New Orleans has recently been called a chocolate city by its mayor. It is a curious choice of words, but resonates with anyone who knows anything about New Orleans, a city heavily populated by African Americans. The city is crime ridden and poor; consequently, New Orleans is ranked near the bottom in terms of education. Why does the citys population remain uneducated? It would be presumptuous to suggest that there is only one reason; there are several. However, one of the most obvious reasons is the utter failure of desegregation in the city. New Orleans has always experienced atypical race relations. Instances of slaves and masters cohabitating, or blacks and whites in the city living in each others neighborhoods and working with each other have been true of New Orleans for centuries. New Orleans also has the largest population of black Roman Catholics in the world. The fact that so many blacks were Catholic and that Louisiana is a southern state with a very large Catholic population inevitably raises one additional question: what was the Churchs moral and legal position on desegregation, segregation, racism, and other racial issues? The public schools in New Orleans desegregated before the parochial schools. Why did this happen? The Archbishop failed to desegregate before the public schools; he did not silence racist laypersons in its ranks, nor did he control racist priests. The Church had a moral responsibility to support desegregation, yet Church support was limited. The Church failed in its moral obligation to New Orleans Catholics, both a product of uncertain local leadership, and a source of local African American disaffection from the Church. The results continue to be felt in New Orleans.

Martin of Tours has become one of the most famous saints of Western Christendom, yet his life was shrouded in controversy. Martins initial fame in Aquitaine came from the circulation of Sulpicius Severus writings in the early fifth century. A pupil of the holy man and lawyer from Aquitaine, Severus used his pen to protect Martins sanctity from attacks by critics such as Ithacius and other members of the clergy. This thesis will use the three works of Severus, the Vita Martini, Chronicorum, and Dialogus to argue that Severus used a rhetorical strategy throughout his Martinian writings to secure Martins sanctity and legitimacy as a bishop. Through the successful defense that these documents presented, Martins sanctity has survived the test of time, despite the fact that his life and Severus writings about him have been a source of scholastic debate. This thesis consists of five chapters followed by a conclusion. Chapter One will place Martin and Severus in their historical context and introduce the historiography of the Martinian works. Chapter Two will explore criticisms of both Martins life as a soldier and of his lack of the educational and social background prevalent in his fellow bishops. Chapter Three will then explore the early struggles that came from reconciling the responsibilities of the ascetic lifestyle with the communal responsibilities as a bishop. Chapter Four will investigate the criticism over Martins involvement with Priscillian of Avila, a rebuke which Severus fully engages in a strong defensive posture to protect Martins reputation from accusations of heresy. Next, Chapter Five will treat charges of hypocrisy contemporary critics brought against Martin. This thesis will not simply highlight these four criticisms that Severus attempted to resolve, but will also explore why these critiques are present in the hagiography and the rhetorical defense used by Severus to secure Martins sanctity.

After the 1896 Plessy v. Ferguson decision, blacks in the South lost most of the rights achieved during Reconstruction and for over half a century lived in a system defined by disfranchisement and segregation. Plessy promised a separate but equal society but by 1920 it was evident that separate was fulfilled but equal fell short in facilities. At about the same time, a three-tiered racial hierarchy, rooted in New Orleans long and distinctive racial history returned. New Orleans black community was split into two groups, American blacks and Creoles. The two groups rarely interacted. As the black community developed its own economy, independent of white control, however, interactions between elite members of each group began to take place. By 1925, elite members of each group came together to provide the black community in New Orleans with its first racial progressionist leaders. Racial progressionists used a gradual and moderate approach centered on attacking Jim Crow from within. They practiced a restrained, modest and reasonable leadership style in which they carefully and slowly petitioned whites for concessions within the system while not posing a threat to the white power structure. They chose to work primarily through two organizations, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and the Federation of Civic Leagues. Through these organizations racial progressionists strove to make separate better in New Orleans black community by petitioning for better schools and more recreational facilities. This study thereby examines, what might be considered, the first phase of the civil rights movement, in one southern city, New Orleans. By the mid-thirties, the black community, led by the Louisiana Weekly, began to question the gradual and moderate approach of racial progressionists. The Weekly argued that the community needed new leaders who offered an active, aggressive and inclusive approach to obtaining civil rights. In 1941, a group of young men who called themselves The Group took over the leadership role in the New Orleans NAACP. They provided the community with the aggressive leadership it needed to continue the attack on the Jim Crow system that racial progressionists had begun in 1925.

