Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2008, Curriculum and Instruction (Education)

This exploratory and descriptive study illuminates the lives of African American female teachers who lived in the upper Ohio River Valley between 1875 and 1915. Existing current research depicts teachers in the South and urban North during this period. This study highlights teachers from northern, small to midsized cities in order to bring them into the historical record and direct attention to their contributions to education. The focus of this historical, intrinsic, embedded, single-case case study was on the social profile, educational opportunities, teaching experiences, and support networks of Pocahontas Simmons Peyton, Susie Simmons (Jones?), Bernadine Peyton Sherman, Mary Peyton Dyson, Anna Stevens Posey, and Elizabeth Jennie Adams Carter. Three additional themes emerged from the data. They involved inconsistent community attitudes, male-defined perspectives, and multigenerational connections and successes.The case for this study was bounded by time, place, race, gender, and occupation. The units of analysis were selected from a pool of 27 names using the maximum-variation purposeful sampling method. The central research question asked how the women operated within the educational systems of the three-state area of western Pennsylvania, northern West Virginia, and southeastern Ohio. The researcher employed multiple methods of data collection in order to triangulate the data and provide rich description of the women within the context of the bounded system. The findings suggest that these women were part of a tradition of exemplary service to education. Although they were unique, these women shared characteristics with teachers in other areas of the country. With one exception, they worked in segregated schools with poor to adequate resources. Each woman had a range of educational options open to her, but not all options were available in each location. The women were skilled at using support networks and their own abilities to navigate within the educational (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2017, Leadership and Change

The dissertation is a deep study of an iconic 20th century female, African American leader whose acclaim developed not only from her remarkable first generation post-Reconstruction Era beginnings, but also from her mid-century visibility among Negroes and some Whites as a principal spokesperson for her people. Mary Jane McLeod Bethune arose from the Nadir- the darkest period for Negroes after the Civil War and three subsequent US Constitutional Amendments. She led thousands of Negro women, despite social adversity, to organize around their own aspirations for improved social and material lives among America's diverse citizens., i.e. “the melting pot.” The subject of no fewer than thirty-two dissertation studies, numerable biographies, innumerable awards, and namesake educational institutions, Bethune ascended to public leadership roles. Her renown of the first five decades of the 20th century is reconstructed to be less enigmatic for people of African descent, and more visible for other mainstream Americans. Remarkably, she employed a uniquely crafted philosophy of interactional destiny for the world's “races” anchored in her brand of Christian evangelism. Bethune's uniquely early feminist worldview and strategies for inter-racial cooperation, different than the worldviews of some of her contemporaries, achieved much social capital and opened doors of opportunity for herself and countless others through a brief federal government position, and organized women's work before 1955. Since much of her meta-narrative was riddled with hagiography and myth, this study has fettered out some myths and eradicated some of the hagiography. The study combines primary sources, secondary sources, photo-ethnography, and hermeneutics to illuminate another pathway for future leadership students and organization developers to appropriate aspects of Bethune's 20th century leadership performance as their own. Unintended to merely applaud Dr. Bethune's leadership performance, this stud (open full item for complete abstract)

PHD, Kent State University, 2013, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

From 1880-1920 the United States struggled to incorporate former slaves into the citizenship of the nation. Constitutional amendments legislated freedom for African Americans, but custom dictated otherwise. White people equated power and wealth with whiteness. Conversely, blackness suggested poverty and lack of opportunity. Straddling the Color Line is a multi-city examination of influential and prominent African Americans who lived with one foot in each world, black and white, but who in reality belonged to neither. These influential men lived lives that mirrored Victorian white gentlemen. In many cases they enjoyed all the same privileges as their white counterparts. At other times they were forced into uncomfortable alliances with less affluent African Americans who looked to them for support, protection and guidance, but with whom they had no commonalities except perhaps the color of their skin. This dissertation argues two main points. One is that members of the black elite had far more social and political power than previously understood. Some members of the black elite did not depend on white patronage or paternalism to achieve success. Some influential white men developed symbiotic relationships across the color line with these elite African American men and they treated each other with mutual affection and respect. The second point is that the nadir in race relations occurred at different times in different cities. In the three cities studied, the nadir appeared first in Charleston, then New Orleans and finally in Cleveland. Although there were setbacks in progress toward equality, many blacks initially saw the setbacks as temporary regressions. Most members of the elite were unwilling to concede that racism was endemic before the onset of the Twentieth Century. In Cleveland, the appearance of significant racial oppression was not evident until after the World War I and resulted from the Great Migration. Immigrants from the Deep South migrated to the Nor (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2015, Leadership and Change

