<p> African American Women Wounded Warriors&rsquo; Lived Experiences of Self-Directed Learning: Success Through the Veterans Administration Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program This study explored the self-directed learning lived experiences of African American women wounded warriors in their successful journeys through the Veterans Administration Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment Program. Garrison&rsquo;s (1997) self-directed learning served as the conceptual model to study the learning dimensions. Collins&rsquo; (2009) Black feminist epistemology served as the lens. Study data were collected by asking three African American female disabled veterans to discuss their lived experiences of motivation, self-management, and self-monitoring employed to obtain self-directed learning goals. Three 90-minute interviews were conducted with each participant to garner descriptive data about the participant&rsquo;s life history, details of the lived experience, and the meaning of the lived experience. </p><p> The study found that participants&rsquo; engagement with others stimulated their intrinsic motivation and encouraged their decisions to enter a self-directed learning program. The findings support the importance of participants&rsquo; utilizing personal accountability methods to self-manage the completion of self-directed learning plan objectives. The findings noted that the participants&rsquo; self-monitoring of information resulted in commonalities and differences regarding the acceptance of lived experiences espoused by others to validate knowledge.</p>

<p> This dissertation explores Martin Luther King, Jr.'s (1929-1968) ideas and philosophy in the context of dialogue with the moral and literary imagination. King was a leading thinker and voice for the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s in the United States.</p><p> Two fundamental philosophical ideas for King were love and empathy. This dissertation explores these ideas through discussion and dialogue. Notably, King's philosophy and claims are contrasted with the writings of John Dewey and Martha Nussbaum. The dialogue between the three scholars should afford readers the opportunity for different and perhaps meaningful questions related to the teachings and philosophy of King.</p>

<p> This thesis investigates what Black undergraduate women understand and take away from Hip-Hop music. Highlighting their matrix of domination and recognizing their intersecting identities, this thesis shows how identity and music work together in the listening experience of Black women, thus emphasizing how they invest this music with social value. The following questions are answered in this research: What does Hip-Hop mean to Black female students at an elite university? How do these Black female students experience and perceive Hip-Hop music? A basic interpretive design with focus groups was used to execute this study. Three focus groups consisting of six to seven participants per group, totaling 19 participants, were conducted. Findings included that the background of each participant influenced what Hip-Hop means to them. Overall, Hip-Hop music was valued by participants and listened to for many reasons of sociological relevance, including its influence of political consciousness and colorism. Future studies should explore the how different demographic groups experience and perceive Hip-Hop, including how diverse educational backgrounds may influence perception.</p>

<p>ABSTRACT Existing models and measures of well-being tend to be based on an individualistic, western worldview. In addition, when cross-cultural comparisons are made, diverse cultural groups within the same national border are typically not examined. The Multidimensional Well-Being Assessment (MWA) was developed because of the absence of a culturally relevant measure to assess the well-being of those whose worldview is more consistent with collectivism. Although much attention has been given to detrimental forces in the lives of African Americans, less consideration has been given to assessing well-being in this population. In this study, a nonrandom sample was used to examine the validity of the MWA. In addition, several demographic variables were considered to explore the relationship of the dimensions of well-being contained on the MWA. A total of the 169 persons who identified as African-American or as a Black person with African ancestry participated in the study. The MWA showed strong reliability on nearly all dimensional subscales, as well as a pattern of expected significant positive and negative correlations with multiple validation measures. Significant correlations between demographic variables (i.e., age, education, income, and gender) and several dimensions on the MWA were also found. This study has implications for future research and the MWA shows promising results with regard to its psychometric properties. It is a potentially useful instrument to utilize in research that seeks to deepen understanding of life satisfaction and wellness in diverse populations, with particular attention to unique findings within the African American population.

<p> Community colleges serve as a gateway to higher education for millions of Americans. An increasingly large number of African American males attend community colleges across the country. Based on the literature the retention and graduation rates of African American men are lower than any group of students attending community college. The purpose of this study was to examine the initiatives within the North Carolina Community College System (NCCCS) Minority Male Mentoring Program (3MP) that are influencing the success of minority male student participants based on student and program coordinator observation and participation. Furthermore, the study examined specific program barriers experienced by administrators and members that impacted program initiatives geared towards increasing the graduation and retention rates of participants. The study revealed the program had affected the success of students as well as identified specific barriers to the program&rsquo;s success. </p><p> This study examines the graduation and retention rates of two cohort years of African American males participating in the NCCCS 3MP Program from fall 2012 to fall 2015 and from fall 2013 to fall 2015. A comparison analysis completed in the two cohort years determined there was a slight increase in the graduation rates of African American male program participants compared to African American non program participants.</p>

