Dissertations / Theses: '20th century american history - civil rights'

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Martin, Ruth Ellen. "American civil liberties, fear and conformity, 1937-1969." Thesis, University of Cambridge, 2013. http://ethos.bl.uk/OrderDetails.do?uin=uk.bl.ethos.648218.

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Vipperman, Justin LeGrand. ""On This, We Shall Build": the Struggle for Civil Rights in Portland, Oregon 1945-1953." PDXScholar, 2016. http://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/3124.

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Generally, Oregon historians begin Portland Civil Rights history with the development of Vanport and move quickly through the passage of the state's public accommodations law before addressing the 1960s and 70s. Although these eras are ripe with sources and contentious experiences, 1945 to 1953 provide a complex struggle for civil rights in Portland, Oregon. This time period demonstrates the rise of local leaders, wartime racial tensions, and organizational efforts used to combat inequality. 1945 marked a watershed moment in Portland Civil Rights history exhibiting intergroup collaboration and interracial cooperation converging to eventually provide needed legislation. Although discrimination continued after 1953, the era between 1945 and 1953 provided an era of change upon which subsequent movements in Portland were based. My thesis uses material from various collections to piece together the early struggle for civil rights in Portland, and more broadly, Oregon. These documents show that the local struggle started before the classical phase of the Civil Rights Movement, usually defined as Brown v. Board of Education to the Civil Rights Act of 1964. By focusing on the classical phase of civil rights, historians miss the building of a strong foundation for Portland's Civil Rights history. My research proves the existing nuances of the fight for equality by looking at local movements rather than the national struggle. This study demonstrates the nuances by focusing on rising racial tension, the efforts to document them, and the strategies used to combat discrimination.

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Nelson, Katherine EIleen. ""On the Murder of Rickey Johnson": the Portland Police Bureau, Deadly Force, and the Struggle for Civil Rights in Oregon, 1940 - 1975." PDXScholar, 2018. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/4434.

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On March 14, 1975, twenty-eight year old Portland Police Officer Kenneth Sanford shot and killed seventeen-year-old Rickie Charles Johnson in the back of the head during a sting operation. Incredulously, Johnson was the fourth person of color to be shot and killed by Portland police within a five-month period. Due to his age and surrounding circumstances, Johnson's death by Sanford elicited extreme reactions from varied communities of Portland. Unlike previous deaths of people of color by the police in Portland, Johnson's death received widespread attention from mainstream media outlets. In response, some white citizens decried Johnson's death as unjustified police brutality. Still, several white citizens defended the Portland Police Bureau and their actions. Members of Portland's African American community, however, firmly believed that Johnson's death was just another instance in the PPB's long history of police brutality within Portland's black neighborhoods. Johnson's death motivated young black activists in Portland, Oregon to form the advocacy group the Black Justice Committee (BJC). The BJC, along with several pre-established advocacy groups in Portland, demanded that the city host its first public inquest to investigate Johnson's death. A public inquest is a public "trial" that usually occurs after a sudden or unexpected death. Black citizens felt this public inquest would hold the city accountable for repeated mistreatment of the city's communities of color; whereas, the nearly all white city government believed a public inquest would quell racial unrest within Portland. Mayor Neil Goldschmidt and District Attorney Harl Haas agreed to host the inquest, at which assistant District Attorney John Moore questioned Officer Sanford's motivations and actions. Despite the advocacy efforts before the public inquest, the jury voted 4-1 for Sanford's innocence. The only black jury member casted the sole vote against Sanford's innocence. Heralded for its progressivity, the city of Portland, Oregon is contemporarily viewed as a liberal mecca where all are welcome to speak their truth and "Keep Portland Weird." However, communities of color have experienced widespread repression, oppression and discrimination since the establishment of the city. Whereas some may see Portland as a city that cherishes individuality, Portland's black community has been robbed of autonomy for generations. Police surveillance, harassment and brutality have plagued Portland's black community for years and continues to be a contentious issue within the city. This project focuses on the history of Portland's black community, the history of the Portland Police Bureau, and the relationship between the two. Starting with World War II and ending with Officer Sanford's public inquest in April 1975, this thesis showcases the unassailability of Portland's black activist community and the city's continued denial of culpability for police actions. Despite the inquest's results, Johnson's death and the advocacy surrounding the incident fueled the motivations of activists at both the national and state level, and encouraged the city to acknowledge the wrongdoings of the Bureau.

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Harvey, Matt. "Bread, Bullets, and Brotherhood: Masculine Ideologies in the Mid-Century Black Freedom Struggle, 1950-1975." Thesis, University of North Texas, 2018. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1248506/.

