Diploma thesis "Prague Spring from the point of view of the transition theory" deals with the time period of "Prague Spring" and briefly also about the following year. The application of the methods of transition tries to show the next development of Czechoslovakia in case if the development hasn't had stopped by the intervention of troops of Warsaw Pact. There is a brief development of transitology there and then; three transition theories from significant authors discussing this topic are mentioned there. Further, the attitudes of reformers to the society in the year 1968 in Czechoslovakia, changes in the society itself and in the Communist Party are investigated there. A very important fact is the international situation and influence of states of the Soviet Block to reviving process and it representatives. The main chapter offers the possible future development of Czechoslovakia after the implementation transition theories. In the last part events from the year 1969 are mentioned. Two public polls bring closer the perception of Prague Spring after 25 and 30 years and its importance for the transition to democracy in 1989.

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This paper focuses on the Secret Six who consisted of Theodore Parker, Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Franklin Benjamin Sanborn, Samuel Gridley Howe, George Luther Stearns, and Gerrit Smith, and the concepts that these men believed in regarding the type of society they wanted established in the United States. The dominant theme in the minds of this Secret Six was the romantic belief in the free individual. The belief in the free individual living in a free, progressive society held out the promise that America could become a perfect community of autonomous individuals and an example for all the world. But the Secret Six realized that for America to be this perfect community of autonomous individuals, America had to be freed of any determinism in its institutions. These six crusaders had such faith in their theories of individualism, that they abandoned moral persuasion and accepted violence as the principal means of establishing their society. These men believed that only the type of an individual who was willing to use violence if necessary and to die for the dictates of his conscience, could reform America into a community that exemplified to the world a belief in the free individual.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / This dissertation employs a historical approach to the philanthropic activities of Madam C.J. Walker, an African American female entrepreneur who built an international beauty culture company that employed thousands of people, primarily black women, and generated hundreds of thousands of dollars in annual revenues during the Jim Crow era. The field of philanthropic studies has recognized Walker as a philanthropist, but has not effectively accounted for how her story challenges conventional understandings of philanthropy. I use historical methods and archival research to determine what motivated and constituted Walker’s philanthropic giving to arrive at three main conclusions. First, Walker’s philanthropy can be best understood as emerging out of a moral imagination forged by her experiences as a poor, black, female migrant in St. Louis, Missouri during the late 1800s dependent upon a robust philanthropic infrastructure of black civil society institutions and individuals who cared for and mentored her through the most difficult period of her life. Second, she created and operated her company to pursue commercial and philanthropic goals concurrently by improving black women’s personal hygiene and appearance; increasing their access to vocational education, beauty culture careers, and financial independence; and promoting social bonding and activism through associationalism, and, later, fraternal ritual. Third, during her lifetime and through her estate, Walker deployed a diverse array of philanthropic resources to fund African American social service and educational needs in networks with other black women. Her giving positions her philanthropy as simultaneously distinct from the dominant paradigm of wealthy whites and as shared with that of other African Americans. Her approach thus ran counter to the racialized and gendered models of giving by the rich white male and female philanthropists of her era, while being representative of black women’s norms of giving.

Many religious leaders in the early 1900s were afraid of the immoral associations and repercussions of birth control. The Catholic Church and some Protestants never accepted contraception, or accepted it much later, but many mainline Protestants leaders did change their tune dramatically between the years of 1920 and 1931. This investigation seeks to understand how Margaret Sanger was able to use her rhetoric to move her reform from the leftist outskirts and decadent, sexual connotations into the mainstream of family-friendly, morally virtuous, and even conservative religious approval. Securing the approval of religious leaders subsequently provided the impetus for legal and medical acceptance by the late-1930s. Margaret Sanger used conferences, speeches, articles, her magazine (Birth Control Review), and several books to reinforce her message as she pragmatically shifted from the radical left closer to the center and conservatives. She knew the power of the churches to influence their members, and since the United States population had undeniably a Judeo-Christian base, this power could be harnessed in order to achieve success for the birth control movement, among the conservative medical and political communities and the public at large. Despite the clear consensus against birth control by all mainline Christian churches in 1920, including Roman Catholics and Protestants alike, the decade that followed would bring about a great divide that would continue to widen in successive decades. Sanger put forward many arguments in her works, but the ones which ultimately brought along the relatively conservative religious leaders were those that presented birth control not as a gender equity issue, but rather as a morally constructive reform that had the power to save and strengthen marriages; lessen prostitution and promiscuity; protect the health of women; reduce abortions, infanticide, and infant mortality; and improve the quality of life for children and families. Initially, many conservatives and religious leaders associated the birth control movement with radicals, feminists, prostitutes, and promiscuous youth, and feared contraception would lead to immorality and the deterioration of the family. Without the threat of pregnancy, conservatives feared that youth and even married adults would seize the opportunity to have sex outside of marriage. Others worried the decreasing size of families was a sign of growing selfishness and materialism. In response, Sanger promoted the movement as a way for conservatives to stop the rising divorce rates by strengthening and increasing marriages, and to improve the lives of families by humanely increasing the health and standard of living, for women and children especially. In short, she argued that birth control would not lead to deleterious consequences, but would actually improve family moral values and become an effective humanitarian reform. She recognized that both liberals and conservatives were united in hoping to strengthen the family, and so she emphasized those virtues and actively courted those same conservative religious leaders that had previously shunned birth control and the movement. Throughout the 1920s, she emphasized the ways in which birth control could strengthen marriages and improve the quality of life of women and children, and she effectively won over the relatively conservative religious leaders that she needed to bring about the movement’s public, medical, and political progress.