island, Mr. Dooley, Jr., and Pinocchio, and the Children's Autumn Festival of Art, Music and Theatre, the Children's Holiday Festival, and the Children's Easter Festival. Each performance is discussed in terms of script, personnel, production, and audience response. Each chapter also includes a summary of the problems being encountered by the Federal Theatre at that time. Conclusions are then drawn concerning the educational and social values of the work done by the Children's Theatre and the legacy left by the Unit to future generations of workers in children's theatre. An appendix includes audience surveys used by the Children's Theatre Unit, a list of members on the Unit's advisory committee, and programs and photographs from the productions. / Research for this study was done at the National Archives in Washington, D.C., at the Library of Congress Federal Theatre Project Collection at George Mason University Library, Fairfax, Virginia, and at the Theatre Collection, Performing Arts Center, New York Public Library at Lincoln Center. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-12, Section: A, page: 4237. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.

The deerskin trade was the most powerful force on Creek life during the eighteenth century. The trade was also one of the most important economic activities in the neighboring British colonies. From its establishment in the 1730s until the American Revolution, Augusta, Georgia, dominated the deerskin trade with the southern Indians. The deerskin trade had political implications as well, and colonial and imperial officials sought to use the trade as a diplomatic tool. For the Creeks, the maintenance of trade and peaceful relations required negotiation and accommodation with the British. Headmen assumed more authority as they formulated and directed Creek foreign policy. / The exchange of deerskins for European manufacturers brought a wide array of material goods to improve and complicate Creek life. Creeks quickly accepted guns and cloth goods but kinship patterns, views on land ownership, and concepts of property proved resistant to change. Consumption always outstripped production in the Creek country, and debt became a constant in Creek life. By the end of the colonial period, Creeks found it necessary to cede land to pay their debts. / Overall, the Creeks emerged from the colonial period with most of their land and cultural traditions intact. The established patterns of commerce from Augusta to the Creek towns were completely overturned by Revolutionary War. Georgia's population grew rapidly during the last part of the eighteenth century, and farming replaced the deerskin trade in economic importance. The trade was resumed through other channels after the war and Creek dependence on foreign goods and the practice of ceding land to clear trade debts continued. Perhaps the most profound changes wrought by the trade resulted from the union of traders and Creek women. The mixed-blood offspring of these relationship ushered in numerous economic, political, and social innovations in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries and changed the course of Creek history. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 47-12, Section: A, page: 4492. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1986.

This dissertation compares attitudes toward death in colonial Massachusetts and South Carolina during their first centuries. Diaries, sermons, newpapers, and legal records are examined and used for a general description of attitudes toward death in each colony which in turn is used for a concluding section comparing the colonies on this issue, suggesting reasons for apparent similarities and differences, and speculating on the significance of these findings. / The evidence examined for this study indicates the presence of two distinct responses to death. Death in Massachusetts was an awesome event. Because of the dominant religious ideology, Puritans perceived dying as putting every person's fate to the test before God, but as traumatic as dying could be for an individual, this uncertainty was not unchallenged on other levels. When the people of Massachusetts wrote in their diaries and journals, listened to funeral sermons, read the newspaper, and observed the actions of their government, they witnessed death manipulated. The key characteristic of this activist approach was the attempt to interact positively with tragedy. Death became an event which perpetuated the ideals of the Bay Colony because it was used to call survivors to go forward with the struggles of living in a "holy commonwealth." / Death was an all too common event in South Carolina. Between epidemic diseases which almost seem endemic, Indian wars, and the accidents associated with a major port city, Carolinians had more than their share of exposure to dying. Because of this intense interaction with death and the religious fragmentation of society, there was no fundamental framework for dealing with dying in this colony. People shared their feelings of sorrow, but they did not have a common means of interpreting the tragedies that surrounded them. In short, they faced death on their own without collective efforts at manipulating tragedy. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 48-03, Section: A, page: 0731. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1987.

