During the second half of the twentieth century, Ethel Lois Payne emerged as one of the most notable African American journalists in the country. She was best known as the First Lady of the Black Press, and wrote for the Chicago Defender from 1951 to 1978. Her columns were syndicated in dozens of black newspapers across the country. The granddaughter of slaves and the daughter of a Pullman porter, Payne rose to become the nation’s preeminent black female reporter of the civil rights era, chronicling the movement’s seminal moments for a national black readership hungry for stories that could not be found in the white media. From publicly challenging President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s commitment to desegregation in the 1950s, to capturing the lives of black troops in Vietnam in the 1960s, she became known simply as a forceful defender of black civil rights, a vocal critic of colonialism in Africa and Asia and a fierce opponent of American militarism during the Vietnam War. This study examines the intersection between Payne’s role as a journalist and her political stances on civil rights and other issues of social justice. More importantly, this dissertation positions Payne as an important strategist who saw journalism as a vehicle to expose racial injustice, particularly during the turbulent 1950s and 1960s. She remained true to the mission of the black press dating back to 1827 with the publication of Freedom’s Journal.

My dissertation, "Education of Deaf African Americans in Washington DC and Raleigh, NC, during the 19th and Early 20th Centuries, Through the Eyes of Two Heroes and a Shero," investigates the education of deaf African Americans during Reconstruction and into the twentieth century in two cities. The document includes three narratives. The first is of Douglas Craig, a loss African American deaf child who was brought to Gallaudet University in Washington, DC in the mid 1800s by a New Hampshire Senator named Aaron Cragin. The child later became an employee who was often referred to as a “jack of all trades.” Craig was admired and loved by many until his death in 1936 which is reflected in the street named in his honor on the campus. The other two narratives tell the stories of Effie Whitaker and Manuel Crockett of Raleigh North Carolina, both hearing, both graduates of Hampton Institute, and educators who taught at the first known school for deaf and blind African American students in the United States. Their commitment to teaching greatly enhanced the quality of life for many students. The three stories demonstrate how political, social, race and economic conditions were very much intertwined with the segregated education system before the 1954 Brown v Board of Education case. In addition to the narratives, I briefly note the 1952 Miller v District of Columbia Board of Education case: A victory that integrated the Kendall School in Washington, DC, which was, and still is, the most influential institution for deaf individuals in the United States. The stories about these unsung heroes and many others are rarely mentioned. However, their narratives are now a small part of a body of scholarly work that contributes to the history of one of the most understudied areas of African American education and there is much more to be done.

This dissertation examines the impact of capitalist class transformation on African American households and community institutions during the Great Migration. The study reviews theories of rural to urban migration according to their applicability to African American migrant households. The transformation of African American households and laboring processes interacted with changes in gender and racial ideology. A historical case study of the Urban League of Pittsburgh discusses the League's racial uplift program and its implications for African American migrant households and Pittsburgh industries. The League unsuccessfully attempted to encourage black female domesticity and economic dependency on black men by encouraging wives to quit jobs and increase surplus labor within the household.

The period of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries is one of the darkest epochs in American race relations. During the ‘nadir,’ African Americans responded to their conditions in numerous ways, including among others the promotion of self-help, racial solidarity, economic nationalism, political agitation, and emigration. This dissertation focuses on the various organizational responses of African Americans to the rise of racial segregation and violence, from the 1880s through the first decade of the twentieth century. In particular it examines the activities of the Afro-American League, the National Afro-American Council, the Constitution League, the Committee of Twelve and the Niagara Movement, demonstrating how these organizations' platforms and activities foreshadowed the creation of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) in 1909. Shifting attention away from the leadership role of W. E. B. Du Bois and his involvement in the Niagara Movement, a secondary aim of this dissertation is to highlight the roles of intellectuals and activists such as T. Thomas Fortune, Bishop Alexander Walters, Ida B. Wells-Barnett, Mary Church Terrell, Jesse Lawson, Lewis G. Jordan, Kelly Miller, Archibald Grimké, Booker T. Washington and John E. Milholland. The dissertation explores the way in which their participation in the organizations mentioned above contribute to the foundation of the NAACP. The ideas and the activities of the Afro-American League and the National Afro-American Council antedated those of the Niagara Movement, and much of the leadership of the aforementioned groups brought their experiences together to create the NAACP.

