This thesis is a study of Rice University's struggle to integrate and charge tuition to its students. In 1891 William Marsh Rice established the charter that founded Rice University. As the school developed, however, the Board of Trustees found it difficult to follow the charter's restrictions against admitting non-white students or charging tuition. The board was struggling to uphold the wishes of the founder while also adapting Rice to changing social and economic conditions. In 1962 Rice began legal action to reinterpret the charter. The board believed that permission to integrate and charge tuition was vital in Rice's efforts to remain a leading educational institution. As a result, the trustees argued that these restrictions prevented realization of the founder's main intention of creating and maintaining a first class university. This action was successful, and with the court's permission, Rice began to integrate and charge tuition in 1965.

From their inauspicious beginnings in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, Mississippi evangelical churches--the Baptist, Methodist, and Presbyterian-- expanded dramatically and set the moral tone of society. Early churches were founded on egalitarian principles by members of both races. A study of unpublished church records reveals that before 1830, blacks and whites received equal treatment in the churches. White evangelicals welcomed slaves into the churches, often opposed slavery, and defended slaves' religious freedom. The rapid expansion of slavery in the state, the movement of slaveholders into the churches, and the growing wealth of the membership presented evangelicals with a serious moral dilemma. As sectional tensions rose and the debate over slavery intensified after 1830, most evangelicals embraced slavery. Religious leaders articulated the most accepted justification of slavery, one based on Biblical teachings. The Biblical defense of slavery emphasized the spiritual welfare of slaves. After 1830 evangelical efforts to minister to blacks increased, and black church membership grew. As they moved from sect to denomination, churches became more hierarchical and less egalitarian. Ministers sought a higher social position and placed greater emphasis on the ministerial gift. Lay participation in worship services was discouraged. Because of their preference for a different style of worship and because of white discrimination, blacks often preferred segregated services. Some historians have characterized biracial churches as simply another white control device against slaves, but an analysis of approximately 1600 disciplinary actions from 30 churches demonstrates that while whites sometimes used church courts to punish slaves who violated the slave code, most cases against blacks involved the same charges made against white offenders. The coming of the Civil War highlighted the divergent goals held by black and white evangelicals. With varying degrees of enthusiasm, white evangelicals lent their support to sectionalism, secession, and war. War and defeat brought about a crisis in many churches, yet out of that malaise grew a powerful, and heretofore unexamined, revival on the home front. Blacks joined in the revivals. The war disrupted life in the slave community, but many slaves saw the war as an answered prayer for freedom. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

Evangelical moralism was the ideological foundation of the southern defense of slavery between 1830 and 1865. By 1830, evangelical culture had begun to attain a remarkable ascendancy in the South and the United States as a whole. The sectional debate over the morality of slavery took place largely within the confines of evangelical conceptual categories. In an era when religious ideas still permeated the life of the mind in America, the Old South was less culturally distinctive than historians have usually acknowledged. Southerners, through the medium of their evangelical world view, participated in mainstream nineteenth-century intellectual developments and modernizing trends. The obsession with bourgeois freedom, liberal economics, and material progress apparent in northern (and British) thought and society found expression in the slaveholding South. The southern encounter with Victorian modernity was most clearly reflected in the region's main cultural product: proslavery arguments written by evangelicals. Evangelicals' individualistic view of the work ethic, freedom, and man's relation to God constituted the premise of most proslavery tracts. Southern ministers popularized the identification of individual morality with economic utility and success in a free market environment. They, likewise, promulgated a definition of freedom that equated liberty with moral self-discipline. On the basis of their prior defense of individual freedom and progress southerners supported slaveholding primarily as a form of ethical success--a providential result of and reward for individual virtue and self-discipline. This justification of particular slaveholders did not lead most southerners to an abstract vindication of the institution of slavery or critique of the ideal of individual freedom. According to the dominant proslavery argument, slaves still possessed the inviolable conscience and autonomous will that were the irreducible touchstones of Christian liberty. Southern slavery, therefore, did not contradict one explanation of personal and economic freedom. Proslavery spokesman maintained that any inequities in southern society resulted from an open and ongoing competition to develop moral will power. Racial and labor subordination originated in failure to develop character. On this fundamental level, southern evangelicals' explanations of their economic order were not at odds with northern evangelicals' understanding of free society.

