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In 1945, Black leaders gained political and financial support from the governments of Virginia and the United States to establish the Booker T. Washington Birthplace Memorial at the site of Washington’s birth in Franklin County, Virginia. The Memorial organization undertook public history work that emphasized Washington as a significant figure in United States history and provided needed education services to Black Southerners. In pursuit of their goals staff, of the Memorial navigated the political and social context of Jim Crow Virginia; this thesis discusses how the history of Booker T. Washington was represented during the founding and operation of the Birthplace Memorial (1945-1956), a time of upheaval in Virginian race relations. / M.A. / Memorials are spaces of remembrance which signify the values of the society in which they are constructed. In 1945, a group of Black leaders established a memorial to Booker T. Washington at the site of his birth in Hardy, Virginia. The establishment of this memorial was a remarkable feat in the historical context of its creation. Memorial founders gained support from white elites in the Virginia and federal governments during the Jim Crow Era, a time of legal and social discrimination against African Americans. This thesis explores the work of the public historians at The Booker T. Washington Birthplace Memorial as they gained support for its establishment, developed programming to meet the needs of the local African American community, and represented the history of Booker T. Washington.

On April 27, 1913, the body of thirteen-year-old Mary Phagan was discovered in the basement of her workplace in Atlanta, Georgia. Over the course of the following two years, her employer, Leo Frank, would be tried and convicted for her murder. Another employee, Jim Conley, a black janitor originally implicated in the crime, provided the evidence used to convict Frank. In my thesis, I explain the multiple identities created to describe the victim and her accused murderer(s). Press reports, trial records, and secondary historical accounts of the crime all reveal a fascination with the young female victim and a desire to solve the mystery of her death. By examining personal identity as a cultural construction, I re-evaluate the manner in which we define and describe crime. Phagan's murder became a cautionary tale, a narrative of sexual danger within the model city of the New South. My thesis illustrates the importance of understanding murder as an event occurring within and shaped by a social context. The murder of Mary Phagan and the Frank case demonstrate how we ascribe meaning to tragic events and how variables such as race, class, gender, and age affect the outcome of criminal procedures. / Master of Arts

This study arranges symptoms of polarity into a causal sequence# beginning with the origin of contrarieties and ending with the ultimate effect. The origin is considered as the fall of man, denoting both a mythic concept and a specific act of betrayal. This study argues that a sense of separateness precedes the fall or act of separation; the act of separation produces various kinds of fragmentation; and the fragments are reunited through paradox. Therefore, a causal relationship exists between the "fall" motif and the concept of paradox.

Academic fiction in its current form—as novels set on university campuses and focused on the lives of faculty—has existed since the mid-twentieth century. The genre explores the purposes and the cultures of universities and the lives of their faculty. Because universities have traditionally been insular communities that interact little with the outside world, the novels contain few non-academic characters. However, one non-academic group does appear consistently throughout the genre—the academic wives. These characters host parties, care for their husbands and children, and remain largely separate from the university structure. Although they appear in nearly all academic fiction, they have escaped notice by critics because they are secondary characters who exist largely in the background. However, a comparison of academic wives and their roles in C. P. Snow's The Masters (published 1951; set 1937), Kingsley Amis's Lucky Jim (published 1954; set in the early 1950s), and Malcolm Bradbury's The History Man (published 1975; set 1972) shows that these characters contribute significantly to the development of universities' cultures. Their roles both influence and respond to changes within the university structure. The academics' anxiety over the wives' potential influence on university affairs in these novels, and these women’s responses to this anxiety, enable the genre to explore the division between academics and non-academics within the university culture.

In 1917, Henry Billiot sued the Terrebonne Parish School Board because his children, who identified as Houma Indian, were denied access to a local white school. The resulting case, Henry Billiot v. Terrebonne Parish School Board, shaped the way in which the community of Terrebonne Parish categorized the race of not only the Billiot family but also the Houma tribe over the course of fifty years. Through the use of Jim Crow legislation, the white community legally refused to consider the Houma tribe as American Indian, and instead chose the derogatory term Sabine as the racial classification of this indigenous group, which detrimentally impacted the United Houma Nation’s fight for federal recognition as an American Indian tribe.

ABSTRACT Charles W. Chesnutt captures the essence of the Post Civil War period and gives examples of the assimilation process for African Americans into dominant white culture. In doing so, he shows the resistance of the dominant culture as well as the resilience of the African American culture. It is his belief that through literature he could encourage moral reform and eliminate racial discrimination. As an African American author who could pass for white, he is able to share his own experiences and to develop black characters who are ambitious and intelligent. As a result, he leaves behind a legacy of great works that are both informative and entertaining.

Thesis advisor: James O'Toole / This thesis examines the extent of Jim Crow segregation in college football in the era immediately preceding World War II by focusing on three black stars: Wilmeth Sidat-Singh of Syracuse, Lou Montgomery of Boston College, and Leonard Bates of New York University. Sidat-Singh was passed off by Syracuse as a Hindu before his real ethnicity was revealed. Montgomery was benched by his Catholic university on six separate occasions, including two bowl games. Bates was the beneficiary of a massive student protest for his inclusion, but ultimately was benched by the supposedly liberal NYU. These benchings of northern players against southern teams shows the degrees the south went to in order to impose segregation on every level of society. Perhaps more importantly it shows how willing northern schools were to acquiesce to these southern demands in favor of expediency. / Thesis (BA) — Boston College, 2005. / Submitted to: Boston College. College of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: History. / Discipline: College Honors Program.

Institutionalized racial segregation in the United States has had a significant impact on many aspects of American culture. Segregation was practiced in every aspect of public life, even in areas of recreation. For those labeled as "nonwhite," even going to the beach was legally restricted. The events between the 1950s and 1960s at Homestead Bayfront Beach in Homestead, Florida are evidence that social stratification based on the social categorization of race has a significant effect even today. This research examines how legalized segregation in the past impacted society and contributed to the development of a place and identity at Homestead Bayfront Beach. This analysis not only fills a gap in the historical record on segregation and recreation in the United States, but also contributes to research on place and place making and the formation of memory and identity.