Master of Education, University of Toledo, 2010, Education Theory and Social Foundations

An action research study was conducted regarding the significance of studying the Civil Rights Movement on the personal development of adults who, as students, had participated in Civil Rights related curriculum. Data were gathered and analyzed utilizing a qualitative phenomenological approach. Ten participants were interviewed as to their views regarding past experiences of learning about the Civil Rights Movement from both high school and outside sources, such as elder family members, involvement in community organizations, and involvement in the TOLEDO EXCEL program for aspiring minority youth. The results suggest that the strong personal impact from learning and being taught about the Civil Rights Movement supports the need for the continuation and expansion of Civil Rights related curricula both in the TOLEDO EXCEL program and in high school coursework.

Master of Science (MS), Ohio University, 2019, Journalism (Communication)

This thesis examines the advocacy and journalistic work of civil rights activist and newspaper publisher Daisy Bates. It explores her ability to negotiate her black womanhood, while navigating the discriminatory practices in the South in the 1940s and 1950s. Bates and her husband founded the Arkansas State Press in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1941, which echoed the sentiments of the civil rights movement at the time. As this thesis demonstrates, Bates's journalistic advocacy mirrored the practices of northern black publications, while defying the traditions of southern race relations. Her journalistic style, characterized by militant sarcasm and provocation of both whites and blacks, came to cement her as a trailblazing black journalist in a region heavily shaped by blacks' oppression. More than being a black woman in times of white male preeminence, Bates defied the double burden of racism and sexism as she wrote stories that attacked white supremacy and accounted for racial injustice in the South. Through an assessment of her journalistic work, this thesis applies a historical research method to restore Bates's place in black press history and situate her within black feminist thought, as a radical frontrunner for women of color in the South in the twentieth century.

MA, Kent State University, 2014, College of Arts and Sciences / Department of History

MAYS, NICHOLAS S, M.A. AUGUST 2014 DEPARTMENT of HISTORY NORTHTERN REDEMTION: MARTIN LUTHER KING, THE UNITED PASTORS ASSOCIATION, AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLES IN CLEVELAND, OHIO (118 pp.) Director of Thesis: Elizabeth Smith-Pryor This study examines a turbulent time in Cleveland, Ohio, when African Americans endured racial inequality and poverty rooted in de facto segregation and discrimination. Racism and poverty led to the 1966 Hough Riot in a predominantly African American neighborhood, which left four African Americans dead. In response, local religious leaders, particularly the United Pastors Association (UPA), prompted by fears of further unrest, a desire for better race relations, and improved economic conditions—reached out to Martin Luther King. Although Northern Redemption seeks to complicate the dominant narrative regarding Martin Luther King’s Northern contribution, my chief aim is to reveal Martin Luther King’s contribution to the civil rights struggle in Cleveland, Ohio. As such, I argue that King’s direct engagement and leadership skills helped galvanize and mobilize the African American community to confront injustices against Blacks. With this in mind, I seek to understand: how did Martin Luther King convince Cleveland’s African American community that had only recently erupted in the Hough Riots to embrace nonviolent direct-action protests to achieve economic, social, and political change? In exploring Martin Luther King’s contribution to the local civil rights struggle in Cleveland, Ohio, this thesis offers a history of race relations and Black oppression in Cleveland, as well as a study of African American triumph against White aggression and racism during the latter 1960s. This thesis offers more insight on the impact of King, however, it does not attempt to perpetuate the nostalgia that already exists in many civil rights histories. Instead, this thesis reco (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2008, Graduate School