This study is a leadership biography which provides, through the lens of Black feminist thought, an alternative view and understanding of the leadership of Black women. Specifically, this analysis highlights ways in which Black women, frequently not identified by the dominant society as leaders, have and can become leaders. Lessons are drawn from the life of Anna Julia Cooper that provides new insights in leadership that heretofore were not evident. Additionally, this research offers provocative recommendations that provide a different perspective of what leadership is among Black women and how that kind of leadership can inform the canon of leadership. Cooper's voice in advocacy, education, community service, and involvement in the Black Women's Club Movement are the major themes in which evidence of her leadership is defined. This leadership biography moves beyond the western hegemonic point of view and the more traditional ways of thinking about leadership, which narrowly identify effective leaders and ways of thinking about leadership development. The findings of this study propose an alternative view of leadership that calls attention to the following critical elements: 1. Black women carry the co-identifers, gender and race, which continue to be nearly nonexistent in leadership theories, discourse, and mainstream leadership literature. 2. The positivist view, as being the only legitimate knowledge claim, must continue to be challenged. 3. There is a need to correct and update our history, making it more inclusive of all human beings. This leadership biography centers on the notion that Cooper, as a quintessential leader, remains paradoxical. For the most part, she continues to be an unknown figure to most Americans, both Black and White. Yet, remnants of Cooper's ideology and leadership are prolific. It is precisely this dissonance between Cooper the undervalued figure and Cooper the scholar/activist leader that is being analyzed in this study. Under (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, Miami University, 2009, Educational Leadership

Many Americans in the nineteenth century argued for limited education for blacks –or no education at all for African Americans in the south. As a result, black churches took up the role and pushed for education as a means to liberate African Americans. The African Methodist Episcopal (AME) Church stands as a good exemplar for a black denomination that explicitly expressed in their policies that they understood the connection of education to African American liberation. This study is a historical analysis of the AME Church's advocacy of African American empowerment through education from 1816 to 1893. In the AME Church's nineteenth century doctrinal statements and publications the leaders explicitly stated that education was a necessary component for black liberation. In this dissertation I argue that, although there were other organizations that pushed for African American education in the nineteenth century, the African Methodist Episcopal Church stood at the fore in advocating for education and connecting it to African American liberation. My primary question is: How did the AME Church connect their advocacy for black education to liberation for African Americans in the nineteenth century? The dissertation will explore two aspects of liberation in the nineteenth century. During the first half of the nineteenth century–from the AME Church's founding in 1816 through the end of the Civil war in 1865 –the Church worked toward a liberation that was focused on the abolition of slavery and overcoming racial oppression. In the latter half of the nineteenth century from 1865 to 1893 –with the death of Bishop Payne– the AME Church focused on a liberation that was geared toward the notions of uplift and self-agency within the black community, namely black social, economic, and political advancement. The last chapter will examine how this historical analysis has implications for transforming African American education in present times. The text will examine the black chu (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, Case Western Reserve University, 2011, History

This master's thesis examines Jewish and African American relations in Cleveland, Ohio from 1900 to 1970. It argues that interactions between Jews and African Americans in the North have been forged by their history of shared urban space which fostered inter-reliance between Jewish entrepreneurs and their black customers. While this African American-Jewish inter-reliance has been explored in the context of civil rights, an examination of street-level interactions in shared urban spaces such as Jewish-run corner-stores, nightclubs, music shops, housing, and even criminal enterprises reveals that relations between African Americans and Jews have been driven as much by entrepreneurship, markets, and patterns of consumption as by their history as two oppressed peoples. Although this study focuses on Cleveland, it also illustrates some of the basic dynamics of demographic change and inter-ethnic activity in urban America during the twentieth century.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2024, History of Art

