This study discusses the role of Supreme Court decisions in shaping the evolution of Jim Crow and African American newspapers’ reactions to these decisions. The study focuses on the period between the end of Reconstruction and the United States’ entrance into World War I. It looks at several Supreme Court decisions to demonstrate how the Court failed to act as a check on state legislatures’ reactionary undertakings and how these legislatures interpreted the Court’s judgments. Several of the Supreme Court’s decisions served to alert white legislators to the federal government’s limited actions to protect the rights of African American citizens. The cases included represent most areas of discrimination faced by African Americans during this period including participation in the court system, Fourteenth Amendment protections, the Fifteenth Amendment, public versus private segregation, transportation segregation, education segregation, and housing segregation. White legislators viewed the Supreme Court as an indicator of the state segregation that the federal government would allow. African American newspapers failed to offer a significant response to many key decisions. As the Court limited the protections of Reconstruction legislation, black newspapers offered little guidance to the black community about how to salvage their equal rights. The newspapers had the opportunity to reach large portions of the African American community and to lead efforts to protest the Court’s potentially detrimental decisions, but the press failed to bring attention to the cases white legislators viewed as signals that the federal government would not interfere with state and local segregation. Through the study of approximately twenty black newspapers, it becomes clear that the newspapers’ editors often misread the importance of the Supreme Court’s holdings. Cases that historians now recognize as key turning points in the status of African Americans went virtually ignored by the press and cases that receive little more than a footnote garnered extended attention from newspapers for being either a significant blow to the black community or for being cause for hope. It is apparent that the Supreme Court played a significant role in enabling Jim Crow to expand and the African American press did little to counter its effects.

This study examines the importance of transportation routes and internal improvements as factors in treaty negotiations and the removal of the Cherokees. Covering a period from approximately 1779 to 1838, the date of forced Cherokee removal from east of the Mississippi, it argues that the Cherokees opposed the construction of military roads and turnpikes and interfered with travel through Cherokee country. Safe passage clauses in Cherokee treaties, issues dealing with passports through Cherokee country, and disputes over ferries and taverns on transportation routes are reviewed. The plans of Southern leaders such as John C. Calhoun and Wilson Lumpkin to build canals and railroads through the Cherokee Nation are explored. Euro-Americans perceived the Cherokee Nation as an obstacle to economic trade and commercial transportation.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Ohio State University, 2006. / Full text release at OhioLINK's ETD Center delayed at author's request

Thesis (M. Arch.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1982. / Vita. Abstract. Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (M.A.)--University of Toledo, 2006. / Typescript. "A thesis [submitted] as partial fulfillment of the requirements of the Master of Arts degree in History." Bibliography: leaves 294-299.

There is no abstract available for this thesis.

The purpose of the study was to give a description of the curricula and methods used in the home schools of home educators and to evaluate by means of case studies the effects of home education upon those included in the study.Chapter I presented an overview of the background and significance for the study and five research questions which were addressed by the study. The questions were:1. Will students being educated in the home be able to obtain academic achievement at comparable levels with those students being educated in the public school? 2. Will students being educated in the home be able to show at least one years' gain in academic achievement when scores of the previous year are compared with scores from the current year?3. What curricula and methods are being used in the home education of the children included in the study?4. What attitudes and values motivated the parents in the study to home educate their children?5. What legal actions, if any, did the parents included in the study face as a result of their choice to home educate?Chapter II provided a review of related literature. Reviewed were: compulsory attendance laws, related court decisions, and research related to home education.Chapter III presented the plan of organization and procedures used in gathering, reporting, and summarizing the data.Chapter IV contained the data collected from the four home educators. The data were presented in narrative form and in tables for each family case study.Chapter V presented a summary of the case studies, answers to research questions, observations, and recommendations. The data provided the following answers to the five research questions:1. Forty percent of the home educated students scored equal to the median national score.2. Students showed inconsistencies in average gains for the year.3. Three of the four families used curriculum materials commercially prepared for home educators.4. The parent educators appeared motivated by socialization concerns and desires for values training.5. Legal action was taken against one of the four families in the study.

