Public space in New Orleans became increasingly segregated following the 1896 U. S. Supreme Court decision in Plessy v. Ferguson. This trend applied to sites of recreation, as nearly all public parks in the city became segregated. African Americans turned, instead, to private parks. This work examines four private parks open to African Americans in order to understand the external forces that affected these spaces, leading to their success or closure, and their significance for black city residents. While scholars have argued public space in New Orleans was segregated during Jim Crow, little attention has been paid to African American parks as alternative spaces for black New Orleanians. Whites were able to control the location of the parks and the parks’ reliance on profit to survive resulted in short spans of existence for most. However, this thesis argues that these parks were crucial sites of identity and community formation and of resistance to segregation.

Although extensive quantitative research has been conducted on Black American incarceration rates, to date, there has not been a study from an Afrocentric (Black American) perspective in the field of public policy. Using Dillard's conceptualization of Afrocentric theory, this study added to the field of public policy by examining how the stigmas associated with mass incarceration have reduced political and economic opportunities for Black Americans born 1965 - 1984. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to provide an Afrocentric voice by which the members of the Black American community are the center of the data collection on the stigmas associated with incarceration as a product of the new Jim Crow (mass incarceration) for those born between 1965 -1984 (the hip-hop generation where the music is the center of the culture) in the United States. Data were collected through semistructured interviews with selected informants based on their background work, experience, and cultural orientation within the Black American community; these data were analyzed via a summative content analysis, which revealed new perspectives on the stigmas associated with incarceration. The new perspective that was gained asked for the structure of the Black American church to be reexamined due to the rise in the mega-church, an improved culturally sensitive K-12 public educational system, and the overall reconnection and strengthening of the Black American family structure. These findings suggest that social change can only occur when researchers of color are allowed to provide their perspectives on issues that affect those they represent. Hence, the social change implications for this study ask that political leaders work directly with the hip-hop generation and the Black American community as a whole to make changes in legislation through political liberalism.

Blanche Armwood was a remarkable black woman activist, from Tampa, Florida, who devoted her life to improving the political, social, and economic status of blacks in the Jim Crow South. Local historians have kept Armwood's legacy alive by describing her achievements and by emphasizing her dedication to the African-American population during one of the most racist periods in American history. In their efforts to understand Armwood's career, scholars depend upon race as the primary category of analysis and focus mainly on the external forces that defined Armwood's world. They argue that she became resigned to her lot in life as a black woman, and consequently chose to accommodate rather than challenge the Southern racial system. This thesis offers an alternative interpretation of Armwood's activism. It argues that Blanche Armwood rejected the white supremacist ideology of the Jim Crow South and insisted on equal opportunity and political equality for all African-Americans. This study examines how social variables such as race, gender, and class intersected in her life, shaping her world view and leadership style. It explores how Armwood's experiences as a southern, middle-class, black woman affected her racial ideology. Armwood left behind a powerful legacy of resistance against the second-class status that white America imposed on blacks during the nadir in African-American history. She contested the white South's perception of African-American women. In a world that associated them with Mammy and Jezebel stereotypes, Armwood insisted that African-American women deserved the same respect that society accorded white women. Armwood fought for political equality, demanding that black women should have the right to vote and participate in the civic process as women and as African-Americans. In addition, she believed that the federal government had a responsibility to protect all its citizens and that every American was entitled to equal treatment before the law. Finally, Armwoodʹs racial uplift work revealed her faith in the cornerstone of the American creed, its promise of equal opportunity. She provided some blacks with the chance to move away from poverty and illiteracy to become respectable middle-class Americans.

Does ethnicity of the student prevent equal levels of learning at an equal pace? Are schools required to teach all children effectively, no matter what their socio-economic status, gender, or ethnicity? Educators and researchers have longed for the answers to these questions. For years, educators have been looking for ways to teach children in schools that are racially identifiable and have the highest percentages of children on free and reduced lunch. School districts that have choice as a way of assigning students are increasing the number of racially identifiable schools. In Charlotte-Mecklenburg Schools, a choice plan was implemented in June 2001. That plan created more schools of poverty within the district. The district also offered additional resources, teacher incentives, and financial assistance as a way to leverage the student make-up of the school district and the individual schools at all levels. / Ed. D.