Two centuries after its formulation, the American doctrine of the separation of Church and State yet remains a continuing source of controversy and confusion for many. For the interpretation of that idea--as embodied in the First Amendment to the Constitution--has been frequently beset by two historical myths or misunderstandings. From early in our history on, for example, there has been an attempt to cast our national beginnings in explicitly Christian terms, exemplified by such notions as "redeemer nation" and the belief in ours as a Christian republic. A clearer reading of the evidence suggests, however, that such an interpretation is not warranted by the facts, nor has it ever been. Yet likewise, neither true is the suggestion that has frequently been advanced by the other historical misunderstanding, namely, that the Founding Fathers set out to create an intentionally "secular" state, wishing to completely deny any significant role for religion within the affairs of public life. For the reality is that the First Amendment was the finely balanced product of compromise, reflecting not simply the more well-known elements of Jeffersonian rationalism and Enlightenment political theory, but an equally significant theological pedigree, as well. One may see within even its few words, in fact, the reflections of such Christian thinkers as Augustine, Luther, Calvin, Edwards, and particularly perhaps, Roger Williams. Taken together with the insights of Locke, Jefferson, and Madison, American separationism thus emerged as a synthesis of sorts between those two visions, as well as a practical solution to the very real problem of vastly different religious experiences between the American states. As a compromise, therefore, the Amendment (and the subsequent American understanding of Church and State), should not be "pushed" too far in either direction. Rather, the key to understanding its continuing relevance for today is to both recognize the complex and varied context out of which the notion of separationism was adopted two hundred years ago, and the truly revolutionary changes which the American experiment was to represent.

The 1950-1953 story of Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's trial, conviction, and execution for allegedly giving away the atomic bomb "secret" demonstrates an oscillation and reciprocity between material history and its motivated and collaborative narrative construction. An examination of government documents, court records, print media, letters, diaries, historiographies, biographies, and FBI and Department of Justice files released since the 1974 FOI Act, reveals the intertextual, formal, and rhetorical operations involved in the construction of the official Rosenberg story. These documents also reveal the extent to which the outcome of that story depended upon race, class, and gender. The coherent official version manifests a polarized conflictual plot, a cause-effect narrative line, and the most definitive ending available in fiction or history--death as retribution and redemption--despite documented government uncertainties. Operating in excess of any concept of the "real" story, the elaboration of the official version over time also gives voice to its historical context and motivations, demonstrating political positionality as prior to any telling of the Rosenberg story. It developed as an embedded narrative in the frame narrative of the cold war, and was intended to force Julius to tell the story of an FBI-alleged Atomic Spy Ring. But the desired official story stopped with the Rosenbergs' deaths, and instead a cultural re-telling began, using the Rosenbergs as the occasion for an historical interrogation of the function of narrative in history-masking and/or -making. E. L. Doctorow's 1971 Book of Daniel and Robert Coover's 1977 Public Burning offer fictional/factual critiques of the Rosenberg story, its historical frame narrative, cold war ideology, and of a twentieth-century capitalist, masculist society which Coover figures as operating according to the binary logic and obsessions of early anality. These postmodern anti-narrative novels figure, dramatize, and formally enact the potentials for and limits to contemporary oppositional cultural political work--a homeopathic and often sacrificial practice of narrating to undo narrative, of positing narrative sequences and relationships masked by narrative sequences and relationships, and of resisting closure in order to remain open to narrative/historical transformation. In this, the postmodern artist and critic may share the same purpose.