In this study, the settlement movement in Chicago is presented as a crucible for the development of Progressive reform. The subjective and objective necessities for social settlements are described through the lives of men and women central to the movement. Reformers such as Jane Addams, Graham Taylor, and Mary McDowell fused their personal motives to their expanding assumptions regarding public welfare in their pursuit of social salvation. The settlement community advanced a methodology of experimentation and flexibility, which was instrumental to the transformation of nineteenth century ideas of charity into the new twentieth century science of social work. The processes of reform were greatly influenced by the evolving concepts of class, gender, and race. The feminine nature of settlement work and the opportunities afforded to generations of college-educated women were integral to the impact the settlement community had on Progressive reform in general and to the role settlement workers played in affecting public opinion. Primary sources include Jane Addams' correspondence, Twenty Years at Hull-House, and issues of the periodical The Commons. The historiography of the Progressive Era is also considered, and the effects of class, gender, and race upon its development throughout the twentieth century.

Anthony Padovano called Thomas Merton a "symbol of the century" inasmuch as he embodied many of the changes facing Christianity during the often tumultuous and violent, but increasingly pluralistic, middle decades of the twentieth century. Merton engaged in a "total ecumenism," in which he intensely studied other religious traditions, most notably the religions of Asia, in order to better understand his own Roman Catholic tradition. This paper will trace the trajectory of Asian ideas and experiences throughout Merton's life and analyze how these experiences transformed him from a narrow-minded monk to an ecumenical mystic. An ever-present subject emerges: the coincidence of opposites, or the paradox. This theme was Merton's own understanding of not only interreligious dialogue but also his very own identity.

In the 1920s historians such as James Harvey Robinson and Arthur Schlesinger, Sr., attempted to examine historical topics using new methodology. Writing "New Social History," they endeavored to emphasize society, culture, and the common people rather than great men and strictly political events. Since the 1980s historians have exhibited new interest in the importance of social history. "Indignities, Wrongs, and Outrages: The Homefront In Kentucky During The Civil War" attempts to apply the methods of the "new social historians" to the era of the American Civil War, centering on the homefront by examining in detail its impact on the everyday lives of Kentuckians. The Civil War in Kentucky was a microcosm of the American Civil War. Although Kentuckians generally favored the Union, allegiances remained mixed throughout the state, even within families. Divided loyalties in this "brother's war," complicated by periodic occupation of the Commonwealth by both Union and Confederate troops, prevoked embittered feelings among friends, neighbors, and relatives, sometimes resulting in challenges to loyalty and even loss of life. Civilians on the homefront endured every aspect of the war: harassment, hunger, homelessness, military occupation, and death. The Bluegrass state was a path for armies marching to and from the "front," resulting in economic devastation for many. Because Kentucky was a supplier of food, livestock, soldiers, and war materiel for Federal and Confederate troops alike, the price of food soared, and fuel shortages wracked the populace. Armies from both sides confiscated produce and livestock, and raids by guerrilla forces often made farming impossible. Financial losses, physical destruction, and soldiers threatening violence resulted in further reduction in the quality of life for Bluegrass civilians. Nevertheless, the homefront story was one of triumph over adversity. In addition to facing armed occupiers and rogue soldiers, women and their servants struggled successfully with everyday problems such as rearing the children, coping with illnesses, and managing businesses and farms. For African Americans the war offered hope for a new beginning. Some found prosperity in their new freedom, but many who ran away to enter Union lines suffered and died in refugee camps scattered throughout the state. The "new social history," to a great extent, is history of the "common people." Drawn largely from letters, journals, and diaries, this thesis attempts to discover how Kentuckians on the homefront lived, worked, and survived during the Civil War. It is a story worth telling.