This paper examines the experiences of rural black women in Mississippi during the Civil Rights Movement by examining correspondence of the grassroots anti-poverty organization the Box Project. The Box Project, founded in 1962 by white Vermont resident and radical activist Virginia Naeve, provided direct relief to black families living in Mississippi but also opened positive and clandestine lines of communication between southern black women and outsiders, most often white women. The efforts of the Box Project have been largely left out of the dialogue surrounding Civil Rights, which has often been dominated by leading figures, major events and national organizations. This paper seeks to understand the discreet but effective ways in which some black women, though constrained by motherhood, abject poverty, and rural isolation participated in the Civil Rights Movement, and how black and white women worked together to chip away at the foundations of inequality that Jim Crow produced.

The goal of this essay is to look at the poems “The Weary Blues” and “JAZZTETMUTED” (hereafter to be referred to as “JAZZTET”) by Langston Hughes andexamine their relationships to both the blues and jazz structurally, lyrically, andthematically. I examine the relationship of blues and jazz to the African-Americancommunity of Harlem, New York in the 1920’s and the 1950’s when the poems wererespectively published. Integral to any understanding of what Hughes sought toaccomplish by associating his poetry so closely with these music styles are the contexts,socially and politically, in which they are produced, particularly with respect to theAfrican-American experience.I will examine Hughes’ understanding of not only the sound of the two stylesof music but of what the music represents in the context of African-American historyand how he combines these to effectively communicate blues and jazz to the page. / <p>A</p>

La vie et l’oeuvre de Howard Zinn cristallisent un ensemble de dynamiques contradictoires. Issu d’une génération marquée par la Grande Dépression et la Seconde Guerre mondiale, il deviendra – à la différence d’autres figures publiques de sa génération – une figure phare de la nouvelle gauche et de son pendant historiographique, la nouvelle histoire sociale. Hissé ainsi au rang d’intellectuel engagé suite aux mouvements sociaux des années 1960, il reste pourtant influencé par la Weltanschauung de son temps. Or loin d’être une trajectoire atypique au sein de sa classe d’âge, un tel parcours permet d’éclairer autrement les comportements collectifs de cette génération, notamment en permettant de s’extraire d’une grille de lecture encore largement axée sur des identités culturelles spécifiques. A ce titre, il permet une relecture des générations intellectuelles aux Etats-Unis associant des communautés trop souvent dissociées selon une approche idéologique plus inclusive. / Howard Zinn’s life and work embodies contradictory dynamics. Though himself from a generation which came of age during the Great Depression and World War Two, he became a leading figure of the New Left as well as a representative of the new social history. He indeed rose to prominence as a public intellectual through his involvement in the social movements of the 1960s, while remaining influenced by the Weltanschauung of his own times. Far from being atypical for his age group, his trajectory sheds new light on the collective behavior of this generation. Indeed, it points to the possibility of going beyond a historiography which has been largely informed by specific cultural identities. By moving away from an approach too narrowly ideological, the study of Howard Zinn’s life and work will offer a more inclusive approach to generational issues in the United States.

The release of the Monument Avenue Commission Report in July, 2018 was the culmination of over one year of research and collaboration with community members of Richmond, Virginia on how the city should approach the contentious history of Monument Avenue’s five Confederate centerpieces. What the monuments have symbolized within the predominately rich, white neighborhood and outside of its confines has been a matter of debate ever since they were unveiled, but the recent publicity accorded to Confederate monuments has led to considerations by historians, city leaders, and the public regarding recontextualization of Confederate monuments. Recontextualization of the monuments should not only consider the city’s current constituency, but also the lives, testimonies, and representations of Richmond’s African- American residents as the monuments were built. A comparative case study of photographs from various institutional archives in Richmond, Virginia, depicting late- nineteenth and early twentieth-century scenes from the city’s history reveals that while Monument Avenue and its Confederate celebrations benefitted the city’s upper-class white constituency, its messages extended far beyond Richmond and its Confederate veterans. By bringing to light images and testimonies from the archive that highlight African-American presence, a counter-narrative emerges detailing the construction of power in post-Reconstruction Richmond through Monument Avenue.

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The 1920s represented a time of tension in America. Throughout the decade, marginalized groups created competing versions of a proper citizen. African-Americans sought to be included in the national fabric. Racism encouraged solidarity, but black Americans did not agree upon one method for coping with, and hopefully ending, antiblack racism. White women enjoyed new privileges and took on more roles in the public sphere. Reactionary groups like the Ku Klux Klan found these new voices unsettling and worrisome and celebrated a white, nativeborn, Protestant and male vision of the American citizen. Simultaneously, technological innovations allowed for advertising to flourish and spread homogenizing information regarding race, gender, values and consumption across the nation. These advertisements selectively represented these changes by channeling them into pre-existing prescriptive ideology. Mainstream ads, which were created by whites for white audiences, reinforced traditional ideas regarding black men and women and white women’s roles. Even if white women were featured using technology or wearing cosmetics, they were still featured in prescribed roles as housekeepers, wives and mothers who deferred to and relied on their husbands. Black women were featured in secondary roles, as servants or mammies, if at all. Concurrently, the black press created its own representations of women. Although these representations were complex and sometimes contradictory and had to reach multiple audiences, black-created ads featured women in a variety of roles, such as entertainers, mothers and business women, but never as mammies. Then, in a decade of increased tensions, white-created ads relied on traditional portrayals of women and African-Americans while black-designed ads offered more positive, although complicated, visions of womanhood.

This thesis analyzes the legal history of the Supreme Court’s Fourth Amendment case law as it relates to the police practice of Stop and Frisk which shifted drastically in 1968 with the creation of the “Terry Stop”. From that decision, it analyzes the broader role that both the Judiciary and Law Enforcement, as fundamental American institutions, played in the creation of the Carceral State. This research draws on archival Supreme Court records to demonstrate that the decision to reinterpret the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on warrantless searches and seizures was made in full view of the politicization and racialization of crime. Further, it shows that the Supreme Court both faced and succumbed to the immense pressure that Law Enforcement, lobbyists, and the United States Department of Justice placed on it. In response, the Court created a semantic carveout of the Fourth Amendment that permitted the practice of racially motivated Stop and Frisk, and the confiscation of contraband found during such frisks as evidence of a crime. In doing so, the Court demonstrated its allegiance to Law Enforcement—in the face of significant evidence to the contrary—by continually dismissing arguments that police practices were motivated by negative stereotypes. In legalizing the Stop and Frisk in 1968, the Court empowered Law Enforcement to practices to gradually shift away from the racially motivated police harassment from the Vagrancy Regime of the Jim Crow era to a constitutionally permissible Stop and Frisk regime. This thesis situates the advent of that change in Police Power which brought about this new regime as a primordial cornerstone in the creation of the Carceral State which was characterized by police as the agents who gathered Black bodies from American streets into the justice system.

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