My dissertation, Communities of Color: The Life and Painting of Alma W. Thomas (1891-1978), examines the work of Thomas, particularly the abstract compositions she produced between 1960 and 1978, against the backdrop of the Civil Rights movement and the contentious debates within the art world itself around different forms of representation. I am particularly interested in both the demands made during that period for greater representation of women and non-White artists in public museums and the widespread belief that arose more or less simultaneously that only representational or figurative art could adequately address feminist or anti-racist concerns. My dissertation aims to show that Thomas's paintings, although non-figurative, were intended to contribute to the goal of a more diverse and integrated society, principally by changing perception itself. Despite what initially appears to be their cheerful simplicity, Thomas's compositions are in fact subtly complex, inviting viewers' attentiveness to small differences in the elements' shape and color. In this way, they solicit a positive form of “discrimination,” one that discourages generalization and attunes us instead to individuality. Her paintings, comprised as they are of separate daubs of paint, stand as analogues, then, for other, even more complex communities of color.  Thomas's own life story is an interesting one: she spent most of her adult life teaching art within the Washington, DC public school system, turning to painting full-time only after her retirement at the age of sixty-nine. In addition to analyzing individual paintings by Thomas, I also investigate the artist's artistic biography, including her commitment to the tradition of European modernism, her affinities with the Washington Color School (particularly the artists Kenneth Noland and Sam Gilliam), and her fascination late in life with the Apollo space program, which I discuss as an early form of Afrofuturism. My ambition is to reveal the (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2023, History

This dissertation focuses on the development of the Lost Cause mythology in North Carolina between the 1880s to the 1920s. The Lost Cause is a racist and inaccurate view of the Civil War years promoted by Neo-Confederate Southerners. This dissertation argues that the Lost Cause developed primarily through the efforts of Neo-Confederate organizations like the United Daughters of the Confederacy. These individuals built a compound-public space that united grassroots movements with official governmental figures to promote the Lost Cause mythology. The formation of this compound-public space and its impact on the Lost Cause provided the necessary cultural support for the development of a Democratic-backed white supremacist campaign in North Carolina in 1898 conducted to reduce the political power of Republicans and African Americans, and to re-establish Democratic hegemony. This dissertation explores the ways in which Neo-Confederates constructed the compound-public space including: the role of politics, gender, religion, education, the media, and Confederate monuments with the express goal of increasing the political power of the Democratic Party.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, History

This dissertation examines the careers of African American members of Congress from the election of Oscar DePriest, the first African American elected in the 20th Century in 1928, through the early years of the Congressional Black Caucus in 1973. It examines the interactions with and contributions of Black members of Congress to the broader Civil Rights and Black Power movements during this period and their relationship with electoral politics. It shows how Black members both played fundamental roles in passing major pieces of Civil Rights legislation during this period and how without their work and input these laws would have been weaker. Simultaneously, it shows how the demands and realities of electoral politics constrained the scope of Black members' legislative efforts, but also how these members actively took steps to advance partisan political goals at the expense of activists because they believed that their work was the best and sometimes only legitimate form of Black activism. Building upon scholarship in both history and Political Science, it contributes to our understanding of the scope of Black political power in the United States prior to the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the impact it had. Simultaneously, it compliments the literature on the Civil Rights and Black Power eras that focus on grassroots movements as the main agents of change by showing how the connections between many Black activists and Black Congressmen helped passed landmark legislation like the Civil Rights Act of 1964, but also how Black members came to distance themselves from those activists as they failed to monopolize Black political action around themselves to the detriment of both their own political agenda and that of activists.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2022, History