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This thesis examines the ways that African Americans in the mid-twentieth century thought about and practiced masculinity. Important contemporary events such as the struggle for civil rights and the Vietnam War influenced the ways that black Americans sought not only to construct masculine identities, but to use these identities to achieve a higher social purpose. The thesis argues that while mainstream American society had specific prescriptions for how men should behave, black Americans were able to select which of these prescriptions they valued and wanted to pursue while simultaneously rejecting those that they found untenable. Masculinity in the mid-century was not based on one thing, but rather was an amalgamation of different ideals that black men (and women) sought to utilize to achieve communal goals of equality, opportunity, and family.

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Bryan, Joshua Joe. "Portland, Oregon's Long Hot Summers: Racial Unrest and Public Response, 1967-1969." PDXScholar, 2013. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/995.

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The struggles for racial equality throughout northern cities during the late-1960s, while not nearly as prevalent within historical scholarship as those pertaining to the Deep South, have left an indelible mark on both the individuals and communities involved. Historians have until recently thought of the civil rights movement in the north as a violent betrayal of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.'s vision of an inclusive and integrated society, as well as coinciding with the rise, and subsequent decline, of Black Power. But despite such suppositions, the experiences of northern cities immersed in the civil rights struggle were far more varied and nuanced. The explosion of racial violence throughout American cities in the late-1960s bred fear among many in the white political establishment who viewed the cultural shifts inherent in racial equality as threatening to undermine their traditional racial dominance. Partially the result of feelings of increased powerlessness, and partially in an effort of self-preservation, many in the ranks of government and law enforcement worked to oppose the seismic changes underfoot. This thesis makes a concerted effort to examine and evaluate the role that race played in the Albina community of Portland, Oregon in the late-1960s, with a particular emphasis on the motivations, impact, and legacy of two racial disturbances that occurred there in the summers of 1967 and 1969. It asserts that while racial prejudice and bigotry were certainly prevalent among members of both the city's political and law enforcement community, and did play a significant role in the deterioration of their relationship with the black community, there were many other factors that also contributed to the police-community discord in late-1960s Albina. Moreover, it asserts that the reactions of the white and African-American communities to the disturbances were, contrary to conventional wisdom, not monolithic, but rather diverse and wide-ranging. The goal of this narrative history is not merely to analyze the racial unrest and public response to the disturbances, but also to integrate and link the experiences of Portland's African-Americans into the broader dialogue of the civil rights movement of the late-1960s. In short, the study of late-1960s Portland allows us to reach a greater understanding of racial inequality in America during this period.

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Tisdale, John Rochelle 1958. "Medgar Evers (1925-1963) and the Mississippi Press." Thesis, University of North Texas, 1996. https://digital.library.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc278976/.

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Medgar Evers was gunned down in front of his home in June 1963, a murder that went unpunished for almost thirty years. Assassinated at the height of the civil rights movement, Evers is a relatively untreated figure in either popular or academic writing. This dissertation includes three themes. Evers's death defined his life, particularly his public role. The other two themes define his relationship with the press in Mississippi (and its structure), and his relationship to the various civil rights organizations, including his employer, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Was the newspaper press, both state and national, fair in its treatment of Evers? Did the press use Evers to further the civil rights agenda or to retard that movement, and was Evers able to employ the press as a public relations tool in promoting the NAACP agenda? The obvious answers have been that the Mississippi press editors and publishers defended segregation and that Evers played a minor role in the civil rights movement. Most newspaper publishers and editorial writers slanted the news to promote segregation but not all newspapers editors. The Carters of Greenville, J. Oliver Emmerich of McComb and weekly editors Ira Harkey and Hazel Brannon Smith denounced the segregationist groups. Evers, too, is not easily defined. His life's work produced few results but his mere presence in the most racist state in the country provided other civil rights organizers with an example of personal strength and fortitude unmatched in the late 1950s and early 1960s. The dissertation reviewed the existing primary and secondary source material, and included personal interviews with primary participants in the Jackson boycotts of 1963. Evers compares with Abraham Lincoln in that both received little credit for their accomplishments until more than thirty years after their assassinations. Both represented the democratic philosophy of the common man's ability to achieve deeds not possible in a caste system.

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Torrubia, Rafael. "Culture from the midnight hour : a critical reassessment of the black power movement in twentieth century America." Thesis, University of St Andrews, 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10023/1884.

