ABSTRACT This is a case study of how a community education program became institutionalized at Temple University. The Pan-African Studies Community Education Program (PASCEP) has been located at Temple since 1979. The research illuminates the events that led to PASCEP coming onto Temple University's campus. The main research question was: "Why and how did Pan-African Studies Community Education Program develop from a Community Education Program in North Central Philadelphia to a Temple University campus-based program, and what were the important factors contributing to its development and institutionalization within Temple University?" The research used a qualitative case study method. Data were collected from archival repositories at Temple University and the City of Philadelphia as well as from original documents provided by the Community Education Program and participants in the study. Documents included newspaper articles, letters, reports, and organizational histories as well as transcripts from thirty semi-structured participant interviews. Semi-structured interviews were held with 30 participants who were involved or familiar with the movement and the university between 1975 and 1979. The research indicates that the Community Education Program acted as a local movement center connected with the Civil rights movement. I employed Social Movement theories and Aldon Morris's Indigenous perspective to examine the trajectory of the Community Education Program from the neighborhood to the University. Much of the organizing, mobilizing, and planning done by the members in the Community Education Program/local movement center was managed by Black women. Therefore, the research employed Belinda Robnett's perspective on Bridge Leaders and Toni King and Alease Ferguson's standpoint on Black Womanist Professional Leadership Development to illuminate the leadership styles of the Black women in the local movement center, and their relationships with Temple University faculty and administrators, as well. Results from the inquiry demonstrate that community activism constituted social movement collective action behavior as the Community Education Program and its supporters became an effective local movement center. The study indicates that leadership, political opportunity, resource mobilization, and participation during the tenure in the Program in the community as well as after the introduction of the Community Education Program to the University were indispensable factors in the institutionalization of the Community Education Program. / Urban Education

Through a content analysis of the maternal relationships in Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings and Alice Walker’s In Search of Our Mothers Gardens, the author evaluates how southern black women writers construct black motherhood. This study is based on the premise that Eurocentric paradigms of motherhood confine black mothers to controlling images that continue to criminalize, distort, and devalue black motherhood. The researcher finds that the institution of black motherhood exists independently of Eurocentric paradigms. The conclusions drawn from these findings suggest that black women writers construct motherhood in terms of Womanist leadership. In the aforementioned memoirs, Womanist leadership is learned and defined in the black church. In summation, this thesis finds that southern black women writers use spiritual reconciliation as a form of Womanist leadership.