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'The Indian image in the Black mind'

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TitleInfo
Title
'The Indian image in the Black mind'
SubTitle
representing Native Americans in antebellum African American public culture
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Easley-Houser
NamePart (type = given)
Arika
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1976-
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Arika Easley-Houser
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
author
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Bay
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Mia
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Mia Bay
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Advisory Committee
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chair
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Townsend
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Camilla
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Camilla Townsend
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Advisory Committee
Role
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internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Gray White
NamePart (type = given)
Deborah
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Deborah Gray White
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Advisory Committee
Role
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internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Fabian
NamePart (type = given)
Ann
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Ann Fabian
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Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
internal member
Name (type = personal)
NamePart (type = family)
Miles
NamePart (type = given)
Tiya
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Tiya Miles
Affiliation
Advisory Committee
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
outside member
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
Rutgers University
Role
RoleTerm (authority = RULIB)
degree grantor
Name (type = corporate)
NamePart
Graduate School - New Brunswick
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school
TypeOfResource
Text
Genre (authority = marcgt)
theses
OriginInfo
DateCreated (qualifier = exact)
2014
DateOther (qualifier = exact); (type = degree)
2014-05
Place
PlaceTerm (type = code)
xx
Language
LanguageTerm (authority = ISO639-2b); (type = code)
eng
Abstract (type = abstract)
My dissertation considers how ideas about Native Americans were figured into free African American rhetoric in antebellum America. Scholarship about the 1830s has emphasized how white reformists from the North supported the gradual abolition of slavery by calling for blacks in America to emigrate to West Africa while opposing the policy of Indian Removal. Yet, scholars have not explored how African Americans linked Indian Removal with the abolitionist causes. While there has been an emergence of literature about the experiences of enslaved African Americans within the "Five Civilized Tribes" (Cherokee, Seminole, Chickasaw, Chocktaw and Creek), there is a dearth of historical research about how ideas about Native Americans were part of the underpinnings of free African American intellectual life. The "Indian Image" is not monolithic in the "Black mind." In fact, I argue that African American writers present three different perspectives about Native Americans that are distinct, and not necessarily complementary to each other, or to those ideas held by white Americans. First, some African Americans aligned themselves with Native Americans to critique white supremacy and bolster their struggles for abolition and citizenship. In some instances, this alliance was linked to either real or imagined shared ancestral relationships between African Americans and Native Americans. Secondly, some African Americans espoused uplift ideologies in order to position themselves above Native Americans along racial, class and gender hierarchies. Thirdly, some African Americans compared and contrasted between Native American and white slaveholding practices, and perceived Native American slaveholders as being more benevolent. This project builds upon scholarship about racial ideologies in the early American republic by demonstrating that African Americans explored diverse ideas about social constructions beyond anti-slavery rhetoric alone. It contributes to a growing subfield of African American and Native American comparative histories which is linked with the scholarship of racial construction by historians such as George Frederickson and Mia Bay. I document the historical binaries of Black/Indian which are inextricably linked to the White/Black and White/Indian binaries explored in these earlier works. Given the resources in African American early print culture, my methodological approach is interdisciplinary. I analyze a range of primary sources in order to examine the language, descriptions, narrative sketches, and rhetorical choices that African American writers used to describe contemporary and past experiences of Native Americans. My sources include articles in the African American press, letters, speeches, memoirs, church and political organizational records and narratives of former slaves. In addition, I draw on interdisciplinary insights from a number of academic fields, including African American and Native American histories, Literature, Racial Theory, and American Studies. My introduction chapter defines the methodological framework and intervention of my dissertation. Chapter 1 examines of the rhetoric that appears within the emerging print culture of the eighteenth-century to reveal the varied ways that writers of African descent invoked Native Americans. The "Indian image" changes