Master of Fine Arts, The Ohio State University, 2005, Graduate School

Master of Arts, The Ohio State University, 2007, Graduate School

MA, Kent State University, 2024, College of the Arts / School of Art

From 1956 to 1971, the FBI conducted a number of operations under the name Covert Intelligence Program, otherwise known as COINTELPRO. These illegal operations were performed with the goal of disrupting the efforts of political organizations such as anti-Vietnam war groups, Chicano and black power movements, the KKK, among many others. There were many methods used, like assassinations and manipulation of the legal system, but on occasion, the program utilized carefully created printed art and photography to undermine public opinion of the organizations. The prime example would be the 1969 Black Panther Coloring Book, published ostensibly by the Black Panthers, but was in actuality a book of violent imagery distributed by the FBI to disturb more moderate members of the community, and push them away from associations and collaborations with the Panthers. This thesis discusses the precarious position occupied by this coloring book as both a genuine piece of Black Panther imagery that aligns with their visual program, while simultaneously used against them in non-member audiences by the FBI. The result is a unique piece of propaganda that has simultaneously positive and negative impacts depending on who is doing the distributing, and who it is being distributed to. Scholarship regarding the use of visual media in these operations is sparse, so this thesis conducts an original survey of how the United States government utilized and manipulated art to further their counterintelligence mission and undermined political activism.

Master of Arts (MA), Ohio University, 2024, History (Arts and Sciences)

Despite serving as the capital of a prototypical Rustbelt state during a period of economic hardship and decline of other once prosperous neighboring Rustbelt cities, Columbus's history is rather separate from those of its peers. The strife experienced by the city during the 1960s and 1970s arose not from the collapse of its industrial districts, a dwindling white ethnic population, or the dilapidation of its infrastructure, but quite the opposite. Columbus's history is one of a city and an education system unable and unwilling to adapt with the changing racial and economic make-up of a rapidly developing urban center. In turn, the city of Columbus and its Board of Education engineered and perpetuated the isolation and impoverishment of black residents to various ghettos across the city to contain and constrict the ever-growing black population that threatened to disrupt the status quo. Deprived by decades of neglect and injustice, Columbus's black community sought to tear down the racial barriers constructed through neighborhood gerrymandering and attendance zones, economic, social, and political isolation, and unequal access to educational resources and facilities that had denied their children a quality education. This responsibility ultimately fell to civil rights activists, parents, students, and educators who struggled for decades against indecisive administrators, intransigent board members and trustees, recalcitrant white parents, and over one hundred years of purposeful separation of the city's black and white communities through a system of de-facto racial segregation. Despite their struggle and the aid of local and national civil rights organizations, social scientists, and the Supreme Court of the United States, the progress achieved during the 1960s and 1970s was largely overshadowed by the betrayal of their efforts in 1996.

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.), Bowling Green State University, 2024, American Culture Studies

In 2021-2022, once routine school board meetings erupted into intense showdowns because of the presence of what many believed to be Critical Race Theory within the school curriculum, Comprehensive Sex Education, disagreement over gender identity, and the nature of parents' rights. There were shouting matches and accusations that schools, board members, and parents were racists, hated America and members of the LGBTQ community, were trafficking in communism, and were harming children. Commenters made fiery pledges to remove board members, and board members received hate mail including death threats. This research project interrogates parents', guardians', and concerned community members' publicly expressed beliefs and anxieties about Critical Race Theory (CRT), gender identity, and Comprehensive Sex Education (CSE), at 10 geographically diverse K-12 public school board meetings in the U.S. available online in 2021-2022. It considers what their comments at the board meetings reveal about their understanding of the world, of America, American identity, and of their own values, hopes, and fears. The methodology used in the project is anthropological. There is close textual analysis to better ascertain the content, context, and meanings of the discourse formations and cultural codes. These are the primary sources analyzed: comments at the school board meetings, written and televised speeches, personal letters, newspapers, op-eds, slogans, protest signs, campaign commercials, websites, and social media. In addition, historical and archival research trace the genealogy of these discourse formations within American culture among the secular and white evangelical Religious Right. The anti-CRT commenters and those who hold to traditional gender ideologies want to maintain a particular culture, an ordering of the world, including ideology and theology that is rooted in hierarchy, exclusion, and particular gender norms heavily influenced by the Southern way of life. (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Arts, University of Toledo, 2023, History

This project explores the political organizing and intellectual writings of Mae Mallory during the 1950s and the 1960s. Mallory is a Black working-class woman who emerged as an influential figure during the struggle to integrate public schools in 1950s Harlem, New York. Mallory's maintained her commitment to self-determination, self-defense, and Black internationalism, despite the pervasive anti-communism of the Cold War. Mae Mallory's opposition of the Cold War climate by the refusal to dilute her ideology and organizational goals, complicates the idea of the “classical narrative” of the Civil Rights Movement. This conception of the movement, coined by Civil Rights activist Bayard Rustin, is defined by male-centered leadership, non-violence, integration, and inclusion into American citizenry. Mallory, her writings, and her organizing were antagonistic to these notions, throughout her career she maintained a community-centered and militant approach.