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The thesis seeks to develop a more sophisticated view of the black power movement in twentieth century America by analysing the movement’s cultural legacy. The rise, maturation and decline of black power as a political force had a significant impact on American culture, black and white, yet to be substantively analysed. The thesis argues that while the black power movement was not exclusively cultural it was essentially cultural. It was a revolt in and of culture that was manifested in a variety of forms, with black and white culture providing an index to the black and white world view. This independent black culture base provided cohesion to a movement otherwise severely lacking focus and structural support for the movement’s political and economic endeavours. Each chapter in the PhD acts as a step toward understanding black power as an adaptive cultural term which served to connect and illuminate the differing ideological orientations of movement supporters and explores the implications of this. In this manner, it becomes possible to conceptualise the black power movement as something beyond a cacophony of voices which achieved few tangible gains for African-Americans and to move the discussion beyond traditional historiographical perspectives which focus upon the politics and violence of the movement. Viewing the movement from a cultural perspective places language, folk culture, film, sport, religion and the literary and performing arts in a central historical context which served to spread black power philosophy further than political invective. By demonstrating how culture served to broaden the appeal and facilitate the acceptance of black power tenets it is possible to argue that the use of cultural forms of advocation to advance black power ideologies contributed significantly to making the movement a lasting influence in American culture – one whose impact could be discerned long after its exclusively political agenda had disintegrated.

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Smith, James G. "Before King Came: The Foundations of Civil Rights Movement Resistance and St. Augustine, Florida, 1900-1960." UNF Digital Commons, 2014. http://digitalcommons.unf.edu/etd/504.

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In 1964, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. called St. Augustine, Florida, the most racist city in America. The resulting demonstrations and violence in the summer of 1964 only confirmed King’s characterization of the city. Yet, St. Augustine’s black history has its origins with the Spanish who founded the city in 1565. With little racial disturbance until the modern civil rights movement, why did St. Augustine erupt in the way it did? With the beginnings of Jim Crow in Florida around the turn of the century in 1900, St. Augustine’s black community began to resist the growing marginalization of their community. Within the confines of the predominantly black neighborhood known as Lincolnville, the black community carved out their own space with a culture, society and economy of its own. This paper explores how the African American community within St. Augustine developed a racial solidarity and identity facing a number of events within the state and nation. Two world wars placed the community’s sons on the front lines of battle but taught them to value of fighting for equality. The Great Depression forced African Americans across the South to rely upon one another in the face of rising racial violence. Florida’s racial violence cast a dark shadow over the history of the state and remained a formidable obstacle to overcome for African Americans in the fight for equal rights in the state. Although faced with few instances of violence against them, African Americans in St. Augustine remained fully aware of the violence others faced in Florida communities like Rosewood, Ocoee and Marianna. St. Augustine’s African American community faced these obstacles and learned to look inward for support and empowerment rather than outside. This paper examines the factors that vii encouraged this empowerment that translates into activism during the local civil rights movement of the 1960s.

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Siff, Sarah Brady. "Evolution and Race in Mid-Twentieth-Century America." Miami University / OhioLINK, 2011. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=miami1314282392.

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Cole, Laura A. "Civil-military relations in Guatemala during the Cerezo presidency." FIU Digital Commons, 1992. http://digitalcommons.fiu.edu/etd/2404.

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In 1986 Guatemala experienced a transition from authoritarian rule. Many issues affected the democratization process, but I argue that an essential aspect was civil- military relations. Thus, the principal question answered in this thesis is: How have civil-military relations determined the extent and nature of transition towards democracy in Guatemala from 1986-1990? Adopting Alfred Stepan’s model to examine civil-military relations, the prerogatives and contestation of the Guatemalan military were examined. Prerogatives exist when the military assumes the right to control an issue, while contestation involves open articulated conflict with civilian government. High military prerogatives and low contestation indicate a situation of unequal civilian accommodation, where civilians do not effectively control the military. Civil-military relations in Guatemala from 1986-1990 reflect a pattern of unequal civilian accommodation. This illustrates the lack of civilian control over the military and continued military dominance of the political system in Guatemala.

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Lai, David Andrew. "UP IN THE BALCONY: WHITE RELIGIOUS LEADERS AND SCHOOL DESEGREGATION IN ARKANSAS, 1954-1960." UKnowledge, 2012. http://uknowledge.uky.edu/history_etds/5.

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This paper examines the various responses of progressive white southern clergy to school desegregation events in Arkansas. I investigate why no major white clerical movement emerged to support civil rights, arguing that internal and external factors limited their genuinely motivated witness. National and local clergy endorsed Brown for both religious and practical reasons, arguing that segregation was counter to Christian brotherhood and hurt worldwide evangelism. However, like William Chafe’s progressives in Greensboro, too many clergy worked for school desegregation but ignored African American voices, believing that their demands unnecessarily inflamed the local opposition and unfortunately urged patience and civility instead of justice. Furthermore, clerical intervention proved to be less effective than ministers expected. Sympathetic clergy experienced physical harassment and congregational opposition for speaking out, and local communities simply ignore their messages.

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Agee, Gary Bruce. "“A Cry for Justice:” Daniel A. Rudd’s Ecclesiologically-Centered Vision of Justice in the American Catholic Tribune." University of Dayton / OhioLINK, 2008. http://rave.ohiolink.edu/etdc/view?acc_num=dayton1224170155.