The recent foreign policy controversies of the Carter Administration have served to highlight many of the weaknesses of United States foreign affairs decision making. The ineffectiveness of America's response to world events is not a recent phenomenon. The patterns begun by United States policymakers in the 1940s have come to haunt their modern day counterparts. Nowhere has this been more evident than in Asia. The policies that guided American involvement in China, Korea, and Vietnam still hang around America's neck like a great albatross. / President Carter's recognition of the People's Republic of China in January 1979 reminds us that for three decades American leaders clung to a policy which ignored political realities. However, this was not a policy arrived at overnight. It was something born out of the American wartime posture, both in Europe and Asia. / My work is an analysis of the events and circumstances in China from the beginning of World War II to the election of 1948. It reveals how the United States foreign policy during this era affected the relationship between China and America. Within this context, I have also examined the decision making process of the Roosevelt and Truman Administrations. / Ultimately, the American foreign policy pattern, which placed European affairs far above those of the rest of the world, ignored the importance of the growth of postwar nationalism, first in Asia and later Africa. These shortsighted policies have been due, in large measure, to the tendency of American leaders to ignore the advice of experts in the field. Instead they have generally chosen to rely on the suggestions of men who have reached positions of authority in foreign affairs due to domestic political expediency rather than experience in foreign policy. / This work uses the resources of both Roosevelt and Truman Presidential Libraries, as well as the resources of the Hoover Institute and National Archives. It bridges the two administrations as few other works have done. It also updates those who have with recently declassified documents from the Truman Library. In short, it is the story of America's China Sojourn from 1942 to 1948. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-03, Section: A, page: 1186. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 40-09, Section: A, page: 5155. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1979.

Scholars have pointed to the recurrent emergence of a "New South" as a major theme in southern history since the Civil War. In studying the 1880s and 1920s, they discovered that the convergent goals of leading politicians, businessmen, and publicists resulted in demands for governmental and economic reform. In each case, initial research focused on New South personalities and state studies followed. C. Vann Woodward (Origins of the New South) and George Brown Tindall (Emergence of the New South) then wrote regional syntheses. Research in the New South era following the Second World War is currently concerned with the period's leading political personalities. Thomas LeRoy Collins, who served as governor from 1955 to 1961, guided Florida's postwar emergence as a New South state. / LeRoy Collins's philosophical precepts derived from his legacy as a native of the American South. Born a shopkeeper's son in a small, class-conscious, southern town, Collins subscribed to the principles and goals defined by his family's status. Allegiance to the church, to public education, and to free enterprise circumscribed a lifelong philosophical creed. Politically, "business progressivism" in the 1920s impressed on Collins the potential for cooperation between government and free enterprise in promoting prosperity. Franklin D. Roosevelt's forceful response to the hard times of the 1930s reinforced Collins's faith in governmental leadership for reform. As governor, Collins sought institutional and economic changes which would allow Florida to enter the mainstream of urban, industrial America. / While championing a new Florida, Collins encountered ideologies and institutions left from the state's agrarian heritage. Despite repeated appeals, Collins failed to gain adherents for a revised view of states' rights and responsibilities. Nor could he loosen the agrarian-conservatives' tenacious hold on the malapportioned legislature. Most importantly, Collins (and other New South advocates) confronted anachronistic racial traditions. Twentieth century nationalism forged, in part, by the communications revolution made the South's legalized system of racial discrimination unacceptable. The Brown decision forced Collins to deal with the issue. / Collins responded to the crisis on the basis of his heritage. Initially, the legacy of paternalistic racial traditions prevailed. While defending the Supreme Court's authority, he instituted a program to meet the Brown decision's minimum demands. Such "moderate" guidance led Florida through a difficult period with fewer disruptions than other southern states. Yet, by 1960 he recognized tokenism's inadequacy. His perception of practical and moral necessities influenced Collins to call for fundamental change in Florida's racial customs. / As Collins's outspoken advocacy of revised racial codes moved him beyond traditional boundaries, he forfeited his political career. During the 1960s, Florida politics demanded racial conservatism and sapped the strength of the New South movement. In a race-oriented campaign, Collins lost a 1968 bid for the United States Senate. When race waned as a political issue during the 1970s, New South advocates once more concentrated the state's attention on governmental action to promote economic change. Many of the ideals and goals associated with the LeRoy Collins administration again became a part of Florida politics. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-03, Section: A, page: 1192. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