<p> Parental engagement with schools is often considered one of the major contributing factors to a child&rsquo;s success in school. There is not, however, a definition of parental engagement that takes into account the social, historical, and cultural factors that shape a parent&rsquo;s view of their own engagement. This qualitative case study examines how African American parents in a high poverty, urban, charter middle school, come to understand practices and beliefs at their child&rsquo;s school, while building relationships with other parents and school staff. Through the lenses of critical race theory and cultural-historical activity theory, the researcher analyzes how the convergence of race, power, history, and culture frame perspectives of policy makers, those who work in schools, and parents. Through the voices of African American parents, in a socioeconomically disadvantaged school community, they define their own engagement.</p>

<p> This dissertation explores the unhomely nature of the slave system as experienced by fugitive and captive slaves within slave and neo-slave narratives. The purpose of this project is to broaden the discourse of migration narratives set during the antebellum period. I argue that the unhomely manifests through corporeal, psychological, historical, and geographical descriptions found within each narrative and it is through these manifestations that a broader discourse of identity can be generated. I turn to four slave and neo-slave narratives for this dissertation: Solomon Northup&rsquo;s <i>Twelve Years a Slave</i> (1853), Frederick Douglass&rsquo;s <i>My Bondage and My Freedom</i> (1855), Octavia Butler&rsquo;s <i>Kindred </i> (1979), and Toni Morrison&rsquo;s <i>Beloved</i> (1987). </p>

The problem of not enough African American males enrolling in masters level teaching programs was addressed in this study. This phenomenological study examined the experiences of African American males in master of arts teaching (MAT) programs to understand why they enrolled and what factors led to persistence throughout their program enrollment. Six African American males currently enrolled in MAT programs in the southern, southwestern, and western regions of the United States participated. Data gathered for each participant included an individual, semi-structured interview and a demographic survey. Audio-recordings were used to capture the fullness of the interviews, and transcription software was used to code, analyze, and sort the data to help identify themes. This study looked through the lens of Strayhorn’s graduate student persistence and Albert Bandura’s self-efficacy theories. Factors that influenced African American males to enroll into a program were (a) education as a necessary credential, (b) desire to give back to society, (c) minority scholarship support, (d) making a connection to passion, and (e) desire to enhance teaching skills. External and internal factors were identified as assisting the males to persist within their programs. Academic institutions and policy makers may find the results useful for understanding the unseen educational barriers likely to limit African American males from enrolling in MAT programs, the issues likely to occur during the process of obtaining the degree, and the factors likely to be assistive to them for achieving program completion.

"The major problem that motivated this study is the fact the Negro in Houston, 1969 does not have any real political power although the potential for such power exists. The major purpose of this study is to seek answers to the following questions. First does the Houston Negro have any real political potential under the present system; if he does, what can he do with it? Second, why are there such wide gaps between the number of Negroes who are eligible to vote and the number that registered to vote and between those who registered and those who actually voted in Houston? The third question is in what election has the Houston Negro demonstrated his greatest political interest and why? And finally, is the politics of Houston based on race or economics?" -- leaf v.

<p> Octavia Butler asked if black skin was so disruptive a force that the mere presence of it alters a story? In a post-colonial era, skin color remains a polarizing topic. While humans are still redefining perceptions about race, people across planet earth are opening up to the possibility of the existence of intelligent extraterrestrial life. This paper explores how the acknowledgment of a galactic presence would transform perceptions of whiteness. The experiences of the best-selling author and proclaimed contactee, Whitley Strieber, are used as case studies to analyze if Amero-European ingrained bias toward melanin would influence the western world&rsquo;s interactions with dark-skinned extraterrestrials species. The white male is portrayed as the prototypical sci-fi nerd in popular American culture; however, the themes and struggles present in science fiction remain deeply connected with those present in African American culture. Despite the presence of extraterrestrials in African centered tradition, Stieber's experience demonstrates that whiteness still holds influence on the dominant cultural position regarding alien contact. I will practice Sankofa to trace African centered histories and traditions designed for communicating with entities from different dimensions, realities or even planets that continue to perpetuate in African American culture. I argue that African American culture has been addressing aspects of reality unacknowledged by the western world. I demonstrate that elements of the cosmic, supernatural, extraterrestrial or superhuman continue to manifest in African centered culture. These continually dismissed observations get lost in a world where the European Enlightenment has led to a culture in which whiteness establishes itself as &ldquo;a norm that represents an authoritative, delimited and hierarchical mode of thought&rdquo; as Joe Kinechole notes, limiting Amero-European culture from fully embracing a world view that includes extraterrestrials. Whiteness changes as it interacts in a range of settings and this paper examines the role of whiteness in a galactic environment by exploring how whiteness navigates through alien spaces.</p><p>