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De, Villiers Shirley. "Religious nationalism and negotiation : Islamic identity and the resolution of the Israel/Palestine conflic." Thesis, Rhodes University, 2004. http://hdl.handle.net/10962/d1007815.

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The use of violence in the Israel/Palestine conflict has been justified and legitimised by an appeal to religion. Militant Islamist organisations like Ramas have become central players in the Palestinian political landscape as a result of the popular support that they enjoy. This thesis aims to investigate the reasons for this support by analysing the Israel/Palestine conflict in terms of Ruman Needs Theory. According to this Theory, humans have essential needs that need to be fulfilled in order to ensure survival and development. Among these needs, the need for identity and recognition of identity is of vital importance. This thesis thus explores the concept of identity as a need, and investigates this need as it relates to inter-group conflict. In situating this theory in the Israel/Palestine conflict, the study exammes how organisations like Ramas have Islamised Palestinian national identity in order to garner political support. The central contention, then, is that the primary identity group of the Palestinian population is no longer nationalist, but Islamic/nationalist. In Islamising the conflict with Israel as well as Palestinian identity, Ramas has been able to justify its often indiscriminate use of violence by appealing to religion. The conflict is thus perceived to be one between two absolutes - that of Islam versus Judaism. In considering the conflict as one of identities struggling for survival in a climate of perceived threat, any attempt at resolution of the conflict needs to include a focus on needs-based issues. The problem-solving approach to negotiation allows for parties to consider issues of identity, recognition and security needs, and thus ensures that the root causes of conflicts are addressed, The contention is that this approach is vital to any conflict resolution strategy where identity needs are at stake, and it provides the grounding for the success of more traditional zero-sum bargaining methods. A recognition of Islamic identity in negotiation processes in Israel/Palestine may thus make for a more comprehensive conflict resolution strategy, and make the outcomes of negotiations more acceptable to the people of Palestine, thus undermining the acceptance of violence that exists at present.

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Sinclair, Donna Lynn. "Caring for the Land, Serving People: Creating a Multicultural Forest Service in the Civil Rights Era." PDXScholar, 2015. https://pdxscholar.library.pdx.edu/open_access_etds/2463.

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This qualitative study of representative bureaucracy examines the extension and limitations of liberal democratic rights by connecting environmental and social history with policy, individual decision making, gender, race, and class in American history. It documents major cultural shifts in a homogeneous patriarchal organization, constraints, advancement, and the historical agency of women and minorities. "Creating a Multicultural Forest Service" identifies a relationship between natural and human resources and tells a story of expanding and contracting civil liberties that shifted over time from women and people of color to include the differently-abled and LGBT communities. It includes oral history as a key to uncovering individual decision points, relational networks, organizational activism, and human/nature relations to shape meaningful explanations of historical institutional change. With gender and race as primary categories, this inquiry forms a history that is critical to understanding federal bureaucratic efforts to meet workforce diversity goals in natural resource organizations.

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Adkins, Edward. "Opening Pandora's box : Richard Nixon, South Carolina, and the southern strategy, 1968-1972." Thesis, University of Oxford, 2013. https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:594d27ff-85d8-4a72-9f99-a8d9ffd563e3.

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Much discussed and little understood, Richard Nixon's southern strategy demands scrutiny. A brief survey of the literature suggests that study on this controversial topic has reached an impasse. Southern historians keen to emphasise the importance of class in the region's partisan development over the last fifty years insist that any southern strategy predicated on racialised appeals to disaffected white conservatives was doomed to failure. Conversely, conventional accounts of the Nixon era remain wedded to the view that the southern strategy represented a successful devil's bargain whereby an avaricious Californian exchanged the promise of racial justice for black southerners in return for white Dixie's electoral votes. Most sobering of all are political scientists concerned with executive power, who evidence the limited discretion enjoyed by presidents to implement any agenda inimical to the corporate will of the federal bureaucracy. Since Nixon's executive departments were brimming with Democratic holdovers from the Kennedy and Johnson years, the question of whether or not the President demanded concessions to southern racists apparently becomes more or less irrelevant: the 'fourth branch' of the federal government inevitably ensured that a southern strategy was simply impossible to execute. In reality, much of this stalemate is the product of academic territorial warfare on the battleground of a subject wide open to multiple interpretations. A southern historian keen to showcase the importance of his local research is likely to show little interest in evidence that a President based in Washington D.C. could initiate social change in Tuscaloosa, Alabama. Similarly, political scientists fighting an unrewarding battle to emphasise the autonomy of federal departments are naturally disinclined to highlight examples of presidential willpower altering bureaucratic culture. Nevertheless, an intriguing paradox remains in evidence. Despite leaning more towards the political philosophy of antediluvian white southerners than the demands of black Americans, Richard Nixon presided over a period of such fundamental social reconstruction below the Mason-Dixie line that he could legitimately claim to have desegregated more southern schools than any other President in history. Whilst a raft of excellent monologues demonstrating the impact of local movements down South on national politics have been published over the last decade, few have even attempted to explain this peculiar phenomenon. As Matthew Lassiter observed in a Journal of American History roundtable on American conservatism in December 2011, 'the recent pendulum swing has overstated the case for a rightward shift in American politics by focusing too narrowly on partisan narratives and specific election cycles rather than on the more complex dynamics of political culture, political economy, and public policy.' The purpose of this thesis is to explain how a President notorious for pursuing the votes of white segregationists rested at the head of a federal government that ruthlessly dismantled Jim Crow. By incorporating the range of methodologies elucidated above, it will identify exactly how much influence President Nixon and his executive officers exerted over civil rights policy. Was Nixon's reactionary agenda thwarted by over-mighty bureaucrats? Or did the President act more responsibly than the majority of commentators have admitted?

