Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2007, History

This dissertation explores roots of the current urban crisis in the United States. Most scholarly explanations associate the problem, particularly of high levels of African-American poverty, with deindustrialization, which has stripped cities of the factory jobs that once sustained working-class communities. My account deviates from the standard tale of black male unemployment by focusing on shifting patterns of African-American women's labor—both paid and unpaid. Using Baltimore as a case study, it argues that public rather than industrial-sector employment served as the foundation of Baltimore's post-World War II African-American middle and working classes. Women outpaced men in winning government jobs. Concentrated in social welfare agencies, they used their new influence over public policy to improve the city's delivery of public services. Black women's efforts to build an infrastructure for sustainable community development put them at odds in municipal policy-making battles with city officials and business leaders intent upon revitalizing Baltimore through investment in a tourism industry. The social services workers scored some important victories, helping to alleviate poverty by shifting to the government some of the responsibility for health, child, and elder care women earlier provided in the private sphere. The conservative ascendancy of the 1970s and 1980s, reversed many of the gains African-American public-sector workers had won. Intent upon resuscitating the United States' status in the global economy, American presidents, influenced by conservative economists and their elite backers, made macroeconomic and urban policy decisions that justified extensive public-sector retrenchment and cuts or changes to social programs. Public-sector workers and their unions, most notably the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), fought with limited success to prevent the transformation of American public policy. Neoliberal policies ero (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Kevin Boyle (Advisor) Subjects: History, United States

Master of Arts, Miami University, 2019, History

The case of Dayton's “Fair-Share” Metropolitan Housing Plan (1969–1981) presents a challenge to several traditional narratives of (sub)urban postwar U.S. history. Planners in Greater Dayton successfully integrated the region's affordable housing stock while encouraging the Department of Housing and Urban Development (H.U.D.) to inaugurate a new era of fair housing in the wake of the failure of George Romney's Open Communities program. The Miami Valley Regional Planning Commission did so with the help of willing business elites and federal administrators, and also by adopting conservative suburban rhetoric to serve the end of metropolitan open housing. This narrative examines why business elites and the suburbs came to support the construction affordable housing outside of the city, and why fair share fair housing was adopted by H.U.D. This thesis challenges the assertion that fair housing inherently conflicts with community development. It also traces the history of metropolitan-wide fair housing to its proper origins: Dayton, Ohio. The Dayton Plan was successful on its own terms, in that it increased the affordability of suburban housing. But racial integration did not follow economic integration, as planners had assumed. This was due in large part to retrenchment in fair housing on the part of the federal government and local business elites. More specifically, the economic hollowing-out of Dayton played a role in the failure of the plan to racially integrate the suburbs—a heretofore unexplored explanation for continued metropolitan segregation in small cities of the Midwest during the decades following the passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968.

Committee: Steven Conn (Advisor); Nishani Frazier (Committee Member); Damon Scott (Committee Member) Subjects: American History; History

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2010, Arts and Sciences : History

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania was America's first great city, but it fell on especially hard times after the mid-1960s. The urban crisis became the catch-all name for these hard times across America. The confluence of race riots, suburbanization, urban blight, deindustrialization, the decline of retail corridors, a rising crime rate, perceived declines in the quality of public education, financial crises in city governments, increased racial tensions contributed to the pervasive sense that cities in America were no longer vital places. While the origins of the urban crisis have been located in the 1940s, the development of a narrative of urban decline gathered strength in Philadelphia after the riots of the summer of 1964. The power of narrative concretely shaped life during the urban crisis. The Jewish community played a special role the history of American cities as one of America's most urban-centric people. In the postwar era and especially after the urban crisis of 1960s and 1970s, they became one of the nation's most suburban groups. In Philadelphia, the African-American community followed a similar path of migration from inner-city neighborhoods toward the suburbs as the Jewish community. This created tension between the two groups as Jews were often the only whites in black communities during the urban crisis. Jews ran many of the stores and served as landlords. They also worked as teachers and social workers in the poor black neighborhoods. In the reports that followed the riots of 1960s, the Jewish merchant and landlord of the inner city were often taken to task for profiting off of the poor. One part of the response of the Jewish community in Philadelphia was to facilitate the removal of Jewish merchants from inner-city neighborhoods. More conflict occurred when Blacks sought to move into middle-class Jewish neighborhoods. The growing perception that the America's inner city public schools were failing the city's youth provided another strong reason for man (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Stradling PhD (Committee Chair); Michael Flamm PhD (Committee Member); Wendy Kline Paula PhD (Committee Member); Nikki Taylor PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: American History

