Integrating methods and sources from the study of Mexican Americans, urban history, and historical preservation this dissertation examines the interactions of race and space. In the late 1960's, Arizona's fast urban renewal project, the Pueblo Center Redevelopment Project, resulted in building a new civic center and government complex in Tucson. Construction of the new expansive structure required that the city's oldest barrio or neighborhood be destroyed. In an era when the local economy relied heavily on tourists' dollars, city officials and boosters used urban renewal as an opportunity to eradicate the barrio in order to diminish long-held national convictions of Tucson as too "Mexican." In the late nineteenth century, Anglo Americans moving to Tucson had displaced Mexican Americans, who moved to the southern edge of town. This demographic shift resulted in the barrio's creation. As a result of de facto segregation, the barrio grew to serve Mexican Americans' consumer and social needs. It became impossible to hide the city's large Mexican American population since the barrio spilled into the central business district. Boosters had constructed the barrio and its residents as obstacles to "progress," targeting it for destruction since the 1930s. Exemplifying the power of the politics of representation, boosters devised images in their widespread promotional campaigns that they hoped would make Tucson appear more modern and racially homogeneous so that they could attract more tourists. Cultural productions indicate that boosters highlighted the incongruity of a Mexican American space in the city that stood in opposition to the modernity that Anglo American space embodied. City officials avoided updating developmental services in the barrio and refused to enforce housing codes for decades. By the 1960s, the barrio fit federal standards that qualified it as a "slum." Two oppositional historical preservation movements emerged as a result the destruction of older and historic structures. Their failures and successes illustrate the process whereby particular histories are legitimated and disseminated while others are marginalized. Mexican Americans attempted to save sites that commemorated the city's Mexican American past, while Anglo Americans succeeded in preserving an exaggerated version of an Anglo past.

This dissertation focuses on Pipestone, Minnesota, which provides an important example of the process of creating and localizing national identity. Founded in 1874, the town derived its name from the nearby pipestone quarries, a traditional excavation site for regional tribes. In the early nineteenth century George Catlin's artistic representations made the area famous and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow's poetic interpretations of tribal mythology offered a romantic Indian past that appealed to industrializing America. This study proposes that the town's founders accepted the popular perceptions of the quarries' significance to the tribes--particularly the symbol of the "peacepipe" and its source in sacred ground--and actively employed related tribal imagery to create local identity and to promote the town on state and national levels. Emphasis on the quarries as unique and central to America's Indian heritage helped Pipestone attract railroad lines, a federal Indian boarding school in the 1890s, and a national monument in the 1930s to protect the quarries and to attract tourists. This dissertation traces the development of Pipestone from Catlin's early influential images of the quarries and tribes to the first productions of the town's annual "Song of Hiawatha" pageant in the 1940s and 1950s. Since the town's inception its residents continuously adapted their conceptions of the quarries' Indian heritage in order to generate a usable past. This study analyzes the ways in which they used tribal and landscape imagery to encourage town growth, investment, tourism, and the legitimizing presence of the federal government, making Pipestone a nationally-known place and a self-professed "real American" town. Archival sources examined include local and regional newspapers, memoirs, town business, state, and railroad promotional literature, federal institutional documents, state histories, and publications by the county historical society. These sources provide evidence of how the town's residents produced and maintained Pipestone's image and how this local process illustrates Americans' search for historical identity.

Tony Terry founded The Gaslight Theatre in Tucson, Arizona, in 1977. The thesis examines The Gaslight Theatre in order to validate the company's artistic relevancy as a contemporary producer of melodramas and to further understand the reason behind the theatre's current success. The structure of the work begins with a history of melodrama, a look at the producer, Tony Terry, and his background and influence on The Gaslight Theatre, followed by a history of The Gaslight's three phases: The Victorian melodramas, the musical comedy melodramas, and the comedy spoof melodramas. A history of The Gaslight olio reveals the nature of the art form. The thesis further provides a study of those involved in the theatre's success, as well as the company's inevitable link to the current theatre practices. Most importantly, the thesis examines The Gaslight Theatre's significance to the local and American theatre community.

<p> Though primarily associated with white Southerners, bluegrass music is actually the product of over three hundred years of black and white musical interaction that occurred in the American Southeast. This document begins by reviewing the first complete definition of bluegrass music written by Mayne Smith. It then proceeds to explore the history of cross cultural exchanges in the South, particularly in the Appalachian Mountains, that began when the first slaves were brought to the New World. In the South, these interactions created the folk music that would eventually develop into country music and later bluegrass in the twentieth century. Black musical styles also directly influenced the father of bluegrass, Bill Monroe, especially through his contact with the blues musician Arnold Shultz. The banjo playing of Earl Scruggs, an essential element of bluegrass, also owes a significant debt to African-American banjo styles found in Scruggs's native region of North Carolina.</p>