Bachelor of Arts, Wittenberg University, 2023, History

This thesis explores the complex and politically significant history of America's Religious Right. From the 1940s to the end of the 20th century, the Religious Right built upon public fear and unease, shaping their social and political positions for political, not theological, impact. As a political group, the Religious Right necessarily included a more social perspective to their political actions with the notion that certain elements of American society were morally dangerous and looking to the government to correct these flaws. By personalizing politics and emphasizing divisive wedge issues, they built a network of dedicated supporters who propelled their rise to power. This approach revitalized economic principles and introduced new wedge issues to direct public debate to follow the path they chose. The underpinnings of the Religious Right began to emerge in the 1940s and 1950s as World War II dramatically changed the character of life in the United States. Televangelists began to become major household names with reach and sway as economic and technologic effects of the war created a new market of television viewers. At the same time, the Civil Rights Movement started to threaten the stability of the racial hierarchies that the social order was based upon to a large extent. All the while, communism loomed as a dark specter over the nation. By the late 1980s and 1990s, the Religious Right had firmly entrenched itself as a political and social landscape of the United States. This achievement was the result of calculated political maneuvering over multiple generations, utilizing personal matters to unite a passionate and determined political base. Notably, the Religious Right's causes were manifestations of the public fears of their time. The dangerous element invoked by these fears evolved from communism to civil rights activists to LGBTQ+ individuals who bucked the roles society established for them. For the Religious Right, the theological backing for their cau (open full item for complete abstract)

Master of Fine Arts, Miami University, 2023, Art

This study sought to understand how nonviolent strategies can be communicated in a way that facilitates self-awareness among people who want to engage in social change. The foundation of this research and its design outcome were informed by two theories –– the Attribution Theory and the Expectancy Value Theory –– to explore what young Black Americans value from nonviolent strategy, understand how their attitude toward nonviolent strategy impacts personal social action today, and examine participants' willingness to shift perceptions based on new knowledge of the movement and their personal experiences. A mixed-methods approach accumulated data from participants who identified general knowledge of the Civil Rights Movement, perception of nonviolent strategies, opinion on the effectiveness of nonviolent strategies, and answers related to personal experience with race-related confrontation and personal nonviolent resistance. The design intervention, a social media toolkit, includes educational, self-guided prompts aimed at connecting users with practical nonviolent applications. The design encourages participants to identify reasonable nonviolent actions, provides context for how those actions can be completed given internal and external factors, and fosters a digital community to discuss progress related to social causes.

Doctor of Philosophy, Case Western Reserve University, 2023, History

Education remains one of the most polarized areas in American society. However, this is not a new phenomenon. From the 1950s to 1980, Congress, the executive branch, and judicial branch significantly increased their funding and oversight in public education. 1965 marked the year Congress passed legislation with the hopes of creating a more equitable system for all socioeconomic classes. However, conservatives also began to coalesce in the 1970s over segregation, helping spur the 1980 Reagan Revolution. 1981 marked the first year in over two decades where Congress cut the education budget for integrative services and changed how the federal government funded programs for low-income students. These changes were integral to the Reagan administration and conservative Congress's goals to reduce social services in an effort to reduce the budget and expand the economy while simultaneously preserving tax loopholes and cuts for the wealthy. Federal funding for social services like education saw cuts that hurt many of the gains that low-income school districts had seen over the previous two decades. One often overlooked piece of legislation–the 1981 Education Consolidation and Improvement Act (ECIA)–caused many of these changes. This act removed the protective language and funding that had helped lower income, bilingual, and segregated communities receive federal aid for the previous fifteen years. While creator John Ashbrook's initial intent for the ECIA was to give more power to local and state governments over education– something that conservatives thought was an important goal–the ECIA also ended integration programs and removed barriers to ensure funding went to high needs schools. These changes have affected education to this day.