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Scuto, Denis J.-P. M. "La construction de la nationalité luxembourgeoise: une histoire sous influence française, belge et allemande, 1839-1940." Doctoral thesis, Universite Libre de Bruxelles, 2009. http://hdl.handle.net/2013/ULB-DIPOT:oai:dipot.ulb.ac.be:2013/210310.

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La thèse analyse l'évolution de la législation de la nationalité du Grand-Duché de Luxembourg du Code civil des Français (1803) à la loi toute récente de 2008, avec une étude détaillée de la période qui va de l'indépendance du pays (1839) au début de la Seconde guerre mondiale (1940). L'étude dégage l'influence importante de la législation des pays voisins sur cette évolution.L'histoire de l'Etat-nation, des migrations et de la politique migratoire est également abordée.

The dissertation analyzes the evolution of the nationality legislation of the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg from the French Code civil (1803) till the most recent law of 2008.
Doctorat en Histoire, art et archéologie
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

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Martens, Allison Marie. "A movement of one's own?: American social movements and constitutional development in the twentieth century." Thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/3361.

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This dissertation examines the interaction between American social movements as they pursue their constitutional rights. The public law literature is dominated by a topdown approach to the study of constitutional politics, frequently focusing on the impact of Supreme Court decision-making. Instead, I explore constitutional politics from the bottom-up, analyzing constraints on social movement organizations as they formulate their constitutional strategies. Social movements must always be keenly aware of the actions of their peers who also seek to exploit the Constitution for their own benefit. My findings indicated that social movements recognize this competitive relationship with other social movements and treat their fellow constitutional claimants accordingly, acting to contest claims unfavorable to their cause, co-opt claims of other groups that have shown promise, and even form coalitions with their peers where an adjustment of their own claims to accommodate their coalition partners will likely net a greater return than going it alone. These negotiated constitutional claims have resulted in significant, durable and often ironic or unexpected shifts in constitutional development.
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Ward, Stephen Michael. ""Ours too was a struggle for a better world" activist intellectuals and the radical promise of the Black Power movement, 1962-1972 /." Thesis, 2002. http://wwwlib.umi.com/cr/utexas/fullcit?p3108532.

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Rocksborough-Smith, Ian Maxwell. "Contentious Cosmopolitans: Black Public History and Civil Rights in Cold War Chicago, 1942-1972." Thesis, 2014. http://hdl.handle.net/1807/65735.

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This dissertation looks at how teachers, unionists, and cultural workers used black history to offer new ways of thinking about racial knowledge from a local level. Numerous efforts to promote and teach this history demonstrated how dissident cosmopolitan political currents from previous decades remained relevant to a vibrant and ideologically diffuse African American public sphere despite widespread Cold War dispersions, white supremacist reactions, and anticommunist repressions. My argument proceeds by demonstrating how these public history projects coalesced around a series of connected pedagogical endeavors. These endeavors included the work of school teachers on Chicago's South side who tried to advance curriculum reforms through World War II and afterwards, the work of packinghouse workers and other union-focused educators who used anti-discrimination campaigns to teach about the history of African Americans and Mexican Americans in the labor movement and to advance innovative models for worker education, and the activities of important cultural workers like Margaret and Charles Burroughs who politicized urban space and fought for greater recognition of black history in the public sphere through the advancement of their vision for a museum. Collectively, these projects expressed important ideas about race, citizenship, education and intellectual labors that engaged closely with the rapidly shifting terrains of mid-20th Century civil rights and international anti-colonialisms. Ultimately, this dissertation offers a social history about how cosmopolitan cultural work in public history and similar forms of knowledge production were at the intersections of political realities and lived experience in U.S. urban life.

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Tiemeyer, Philip James. "Manhood up in the air : gender, sexuality, corporate culture, and the law in twentieth century America." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/15916.