By the outbreak of World War I in 1914, Black Americans were restrained from enjoying democratic principles. Black American editorials combatted these discriminations by exaggerating France as an egalitarian nation that provided principles of equality, liberty and fraternity to its colonial subjects. Often, Black journalists contrasted the experiences of Africans in the French army with Black Americans' inequalities. While Great Britain and Germany willingly deployed African troops in Africa, they refused to use Africans on the European continent, but France was different. The incorporation of French Africans into the French army compensated for its declining birth rate at World War I's outbreak by providing essential manpower for the war effort. As a result, journalists displayed France as appearing to provide egalitarian principles to its African soldiers. However, it was not to show the appearance of social advancement but rather to create a haze of social equality that hid France's cultural and biological racism. This paper addresses how the Black press interpreted the incorporation of French African colonial subjects into the French army in 1914 - 1915 and how these perceptions redefined American racism, equality, white supremacy, and American democracy. Black journalists used the appearance of social advancement for French Africans serving in the French army to initially display the differences between French and American society. As a result, editors noted the shifting mentality of Black American communities from various parts of the United States and how it impacted their perception of American society. Journalists were biased in their approach, understanding that they influenced the reader's interpretation through written or visual imagery by shaping how Black Americans interpreted the world around them. As the war raged on, they saw the war as an opportunity to criticize American democracy, demonstrate the inequalities experienced within a "white" Ame (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2022, Leadership and Change

Reframing Leadership Narratives Through the African American Lens explores the context-rich experiences of Black Museum executives to challenge dominant cultural perspectives of what constitutes a leader. Using critical narrative discourse analysis, this research foregrounds under-told narratives and reveals the leadership practices used to proliferate Black Museums to contrast the lack of racially diverse perspectives in the pedagogy of leadership studies. This was accomplished by investigating the origin stories of African American executives using organizational leadership and social movement theories as analytical lenses for making sense of leaders' tactics and strategies. Commentary from Black Museum leaders were interspersed with sentiments of “Sankofa” which signify the importance of preserving the wisdom of the past in an effort to empower current and future generations. This study contributes to closing the gap between race and leadership through a multidimensional lens, while amplifying lesser-known histories, increasing unexplored narrative exemplars, and providing greater empirical evidence from the point of view of African American leaders. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA (https://aura.antioch.edu) and OhioLINK ETD Center (https://etd.ohiolink.edu).

BA, Oberlin College, 2021, Comparative American Studies

This thesis draws on interviews with voters and organizers to disrupt preconceived popularized notions of the Deep South, arguing for a reimagining of the region's value through the lens of electoral politics and the Democratic Party's campaign efforts. There is plenty of room for revision in the apathetic approach that national Democrats and progressives treat the South with. This historic and contemporary disdain, paired with common guilt in the promotion of a limited and exclusionary idea of what the South is, contributes to the marginalization of Southern communities of color, queer and trans people, working class folks, and more. However, through attention to voter access, revised organizing tactics, and more, the Democratic Party can be a part of the solution.

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Arts Administration, Education and Policy

This historical research study situates the pedagogical work of Dr. Margaret Taylor Goss Burroughs (1915-2010) within the histories of art education. By situating a Black women art educator into the histories of art education during the 1940s-1960s, the history of art education must be reconsidered. By tracing and crafting a bridge from the work of Carter G. Woodson and the concept of fugitive pedagogies to Dr. Burroughs, a clearer picture of the art classroom within de facto segregated high schools emerges. Utilizing alternative historical methods such as microhistory, critical fabulation, and place-based methodologies, Margaret's educational career comes into focus, challenging the dominant narratives within histories that continue to obfuscate the work of Black art teachers. The analysis first looks at Margaret's biographical information prior to becoming a teacher, including her experiences within the school systems of Louisiana and Chicago. From there, I trace the ways that art education became a major theme in her life, and the ways that her art teachers worked to provide her the opportunity to become an art educator. The second section focuses on two different layers of analysis: one utilizing the tenets of fugitive pedagogies to deepen our understanding of Margaret's work in her high school classroom; the second focusing on the importance of place and how being in Bronzeville and dedicating herself to her community impacted her and gave her a reason to leave the classroom and become the head of the DuSable Museum of African American History.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 2021, American Culture Studies

Ethnic Studies (ES) is the study of history, practices, and contributions of people of color and their descendants. Ethnic Studies has emerged as an academic discipline resulting from social activist groups of the late 1950s, and, subsequent student activism of the 1960s. In ways that were planned and improvised, Black scholar activists along with the Third World Liberation Front (TWLF) fashioned the need for the development of curricula that provided an alternative to the traditional Eurocentric focus in many academic fields. An inquiry into the origin of Ethnic Studies at Bowling Green State University (BGSU) qualifies in general some African Americans' responses to education in the U.S. and specifically at the first school to have ES in the state of Ohio. Alliances between activist student groups and individuals of diverse backgrounds led to the formation and development of a new academic discipline, Ethnic Studies at BGSU beginning in May 1970. The development of Ethnic Studies programming and curricula at BGSU emerged from a coalition of student activists advocating for Black Studies. BGSU's department is among the oldest in the nation focusing on interdisciplinary studies of race. African Americans organizing and sustaining Ethnic Studies at BGSU brought academic and artistic value and distinction to them and to the institution.

