Bootlegging Aliens: Unsanctioned Immigration and the Underground Economy of Smuggling from Cuba During Prohibition

Adolinae Marcinskas seems an unlikely candidate to be derided as an illegal immigrant. She had lived in New Jersey from 1907 to 1921, married there and had two children who were American citizens. But for some reason, her husband convinced her that life would be better back in their native Lithuania, and in 1921 he sent her and her children there, promising that he would soon follow. He never did, and in December 1922, she decided to return to the United States on her own, hoping to reunite with her husband. As a woman traveling alone, however, entering the United States was no easy task. In 1921, Congress had passed the first immigration restriction laws seeking to limit the influx of Eastern European immigrants through a system of quotas. She also faced another obstacle under the law prohibiting the entry of persons likely to become a public charge. A woman with no visible male provider caring for two children could be barred from entry because she lacked an identifiable means of support. Rather than taking her chances at a legal port of entry, where she would be subject to questioning by an immigration inspector who might send her away, Adolinae Marcinskas elected to bypass U.S. immigration laws entirely. Instead, she and her children traveled to Havana, Cuba and arranged to be smuggled to the Florida coast. After several days sick at sea-she could not remember exactly how many and after being transferred from a big boat to a smaller boat, eventually she, her children and the other six illegal immigrants on board were landed on a deserted, wooded shore in the middle of the night. With no other transportation in sight, Adolinae and her children began to walk. She estimated that they walked three or four miles until her children grew too tired to continue. In desperation, she flagged down a passing automobile. It turned out to be a police car

Thirteen loops: race, violence and the last lynching in America

Thirteen Loops: Race, Violence, and the Last Lynching in America blends creative nonfiction with journalistic inquiry to examine the interconnected and racially related murders of Vaudine Maddox (1933, Tuscaloosa), Sergeant Gene Ballard (1979, Birmingham), and Michael Donald (1981, Mobile). Research methods included, but were not limited to, archival work, personal interviews, as well as the author's first-hand explorations of the locations referenced herein. The primary objective of this work is not to put forward any definitive conclusions on race, but rather, to present the facts objectively, creatively and honestly in order to allow the reader to arrive at his or her own conclusions. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Recasting the image of God: faith and identity in the Deep South, 1877-1915

Individuals construct their own identity in large part through their conceptions of gender. Few historians, however, have explored how religion shaped gender construction in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia during the New South period. Scholars have primarily concentrated on the roles various denominations allowed men and women to hold in church leadership rather than how different theological understandings changed the ways individuals understood manhood and womanhood. My dissertation explores how church officials used Protestant theology in Mississippi, Alabama, and Georgia to argue for new constructions of gender. By using archival sources as diverse as diaries, sermons, speeches, unpublished memoirs, and published works, my research examines three theological groups in the American Deep South between 1877 and 1915. These three groups are the Southern Baptist Convention (SBC); the Methodist Episcopal Church, South (MECS); and the emerging Holiness movement. I argue that these groups had specific theological emphases that changed how they conceived of manhood, womanhood, and family life. While class, race, and regional identities were important for the denominational officials studied, theology was also an influential factor in formulating their personal understandings of self. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Creating a "different citizen": the federal development of the Tennessee Valley, 1915-1960

This dissertation describes the process of cooperation and contestation by which residents, civic leaders, state officials, and federal politicians in the Tennessee Valley encouraged the economic development of their rapidly changing region. Beginning in 1916, when the Woodrow Wilson administration authorized construction of a hydroelectric dam and nitrate-producing plants at Muscle Shoals, Alabama, federal investment provided the means by which communities created (or attempted to create) prosperity by encouraging industrial development in a dying agricultural economy. The debates over Muscle Shoals led to the creation of the Tennessee Valley Authority, but federal officials found that Valley residents rejected broad-based social reorganization in favor of directed economic investment. During the "Gunbelt" defense boom of World War II, Valley leaders increased calls for development, especially at Huntsville, where the inconsistency of federal funds led community leaders to develop a modern, professional industrial recruitment campaign. In the Tennessee Valley, and across the South, the Sunbelt economy emerged as locals encouraged federal investment in order to bring development while rejecting and redirecting broader calls for social change. Historians have only recently begun to investigate the complicated process by which the southern economy modernized in the twentieth century, but none have provided an in-depth exploration of the long-term growth of one particular region, such as the Tennessee Valley. Drawing on local records, numerous Valley newspapers, and federal records, this dissertation traces the process by which Valley residents attempted to attract industries and businesses to the region. As such, this research provides insight into the birth of the modern southern economy. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries

Baseball diplomacy, baseball deployment: the national pastime in U.S.-Cuba relations

The game of baseball, a shared cultural affinity linking Cuba and the United States, has played a significant part in the relationship between those nations. Having arrived in Cuba as a symbol of growing American influence during the late nineteenth century, baseball would come to reflect the political and economic connections that developed into the 1900s. By the middle of the twentieth century, a significant baseball exchange saw talented Cuban players channeled into Major League Baseball, and American professionals compete in Cuba's Winter League. The 1959 Cuban Revolution permanently changed this relationship. Baseball's politicization as a symbol of the Revolution, coupled with political antagonism, an economic embargo, and an end to diplomatic ties between the Washington and Havana governments largely destroyed the U.S.-Cuba baseball exchange. By the end of the 1960s, Cuban and American baseball interactions were limited to a few international amateur competitions, and political hardball nearly ended some of these. During the 1970s, Cold War détente and the success of Ping Pong Diplomacy with China sparked American efforts to use baseball's common ground as a basis for improving U.S.-Cuba relations. Baseball diplomacy, as the idea came to be called, was designed to be a means toward coexistence and normalization with the Castro government. Ultimately, despite a taking few swings during that decade, baseball diplomacy--unable to surmount the obstacles, either within politics or within professional baseball--failed to produce any actual games between Cuban and Major League Baseball teams. As Cold War détente evaporated into the 1980s, baseball's role in the U.S.-Cuba political relationship changed. Efforts to boost Cuban exposure to Major League Baseball developed as part of a general policy to use American culture and influence to erode Communism. This practice of deploying baseball as a political weapon continued into the 1990s. Unlike earlier efforts at baseball diplomacy, which were designed to improve U.S.-Cuba relations, baseball deployment aimed to provoke a democratic regime change in Cuba. This dissertation examines how politics have complicated U.S.-Cuba baseball exchanges, and traces the sport's contradictory use through baseball diplomacy and baseball deployment. (Published By University of Alabama Libraries