over the eighteenth century: from violent/"savage" images of indigenous people in the mid-eighteenth century to viewing them as either allies or foes. African Americans invoked ideas their about Native Americans either symbolically or due to actual encounters in the later decades of the eighteenth century. Chapter 2 illuminates how Native Americans figured in the emergence of the black printing press and pamphlets for the purpose of bolstering the challenge against slavery, Indian Removal and African colonization in the first two decades of the nineteenth-century. I consider the mission of the Freedom's Journal, America's first black-edited newspaper, and the implicit ways that the editors juxtaposed news coverage about Native Americans and reports of violence and racial uplift. I also examine the symbolic ways in which David Walker's Appeal to the Colored Citizens of the World, which was first published in 1829, incorporated the symbolic use of Native Americans in order to illicit violent opposition to slavery. Chapter 3 examines the impact of federal policies, particularly the Indian Removal Act of 1830, and the expansion of slavery. A tragedy for many members of the Five Civilized Tribes, the Act also causes widespread fear amongst free African Americans who were concerned about their own future in the new Republic. Two issues about Native Americans dominate African American writings in these years: the Seminole Wars in Florida and two Supreme Court decisions pertaining to the Cherokee Nation. This chapter also discusses how many African Americans who were ancestrally linked with Native Americans challenged nascent pseudo-scientific ideas about the constructions of race. Chapter 4 analyzes how black-edited newspapers from the 1850s in the North and in Canada included reports which revealed that there was more limited actual contact between Native Americans and African Americans than in the earlier decades of the nineteenth century. I also examine the various ways that some African Americans claimed "Indianness" as a form of social capital as evidenced through their writings in memoirs and newspaper reports about legal cases. Finally, my conclusion chapter ends with a debate that occurred amongst an organization of free black men in Brooklyn, New York in 1860 around the issue of comparing the historical injustices faced by African Americans and Native Americans.
Subject (authority = RUETD)
Topic
History
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Rutgers University Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = RULIB)
ETD
Identifier
ETD_5546
PhysicalDescription
Form (authority = gmd)
electronic resource
InternetMediaType
application/pdf
InternetMediaType
text/xml
Extent
xi, 257 p. : ill.
Note (type = degree)
Ph.D.
Note (type = bibliography)
Includes bibliographical references
Note (type = statement of responsibility)
by Arika Easley-Houser
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
African Americans--History
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
Indians of North America--Public opinion
Subject (authority = ETD-LCSH)
Topic
African Americans--Atitudes
RelatedItem (type = host)
TitleInfo
Title
Graduate School - New Brunswick Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Identifier (type = local)
rucore19991600001
Location
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NjNbRU
Identifier (type = doi)
doi:10.7282/T3K935VW
Genre (authority = ExL-Esploro)
ETD doctoral
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Rights

RightsDeclaration (ID = rulibRdec0006)
The author owns the copyright to this work.
RightsHolder (type = personal)
Name
FamilyName
Easley-Houser
GivenName
Arika
Role
Copyright Holder
RightsEvent
Type
Permission or license
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (point = start); (qualifier = exact)
2014-04-17 17:12:08
AssociatedEntity
Name
Arika Easley-Houser
Role
Copyright holder
Affiliation
Rutgers University. Graduate School - New Brunswick
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Type
License
Name
Author Agreement License
Detail
I hereby grant to the Rutgers University Libraries and to my school the non-exclusive right to archive, reproduce and distribute my thesis or dissertation, in whole or in part, and/or my abstract, in whole or in part, in and from an electronic format, subject to the release date subsequently stipulated in this submittal form and approved by my school. I represent and stipulate that the thesis or dissertation and its abstract are my original work, that they do not infringe or violate any rights of others, and that I make these grants as the sole owner of the rights to my thesis or dissertation and its abstract. I represent that I have obtained written permissions, when necessary, from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis or dissertation and will supply copies of such upon request by my school. I acknowledge that RU ETD and my school will not distribute my thesis or dissertation or its abstract if, in their reasonable judgment, they believe all such rights have not been secured. I acknowledge that I retain ownership rights to the copyright of my work. I also retain the right to use all or part of this thesis or dissertation in future works, such as articles or books.
RightsEvent
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (point = start); (qualifier = exact)
2017-06-09
DateTime (encoding = w3cdtf); (point = end); (qualifier = exact)
2019-05-31
Type
Embargo
Detail
Access to this PDF has been restricted at the author's request. It will be publicly available after May 31st, 2019.
Copyright
Status
Copyright protected
Availability
Status
Open
Reason
Permission or license
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ETD
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windows xp
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