<p> The success rate of modern U.S. presidents in passing significant, non-incremental policy initiatives, that involved transformational change, has been much slower than the rate at which unresolved, major issues (e.g., energy, deficits, and immigration) have been accumulating. Since congressional leaders play a major role in ensuring the passage of non-incremental legislation, understanding the leadership approaches used by U.S. presidents with congressional leaders could provide insights into the challenges faced in passing non-incremental legislation. Thus, the purpose of this qualitative, historical case study was to explore President Carter's leadership approach in his attempt to gain the support of the two congressional leaders&mdash;Thomas "Tip" O'Neill, Speaker of the House of Representatives, and Robert Byrd, the Majority Leader of the Senate in his quest to pass a comprehensive energy policy. </p><p> The following research question guided this study: What was the nature of President Carter's leadership approach as evidenced by direct communication with the two congressional leaders during his attempt to pass a comprehensive energy policy between January 20, 1977 and November 8, 1978? This historical case study was conducted at the Carter presidential Library in Atlanta, Georgia. Written documents, as well as audio and video recordings provided multiple sources of data and allowed for data triangulation. In the instance of this energy legislation, President Carter rarely engaged in transactional exchanges and primarily limited his attempts at transformational leadership to public speeches; nearly to the exclusion of all other methods of direct communication. The president's limited use of other traditional presidential leadership tools (private meetings, letters, and the use of reciprocity or bargaining) was perhaps the reason that he was unable to secure the enthusiastic support of Senate Majority Leader Byrd. Unlike the House, which had passed the president's proposal nearly intact, the energy bill was eventually dismembered in the Senate and only a shell of the original plan was enacted. Presidents should give special attention to their working relationship with the congressional leaders and utilize both transactional and transformational leadership approaches. </p>

<p> The development of commercial aviation was a defining characteristic of the post-World War I era. The Post Office played a key role in that process by using warplanes and war-trained aviators to initiate the Air Mail Service in 1918. By 1920, a transcontinental air mail route spanned the nation from New York to San Francisco. Over the ensuing years, the continuing expansion of the nation's air mail network was a pivotal catalytic force in the development of a wide array of new aviation technologies, including aircraft design improvements, enhanced navigational and communication systems, and mechanisms for night-flying capabilities.</p><p> In close collaboration with the Air Mail Service, cities and towns throughout Nebraska made significant contributions to all of these developments during the 1920s and 30s. Omaha and North Platte built airfields that became key stops along the original transcontinental air mail route, while Grand Island and Lincoln would be added to the network in subsequent years. And throughout this period, smaller towns and villages, and thousands of rural Nebraska residents, expressed their enthusiastic support for aviation in countless ways, reflected most notably by the dozens of farm families who assisted pilots who were forced to make emergency landings in fields and pastures scattered around the state. </p><p> Nebraska also proved to be an ideal proving ground for the new Air Mail Service. The state's low population density, relatively level terrain, and access to the broad and familiar Platte River valley bisecting the Great Plains made it attractive for experimentation with all sorts of new developments in aviation during this period, particularly in the realm of night flying capabilities and enhanced radio transmissions. Nebraska's connections to the Air Mail Service were further solidified when the nation celebrated National Air Mail Week in 1938. Dozens of towns across Nebraska participated enthusiastically in the week-long commemoration of the service's 20^th anniversary, making the event a fitting tribute to the early airborne pioneers who established the aerial transportation system that we take for granted today.</p>

<p> Marginalized husbands, fathers, and sons on dramatically different positions within territorial New Mexico's social, racial, and class hierarchies constructed and performed the identity of young, able-bodied, industrious "A-1 good men" when demanding entitlements from governors, penitentiary wardens, chiefs of the Mounted Police Force, and Bureau of Immigration officials in a fledgling territory that desperately coveted statehood. Not a <i>Hispano</i> identity, an Anglo identity, or an affluent one, this gendered identity embodied a representation of the man territorial authorities defined as the ideal New Mexican, an image deemed necessary to merit and achieve equal inclusion in the United States. </p><p> I argue that New Mexico's underfunded institutions of the Territorial Penitentiary, Mounted Police Force, Bureau of Immigration, and territorial courts&mdash;institutions designed to facilitate New Mexico's transition from a demeaned site of Spanish, Mexican, and indigenous Pueblo authority to a celebrated site of U.S., Anglo, and federal authority&mdash;enabled this gendered representation to flourish. </p><p> This dissertation interrogates how and why territorial institutions differentially recognized those with whom they interacted, directly or tangentially, including immigrant miners, an incarcerated pregnant African American teenager and her veteran father, an elderly Anglo female murder victim, imprisoned <i> Hispano</i> husbands, <i>Hispana</i> business owners in need of police protection, and young Anglo "cowmen" seeking employment. </p><p> New Mexico's status as a peripheral participant in the nation propelled a milieu of unbelonging and rigorous racialization. Scrutinizing demands for entitlements found in the correspondence, advertisements, and judicial proceedings of territorial institutions illuminates a gendered rhetorical pattern that determined whose labor would be considered most valuable, whose testimony would be granted the most consideration in court, whose family would merit wages from territorial employment, and whose presence would be most welcome outside of the penitentiary. </p><p> New Mexico's territorial institutions are spaces where the enmeshment of race, gender, working-class masculinity, and political disenfranchisement is highly visible. These institutions did not evaluate gendered claims of entitlement equally. How women&mdash;whether <i>Hispana</i>, Anglo, African American, immigrant, native-born, young, elderly, domestic worker, or business owner&mdash;negotiated this space in political transition challenges the ubiquitous performances of masculinity harnessed to obtain privileges from territorial institutions.</p>

