Thesis (D. Min.)--Mid-America Baptist Theological Seminary, 1993. / Microfiche lacks bibliography.

This thesis uses the 50th Anniversary of the 1957 Integration Crisis at Central High School as a case study to explore issues of memory and remembrance. After looking at various forms of commemoration, Little Rock proves to provide key insights into the dangers of memory, as well as more effective ways of remembering.

Thesis (D.Min.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 392 403).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-116).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Dallas Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 392-403).

Thesis (D. Min.)--Abilene Christian University, 2006. / Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 111-116).

This paper examines the various responses of progressive white southern clergy to school desegregation events in Arkansas. I investigate why no major white clerical movement emerged to support civil rights, arguing that internal and external factors limited their genuinely motivated witness. National and local clergy endorsed Brown for both religious and practical reasons, arguing that segregation was counter to Christian brotherhood and hurt worldwide evangelism. However, like William Chafe’s progressives in Greensboro, too many clergy worked for school desegregation but ignored African American voices, believing that their demands unnecessarily inflamed the local opposition and unfortunately urged patience and civility instead of justice. Furthermore, clerical intervention proved to be less effective than ministers expected. Sympathetic clergy experienced physical harassment and congregational opposition for speaking out, and local communities simply ignore their messages.

In this study, I examined musical recordings from the jazz idiom that relate to events or ideas involved in the Civil Rights Movement during the mid-1950s through the mid-1960s. The study focused on the four following musicians' recordings: Charles Mingus, Fables of Faubus; Sonny Rollins, The Freedom Suite; Ornette Coleman, Free Jazz; and John Coltrane, A Love Supreme. The study relies primarily on the aforementioned recordings, critics analysis of those recordings, and events that took place during the Civil Right Movement. The study concludes that these recordings are not only commentary about ideas and events but historically representative of the movement as well.

My dissertation argues that African Americans in the 20th-century connected lynching and other acts of racial violence with Christ's crucifixion, which in turn fostered hope and even interracial amity by linking his resurrection with racial uplift. To illustrate this dynamic, I focus on musician, dramatist, and church leader Willa Saunders Jones (1901-79) and her Passion play, which she wrote in Chicago during the 1920s. Over the course of six decades, Jones produced her play annually in churches and later large civic theaters. Growing in size and splendor, the play remained intimately tied with the Black church. It also bore the impress of Jones's cultural training in Little Rock, Arkansas and Chicago, the city to which her family fled after a transforming brush with racial violence. The rise of her Passion play depended upon her musical success, most notably as a choral director. By focusing on a single cultural product over time and through several disciplinary lenses, my study contributes new insights into the role of sacred music and drama within the African American community. Offering a brief overview of Jones and her play, my Introduction also articulates the dissertation's two central organizing concepts: the crucifixion trope and resurrection consciousness. Chapters One and Two explain why Americans, especially of African descent, made a link between the suffering of black men in America and the crucifixion of Christ (the crucifixion trope). Chapters Three and Four indicate why Jones considered sacred music and drama to be agents of racial uplift and interracial amity. The final chapter focuses on the theme of Christ's resurrection as a metaphor that animates certain responses to racial trauma (resurrection consciousness). In addition to a wide range of secondary sources, I draw upon personal interviews, court records, genealogical records, the Black press, visual images, song lyrics, correspondence, autobiographies, plays, playbills, school records, television footage, and church publications of the National Baptist Convention, USA. "Windy City, Holy Land" should be of special interest to scholars in African American Studies, American Studies, History, Religious Studies, Theatre Studies, and Women's Studies.

Thesis (D. Min.)--Midwestern Baptist Theological Seminary, 2006. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 166-171).