This dissertation is an ethnographic analysis of the ways in which disenfranchised Black communities mobilize cultural legacies of maroonage to empower themselves through the establishment of independent educational institutions. Using Kamali Academy, an African-centered, systematic home school in New Orleans, Louisiana, as a case study and ethnographic site, I examine two primary questions: What does the relationship between maroonage, as a political-cultural praxis, and independent Black educational institutions tell us about the construction of autonomous Black communities in the United States? Specifically, what does Kamali Academy teach us about these communities’ viability as interventions into a failing educational system that marginalizes Black students and families in New Orleans? Building on existing scholarship, I highlight maroonage as a method of community construction within a dominant socio-political structure. I depart from the literature, however, by rearticulating maroonage as a translocal and transhistorical cultural tradition, a process by which individuals and communities disengage from the dominant structure and re-engage in affirming and positive institutions. When considered within the context of both the charter school movement that has taken over New Orleans public schools since Hurricane Katrina as well as the extensive legacy of the struggle for independent Black education in the United States, Kamali Academy provides insight into what I have termed institutional maroonage, or the formation and maintenance of independent Black institutions that serve as spaces for community building and benefit the interests of Black freedom. / text

What causes Black people in America to opt-out of voting in the American political process? Do racial or cultural markers play a part in their turning away from the political process? Do economic factors play a role? This question often raises ferocious arguments in America. Yet, there has been no thorough investigation of the motivations behind Black voting abstention. This dissertation seeks to fill that void by exploring why a sample of middle-class Philadelphians choose not to exercise their right to vote. Voter apathy, racial/communal interests, or other factors have historically been utilized to explain why individuals choose to sit on the periphery of the American political system. However, none of these studies examine the cultural factors that cause individuals of African descent to exercise abstention from voting. The purpose of this project is multi-fold: (a) to explore with a sample of Black nonvoters their reasons for not voting; (b) interrogate our current orientation that voting as a needed signifier for our existence, (c) to properly center Black nonpolitical engagement as a possible viable avenue for African-descended people in our pursuit of creating a milieu of resistance and liberation, (d) to help normalize nonvoting practices as valid and acceptable methods of Black political engagement within Africana Studies, the Academy, and the Africana community; and (e) to push back against the dominant discourse that voting is the only viable option for progress for African-descended people in America. This work explores the idea that abstaining from voting, which has been a source of shame and contention within the Black community, may serve as a practical and useful tool in resistance and liberatory fashion for our people. This study seeks to conceptualize and link Black nonparticipatory politics as a form of Political Maroonage. The value of this project is that it should add the academic discourse of the Black nonvoter’s critique of the American political process and add clarity to the politicians who are seeking these individuals’ support for political office. / African American Studies

Nesta pesquisa buscamos, por meio da análise do processo de redução do maniel de Neiba, desatar uma pequena parte da emaranhada trama que compõe a história do Mundo Atlântico na segunda metade do século XVIII. Ocupando a brecha formada pelo choque dos projetos coloniais díspares dos Impérios espanhol e francês para a Ilha de Española, os cimarrones do maniel de Neiba mobilizaram uma rede de interesses, cumplicidades e solidariedades que lhes permitiu empreender um projeto de liberdade que buscava reunir as benesses de uma vida tutelada com a autonomia que haviam conquistado na Serra do Baoruco, fronteira sul entre as colônias de Santo Domingo e Saint Domingue. / In this research we seek, through the analysis of the reducción process of the maniel of Neiba, untie a small part of the tangled web that makes up the history of the Atlantic World in the second half of the eighteenth century. Occupying the gap formed by the shock of different colonial projects on the Española Island, the maroons of the maniel of Neiba mobilized a network of interest, complicity and solidarity that allowed them to undertake a project of freedom that tried to gather the benefits of a life controlled by the Spaniards with autonomy that they conquered in the Baorucos Mountains, southern border between the Santo Domingo and Saint Domingue colonies.

Nesta pesquisa buscamos, por meio da análise do processo de redução do maniel de Neiba, desatar uma pequena parte da emaranhada trama que compõe a história do Mundo Atlântico na segunda metade do século XVIII. Ocupando a brecha formada pelo choque dos projetos coloniais díspares dos Impérios espanhol e francês para a Ilha de Española, os cimarrones do maniel de Neiba mobilizaram uma rede de interesses, cumplicidades e solidariedades que lhes permitiu empreender um projeto de liberdade que buscava reunir as benesses de uma vida tutelada com a autonomia que haviam conquistado na Serra do Baoruco, fronteira sul entre as colônias de Santo Domingo e Saint Domingue. / In this research we seek, through the analysis of the reducción process of the maniel of Neiba, untie a small part of the tangled web that makes up the history of the Atlantic World in the second half of the eighteenth century. Occupying the gap formed by the shock of different colonial projects on the Española Island, the maroons of the maniel of Neiba mobilized a network of interest, complicity and solidarity that allowed them to undertake a project of freedom that tried to gather the benefits of a life controlled by the Spaniards with autonomy that they conquered in the Baorucos Mountains, southern border between the Santo Domingo and Saint Domingue colonies.