<p> Though much has been written about Phillis Wheatley's life and works, the balance of Wheatley scholarship has submerged her in historiographical context rather than treat Wheatley as a subject on her own merits. Wheatley's work was connoted as "unthinkable" in her own time as a means of using recognition of singular acts of resistance as exceptions to a rule of deference on the part of blacks to white society. Moreover, this contextualization has been repeated in Wheatley scholarship. In its overemphasis on Wheatley's environment or her potential link to present literary schools, Wheatley scholarship similarly attempts to "account" for Wheatley rather than seriously reckon with her as a historical actor. </p><p> However, Wheatley was herself aware of this system of representation, and honed her ability to politick through manipulating her "unthinkable" attributes into an opportunity to publish her verse. Wheatley's 1773 collection <i> Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral</i> began a brief yet pointed period in the public eye, and Wheatley used this opportunity to further hone her developing and increasingly radical voice. The poet's works challenged white hierarchy in ways both direct and indirect, with elites such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson evaluating her work. In his 1801 work <i>Notes on the State of Virginia,</i> Jefferson was particularly critical of Wheatley's capacity to write her own poetry, but Jefferson's contemporaries continuously challenged his opinion and forced him reevaluate his views. Though she was never conventionally famous, Wheatley nonetheless made a marked contribution to the discourse of "race" in her day.</p>

From the birth of the republic through annexation and secession two men in Texas politics loom in bitter opposition---Sam Houston and David C. Burnet. Of the former much is known. The first good history of Texas was by his follower, Henderson Yoakum. John Henry Brown, Hubert Howe Bancroft, and a host of others broadcast the fame and immortalized the name of the "Victor of San Jacinto." By the close of the nineteenth century "Old Sam" was signally preeminent. In 1901, however, a youthful scholar gave the friends of Houston pause when he raised again the ever-haunting question posed by Burnet and countless others: In Houston's retreat from the Colorado, which is the key to San Jacinto, did not the general display gross misjudgment, and hence, is not Houston's entire military fame totally unwarranted? It is over half a century since Eugene C. Barker published his critical study of the Campaign of San Jacinto---and three decades since his reinterpretation. With Barker's later reevaluation the publicists recaptured the field: Clarence R. Wharton wrote his San Jacinto, the Sixteenth Decisive Battle of the World, Andrew Jackson Houston published his Texas Independence , and Marquis James won the Pulitizer Prize for his novel, The Raven. From the retreat, where they began their rivalry, through a long series of clashes closing with the latter's death at the Civil War, Burnet and Houston captured the attention of the Republic. Others could oppose the General: Lamar, Burleson, Sherman, Green were but a few who did---but their tenure was brief compared to that of the "Old Puritan." Arriving in Texas over a decade before Houston, Burnet was to live to see the South downtrodden and himself, its chosen representative, turned from the doors of the capitol. President, Vice-President, Secretary of State, United States Senator-Elect, Burnet has long merited a suitable published work; yet none has appeared. In an effort to remedy an obvious defect, the author submits this monograph on "The First President of Texas."

Many works have been written concerning the Texas cattle country, the Great Plains, the cowboy, the famed Texas Rangers, and other subjects related to the vast inland-orientated aspects of the history of the state. The story of the exciting days of the Republic has also been the subject of numerous studies. In contrast, little has been written concerning the sea-orientated areas of the state, and the period of Texas history from the end of the Mexican War until the Reconstruction has not yet been made the subject of careful historical analysis. Thus, one of the most neglected subjects of historical study has been the Texas Gulf Coast in the formative period of the 1850's and the critical years of the War between the States. At the outset this study was intended to deal with the Galveston Coast during the period from statehood through the War; however, a closer examination of the topic at the actual research level indicated that this time delineation was too large for one book and that no satisfactory study of the Civil War period could be made without first developing an analysis of the formative period of the late forties and the fifties. In fact, while the war years may appear to be more worthy of study and perhaps more colorful, the decade before the war was actually much more important from the historical point of view because those were the years in which Texans determined the profile of their own future. Once the decision had been made to go into cotton production by means of slave-labor as the major economic enterprise of the state, and once the decision to secede had been reached, what happened to Texas during the war and reconstruction periods was beyond the control of Texans, being determined by events in a larger arena. Galveston was chosen as the nucleus of the study rather than the Gulf Coast as a whole, because in terms of trade, banking and journalism the Island dominated the coastal area. In fact, the city, the largest in Texas, was known as the "Queen City" of the Gulf. This study does not pretend to be a complete history of Galveston in this period, rather the intention has been to focus on the major issues and major personalities that dominated life in the cosmopolitan metropolis in those critical years, 1845--1861.