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This project analyzes the sexual and gender politics of flight attendants, especially the men who did this work, since the 1930s. It traces how and why the flight attendant corps became the nearly exclusive domain of white women by the 1950s, then considers the various legal battles under the 1964 Civil Rights Act to re-integrate men into the workforce, open up greater opportunities for African-Americans, and liberate women from onerous age and marriage restrictions that cut short their careers. While other scholars have emphasized flight attendants' contributions in battling sexism in the courts, this project is unique in expanding such consideration to homosexuality. Male flight attendants' status as gender pariahs in the workforce (as men performing "women's work")--combined with the fact that many of them were gay--made them objects of "homosexual panic" in the 1950s, both in legal proceedings and in various forms of extra-legal intimidation. A decade later, aspirant flight attendants were participants in some of the first cases brought by men under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. Their victories in the courts greatly benefited the gay community, among others, which thereby enjoyed greater freedom to enter a highly visible, public-relationsoriented corporate career. As such, my project helps to recast the legal legacy of the civil rights movement as a three-pronged reform, confronting homophobia as well as racism and sexism. Beyond legal considerations, Manhood Up in the Air also examines how both labor unions and the airlines negotiated a legal environment and public sentiment that largely condoned firing homosexuals, while nonetheless accommodating gay employees. This form of accommodation existed in the 1950s, though much more precariously than in the post-Stonewall decade of the 1970s. Thus, the project records the pre-history to the current reality, in which both corporations (with airlines at the forefront) and labor unions have become core supporters of the contemporary gay rights movement.
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Harrison, Alisa. ""Ain’t gonna let nobody turn me round" -- the Southwest Georgia freedom movement and the politics of empowerment." Thesis, 2001. http://hdl.handle.net/2429/11742.

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In the early 1960s, African-American residents of southwest Georgia cooperated with organizers from the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) to launch a freedom movement that would attempt to battle white supremacy and bring all Americans closer to their country's democratic ideals. Movement participants tried to overcome the fear ingrained in them by daily life in the Jim Crow South, and to reconstruct American society from within. Working within a tradition of black insurgency, participants attempted to understand the origins of the intimidation and powerlessness that they often felt, and to form a strong community based on mutual respect, equality, and trust. Black women played fundamental roles in shaping this movement and African-American resistance patterns more generally, and struggles such as the southwest Georgia movement reveal the ways in which black people have identified themselves as American citizens, equated citizenship with political participation, and reinterpreted American democratic traditions along more just and inclusive lines. This thesis begins with a narrative of the movement. It then moves on to discuss SNCC's efforts to build community solidarity and empower African-American residents of southwest Georgia, and to consider the notion that SNCC owed its success to the activism of local women and girls. Next, it proposes that in the southwest Georgia movement there was no clear distinction between public and private space and work, and it suggests that activism in the movement emerged from traditional African-American patterns of family and community organization. Finally, this thesis asserts that the mass jail-ins for which the movement became famous redefined and empowered the movement community. This analysis reconsiders the analytical categories with which scholars generally study social movements. Instead of employing a linear narrative structure that emphasizes formal political activity and specific tactical victories, this thesis suggests that political participation takes diverse forms and it highlights the cycles of community building and individual empowerment that characterize grassroots organizing. It underscores the sheer difficulty of initiating and sustaining a mass struggle, and argues that the prerequisite to forming an insurgent movement is the ability of individuals to envision alternative social and cultural possibilities.

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Asenas, Jennifer Nichole 1977. "The past as rhetorical resource for resistance : enabling and constraining memories of the Black freedom struggle in Eyes on the prize." 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/2152/15859.

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I began this project with the question of how today's social justice activists might find a useable history in a massively influential text like Eyes on the Prize. Thus, the broad question that motivated this rhetorical inquiry was: what means are available to people interested in social change, but whose access to the resources to influence society is limited? One important resource that oppressed peoples can lay claim to is a shared sense of the past. Through a critical analysis of Eyes on the Prize, this dissertation examines shared memory as a resource for rhetorical production. I am interested not only in how the past is re-presented in the documentary, but also what resources the documentary provides its audience to consider and take action for social change. The films present memories that complicate or run counter to the dominant narrative of the black freedom struggle and thereby make available a reservoir of rhetoric power for a political present. My analysis suggests that Eyes on the Prize does not contradict public memory's dominant values of the black freedom struggle, but it does resist their blind adherence. The documentary does not force viewers to take sides on divisive issues like separation/integration or violence/nonviolence. Instead it allows them to realize that these concepts are dialectical. These are, in my estimation, productive tensions. Eyes on the Prize is an excellent pedagogical tool for producing citizen activists. Although activism gives way to electoralism by the end of the documentary, activism is portrayed positively in the documentary. There are certainly costs to activism, as some activists experienced in the most extreme way. However, the heroes of Eyes on the Prize are certainly the activists. In an analysis of a text's rhetorical potential, it is also necessary to acknowledge how the text limits rhetorical possibility. Significantly, Eyes on the Prize inadequately addresses the importance of class in the black freedom struggle. The lacuna of class in the documentary neglects fundamental changes in the goals and tactics of the black freedom struggle and limits the material and psychological structures that maintain racism.
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Krochmal, Maximilian. "Labor, Civil Rights, and the Struggle for Democracy in Mid-Twentieth Century Texas." Diss., 2011. http://hdl.handle.net/10161/5681.