This thesis addresses how Japanese and Japanese Americans may have lived and been perceived in Virginia from 1900s through the 1950s. This work focuses on their positions in society with comparisons to the nation, particularly during the “Jim Crow” era of “colored” and “white,” and after the bombing of Pearl Harbor in 1941. It highlights various means of understanding their positions in Virginia society, with emphasis on Japanese visitors, marriages of Japanese in Virginia, and the inclusion of Japanese in higher education at Roanoke College, Randolph-Macon College, William and Mary, University of Virginia, University of Richmond, Hampden-Sydney College, and Union Theological Seminary. It also takes into account the Japanese experience in Virginia during Japanese internment, while focusing on the Homestead, Virginia, as well as the experiences of Japanese students and soldiers, which ultimately showed Virginia was distinct in its mild treatment towards the Japanese as compared to the West Coast.

Containing portraiture and biography as well as protest text and affirmative text, African- American Illustrated biographical dictionaries made from 1876 to 1917 present Social Gospel ideology and are examples of Afro-Protestantism. They are similar to the first American illustrated biographical dictionaries of the 1810s in that they formed social identity after national conflict while contesting concepts of social inferiority. The production of these books occurred during the early years of Jim Crow, a period of momentous change to the legal and social fabric of the United States, and because of momentous changes in modern American print industries. While portraits within the books simultaneously form, blur, and stabilize identity, biographies convey themes of perseverance, social equity, and social struggle. More specifically, text formed an imagined community in the African-American middle class imaginary. It worked together with image to help create a proto-Civil Rights social movement identity during the beginning of racial apartheid.

Au sortir de quatre années d’une guerre fratricide, les États-Unis s’engageaient sur la voie de la Reconstruction, période qui généra des questions autour de la liberté. Deux catégories étaient au cœur d’une actualité faite de rebondissements multiples : les Noirs et les femmes. Les uns parce que leurs soutiens abolitionnistes souhaitaient obtenir une citoyenneté immédiate (“This is the Negro’s hour”) ; les autres parce qu’elles étaient les alliées de longue date des mêmes abolitionnistes et réclamaient dorénavant le suffrage. Ce fut le début d’alliances, de mésalliances entre les hommes noirs, les suffragists, les femmes noires et leurs soutiens et adversaires respectifs, pris qu’ils étaient dans les péripéties de luttes et de causes qui, bien que complémentaires et concomitantes, demeurèrent souvent différentes voire divergentes sur le plan des principes et des stratégies de lutte, ce qui mena parfois à une hostilité réciproque. Tous entrèrent ainsi dans un jeu continu entre universalisme et particularisme (s) jusqu’à l’avènement du vote féminin (Sud mis à part) en 1920 puis du Voting Right Act (1865). Que la réussite des un(e)s dépendît ou non de la victoire des autres, les défaites successives des un(e)s et des autres montraient quant à elles les réticences d’une société traversée par les convulsions occasionnées par ses contradictions d’origine : depuis qu’elle avait proclamé tous les hommes (hormis les Noirs, les Amérindiens et les femmes) égaux. L’inclusion électorale des Noirs et des femmes fut effective au terme de plus d’un siècle de luttes, d’alliances et de mésalliances qui se succédèrent au milieu de cycles successifs d’adhésions ou d’oppositions souvent tumultueuses d’un bout à l’autre de l’échiquier politique. / In the wake of a tragic civil war, the United States entered a period of Reconstruction that aroused many questions about the notion of liberty. Two groups were propelled into the center of the country’s public debate: Blacks and women. While the former became a central issue because their abolitionist allies wanted them to garner immediate citizenship (“This is the Negro’s hour”), the latter were trying to catch public attention because they had been longtime allies to the same abolitionists and were now claiming their own enfranchisement. That was the inception of a long period made of alliances interspersed with moments of blatant disagreement and even separation between black male militants, suffragists, black female franchise advocators, and their respective supporters or opponents. They were all caught in the twists and turns of struggles and causes that complemented one another. Though their motives were concomitant and compatible, they remained fundamentally distinct, even divergent in terms of principles and strategies, which sometimes sparked mutual hostility. They all entered a cycle of actions oscillating between a universal and a particular claim of the franchise. This situation prevailed until the advent of universal female suffrage in 1920 (except for black women in the South). Whether or not the success or failure of black males depended on the defeat of women, the successive defeats of both groups pointed out the reluctance of a society undergoing the convulsions sparked by its original contradictions stemming from the very period when it declared all men equal; all except Indians, Blacks, and women. The final enfranchisement of both women and Blacks took more than a century of alliances and dissociations in the midst of a tumult of successive support or opposition across the country’s political spectrum.

