This dissertation examines how race and gender interacted with economic variables to shape a class transition involving African American domestic laborers from 1863 to 1980. African American women performed household labor traditionally assigned to their racial group during slavery under new economic conditions that developed after emancipation. After slavery, these women were forced to contract their labor to white households and produce feudal surplus. The analysis suggests that African American women radically transformed the feudal economic and social conditions of paid household labor well into the twentieth century. These women were agents of a class transition from feudalism to independent commodity production. African American women, gradually and through small-scale incremental changes, redefined and standardized their jobs as household workers so that they were increasingly able to exchange pre-specified services for a given amount of money. These workers also developed creative strategies to break the continued association of their race with servitude. Rather than being inherent attributes of paid domestic work, flexibility and autonomy were outcomes of strategic choices made by African American women establishing themselves as independent producers of a service. This dissertation also examines how the material conditions and changing economic subjectivity associated with this class transition profoundly affected the construction of race and gender identities. By engaging in individual and collective actions that radically transformed the domestic labor process, African American women not only challenged and subverted the racialized and gendered associations of such work, but also produced new meanings of Blackness and womanhood. An understanding of the complex interactions of race, class, and gender in this historical example helps us make sense of contemporary inequalities as well as identify strategies for social change.

The primary purpose of this proposal is to evaluate the strengths and weakness of an Afrocentric education in an urban school to promote the academic achievement of impecunious black children. This study is important to understanding ways to improve the academic achievement of low-income and disadvantaged black students who are marginalized from the mainstream of American society. This proposal analyzes educational and social forces that prevent poor black children from achieving in urban schools and policies that separate them from the general school population. The study addressed the state of blacks in America today, and shows reasons why urban schools must change to save black students. The study also shows that the current educational system in urban communities does not work. The study discusses whether or not school integration has helped black children improve in their overall educational experience. This study examines and explores the development, characteristic, learning style, and cultural backgrounds of teachers and students who interact in traditional public schools in insolvent urban communities. This study also examines a critical pedagogy in the sociology of the black experience. This part of the study explores black children in a social and historical context in American society. The major finding in this study showed a significant improvement in students' academic achievement based upon documents from the state's DOE and it has renewed Bannker's charter. The sentiments from the major stakeholders appeared to be satisfied with the overall performance of the school and in the direction its going. The positive results on standardize norm reference test has soften the opposition once held by some of the stakeholders in respect to its radical departure from integration. Many parents have witnessed the positive changes in students' self-esteem and self-worth at Banneker and in the community. Therefore, many of the stakeholders believe that education programs of a cultural relevant motif designed does enhanced low-income and disadvantaged black students' academic achievement. This study was limited to low-income and disadvantaged black children attending urban schools where every effort to desegregated these schools has failed and the majority of children has failed and is continuing to fail.

This dissertation departs from current literature that treats moral reform as a conservative force in American history by focusing on the political intent of black reform activity. My overall goal is to dissociate black reform efforts from “middle-class” thinking by describing how free blacks in Philadelphia and New York City sought political change through moral improvement. In chapters on literary societies, educated ministers, Sunday schools and apprenticeships, I demonstrate the relationship between moral reform and political action. My premise is that lacking political rights and access to more direct means of protest, free blacks embraced moral reform to achieve racial advancement, refusing to accept their inferior status. However, most historians do not regard moral reform as being a legitimate form of protest. In fact, antebellum black leaders often have been unfairly disparaged in the historical record for their nonviolent reform methods. This dissertation calls for a new paradigm that merges moral reform with violent “political” action without assigning worth to either approach. It ultimately reflects the need for historians to allow for less explicitly “political” forms of protest, especially among relatively powerless groups who were precluded from directly confronting authority. This dissertation also joins with a growing body of literature that questions the presumed conservatism of “middle-class” America. Since all social classes are historically constructed, they do not possess a predetermined or fixed politics.

This dissertation examines the struggle for racial equality in urban fire departments from the late 19th century to the present. The first half contains extensive case studies of Black experiences in the New York City Fire Department (FDNY) and Baltimore City Fire Department (BFD). Particular emphasis is given to the process of Black inclusion, day-to-day and institutional race relations, and the backgrounds and experiences of Black firefighters in each fire department. The activities of local branches of national civil rights organizations such as the National Urban League and the NAACP, as well as the involvement of local Black political leaders in the struggle for Black inclusion and equal opportunity are chronicled, as are the activities of the Vulcan Society in New York and the Social Association of Fire Fighters in Baltimore. The second half of the dissertation explores the nationalization of the struggle for equal employment opportunity within the urban fire service. The 1970 formation of the International Association of Black Professional Fire Fighters (IABPFF), its relationship to the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), and the struggle for "community control" and Black representation within urban fire departments as well as the impact of Title VII, the Civil Rights Movement, the Black Caucus and Black Power movements, and urban rebellions on the organization's formation and objectives are examined. The evolution, implementation, limitations, and strengths of equal opportunity litigation and remedial relief programs as applied to urban fire departments, the activities of Black firefighters' organizations, the International Association of Fire Fighters (IAFF), municipal governments, the Department of Justice, and the federal courts during the course of fire department litigation are also documented and analyzed.