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2020, Educational Theory and Social Foundations

The purpose of this oral history is to document the lived experience of the learning environment of African American students and culturally specific practices of African American teachers who taught in the legally segregated Louisvlle Central High School. Historically, segregated African American schools have been depicted as inferior educational institutions. By offering a counter-narrative of educational success within a segment of the African American community in the Jim Crow South the central thesis of this oral history is a counter-narrative to the suppositions of cultural deficit as the primary theory explaining the achievement gap between the majority population and minorites. By exploring the lived experience of the characteristics of the school culture and environment and the characteristics of those responsible for teaching, this oral history adds to the body of literature which shows that the achievement gap cannot be adequately explained by reference to cultural deficit. Moreover, the counter-narrative points toward significant issues pertaining to education and justice. As a legal, constitutional matter by legally denying free and equal access to public institutions and the public sphere de jure segregation violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment and was thereby unconstitutional. In striking down legal segregation Brown established an equal civil right to equal access and thus formal equality of opportunity. As an educational matter (as opposed to a strictly constitutional one), however, the findings of this oral history, that the educational environment of Louisville Central High School was not culturally and educationally deprived, suggests that the quality and effectiveness of education is a matter that is independent of the strictly legal matter of the right to formal equality of opportunity as equal access. While being of the greatest significance for a democratic and just society, the civil right to free and equal acces (open full item for complete abstract)

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2020, Leadership and Change

There is a gap in the literature on generativity and the leadership philosophy and praxis of African American Female Foreign Service Officers (AAFFSOs). I addressed this deficit, in part, by engaging an individual of exceptional merit and distinction—Aurelia Erskine Brazeal—as an exemplar of AAFFSOs. Using qualitative research methods of portraiture and oral history, supplemented by collage, mind mapping and word clouds, this study examined Brazeal's formative years in the segregated South and the extraordinary steps her parents took to protect her from the toxic effects of racism and legal segregation. In addition, I explored the development of Brazeal's interest in international affairs and her trailblazing diplomatic career. In an effort to understand her leadership philosophy and praxis, the study engaged eight additional research respondents, ranging from proteges and colleagues to Brazeal's fictive daughter, Joan Ingati. Drawing from the Iroquois Great Law of Peace, this study employed the concept of generativity—concern for the welfare and well-being of future generations—as a focal lens. The research concluded that in order to be effective in the 21st century, leaders would do well to emulate Brazeal's example as a generative leader. This dissertation is accompanied by 11 audio files. This dissertation is available in open access at AURA: Antioch University Repository and Archive, http://aura.antioch.edu/ and OhioLINK ETD Center, https://etd.ohiolink.edu.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2019, Leadership and Change

This study tells the deep, rich story of Evelyn T. Butts, a grassroots civil rights champion in Norfolk, Virginia, whose bridge leadership style can teach and inspire new generations about political, community, and social change. Butts used neighbor-to-neighbor skills to keep her community connected with the national civil rights movement, which had heavily relied on grassroots leaders—especially women—for much of its success in overthrowing America's Jim Crow system of segregation and suppression. She is best-known for her 1963 lawsuit that resulted in the U.S. Supreme Court's 1966 decision to ban poll taxes for state and local elections, a democratizing event hailed as a progressive victory over the entrenchment of property and wealth as prerequisites for suffrage. Virginia required an annual $1.50 poll, while other Southern states had similar levies. Butts' legacy from her 1954–1970 grassroots heyday is also built on what she did before and after her court victory to help blacks and poor whites attain political citizenship—the right to fully participate in political decision-making. Butts, who stood amid the continuum of black resistance leaders questing for freedom, civil rights, equality, justice, and dignity, exercised effective leadership on diverse concerns, including segregated schools, employment discrimination, and substandard housing. Self-determination for marginalized people lay at the heart of her crusades, especially for voter education, registration, and turnout. This first, full-length scholarly examination of Butts' leadership is a qualitative study and narrative inquiry that includes the context of her times. This interdisciplinary study draws on literature in history, political science, sociology, civil rights, voting rights, critical race theory, and leadership theories, and is built on narrative analysis and constructivist/interpretivist techniques. Butts, who died in 1993, did not leave many personal writings, so research findings emerged fro (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, History

