Sociology Theses and Dissertations
Permanent URI for this collectionhttp://hdl.handle.net/1903/2804
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Item Juvenile Delinquency and the Negro in Charles County, Maryland(1966) Seaman, Thomas W.; Lejins, Peter P.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, MD)Are there differences between Negro and white juvenile delinquents? This was the question that constituted the basis for this exploratory study. The objectives of the project were to determine if Negro juveniles were proportionately overrepresented among juvenile delinquents and if there were differences in types of offenses committed by Negro and white delinquents. The differences found were analyzed in the light of socio-economic class differences between Negro and white delinquents. Previous research has tended to indicate that racial differences disappeared when socioeconomic class was held constant. The area selected for the project was Charles County, Maryland, because of the writer's access to court records and knowledge of the area. Delinquency rates were developed to determine if Negroes were proportionately overrepresented among delinquents and/or if lower class juveniles were overrepresented among delinquents. Delinquent offenses were divided into four types: offenses involving theft or attempted theft of property, offenses involving violence, offenses involving the destruction of property, and offenses injurious to the child himself. Delinquency rates were developed for Negro and white delinquents in each socio-economic class for each type of offense. A simple ecological investigation was conducted to determine if there were any significant patterns in the spatial distribution of the delinquents. The findings show that Negro juveniles were not significantly overrepresented among delinquents even though Negro delinquents were overrepresented among lower-lower class delinquents. White delinquents were found to be overrepresented among delinquents from the lower-middle and upper-lower classes. The analyses of types of offenses revealed that types of offenses could be identified with certain levels of the socio-economic structure regardless of race, but that differences existed between Negro and white delinquents within socio-economic classes. The ecological investigation indicated that there was no significant ecological pattern among county delinquents.Item The Fair Housing Movement: An Overview and a Case Study(1965) Noe, Kaye Sizer; Cussler, Margaret T.; Sociology; Digital Repository at the University of Maryland; University of Maryland (College Park, Md)The fair housing movement is a recent development in the general civil rights movement. While subscribing to the ideology of the general movement, community fair housing groups concentrate upon making middle-income, and particularly suburban, housing available to financially qualified Negroes. Few fair housing groups are affiliated with Negro civil rights groups, and most are all-white in membership. Their methods utilize many of the concepts first developed in sociology and social psychology; their programs emphasize community relations when a Negro move-in is imminent, property listing services which bypass the practices of discrimination entrenched in the real estate industry, and subscription by community members to open covenants. They seldom try to "force" integration using test cases, attempting rather to prevent discrimination against Negroes seeking homes in their communities and to avoid violence. The major portion of the research was a case study of a fair housing group in Greenbelt, Maryland. The program of this group emphasized a "planning" approach to integration and publicly avoided the moral-ethical arguments which have been central in the general civil rights movement. Such resistance as they encountered was from individuals concerned about the possible effect of Negro occupancy on property values in the older, low-income section of the city. The leaders of the group were active in civic activities, representative of most religious faiths, tended to be college-educated, and many had a history of affiliation with other "liberal" groups. Few were active in other facets of the civil rights movement. It was concluded that the fair housing movement tends to be moderate rather than radical in its membership and strategy, and that its scope (some 600 groups in metropolitan areas across the United States) represents near-spontaneous action at the grass-roots level based on a conviction that discrimination on the basis of race is wrong.