The dissertation research addresses questions and issues concerning the study of Afro-American biohistory. Afro-American health and lifestyles were investigated from an integrative bio-cultural framework that interrelates demographical, historical, socio-cultural, and biological factors. The central focus of the dissertation research was the bio-social experiences and conditions of free, urban dwelling Afro-Americans in 19th century Philadelphia. The First African Baptist Church cemetery population, interred circa 1823-1841, studied represents a sample of that Afro-American community. Theoretical considerations centered around the questions and approaches to the study of health and disease patterns in historical Afro-American populations in the Americas. Methodological considerations centered on the contributions of physical anthropological methods (skeletal biology, paleodemography, paleopathology, histology and bio-cultural modeling) in assessing the health of historical Afro-American populations. Skeletal biological methods included paleodemographic and paleopathologic (including histologic) assessment of health and disease status. The objectives of the research were to: (1) provide a synthesis of the relevant questions and issues regarding Afro-American health and illness prior to the twentieth century; (2) propose a protocol and framework for studying Afro-American health and lifestyles in the Americas; (3) begin to reconstruct the lifestyle(s) of 19th century urban Philadelphia Afro-Americans and of the First African Baptist Church (FABC) cemetery population in particular; (4) undertake a comprehensive health status assessment of the FABC skeletal material. All adult (100%) FABC dentition (n = 51) available for study exhibited enamel defects; of these 84.3% had multiple defects. The peak period of onset of hypoplasias was ages 2.0-4.0 years, most probably associated with the weaning period and infectious disease. Infectious disease rates (25.3%) were lower than other Afro-American skeletal series. The incidence of trauma in the FABC population was low (17.3%), with the majority occurring in older males. The highest mortality (25%) was for infants ($<$1 year). Life expectancy at age twenty was 24.7 years. FABC skeletal population, as representative of the FABC congregation members and free Philadelphia Afro-Americans, were generally healthier than their slave or emancipated counterparts. Stress indicators point to episodes of nutritional and disease stress which affected fetal growth, infants and younger children, reproductive age females and young adult males who may have been at greater risk due to early entry into the labor force.

This study is an examination of the social basis of the Chicago Urban League's politics from its origins to the eve of World War II. The League is an interracial organization with a black professional staff serving a black clientele. It sought to mitigate against the hardships caused by the dislocations of internal migration and settlement of black Southerners. While it is hard to argue against the ministration of black material needs, the process of coordination implied a socialization that needs more explicit examination. The basic thesis of the study is that the Urban League actively sought to "remake" the migrant in the organization's effort to engineer race relations in Chicago. In Chapter One, I provide a social and intellectual backdrop to origins of the Chicago branch of the National Urban League during the Great Migration and the nascent growth of an administrative state and corporate economy. The League's officials overstated the helplessness of Southern black migrants in order to legitimize its role as interpreter of their needs. In Chapter Two, I discuss the Chicago Urban League's policy on strikebreaking and unionization as an attempt to evaluate their congruence with black workers' interests. I find a complex and uneven record with regard to supporting black labor activity during this time period. The organizations' efforts to socialize black newcomers both at the workplace and at home was more a testimony to a division of interests. The League sought to organize neighborhoods and communities, and spoke in terms of a unitary black community, masking ambiguous but nonetheless real social divisions. In Chapter Three, I examine the rationale and methods of race relations engineering. The attempt at engineering was not necessarily a success, but its attempt was anti-democratic in conception and practice. The omnipresent notion of "adjustment" suggested the manipulation of social policy by black and white social technicians in the name of serving black migrants. In conclusion, I argue that racial democracy narrowly conceived as racial parity limited the Urban League's social horizons and ignored the real structure of racial inequality in the United States. (Abstract shortened with permission of author.)

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This study traces the evolution of the anti-apartheid movement from its emergence in the radical diaspora politics of the 1940s through the civil rights and black power eras and its maturation in the 1980s into a national movement that transformed US foreign policy. Chapter one traces the emergence of this counter-hegemony discourse in the radical African Diaspora politics of the 1940s and its repression through government intervention. Chapter two takes a close look at the government's efforts to reestablish discursive hegemony in the United States by co-opting African-American leaders and organizations through “enlightened paternalism” that included covert and overt CIA funding and the establishment of anticommunist journals. Chapter three examines the re-emergence of anti-apartheid sentiment during what became known as the civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s. Chapters four and five look at the radicalization of the black freedom movement and the development of an anti-apartheid discourse and culture in the 1970s. Chapter six examines the emergence of TransAfrica—the black lobby for Africa and the Caribbean and its challenge to Reagan's “constructive engagement” policies. Chapter seven examines the Free South Africa Movement and the revival of direct action to pressure Congress to pass anti-apartheid sanctions. Chapter eight looks at role of the Congressional Black Caucus in passing sanctions against South Africa over President Reagan's veto. And finally chapter nine examines the impact of sanctions on the release of Nelson Mandela and his colleagues from prison and his eventual election as the first democratically elected president of South Africa.

In this thesis, I survey American public commemorations about war, the military, and Black American veterans from the nineteenth century to the present. With historiography about American war commemorations and with primary and secondary sources disclosing America’s racial hierarchy implemented legally and socially throughout this timeframe, this thesis unveils a chronology of discrimination and White supremacy which resulted in the marginalization of Black Americans in public art. Utilizing twentieth century archival records from the “National Home of Disabled and Volunteer Soldiers” as a basis of analysis, I navigate through the history of American war commemorations to unveil how the U.S.’ devotion to denoting race throughout and within its societal structures contributed to a dearth of acknowledgment of Black American servicemen in the public commemorative landscape.I argue that by evaluating the racial climate, devotion to White supremacy, and commemorative politics of American society from the nineteenth century to today, a future, more inclusive monument to Black American veterans may be formed. I also argue that by studying past implementations of public art regarding the military, war, and veterans alongside a timeline of civil rights movements including the contemporary movement “Black Lives Matter,” past monuments and commemorative structures with supremacist representations may be challenged in ways to diversify and improve the American commemorative landscape. I posit that a project to publicly depict Black servicepeople should involve Black narratives, Black leadership, and ample information about the subjects of the structure to combat past measures of erasure of Black American servicepeople in American public art. / History

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