This dissertation examines the evolution of early race relations in Boston during a period which saw the extinguishing of the progressive abolitionist racial flame and the triumph of Jim Crow in Boston. I argue that this historical moment was a window in which Boston stood at a racial crossroads. The decision to follow the path of disfranchisement of African Americans and racial polarization paved the way for the race relations in Boston we know and recognize today. Documenting the high number of blacks and whites who married in Boston during these years in the face of virulent anti-miscegenation efforts and the context of the intense political fight to keep interracial marriage legal, the dissertation explores the black response to this assault on the dignity and lives of African Americans. At the same time it documents the dilemma that the issue of intermarriage represented for black Bostonians and their leaders. African Americans in Boston cautiously endorsed, but did not actively participate in the Boston N.A.A.C.P.'s campaign against the resurgence of anti-miscegenation laws in the early part of the twentieth century. The lack of direct and substantial participation in this campaign is indicative of the skepticism with which many viewed the largely white organization. Boston, with its substantial Irish population, had a pattern of Irish, and other immigrant women, taking Negro grooms—perhaps because of the proximity within which they often worked and their differing notions about the taboo of race mixing. Boston was, for example, one of the most tolerant large cities in America with regard to interracial unions by 1900. In the period between 1900 and 1904, about 14 out of every 100 Negro grooms took white wives. Furthermore, black and white Bostonians cooperated politically to ensure that intermarriage remained legal throughout the nation.

This dissertation investigates the impact of the New York City-based Liberator magazine on the expansion and dissemination of African American political outlooks in the decade between 1960 and 1971. This study explores the history of this magazine as a critical political and cultural formation of these years. Growing out of the tradition of labor, Left-oriented radicalism as well as earlier forms of Black Nationalism at the turn of the 20th century, the Liberator provided an indispensable forum where many of the national and international concerns facing Black people could be discussed and debated. In its early days as the organ of the short-lived Liberation Committee for Africa and after, Liberator delivered cutting-edge political, social and cultural analyses of Black radicalism. Therefore, in accounting for the transition period between the Civil Rights Movement and Black Power radicalism, I argue that Liberator represents an important example of the strategic efforts of African American intellectuals, artists, and activists to shape autonomous political spaces through the establishment of a radical print culture.

This project bridges the gap between the culture of stagnation in New England Black congregations and the history of vibrant creativity in Black culture and churches by crafting an engaging teaching resource in the form of a digital application, built on the core fundamentals of gamification. As such, this project weaves gamification, technology, the Black church, and cross generational ministry together in order to assist in the renewal of New England Black churches. Positioning gamification in conversation with practical theology with a focus on Black church history and culture, the project confronts matters related to gender, age, and social location in Black churches. The project argues that we are in the midst of the “#Church,” which should be embraced by the dying Black church, in the midst of a crisis, as a legitimate mechanism for revitalization and relevancy in this hashtag (#) culture. On social media, the hashtag (#) denotes a trending topic, word, phrase and is a form of grouping like topics together for search parameters as well as social interaction and affiliation. The project leverages this hashtag culture by presenting a three-year revitalization project in the form of a web-based game addressing matters of project design and implications, implementation strategy, and evaluative measures.

No description available.

<p> In 1954, Southwestern Louisiana Institute (now the University of Louisiana at Lafayette) became the first undergraduate school in the Deep South to desegregate. Its acclaim as the first, however, was promoted only because it lost as a defendant in <i>Clara Dell Constantine et al. v. Southwestern Louisiana Institute et al.</i> What occurred then, and the indignities experienced by African American students during that first decade has never been fully documented. The black experience was figuratively and literally blacked out. </p><p> African American students found themselves receiving lower grades in class than their white counterparts. Social events banned them, and school services denied access. To cope with racism, they drew strength by supporting one another, developing a grapevine, establishing their own social network, and most of all, keeping focused on their education. But not everyone was against them. Some whites risked their reputation, and became their brother&rsquo;s keeper. </p><p> The four Pillars of Progress, commemorating the fiftieth anniversaries of SLI&rsquo;s desegregation and <i>Brown</i> in 2004, stand today as a campus testament to that era. But what remains at odds is whether the desegregation of SLI was &ldquo;without incident.&rdquo; That still remains a matter of interpretation and depends on whom is being asked and who answers.</p><p>

This thesis examines the 1960’s relocation of over eighty families from the former community of Africville, in the North End of Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada into nearby public housing. It investigates the narrative of what was, is, and could perhaps one day be. Rebuilding Africville challenges the idea of re-stitching community and character back to the former site of Africville. The intent of this dissertation is to design multi-owned housing for the site, as well as a central civic structure that will act as the community’s anchor. The homes are designed to be inclusive to three groups of homeowners: former Africville residents, Africville descendants, and new Africville community members who simply have an interest in reestablishing Africville. Rebuilding Africville does not attempt to replicate what once existed over forty years ago; it will, however, attempt to extract elements that were once highlights of Africville and graft them with modern ideas. / Rebuilding Africville follows on the heels of both the United Nations’ recommendation to Canada to consider paying reparations to the former community of Africville, as well as the recent official public apology from Halifax Regional Municipality to former Africville residents.