History Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2778
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Item "An Unpleasant Wartime Function": Race, Film Censorship, and the Office of War Information, 1942-1945(2007-04-30) Wagner, Jessica Lauren; Gilbert, James B.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This paper will try to untangle how the U.S. Office of War Information's Bureau of Motion Pictures tried to enact change in the world, using Hollywood films, during World War II. It will also show how inconsistencies within the agency and lack of support from the President, Congress, and Hollywood often sabotaged the Bureau's project. I argue that a structural component and a thematic component helped cripple the OWI's Bureau of Motion Pictures. First, the extremely decentralized, bureaucratic and conflict-laden nature of the government information network, and the limited enforcement power of the OWI and in particular the Bureau of Motion Pictures, limited its success. Second, the BMP's passionately liberal and racially progressive interpretation of U.S. war aims helped contribute to its downfall. The BMP operated during a watershed moment in race relations, in which hierarchies of racial and ethnic groups were shifting dramatically.Item A Tradition of Struggle: Preserving Sites of Significance to African American History in Prince George's County, Maryland, 1969-2007(2007-04-30) Michael, Courtney Elizabeth; Sicilia, David; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)This thesis examines efforts by the citizens of Prince George's County, Maryland to protect and preserve local historic sites significant to African American history. Since the early 1980s, preservationists in Prince George's County have recognized the importance of -- and made specific efforts to find, document and preserve -- sites that tell the story of African American life in the county. Using three case studies, Abraham Hall, Rosenwald Schools and the Butler House, this thesis demonstrates how preserving African American historic sites became a priority in Prince George's County, due to both a shift in local demographics and to changing practices in the field of historic preservation nationwide.Item MOVEMENT MATTERS: AMERICAN ANTIAPARTHEID ACTIVISM AND THE RISE OF MULTICULTURAL POLITICS(2004-06-07) Hostetter, David L.; Gilbert, James B.; History; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md.)American organizations that opposed apartheid in South Africa extended their opposition to racial discrimination in the US into world politics. More than three decades of organizing preceded the legislative showdown of 1986 when Congress overrode President Ronald Reagan's veto to enact economic sanctions against the apartheid regime. Drawing on the tactics and moral authority of the civil rights movement, the antiapartheid movement mobilized public opinion with familiar political symbols while increasing African-American influence in the formulation of US foreign policy. Three conflicts in particular shaped American antiapartheid activism: the debate between those holding an integrationist vision of the civil rights movement versus the advocates of a Pan-Africanist view as expressed in the Black Power movement; the tension between the antiracist credibility American leaders sought to project to the world and the anticommunist thrust of American foreign policy which led to a tacit alliance with South Africa; and the dispute over whether nonviolence or armed liberation provided the best strategy for ending apartheid. Three antiapartheid organizations that debated and dealt with these conflicts were the American Committee on Africa (ACOA), the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC), and TransAfrica. Each group worked against apartheid for more than a decade, combined direct action with other tactics, and included antiapartheid activism in larger efforts concerning Africa and US foreign policy. The efforts of these organizations provide a window through which to examine the conflicts that marked the antiapartheid struggle. Cultural expressions reinforced public sentiment against apartheid. Novels, plays, movies and music provided a bridge for Americans who strove to understand the struggles of those who lived under apartheid. Via the page, stage, screen, and recording studio, apartheid's opponents found a platform to transmit their message to a broad audience of Americans. The similarity of apartheid to American racial segregation provided activists with metaphors to mobilize constituencies that had opposed American racism. Direct action in particular helped dramatize American entanglement with apartheid. By extending the moral logic of the civil rights movement, the antiapartheid movement was able to invoke the themes of equality and freedom central to American civil religion.