The goals for public schools are to educate all students so that they may attend colleges and/or develop relevant job and citizenship skills. African American students enrolled in American public schools struggle to keep up academically, revealing a so called “achievement gap.” Consequently, many African American children are unable to realize their potential and participate as successful contributing citizens. This study examined how African American parents might engage in their children’s schooling and how schools might support this participation to better meet the needs of these students. The segregation and racism historically practiced in public schools has led to negative perceptions between educators and African American families and communities. The gap in traditional measures of academic achievement between Black and White children has been debated and analyzed by scholars, legislators, and practitioners for decades. School based issues associated with this trend are lower teacher expectations for students of color, lack of curriculum rigor, effective teacher development and training, inadequate resources, tracking of African American students into less demanding programs, a lack of appreciation for Black cultures and inappropriate/misguided school administration. This study examines African American parents’ perceptions of public education and how it impacts Black student success and offers a synopsis of significant events that may have shaped some of these perceptions. Findings include evidence that African American parents perceive that schools do not reach out to them to foster a partnership or encourage participation, but most often engage them when behavior or academic issues arise with their children. Additional areas for investigation surface by the findings include evidence that the disconnect perhaps does not come from a lack of engagement, but from a lack of active participation and partnership. Parents are left feeling as if they have no influence on school culture. Recommendations for improving school and family interactions that may improve African American student outcomes include teacher led parent-school partnerships, communication outside the classroom and school setting, and consideration for cultural differences.

The study examines the formation and development of Chinese American populations in Augusta, Savannah, and Atlanta, Georgia from the beginnings of Chinese Exclusion period through the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Although people of Chinese ancestry were in an ambiguous position upon their arrival in the 1880s within the black-white dyad that defined southern race relations, they were able to negotiate this system, transforming themselves from being perceived as “outsiders” before the 1940s to being treated as “honorary whites” by the late 1960s. To explore this transition, this project analyzes generational differences between immigrants and their children. Before the 1920s, the mostly Chinese immigrant male population concerned themselves with establishing viable businesses for sending remittances back to family in China and creating social institutions that helped the men cope with decades of separation from their families. The men avoided possible conflict with Jim Crow by having their businesses and residences in black or immigrant areas. Some men cultivated better relations with whites by attending Sunday schools that catered to Chinese immigrants. The mutation from “outsider” to “honorary white” status began when prosperous Chinese men started sending for wives to join them in the 1910s, thus ushering in a new pattern of planned long-term settlement in the state. Families successfully challenged the older perception by joining white churches, enrolling their children in white schools, and building social ties with white community leaders. Second generation Chinese Americans reaped the benefits of this strategy in the 1950s and 1960s by gaining access to housing in white neighborhoods, employment opportunities in white-collar occupations, and acceptance as partners in marriages with European Americans.

The study examines the formation and development of Chinese American populations in Augusta, Savannah, and Atlanta, Georgia from the beginnings of Chinese Exclusion period through the passage of the Immigration Act of 1965. Although people of Chinese ancestry were in an ambiguous position upon their arrival in the 1880s within the black-white dyad that defined southern race relations, they were able to negotiate this system, transforming themselves from being perceived as “outsiders” before the 1940s to being treated as “honorary whites” by the late 1960s. To explore this transition, this project analyzes generational differences between immigrants and their children. Before the 1920s, the mostly Chinese immigrant male population concerned themselves with establishing viable businesses for sending remittances back to family in China and creating social institutions that helped the men cope with decades of separation from their families. The men avoided possible conflict with Jim Crow by having their businesses and residences in black or immigrant areas. Some men cultivated better relations with whites by attending Sunday schools that catered to Chinese immigrants. The mutation from “outsider” to “honorary white” status began when prosperous Chinese men started sending for wives to join them in the 1910s, thus ushering in a new pattern of planned long-term settlement in the state. Families successfully challenged the older perception by joining white churches, enrolling their children in white schools, and building social ties with white community leaders. Second generation Chinese Americans reaped the benefits of this strategy in the 1950s and 1960s by gaining access to housing in white neighborhoods, employment opportunities in white-collar occupations, and acceptance as partners in marriages with European Americans.