By focusing on incidents during the careers of rap moguls Russell Simmons, Sean Combs, and Shawn Carter, it becomes evident rap music has become more conservative and affirmative of traditional American entrepreneurialism than believed by prior scholarship, which regarded rap music primarily as radical and counter-cultural black expression. For Russell Simmons and Run-DMC, the Madison Square Garden concert and its effect on the perception of a subsequent endorsement deal with Adidas demonstrate the emergence of rap music unto the mainstream consumer culture. Though the parties involved would later claim singularity in the event, the process was not just a spur of the moment occurrence, but the calculated effort of Russell Simmons to entice the shoemaker. Sean Combs attempt to rebrand himself from Puff Daddy to P. Diddy following the negative publicity from his weapons possession trial also exemplifies this principle. Combs underwent the maneuver in an attempt to rebuild his economic viability after much bad press. By changing his moniker, Combs sought to continue his high esteem within the white mainstream as a purveyor of the ghetto culture. Shawn Carters return to rap music following a well-publicized retirement and ascension to CEO of Def Jam Records highlights the continued merger between black expression and the market. Though Carter had become perceived as a businessman despite not legitimately engaging in such activities through his music and public persona, he left the corporate sphere, preferring the perception of moguldom to its actual practice. Based on these actions of these moguls, it is evident rap music is not inherently radical or counter-cultural, but instead represents the merger of traditional African-American expression with the entrepreneurial drive of the American Dream. This desire to gain wealth is not counter-cultural, but rather represents the emergence of African-American expression into a mainstream market.

Catholic missionaries played an important role in the colonial scramble in Africa and the subsequent years. They served as educators and medical support for the state in many cases. The state relied on missionaries to staff schools, educate the population, and aid in the civilization of the Africans. In the Belgian Congo, Catholic missionaries - specifically the Society of Missionaries of Africa or White Fathers - played an especially important role as agents of evangelization and European civilization. The Belgian state relied heavily (and provided subsidies) on missionaries to educate the native people. Through education and medical help, missionaries fostered conversions and attempted to establish a native Church in Africa. Using mission diaries, personal correspondence, annual reports, and personal interviews (conducted in fall 2008), as well as secondary sources, I will attempt to construct a picture of the White Fathers and their experiences during the colonial period and subsequent decades, but with special focus on the years 1950-1955. I will examine the White Fathers as an institution and look at the relationships within the Society and those among the Society, the Belgian regime, and private companies. Through personal interviews with missionaries stationed in the Belgian Congo and Burundi during the 1950s, I will look at these individuals experiences and lives to better understand the Society as a whole and its role in imperial Africa. Though there are few secondary sources about the White Fathers in Africa, the primary sources I accessed in Rome and Brussels were very rich. While there are some drawbacks to using oral interviews as primary sources, I believe the interviews provided invaluable data about the daily lives of Catholic missionaries in the field in Congo.

Although the Passio Santarum Perpetuae et Felicitatis has received much scholarly attention in the past twenty years, it has been used primarily as a source of information on the martyr Perpetua. Other aspects of the account, such as its Montanist theology and its unique portrayal of women have been largely ignored by scholars interested in tearing it apart for relavent information on Perpetua. The Passio contains three distinct portions, each produced by a member from the religious community of Carthage in the early third-century C.E. It therefore serves as a unique historical window into early Christian North Africa, displaying a community in many ways theologically distinct from its most well known member, the apologist Tertullian. The author of the narrative portion of the account as well as the self-written account of the martyr Saturus have been marginalized due to the enormous stature of Perpetua, the first female martyr to write an account of her own persecution. In many cases, these two male figures are ignored due to a perceived relationship with Tertullian, who is looked upon with derision for his patriarchal attitudes toward women and their role in religious life. It is the purpose of this thesis to demonstrate that the Passio promotes a view of Christianity that is distinct from the one espoused by Tertullians writing. It will also show that the Passio presents a consistent set of theological themes in all three of its parts and offers a more progressive understanding of women as they function in the church than the one offered by Tertullian.

Before 1860 people in the Gulf South valued education and sought to extend schooling to residents across the region. Southerners learned in a variety of different settings within their own homes taught by a family member or hired tutor, at private or parochial schools as well as in public free schools. Regardless of the venue, the ubiquity of learning in the region reveals the importance of education in Southern culture. In the 1820s and 1830s, legislators in Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama sought to increase access to education by offering financial assistance to private schools in order to offset tuition costs and thereby extend learning to less wealthy residents. The Panic of 1837 made it difficult for legislators to appropriate money for education, but the economic recovery of the 1840s ushered in a new era of educational progress. The return of prosperity in the Gulf South coincided with the maturation of Jacksonian democracy a political philosophy that led Southerners to demand access to privileges formerly reserved for the elite, including schooling. While Jacksonian ideology led voters to lobby for schools, the value that Southerners placed on learning stemmed from other sources. The political philosophy of republicanism rested on the premise that a representative democracy needed an educated populace to survive. In addition, Southerners embraced learning as a means of social mobility. Most parents exhibited an innate desire to have their children educated in hopes that it would contribute to later success in life. The urban governments of the South were the first to acquiesce to voters demands, so that New Orleans, Natchez, and Mobile all established public schools during the 1840s and 1850s. The success of these schools led residents in rural areas to lobby their legislatures for similar schools in their neighborhoods; by 1860 Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama had all established statewide public school systems. The story of these developments not only catalogues educational developments largely overlooked in the larger historical narrative of the antebellum South, but offers insight into the worldview and aspirations of the people inhabiting the region.

