Browsing by Author "Dr. Blair Kelley, Committee Chair"

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Challenges and Triumphs of the North Carolina Woman Suffrage Movement, 1894-1920
(2008-03-10) Mountcastle, Sherry A; Dr. Blair Kelley, Committee Chair
This thesis describes the early development of the Suffrage Movement in North Carolina and the political and social challenges addressed throughout the movement's history. It describes the leadership within both the suffragist and the antisuffragist groups in the state. Also addressed are the roles of gender, race, and politics in suffrage and antisuffrage literature. Special attention will be given to the important role of the state's industrialists in opposing woman suffrage, and their motivation for doing so. Research includes the use of both suffrage and antisuffrage records and publications, as well as numerous newspaper articles, editorials, and letters to gauge contemporary public opinion.
A Community Worth Fighting For: African American Educational Activism in Charlotte, North Carolina, 1961-1974
(2008-05-12) Bundy, Lauren Tess; Dr. Blair Kelley, Committee Chair; Dr. Katherine Mellen Charron, Committee Member; Dr. Craig T. Friend, Committee Member
This thesis will explore the traditions of African American educational activism in Charlotte, North Carolina between 1961 and 1974. During this time period, African Americans representing nearly every sector of the community relied on a flexible model of activism in their fight for schools which respected their educational traditions. Throughout this time period African Americans, with the help of some white Charlotteans, voiced their discontent with the status quo of public education which marginalized African American children and maintained the economic, political, and social control of a handful of white city fathers. Moreover, African Americans rejected school desegregation plans created by the all-white Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board, which inflicted heavy blows on the black community and their educational and community institutions. Throughout the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, white school officials regularly created integration and reform plans which closed historically black schools, fired black educators, and placed an undue burden on black students and their families. Schools represented a rare space of reprieve, empowerment, and opportunity in the bleak landscape of the Jim Crow South. Despite the enormous financial discrepancies between white and black schools, black communities came together to provide their students with an educational experience which met their intellectual and social needs. Desegregation plans that threatened these treasured community resources were met with fierce opposition from African Americans not just in Charlotte, but across much of the nation. In the early 1960s Rev. Reginald Hawkins and the Westside Parents Council organized a neighborhood school boycott in opposition to the discriminatory policies of the Charlotte-Mecklenburg School Board. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, activists including Rev. Elo Henderson and Rev. Robert Shirley attempted to use the newfound support of the federal government to pressure city and school officials to finally desegregate the schools. By the late 1960s, the rhetoric and ideology of Black Power stoked the fires of protest and social reform in Charlotte. Huge numbers of Charlotteans, white and black, young and old, rallied around Rev. George Leake and his quest to save the city's historically black schools. When integration finally came to the schools in 1971, African American students took center stage as advocates for racial equity in educational reform. A quest for the dignity and rights of citizenship, not adherence to a strict protest ideology, motivated each of these individuals and groups. Black Charlotteans passionately waged a prolonged and often grueling battle for a model of school integration which honored the treasured traditions of their community. In this moment of enormous social turmoil, the public school system became the medium through which black and white Charlotteans jockeyed for greater cultural, political, and economic influence.
Reclaiming First-Class Citizenship: the African-American Struggle and Mobilization for Political Rights in New Bern, North Carolina (1948-1979)
(2007-04-25) Medlin, Karen Elizabeth; Dr. Michael Allen, Committee Member; Dr. Walter Jackson, Committee Member; Dr. Blair Kelley, Committee Chair
This study explores the post-World War II activism and effort among African-Americans in New Bern, North Carolina to overturn their historic role as second-class citizens. After the North Carolina disenfranchisement law was passed in 1900, which was part of a white-implemented scheme to strip African-Americans of the political rights that they had achieved during the Reconstruction era, African-Americans in New Bern were largely marginalized from the political process. Following a new race consciousness in 1948, many of the disqualified residents were determined to forge strategies to reclaim their political rights as American citizens. Between 1948 and 1979, blacks in New Bern, with little assistance from whites, determined their own terms and provided their own base of support through local grassroots organizing in order to accomplish their primary goals of equally registering, voting, running, and winning public office. Though the black community in New Bern was anything but monolithic, in the world of politics, it came together as a forceful bloc to battle white supremacy. The result was a form of social and political modernization in which African-American New Bernians were finally able to share in the fruits of democracy as well as to transform their once secondary status in society. The city of New Bern, and the premier focus of this study, is the county seat of Craven County and is situated at the confluence of the Trent and the Neuse Rivers off of the Eastern coast of North Carolina. Founded in 1710 by Swiss merchants, it is the second oldest town in the state and once served as the capital from 1746 to the end of American Revolution. Due to the surrounding rural farmland that was particularly fertile for cotton and tobacco production, Craven County boasted one of the largest slave populations in the state. New Bern, on the other hand, served as an urban escape or refuge for hundreds of slaves both before and after the American Civil War. With a sizeable population in the city in the mid to late 19th century, blacks possessed immense political power through voting and local, state, and national office-holding, making the subsequent decline in their political influence during the twentieth century most relevant and crucial for further study. To best highlight the African-American political movement in New Bern during the twentieth century, this study takes a focused look at the most viable local organizations to arise while centering on oral histories and personal accounts among the politically active non-white inhabitants. Likewise, this thesis traces the existence of local white attitudes toward black advancement through three common responses, gradual readjustment and both violent and non-violent deterrence, and how each response affected the black quest for first-class citizenship. In spite of any and all impediments, this study argues that African-American New Bernians (over several generations) remained remarkably dedicated to their long-standing aspiration to garner political power in a racially unjust atmosphere. Above all, this thesis aims to contribute to the existing historiography of the Civil Rights Movement in the South by drawing attention to a locale that was largely detached from the larger struggle in time, place, national exposure, and outside organizational assistance. Over the course of their political quest, black New Bernians were certainly assisted by national legislation such as the 1965 Voting Rights Act, yet the outcome was primarily up to them as they emerged as the core directors. As this thesis argues, their struggle transcended several common historiographical restraints and thereby offers a different perspective of how local grassroots activism amid the Civil Rights Movement should be chronicled and understood.