“The Inner Light of Radical Abolitionism” tracks the emergence of abolitionism in greater Rhode Island, focusing on Providence and the surrounding communities in Massachusetts and Connecticut. Three major lines of Rhode Island's anti-slavery activism during the early republic—Quaker anti-slavery sentiment, the abolitionist campaign of the Providence Abolition Society, and Rhode Island's free black community—came together to provide the basis for William Lloyd Garrison's The Liberator and his New England Anti-Slavery Society. Quaker and free black communities in greater Rhode Island provided the initial support for Garrison's calls for immediate abolitionism. The work of abolitionist Quaker women from greater Rhode Island fused the question of women's rights with that of abolition and split the national abolitionist movement as a result. By the time the New England Yearly Meeting withdrew formal Quaker support for abolition in 1840, the movement bore the imprint of Quaker activism.

Master of Arts in English, Cleveland State University, 2019, College of Liberal Arts and Social Sciences

ABSTRACT …A-Minor is an one-act play that examines the relationship between a Black artist and the predominantly white society and industry he must assimilate into in order to be considered a success. The main character Jacque Bonnet is used as a vessel to interpret the life and career of Joseph Bologne Chevalier de St. George. Despite Bonnet and Bologne being from different eras (Bologne mid to late 1700's, Bonnet Mid 1800's) I used Bonnet as a device to investigate the lesser explored life of Bologne. By creating a meta-gothic world for Jacque Bonnet to exist in, the crowd can watch his mental decay in real time. This play relies heavily on pace and aesthetic. A minimalist set with several props and original music will assist in the telling of the story. This play is heavily influenced by Suzan Lori-Parks' Topdog/Underdog and Picasso's Harlequin with a Violin and has to be told through a gothic lens with Victorian tendencies. These are the fears of the Black artist learning to assimilate. This is a problem that spreads beyond the history of America. There have long been Complaints of the field of medieval studies being too white and failing to pay attention to the African Diaspora that populated much of Europe between the year 500 and 1500. Joseph Bologne has been long forgotten in the annals of European history. The romanticized version of a continent that is rarely challenged. …A-Monor serves as a revisioning of one, Joseph Bologne's life using a fictional character. The white world that surrounds Jacque represents the smothering of a black artist in a white dominated market. In the end this play serves as a loose interpretation of how history, specifically of the African Diaspora can be consumed and forgotten about by a mass white elite. The aristocracy controls Jacque's work just as much as the majority white corporate hands control today's art and entertainment market. Keeping to the tradition of the downtrodden black artist, the historical set (open full item for complete abstract)

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2019, History

While much has been written about white fears over the “danger” of interracial marriage, little has been devoted to understanding black perspectives—how Black Americans thought and talked about the topic. This dissertation examines debates among Black Americans about interracial marriage in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Many personally opposed interracial marriage, but they publicly defended and fought for the legal right to such unions. Their fight became an integral part of the battle to gain basic citizenship rights and helped forge a collective identity as they offered, and argued over, competing solutions for racial advancement and visions of the future of the race. Examining Black Americans' internal debates reveals much about their intra-racial tensions, intraracial cooperation, racial identity formation, and the evolution of thought and strategy over time. The dissertation uncovers a vigorous debate with a diverse set of opinions, paradoxes, and complex implications for African American and American history. Black proponents and opponents of interracial marriage alike sought their race's collective advancement and attainment of rights and did so in part by projecting a particular community image. The study therefore engages with notions of respectability, uplift, patriarchy, power, privilege, gender, and sexuality. Altogether, the study broadens understanding of “the Long Civil Rights Movement.”