PhD, University of Cincinnati, 2008, Arts and Sciences : History

After World War Two, American cities began to break down. Their housing and industrial infrastructure fell into disrepair, and efforts to improve cities, including urban renewal and highway construction projects, only exacerbated the existing problems, destroying neighborhoods and increasing pollution. All of these problems exposed city residents to a unique set of environmental problems. By the 1960s many of them responded to this environmental breakdown with a series of dynamic local social movements. For almost a decade, residents of scores of cities, especially in the East and Midwest, forced local leaders to ameliorate the impact of a variety of local environmental problems. This dissertation provides case studies of three of these local movements. In St. Louis, the rapid decline of the city's housing stock exposed poor, predominantly African American city children to toxic levels of lead paint. A group of dedicated residents and social workers raised awareness about the issue, and pushed the city to enact and enforce a lead ordinance. In Baltimore, a coalition of African Americans and blue collar whites formed the Movement Against Destruction to fight the construction of the local highway system and articulate an environmental critique of the highway planning and construction process. In Chicago, the Citizen's Action Program (CAP) fought the local Democratic machine for five years over a variety of issues, including air pollution and highway construction. CAP's core constituency were ethnic, blue collar homeowners from the city's outlying neighborhoods who used pollution issues as an entry point into local political activism. Together, these studies are part of the hidden history of postwar environmental activism. Popular and academic research focuses on wilderness areas and national parks, and activism by a few national elites or middle class suburban groups. But by focusing on local issues and the malapportionment of environmental hazards and amenities, urb (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: David Stradling PhD (Committee Chair); Andrew Hurley PhD (Committee Member); Wendy Kline PhD (Committee Member); Nikki Taylor PhD (Committee Member) Subjects: History

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2012, EDU Teaching and Learning

The purpose of the research was to investigate how students, teacher and text intersected to develop interpretations and understandings of “edgy” literature. Aronson (2001) states that young adult literature includes texts which address, “the profoundest, deepest, and richest issues that we face as a nation” (p.8). The mediation of one such young adult novel, Night Fires (Stanley, 2009) is the focus of this teacher research, which took place with a class of urban sixth grade students during the 2011-2012 school year. The ways students interpreted and understood the text were analyzed through the theoretical frames of critical literacy, testimony and dialogism. These theories do not fully align with one another; however the data shows how they can work together in the analysis of a mediation. Data are drawn from a qualitative teacher research study conducted in an urban sixth grade English class located in a large Midwestern city. Teacher research positions the researcher as an insider whose first responsibility teacher and not researcher (Baumann & Duffy-Hester, 2002). Within this research project, having my students as my primary responsibility meant that I was not an unbiased observer, instead I worked to understand the mediation of the novel through my knowledge of the students and through theoretical lenses and related research. In order to better understand how my students were interpreting the novel, I also worked to understand the research context – an urban middle school in a diverse community – from the students' perspective. This allowed me to recognize and honor how the students defined themselves and their community, as opposed to imposing the label “urban”. This aspect of the research facilitated both my teaching and the research as the intersections of the students' urban location and the novel became a part of the mediation. Data analysis of six episodes from the novel mediation shows that the students, text and teacher intersected and interacted in a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Patricia Enciso (Advisor); Valerie Kinloch (Committee Member); Linda Parsons (Committee Member) Subjects: Education; Literacy; Literature

BA, Oberlin College, 1996, Sociology

From introduction: Urban squatting is the unauthorized occupation of empty buildings. Squatting is usually thought to be a Third World phenomenon associated with urbanization, poverty, and rural-urban migration. However, there is a history of squatting in the US and Europe as well. Squatting has been reported in New York, San Francisco, Newark, Boston, Philadelphia, Detroit, and Los Angeles. Since World War II and particularly in the last thirty years, urban squatting has received much attention in Europe. The major European centers for squatting have been London, Amsterdam, and Berlin.' In Britain, the squatting of buildings scheduled for renovation or demolition became an organized and public movement. In the United States, squatting is a criminal offense and has not been widely publicized. Squatting has a dual purpose. It can provide immediate shelter while being a political tactic to draw attention to neighborhood neglect, the lack of available and affordable. low-cost housing, the dwindling stock of housing, and homelessness. This direct-action technique serves to empower its participants who are usually people disempowered through their participation in the housing system. Squatting has a long history in the United States. It was a common form of tenure during the pioneer and settler days of this country. The homesteading acts of the nineteenth century institutionalized it. Since then we have had different terms for the same actions. Whereas homesteading is a legal and institutionalized means of taking over and rehabilitating an abandoned building, squatting is not. Squatting is most common during periods of economic recession or depression. During the Great Depression, many squats or shantytowns appeared in towns all over the country. These "Hoovervilles" protested the lack of government response to the financial crisis. Additionally, they were organized and focused on mutual aid.

Committee: Daphne John (Advisor) Subjects: Economics; Social Psychology; Social Structure; Urban Planning

Doctor of Philosophy in Urban Education, Cleveland State University, 2011, College of Education and Human Services

Hurricane Katrina left in her wake one of America's oldest and greatest cities in shambles. In 2011, five years after the storm, New Orleans remains in a state of recovery. Statistics reveal many disaster-related facts attributable to the storm. Life stories, however, can open the windows to the soul, inviting us to better understand the human element of this tragedy. Employing a narrative case study methodology, this study delved into the life stories of three young adults who attended to residents only three weeks after they returned to their homes. Through a series of three interviews with each participant, it explored how their education, social and cultural capital, and family lives prepared them for – and were transformed by their experiences as Hurricane Katrina relief volunteers. Engaging in life narrative method provided understanding of how the crisis volunteer experience was incorporated into the identity of these young adults and how it continues to affect their sense of agency in being active and engaged citizens. The study concludes that mandatory community service and service-learning programs that incorporate education, engagement, and critical reflection, provide foundational learning in civic engagement and foster volunteerism in young adults. The study raises critical questions regarding the role of institutional systems in ensuring equity and access for civic engagement for young adults.

Committee: Elice Rogers Ed.D. (Committee Chair); Catherine Hansman Ed.D. (Committee Member); Brian Harper Ph.D. (Committee Member); Anne Galletta Ph.D. (Committee Member); Dwayne Wright Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Social Research