This thesis discusses the rise of air pollution to become a major public and official concern in America during the 25 years after 1945. What had been largely ignored as a sporadic local smoke nuisance was seen as a nationwide crisis demanding federal intervention by 1970. Although air pollution was among the most salient issues creating a sense of environmental crisis and facilitating the emergence of environmentalism before Earth Day, 1970, recent environmental history studies have largely overlooked it, focusing instead on traditional conservation and wilderness preservation organizations and often criticizing these for their white, male, affluent, "elitist" character. However, the public-health/antipollution wing of early environmentalism drew broader support from women, minorities, and the working class as well, as citizens mobilized regarding real threats, not mere amenities or linguistic constructs. Air pollution was an issue in England, Continental Europe, and America long before 1945 due to health worries and economic damage, yet local government and industry throughout the industrial world long persisted in constructing the issue as merely an aesthetic nuisance, aided by quietist scientific and medical experts. Even after 1945, when major improvements in science and technology expanded control capabilities and understanding, local and state power structures often still ignored the problem and growing public complaints. Consequently, angry citizens increasingly demanded federal intervention to override state/local nonfeasance, and the federal government gradually responded, creating the (now sometimes criticized) present federal regulatory approach to environmental policy. Three case studies--Los Angeles, New York City, and rural central Florida--depict wider variations, contrasts and similarities in the national battle against air pollution and illustrate why traditional localism and federalism were unable to adequately address such aspects of the problem as recalcitrant interstate industries, interstate pollution problems, or state/local governments deliberately sheltering polluting industries. This thesis also reflects on other persistent problems and patterns in environmental policy, such as the politicization of science and medicine to serve as weapons in legal battles for economic purposes, or the general public's frequent refusal, even while blasting major industrial polluters, to accept fully their own responsibility for causing environmental degradation.

Houston, Texas, the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States, is home, to professional teams for all major sports, internationally acclaimed museums, a symphony orchestra, ballet and opera companies, commercial and repertory theaters, respected universities, the Texas Medical Center, and the Manned Spacecraft Center. Yet historians of the American city seldom include Houston in general surveys. Scholars who tackle Houston's history focus on the city's reputation as a "free-enterprise" business arena but ignore its citizens' philanthropic generosity, which has sustained the city's cultural, educational, and service institutions. For generations Houston pacesetters have espoused bold visions for urban development, but most biographers focus attention instead on their subjects' entrepreneurial genius. Among the many generous families that merit study, the three children of Progressive Governor James Stephen Hogg (1891--1895) were exemplary civic activists who articulated an urban ideal of good citizenship within a healthy community. They believed that public service through political participation, economic development through good business practice, and civic leadership through voluntarism were necessary components of community life. They served in appointive and elective offices and amassed a fortune in oil, real estate, and other enterprises. Their greatest impact lay in philanthropic careers: they supported city planning; pioneered preventive mental health care; established the Hogg Foundation for Mental Health; and sponsored lectures and university scholarships. Will was a University of Texas regent; Ima served on Houston's Board of Education; Ima founded and sustained the Houston Symphony; and family generosity nurtured the Museum of Fine Arts for fifty years. Profoundly influenced by their parents' examples, the Hoggs' activism illuminates Progressivism, philanthropy, and civil society in the United States. Progressives like the Hoggs were proactive optimists whose moral response to social dislocations taught citizens they could improve their lives. Hogg philanthropies, which interpreted this promise of American life, help explain how millions of generous Americans build community institutions. The Hoggs' efforts to unite business leaders, politicians, and volunteers in partnerships of civic responsibility show how cooperation promotes democracy and fosters civil society. As the Hoggs were challenged a century ago to husband their oil wealth and build a great city, so must Houstonians today conserve resources to promote community goals and preserve diverse values.

