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.”

Committee: Stephanie Shaw (Advisor); Paula Baker (Committee Member); Kenneth Goings (Committee Member) Subjects: African American Studies; African Americans; American History; Black History; Black Studies; History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2011, Spanish and Portuguese

Central American national literatures and social imaginaries have largely denied, ignored or, at best, minimized the long-lasting legacy of Afro-descendants across the isthmus. This dissertation examines how and why the identities of the black diaspora—mulattoes, the West Indian population that was recruited to work on the United Fruit Company's banana plantations and the Afro-indigenous Garifuna—have been shaped historically, vis-a-vis the nation, by Central American literary discourses, from colonial times to the present day. The black diaspora is not a powerless or exploited populace, but a constituency whose local and transnational expressions of identity challenge the myths of harmony and ethnic homogeneity in Central America. Debates about ethnicity and citizenship take place in the political arena as well as literature, where canonical authors like Ruben Dario and Miguel Angel Asturias as well as understudied writers like Paca Navas Miralda and David Ruiz Puga have intervened at different times in history. I demonstrate that questions about the black diaspora's relevance to Central American national cultures emerge in periods of political and economic turmoil. Chapter 1 examines travel narratives by Thomas Gage and Jacob Haefkens in order to identify the opportunities for upward social mobility available to blacks in Central America during colonial times and argues that these opportunities allowed them to exercise control of their representation in Central American letters. Chapter 2 analyzes 19th century texts by Ruben Dario and Francisco Gavidia that subject the implicit reader to an aesthetic education by supplying copious allusions to influential works, demonstrating the Central American intellectuals' literary prowess as manifested by their ability to make blackness a sublime element in their writing. Chapter 3 examines two anti-imperialist novels by Paca Navas Miralda and Demetrio Aguilera Malta, whose novels from mid 20th century map the presence of (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Abril Trigo PhD (Advisor); Ana Del Sarto PhD (Committee Member); Laura Podalsky PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: Latin American Literature