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What happens when the dominant binary categories used to describe American race relations--either "black and white," or "Anglo and Mexican"--are examined contemporaneously, not comparatively, but in relation to one another? How do the long African American and Chicano/a struggles for racial equality and economic opportunity look different? And what role did ordinary people play in shaping these movements? Using oral history interviews, the Texas Labor Archives, and the papers of dozens of black, brown, and white activists, this dissertation follows diverse labor, civil rights, and political organizers from the mid-1930s to the mid-1960s.

Tracing their movements revealed a startling story. Beginning in the mid-1930s, African American and ethnic Mexican working people across Texas quietly and tentatively approached one another as well as white laborers for support in their efforts to counter discrimination at work, in their unions, and in the cities in which they lived. Such efforts evolved in different ways due to the repression of the early Cold War, but most organizers simply redirected their activism into new channels. By the close of the 1950s, new forms of multiracial alliances were beginning to take hold. Mutual suspicion slowly gave way to mutual trust, especially in San Antonio. There, and increasingly statewide, black and brown activists separately developed robust civil rights movements that encompassed demands not only for integration but also equal economic opportunities and the quest for independent political power.

The distinct civil rights and labor movements overlapped, especially in the realm of electoral politics. By the mid-1960s, what began as inchoate collaboration at the local level had gradually expanded from its origins in the barrios, ghettos, union halls, and shop floors to become a broad-based, state-wide coalition in support of liberal politicians and an expansive civil rights agenda. At the same time, African American and ethnic Mexican activists were engaged in new waves of organizing for both political power and civil rights, but they encountered opposition from members of their own ethnic groups. Thus the activists' efforts to forge inter-ethnic coalitions coexisted with protracted intra-ethnic conflict. In many cases distinctions of class and political philosophy and tactics mattered at least as much as did ties of ethnicity. Activists learned this lesson experientially: in the trenches, through countless small conflicts over several decades, they slowly separated themselves from their more conservative counterparts and looked to multiracial coalitions as their primary strategy for outflanking their intra-ethnic opponents. Meanwhile, organized labor and white liberals had been searching for allies in their efforts to wrest control of the Democratic Party away from its conservative wing. In the early 1960s, they reached the conclusion that black and brown voters would prove key to their own success, so they gradually transitioned toward civil rights organizing in order to build a coalition with the black and brown civil rights movements.

After decades of fighting separately and dabbling in experimental partnerships, veteran ethnic Mexican, African American, and white labor and liberal activists finally came together into a powerful statewide Democratic Coalition. Between 1962 and 1964, their collaborative campaign for civil rights, economic opportunity, and political power reached a fever pitch, resulting in the state's largest ever direct action protests, massive door-to-door electoral initiatives, and an ever-deepening commitment by labor to putting boots on the ground for community organizing. In the late 1960s the statewide multiracial coalition reached its apex and began to lose steam. At the same time, local multiracial coalitions continued to thrive, underpinning both the African American and Chicano/a urban electoral mobilizations and the rising Black and Brown Power movements. At the local level and in the short term, black, brown, and white working-class civil rights activists won--they achieved a degree of economic and political democracy in Texas that was scarcely imaginable in the age of Jim Crow just a few decades earlier. But as they won local battles they also lost the larger war.

Working-class civil rights organizers thus failed in the end to democratize Texas and America. Their goals remain distant to this day. Yet they were themselves transformed by their experiences in the struggle. Most transitioned from near-complete political and economic exclusion to having a voice. Their collective story indicates that scholars have much to gain from studying organized labor, electoral politics, and the African American and ethnic Mexican civil rights movements simultaneously. Doing so not only adds to the emerging historical sub-field of black-brown relations but also makes each of the individual movements look different. It reconnects class to the black freedom struggle, militancy to the ethnic Mexican civil rights movement, organized labor to community activism, and all three movements to the creation of today's urban politics.

Dissertation

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24

Hall, Emily. "The Poor People’s Campaign: How It Operated - and Ultimately Failed - Within the Structure of a Formal Nonprofit." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/3623.