This dissertation traces the debate about desegregation on the campuses of five elite private universities in the South from the end of World War II to the early 1960s. The presidents of Duke, Emory, Rice, Tulane, and Vanderbilt, charged with leading these schools to national prominence, quickly grasped that postwar realities---including pressure from federal grantmakers and national philanthropic foundations---would require some measure of racial change if the schools were to advance. In the interest of progress the presidents were willing to accept limited participation by "exceptional" blacks in the life of the university. The critical issue in their eyes was who would control the process of racial change. While acknowledging, some more grudgingly than others, that "outside" pressure for desegregation should be heeded, the presidents insisted that the pace and manner of loosening racial restrictions must remain the decisions of educated southern whites. Many powerful trustees and alumni staunchly opposed even this. These traditionalists strongly defended southern racial customs and fought any attempts to alter them for any reason, even the advancement of the schools they served. With varying degrees of energy and success, the presidents mediated between the proponents of progress and tradition, trying to avoid open conflict while gradually improving each school's academic quality. Only Vanderbilt took steps towards opening admissions, allowing black graduate students to enroll in its School of Religion beginning in 1953. The debate over the place of talented blacks on these campuses remained subdued until 1954, when Brown v. Board of Education and the growing grass-roots civil rights movement brought increased turmoil to the South. Although many trustees vowed not to bend to this pressure, the costs of maintaining segregation on campus became too high to bear. By the early 1960s, snowballing loss of faculty, student discontent, and above all, the threat of a funding cut-off by the federal government and the foundations led all these schools to abandon segregated admissions policies.

In July 1835, a northern anti-slavery society sent bundles of abolitionist literature through the United States postal service to the South. Arriving at South Carolina's port city, the mailing became the focus of white Charlestonians' fears of slave uprisings and those Who might assist a servile insurrection. During an attack on the post office to destroy the papers, someone in the crowd shouted for a lynching of Charleston's Catholic bishop and the destruction of the Catholic cathedral and surrounding buildings, including a parochial school for free black children. Using the Charleston Post Office Raid as a backdrop, this study explores both the connections between anti-abolitionism, anti-Catholicism, and nativism in the antebellum South and the reaction to these pressures from southern Catholics, mostly recent immigrants, as they made a place for themselves in their new homeland. At the heart of the work is a consideration of the effects of the ethnic and racial stereotypes and cultural assumptions at play in the antebellum South.

Jonas Chickering was the foremost American piano-maker in the early- to mid-nineteenth century. He perfected the iron frame in the square piano and the grand piano, adding stability and strength to the instruments, and launching his company into the international market. Even more, he took advantage of an age in which technology, transportation, financial abundance, and American idealism converged, propelling the piano, its music, and its artists into the American mainstream. The Chickering firm in the mid-1800's was one of the most respected manufacturing companies in the United States. In the history of pianoforte design, Jonas Chickering bridged the gap between the 19th-century European pianoforte and the modern design epitomized by the Steinway company. His firm was also largely responsible for the "piano craze" that overtook the United States in the mid-1800's, in which "middle-class" status was epitomized by stationing a piano in the living room. This document gives an overview of the nineteenth-century Chickering company as a whole. It focuses specifically upon the design and construction of the nineteenth-century Chickering square and grand. In conducting research for this dissertation, I began with a study of five Chickering instruments at the Smithsonian Institution, particularly noting the physical evolution of the square piano. Important primary-source information was gathered at the Smithsonian Institution Archives Center, whose Chickering & Sons collection includes the majority of the Chickering Piano Registers. A visit to the Fiske Museum in Claremont, California afforded an opportunity to study the earliest known Chickering grand in a public collection, as well as two Chickering squares. I also visited numerous other Chickering grands in California to trace further the evolution of the grand line. In order to examine more closely a representative instrument, the author acquired an 1869 Chickering square (Serial #34936). Through dismantling its action and damper assemblies, I was able to gain more insight into the Chickering company's designs and production methods. A detailed summary of findings is included. This writer's intent is to explain the technological, musical, and ideological success of the Chickering company in producing perfect instruments for their time.