The design of this dissertation was to place a biographical sketch of some of my 19th Century ancestors into the context of the general history of their time. The two people selected were my paternal grandmother, Katherine Beckham Conner (Katy in the text), born September 3, 1820; died sometime near, but before, 1880, in Toledo, Arkansas. The other was Katy's middle son, William Lewis Conner (Lewis in the text), born in Mississippi, August 28, 1843; died in Fordyce, Arkansas, June 30, 1901. Lewis was my father. / Tradition has it that Katy migrated from Mississippi (Webster County) to Arkansas in 1848; that she drove and looked after her own covered wagon, traveling as a unit in a train that left Webster County leaving for the then newly discovered gold mines of California. / Katy probably had no intention of going all the way. She was a twenty-eight-year-old woman with three little boys. It was never explained why she left in Mississippi a husband, William Moore Connor, my grandfather. / Tradition also indicated that the place were she dropped out of the train was in Arkansas, at Toledo. The settlement was a rudimentary trading center in a pioneer farming community, sixteen miles South of Pine Bluff and located on the Old Military Road. / In this region, opened to white settlement in the 1820's, this old road seems to antedate acquisitions from the Indians and all other recorded events. It figures predominantly in the following story. / Katy remained in the vicinity of Toledo for the balance of her life, she became a successful farmer--possibly a prosperous one--all on her own. She brought her three boys to maturing--the oldest was Orlando Philemon (Lanny in the text), the youngest James Henry (Jim in the text). She died leaving all of them comfortably established in the community. / All their lives were rudely interrupted by the Civil War. Considerable space in the text is devoted to the experiences of Lewis and Lanny in the Confederate Armed Services. In the course of the service Lewis lost his left leg at the hip. / After Katy died the railroad came into this virgin territory. From Pine Bluff on the Arkansas River it followed generally the route of the Old Military Road, especially for the approximately seventy miles to Camden, another river town on the Ouachita River. The railroad's coming had the effect of revolutionizing the work and life styles of practically every inhabitant of this primitive wilderness. When the actual route of the road missed a town, as it did Toledo, which had become a county seat by that time, the population of the old established community would move to one of the towns newly created along the railroad. Today, just one hundred years later, Toledo, first a primitive village, then a bustling farming trading center, and finally county seat, has reverted to rural terrain. Its site is indistinguishable from the surrounding landscape. / The dissertation necessarily includes some discussion of land policy, farming and social, political and economic history that affected the family history. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 41-11, Section: A, page: 4810. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1980.

"Power concedes nothing without a demand," Frederick Douglass wrote in 1857. "It never did, and it never will." Blacks in Tallahassee discovered the truth of Douglass' words as they struggled against an entrenched system of racism to achieve access to political, social, and economic power. Blacks fought against discrimination in every way they could, often as individuals, but most effectively through organizations, alliances, and coalitions. / After a successful bus boycott in the spring of 1956, the black community launched an attack on Jim Crow laws that left most Tallahassee whites dumbfounded and converted a few to their cause. Using the church as their meeting ground and Christian ethics as their armor, blacks struggled to teach whites that segregation was inconsistent with their shared religious values. Blacks in Tallahassee clung to the hope that this ethically-based moral suasion would disarm segregation proponents, even after it became clear that whites would use every legal and extralegal tactic to preserve segregation. / By 1963, blacks turned to a more militant phase of protest, but until the civil rights bill was passed in the summer of 1964, the strength of white resistance--buttressed by the force of the legal and political community--was able to force blacks to accept token concessions and pledges of improvement. But the passage of the civil rights bill was no panacea for black grievances. Tallahassee dragged its feet to avoid compliance with the law. Yet clearly and inexorably, change did occur. The civil rights bill had ended forever any real question over the legality of integrated public facilities and conveyances and set a tone of inevitability in the long and bitter struggle for equal rights. / But the civil rights movement was more than just a legal revolution; it transformed relations between blacks and whites on every level of human activity. In Tallahassee, the actions of individuals in the large and small contexts of life determined how and at what level the city adjusted to an integrated society. How Tallahassee finally emerged from a rigidly closed society to a more open one is the story of how one Deep South community dealt with the burden of history and embraced the challenge of the future. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 46-03, Section: A, page: 0778. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1984.

This study is a description of the popular theatre as it operated in North Carolina between the end of Reconstruction and the early 1920s. The emphasis of the study is on identifying towns which had a theatre (usually called an "opera house"), the number of theatres in each town, specifications for the theatre spaces, biographical information on managers, and types of attractions that played the theatres. One hundred and fifty-nine halls have been identified in eighty-two towns, and several thousand attractions have been accounted for. / The bulk of the work is a catalog of halls that can be inventoried from available sources, arranged alphabetically by town. Following the catalog, a chapter describes in detail the nature of the attractions presented during a sample season, 1904-05. A summary and evaluation of the characteristics of North Carolina theatre during the period completes the text. Appendices supply (A) information on plays presented by repertoire companies during the 1904-1905 season; (B) significant citations for North Carolina entries in the "Correspondence" column of the New York Dramatic Mirror, the leading theatrical newspaper of the period; (C) itineraries for selected companies for the 1904- 1905 season; (D) a preface from one of the theatrical directories of the period; and (E) illustrations, including photographs of several of the opera houses described in the catalog. An extensive bibliography of primary and secondary sources is included. / The primary conclusion drawn from the data is that the primary medium of popular culture during the period was theatre. The types of attractions that played opera houses reinforced the values, attitudes and beliefs of the audience, an essential function of popular culture. North Carolina theatres were typical stops on "The Road" during the Era of the Opera House, not attracting the top stars and highest-quality attractions, but providing a substantial quantity of popular entertainment to their audiences. As such, they were the primary loci for the dissemination of popular culture in their communities. / Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 56-12, Section: A, page: 4613. / Major Professor: John A. Degen. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--The Florida State University, 1995.