No description available.

No description available.

The primary intent of this thesis is to examine foster care services. An attempt has been made to study, from a dual perspective, the relevance of discharge and the relevance of foster care services for Black children and the Black community. Juvenile boys are increasingly exhibiting behavioral problems such that the family is having to look outside of the nuclear and extended units for supportive alternatives. While the intent of the thesis is to examine discharge and Black children in foster care, the major concern is the institutionalization of Black males and the impact this syndrome is having on the Black community. After beginning with a brief history of foster care and a selected review of the literature, the thesis focuses on the central topic: the study of a sample discharge group from a foster care institutional residence program in New York City. The main source of information was the agency's population information forms. The separation experience was chosen as a focus of study for two reasons. First of all, the discharge experience can be a traumatic and confusing episode to adolescents who have developed a psychodynamic profile that makes them dependent on institutional living. Secondly, this examination will begin to draw attention to the effect the foster care experience has on their future development and the impact the system has on the Black community. It is therefore imperative to begin on examination of what happens to adolescent Black males when they leave foster placement.

This thesis offers a comprehensive examination of the intellectual contributions of John Glover Jackson, an African American historian. Jackson, similiar to many other African American scholars, is self trained in the field of African history. This self training is a crucial element in this presentation for it is an attempt to present the autodidact's efforts and contributions as valid. This attempt reviews the archeological, anthropological, and cultural evidence presented by Jackson relating to his interpretations of man, God, and civilization. The methodology utilized in this research consists mainly of examining secondary data. Primary materials include interviews, video recordings, and recorded lectures. Critiques of the scholarly content of these materials are included in the assessment of Jackson's work. Iconographic, linguistic and ethnological evidence will be presented as interpreted by Jackson. The findings demonstrate that Jackson's contributions were virtually ignored. The reasons for this disregard are several. The dissenting nature of his presentation, his atheist reasoning and his lack of diplomacy contributed to his neglect. The results of this study carry wide reaching implications in the different fields of historical research. An Important finding, for example, is that formal university training is not an absolute prerequisite in the writing of history. Of greater significance is the evidence presented and the integrity of the historian's scholarship. The autodidact and the formally trained scholar have much to offer historiography. Neither can be ignored if honest scholastic advancements is intended. This exploring of the contributions of the self taught scholar, John G. Jackson, attempts to support such a conclusion.

This study examines the use of Kongo cosmology as a theory of reading African-American literature. By analyzing the philosophical modes and belief systems of the Bakongo people, a general view of their cosmos is constructed and establishes the Kongo cosmogram used as the basis of this study. The community, crossroads, elders, and circularity of life all prove to be crucial elements in the Kongo cosmogram. These elements all have respective roles in the operation of the Kongo cosmogram as a literary theory. As the focus shifts from Africa to America, a study of how the Kongo cosmogram is disrupted by the Maafa and reconstructed in America via plantation existence is necessary to establish the history and function of the cosmogram in America. Finally, the Kongo cosmogram is applied as a literary theory, using Lorraine Hansberry's "A Raisin in the Sun" and James Baldwin's Go Tell It on the Mountain. These texts manifest the elements of the Kongo cosmogram and demonstrate its applicability as a literary theory.

This study explores the relationship of the Outlyer/Maroon tradition and historical reality to the form and content of Michelle Cliffs novels Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven in order to demonstrate how a literary theory of Outlyerism derives from distinct aspects and phenomena of Outlyer/Maroon culture and tradition. The social, political, and military strategies used by Outlyers can be roughly grouped into eight categories: 1. Conjuring 2. Camouflage 3. Creolization 4. Rapid movements from one area to another 5. Military Ambush 6. Primacy of Elders 7. Primacy of Rituals 8. Use of communciative instruments in a network of military signification. While the Outlyers used these strategies as forms of resistance in an historical space to combat European hegemony and cultural imperialism, Cliff employs and manipulates them, figuratively, in the literary space towards the same end, such that these strategies become literary and historical tropes in her contouring of the form and content of her novels and give heightened import to the notion of creative resistance. The creation of a literary theory of Outlyerism was designed so that critics might reconfigure the ways in which black resistance and nation building are theorized and discussed. Situating Cliff's texts within the Outlyerist vein takes care, then, not to use theories of marginalization to center the very hegemonic systems which work to oppress minority groups.

No abstract available. / Thesis (M.A.)-University of Durban-Westville, 2001.

Thesis--University of Pennsylvania. / "Reprinted from Journal of the American Oriental Society, Supplement no. 7, January-March, 1948." Bibliography: p. 67-70.

This research examines the internal and external forces that motivated freeborn and emancipated black Georgians to emigrate to Africa during the African Colonization Movement, 1817-1860. Throughout the study, qualitative and quantitative data were used to analyze the reasons why antebellum black Georgians embraced the ideas of black expatriation. The qualitative data consisted of the writings of black opponents as well as the writings of the proponents of African colonization, including Georgia émigrés, and the agents of the American Colonization Society. The quantitative data consisted of the number of emigrants who resettled to Africa and their survival rate in the newly formed colony of Liberia. The conclusion suggests that the vast majority of black Georgians did not favor African colonization. Less than ten percent of the freeborn and emancipated black population in Georgia chose to resettle in Africa even though there were promises of political, religious, and economic independence and the promises of land and a free education. Key internal forces that motivated blacks to settle in Africa were the independence of Liberia in 1848 and the words expressed by black leaders and émigrés who espoused expatriation. The external forces were the American Colonization Society’s involvement in promoting the removal of free and emancipated blacks, and state laws that prevented blacks from possessing certain liberties or from integrating within the Anglo-American society. Other external forces in the study included the majority community’s fear of the free black population as well as John Brown’s 1859 raid on Harpers Ferry.

M.A. (African Languages) / Please refer to full text to view abstract