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This thesis shows that because the Poor People’s Campaign was created by and operated within the formal structure of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - a nonprofit organization - it was unable to achieve success by almost any measure. SCLC’s organizational structure made it extremely difficult to create a national campaign from the ground up, and its leadership strategy guaranteed that it would be virtually impossible to sustain that kind of national campaign.

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Hall, Emily M. "The Poor People's Campaign : how it operated - and ultimately failed - within the structure of a formal nonprofit." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/7993.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
This thesis shows that because the Poor People’s Campaign was created by and operated within the formal structure of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) - a nonprofit organization - it was unable to achieve success by almost any measure. SCLC’s organizational structure made it extremely difficult to create a national campaign from the ground up, and its leadership strategy guaranteed that it would be virtually impossible to sustain that kind of national campaign.

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26

Ogilvie, Charlene Sarah. "The Aboriginal movement and Australian photography." Phd thesis, 2007. http://hdl.handle.net/1885/149690.

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27

Lanois, Derrick. "Fatherhood of God; Brotherhood of Man: Prince Hall Affiliated Freemasonry, Manhood, and Community Building in the Jim Crow South." 2014. http://scholarworks.gsu.edu/history_diss/41.

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The dissertation examines African American Freemasons throughout the South during the Jim Crow era. The secret nature of Prince Hall Affiliated Freemasonry (PHA) has hidden the contribution and activism of the organization and its members. I argue the organization is part of a web of networks that fought for civil and human rights for African Americans. Through PHA, members are cultivated into leaders, activists, businessmen; over the years, the members have created an initiatic identity that connected them to the African American community and humanity. The significance of my study is that I analyze PHA through a womanist lens and argue the organization has a diarchal gender relationship that allows women and men to take on leadership and activist roles that differed from the normative gender relationship of their time.

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Baloyi, Colonel Rex. "Interpretations of academic freedom :." Diss., 1998. http://hdl.handle.net/10500/18051.

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29

Herczeg-Konecny, Jessica. ""We will be prepared" : scouting and civil defense in the early Cold War, 1949-1963." Thesis, 2013. http://hdl.handle.net/1805/4033.

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Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
During the early Cold War, 1949 through 1963, the federal government, through such agencies as the Federal Civil Defense Administration (FCDA) (1950-1957), the Office of Civil and Defense Mobilization (OCDM) (1958-1960), and the Office of Civil Defense (OCD) (1961-1963), regarded children and young adults as essential to American civil defense. Youth-oriented, voluntary organizations, including the Boy Scouts of America (BSA) and the Girl Scouts of the United States of America (GSUSA), assisted the federal civil defense programs by promoting civil defense messages and agendas. In this thesis, I will explore how the GSUSA and BSA translated federal civil defense policies for their Scouts. What were the civil defense messages transmitted to Scouts during the early Cold War? How were those messages disseminated? Why? What was the social impact of BSA and GSUSA involvement with civil defense on America’s evolving national ideals?

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30

James, Ervin. "Unity, Justice and Protection: The Colored Trainmen of America's Struggle to End Jim Crow in the American Railroad Industry [and Elsewhere]." Thesis, 2012. http://hdl.handle.net/1969.1/ETD-TAMU-2012-08-11513.

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The Colored Trainmen of America (CTA) actively challenged Jim Crow policies on the job and in the public sphere between the 1930s and 1950s. In response to lingering questions concerning the relationship between early black labor activism and civil rights protest, this study goes beyond both local lure and cursory research. This study examines the Colored Trainmen's major contributions to the advancement of African Americans. It also provides context for some of the organization's shortcomings in both realms. On the job the African American railroad workers belonging to the CTA fought valiantly to receive the same opportunities for professional growth and development as whites working in the operating trades of the railroad industry. In the public sphere, these men collectively protested second-class services and accommodations both on and off the clock. Neither their agenda, the scope of their activities, nor their influence was limited to the railroad lines the members of the CTA operated within the Gulf Coast region. The CTA belonged to a progressive coalition comprised of four other powerful independent African American labor unions committed to unyielding labor activism and the toppling of Jim Crow. Together, they all worked to effectuate meaningful social change in partnership with national civil rights attorney Charles H. Houston. Houston's experience and direction, coupled with the CTA's dedicated membership and willingness to challenge authority, created considerable momentum in movements aimed at toppling racial inequality in the workplace and elsewhere. Like most of their predecessors, the CTA's struggle for advancement fits within a continuum of successive challenges to economic exploitation and racial inequality. No single person or organization can take full credit for ending segregation or achieving equality. Many who remain nameless and faceless contributed and sacrificed. This study not only chronicles the contribution of a relatively unsung African American labor organization that waged war against Jim Crow on two different fronts, it also pays homage to a few more individuals who made a difference in the lives of an entire race of people during the course of a bitterly contested, never-ending struggle for racial equality in the United States of America during the twentieth century.

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Dissertations / Theses on the topic '20th century american history - civil rights'

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