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1958, Sociology

Master of Arts (MA), Bowling Green State University, 1958, Sociology

Doctor of Philosophy, University of Toledo, 2022, Curriculum and Instruction

This qualitative case study examined the implementation of a four-week instructional unit on the Civil Rights Movement taught through a human rights lens and emphasizing written discourse in the classroom. The study was conducted in a large, urban high school in the Midwest near the end of the 2022 spring semester. The instructional unit, a critical case, was taught as part of the curriculum of an American History class required for sophomores but including some juniors and seniors. Data from 32 students who met the attendance and assignment submission requirements of the study were included. The framework for the case study was the intersection of theories of history instruction, human rights education, and discourse. Data collected included student created classwork and artifacts, teacher-researcher participant observations, and curricular and instructional materials. The research questions addressed the ways students independently and collaboratively reflected on history and human rights, the ways students engaged in analysis and critical thinking, and the ways in which they reflected on their experiences through their written discourse. Data analysis showed that students often made meaningful connections between history, human rights, and current events through written discourse, but that there were specific concepts with which they struggled such as the human rights concept of correlative duties. Additionally, students engaged in collaborative discourse that gave them the opportunity to practice human rights discourse. Students' most personal connections were made in activities and discussions in which they engaged in critical thinking and analysis. The connections made by students included comparisons between events of the Civil Rights Movement and current issues such as police brutality and the Black Lives Matter Movement. Students also demonstrated the ability to effectively reflect on their personal and classroom experiences. These findings illustrated the (open full item for complete abstract)

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)

Doctor of Philosophy (PhD), Ohio University, 2022, Journalism (Communication)

The objective of this dissertation is to offer a historical account of the anti-convict leasing efforts led by the Black club women of the National Association of Colored Women spearheaded by Mary Church Terrell, from the organization's formation in 1896 to the abolishing of convict leasing in the early 1930s. Through a qualitative historical analysis of the journalistic work of Mary Church Terrell and the NACW, this dissertation examines how Black club women subverted and leveraged their unique locus shaped by their intersectionality as well as the double burden of gender and race, to advocate for Black uplift, challenge prevailing Black stereotypes, and expose the horrors of the southern convict leasing regime, at a time when white men predominantly occupied rhetorical and political spaces. Through counter storytelling and a rejection of journalistic objectivity, the NACW refuted dominant typecast portrayals of Black womanhood—and by extension, the Black community at large—in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and exposed the racial disparities of convict leasing, long before the mainstream white press acknowledged the system's unconstitutionality.

Ph.D., Antioch University, 2021, Leadership and Change

This dissertation examines the experiences of five civil rights-era rabbis (William Silverman, Randall Falk, Alfred Goodman, Irving Bloom, and Burton Padoll) to highlight their contributions, leadership approaches, struggles, and achievements with a particular emphasis on social justice. As each of the rabbis drew from their understanding of the richness of the Jewish textual canon, the study includes a survey of Biblical, Talmudic, and contemporary Jewish sources that laid the groundwork for their rabbinic activism and which compel rabbis today. The study dramatically highlights those texts as providing applicable strategies with regard to leading a congregation with a “prophetic” voice, knowing when to speak out, and how to do so, strategies that inspired—and inspire—rabbis to engage in work intended to make their communities more just and equitable. Each of the five rabbis featured in the dissertation produced vast amounts of correspondence, sermonic materials, and other writings, making archival research a particularly useful methodology to explore the volumes of primary sources and provide insight into the individual and collective experiences of these rabbis. Particular attention is further paid to context as a means of highlighting and distinguishing the choices that these rabbis made as leaders of and within their communities. The dissertation contributes to the leadership legacy of these rabbis by contributing new and relevant materials to scholarship around the civil rights movement, the American Jewish experience, and the intersection of the two. Four contemporary leadership theories are highlighted through their experiences (Transformational Leadership Theory, Servant Leadership Theory, Relational Leadership Theory, and Courageous Leadership Theory), which, in turn, makes current scholarship in the field of leadership and change accessible to clergy. Additional theories of leadership are also explored through these exemplars, as is the introduction of a (open full item for complete abstract)