While there are many books, articles, and other resources that discuss Eleanor Roosevelt’s life, work, and contributions to the causes of social, economic, and political equality in the United States, few consider at length the impact that her personal relationships with civil r…
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This dissertation explores how middle-class black activists and reformers participated in protests to open up and improve workplaces for black workers in Atlanta in the 1960s and 1970s. While middle-class activists and reformers achieved some limited victories in these workplace…
In the postwar period, the National Council of Negro Women (NCNW), the largest African American women’s organization in the United States, positioned themselves as representatives of Black women’s interests on the world stage. Previous studies of founder Mary McLeod Bethune’s in…
As NASA propelled mankind beyond the limits of the earth, women and African American employees fought against discriminatory structures and systems within the agency. Since its inception, NASA administrators and NASA’s black employees had a tenuous relationship. Black employees …
An Obligation to do One's Best is an exploration of myth and reality at home in a small southern town. The artist is calling into question whose history we are referencing when it comes to art, economics, and culture. In these liminal landscapes, the viewer/spectator becomes a c…
From the establishment of institutions of higher education in Colonial America until the 1970s, college administrators have acted in loco parentis, or as legal guardians of students “in the place of parents.” Under the legal regime of in loco parentis, society and the legal syst…
In the years since the federal Fair Housing Act of 1968 outlined an obligation for government to “affirmatively further fair housing” (AFFH), actual follow-up on this promise has often fallen short. Local efforts to advance fair housing goals have also received limited attention…
This project documents the efforts of Kansas City activists, organizers, and politicians who successfully fought for the passage of a municipal nondiscrimination ordinance in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The ordinance outlawed discrimination in employment, housing, and public…
This dissertation engages with the legal crisis leading up to and following the ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment (1868) through an analysis of law, prohibition, and taboo in the works of Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Sutton E. Griggs, and Pauline E. Hopkins. In order to unders…
This project explains the conditions under which American social movements that begin their mobilization through peaceful, lawful acts of protest become politically violent. To do so, I propose and develop a new, unifying framework called the state legitimacy framework. The stat…
The life of Dr. Annie Mae McClary Walker is a microcosm of Black History in the United States. The only half Native American-half African American anthropologist in the world, Dr. Walker provides rare insight into the racist culture of her childhood on the Seminole reservation a…
Across the American South, civil rights memory institutions created by city and state governments and private organizations, preserve and communicate complex civil rights histories. Each of these institutions, for different reasons, influenced by their particular cultural, histo…
Between 1964 and 1968, protests against anti-Black racism and police violence transformed cities across the United States. Against the backdrop of the civil rights movement and the emergent Black Power movement, these so-called “race riots” elicited a diverse groundswell of poli…
The 1966 Seattle school boycott and freedom schools represent a case of successful activism that did not translate into successful long-term policy. Instead, the value of the boycott lies in the role it played as a catalyst in Seattle’s decades-long series of desegregation attem…
This exploratory research focused on the effects of religious oppression on Muslim Lebanese women's status and civil rights. As a qualitative study of inequity, oppression, and empowerment, the research was guided by a narrative-interpretivist approach and governed by the femini…
This dissertation is a study of how the symbolism, meaning and function of the Lincoln Memorial has been shaped and altered by civil rights protests held at its site from 1922 to 1968 and by the overarching influence of the ideology of American exceptionalism. The focus is on pr…
“‘Authors of the Liberation’” examines the evolution of the struggle for political black equality in the 1960s through the story of the Freedom Democrats—black Mississippians who challenged the seating of the “Regular” white delegation at the 1964 Democratic National Convention.…
The civil rights movements in the United States (1953–68) and Northern Ireland (1963–72) demonstrate how campaigns with similar goals and methodologies can take divergent paths. The history and culture combined with the governmental structures and responses were the primary fact…
Bowdon, Georgia, has an almost century-long history related to the apparel industry. The public memory of this industry underplays the role played by Black workers and reinforces the traditional white, paternalistic ideology of the textile industry. This thesis examines the hist…