ABSTRACT Holy Rosary Institute began as an industrial school for African American young women in Galveston, Texas, during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. In 1913 it moved to Lafayette, Louisiana, and in 1947 began admitting males as well as women. It closed in 1993. Through much of its history, this secondary school was staffed primarily by the Sisters of the Holy Family, the second oldest order of African American nuns in the United States, and the Divine Word Missionaries, one of the earliest groups of Catholic priests to accept African American candidates for the priesthood. In 1992, Gerard L. Frey, former bishop of the Diocese of Lafayette described its importance to the people of Louisiana. Holy Rosary Institute in its many years as a vocational-technical school, as a normal school, and as a high school has served the entire area of southwest Louisiana by providing education which would not otherwise have been available to the black community. Without the schools influence, the socio-economic condition of southwest Louisiana would have been vastly different. One shudders to imagine, what the conditions would have been had it not been for Holy Rosary and those valiant leaders who staffed it for all its years. Once considered one of the outstanding secondary schools in the nation, Holy Rosary trained students who went on to become some of the countrys finest doctors, lawyers, educators, nurses, and many other highly rated professionals in various fields. In 1974, due to a decline in enrollment and astronomical costs the boarding department was closed ending an era that had begun more than fifty years before. With the closing of the boarding department Holy Rosary began a period of decline. The financial difficulties caused by decreasing revenues caused the elimination and restructure of many of the services provided by the school. The needs of the school prompted an all out effort on the part of the alumni and friends to Keep Rosary Alive. Continuing its philosophy of superior educational development, the eighties saw a slight rise in enrollment and a serious recommitment to the vision of its founder. However, after eighty years of service, finances and other socio-economic factors led to the closure of one of the finest college-preparatory schools in the South in 1993. This is its story.

The doctrine of popular sovereignty emerged as a potential solution to the crisis over slavery in the territories because it removed the issue from the halls of Congress. Most historians have focused on its development and implementation beginning in the late 1840s and culminating with passage of the Kansas-Nebraska Act in 1854, but have not recognized its significance in earlier debates over slavery. Popular sovereignty, which took various forms and received different definitions, appeared as a potential solution to the problem of slavery extension as early as the first decade of the nineteenth century when settlers in the Louisiana Purchase and the Old Northwest demanded the right to govern their own domestic institutions. This work charts its development beginning with the earliest debates over the extension of slavery in the territories and traces its place in political discussions until the breakup of the Union. Focusing on the idea of popular sovereignty illustrates how Americans perceived democracy and democratic institutions, specifically the division of power between states and the federal government. The issue of slavery in the territories became a flash point in the debate over the nature of the Union in the earliest years of the republic; it persisted to the coming of the Civil War. The expansion of slavery remained a contentious issue throughout the nations first eighty years, even though the terms of the debate changed significantly over time. Popular sovereignty offered a way to avert a clash over the future of slavery by affirming the right of residents in the territories to determine slaverys future within their jurisdiction. Ultimately, the doctrine failed to settle the crisis over slavery in the territories because northerners and southerners could not agree on how the people would exercise self-government. Placing the future of slavery in the hands of settlers in the territories presented a risk to both northerners and southerners. The North feared that they would permit slavery; the South believed that antislavery citizens would seize control of territorial governments and prohibit slavery.

Spanish rule in Louisiana was bracketed by periods of unrest. Using the criteria for rebellion developed by political scientist Claude E. Welch Jr., in Anatomy of Rebellion to compare the 1768 rebellion under Governor Antonio de Ulloa, and demonstrations of discontent in the 1790s under Baron Francisco Luis Carondelet, one is able to draw out similarities, contrasts, and continuities in factors causal to political unrest. The most powerful of these causal factors were the economic troubles, geographic marginality, ethnic tensions, weak authority, and unsuccessful attempts to reform the colonys commercial system. Methods employed by the Spanish administrations to contain or mitigate the discontent largely failed, leading to episodes of violent popular political contention. The roots of Louisianas problems ran deep. By the arrival of the Spaniards, the colony had been largely neglected by the French crown. Suffering shortages of food, and economic strife, the colonial elite formed their own alternate, and often illegal, structures of power and support. The 1766 imposition of Spanish rule threatened those structures. In 1768, discontented members of the Louisiana Superior Council staged a coup, driving Spanish governor Antonio de Ulloa out of the colony. Lieutenant General Alejandro OReilly restored order to the colony in 1769. OReilly demonstrated effective means of control over a discontented populace, which stood in stark relief to the weaknesses, neglect and disorder of the previous Spanish administration. In the early 1790s a number of factors sparked new fears of rebellion in Louisiana. Disruptions of trade caused by war with France, attempts to integrate Louisiana into the Spanish mercantile system, shifts in agriculture and a shortage of specie backed currency once again agitated the colonial elite. At the same time an influx of revolutionary propaganda from the French Republic threatened to spark old ethnic tensions while tales of the Haitian revolution brought fears of slave revolt in the colony. Baron Carondelet utilized an increased military presence, information control, incorporation of colonial leaders into his administrative structure, and the fear of slave revolt to contain demonstrations of popular discontent. While his administration saw an increase in political violence, Carondelet prevented widespread rebellion.