We Shall Lead: Freedom Schools and the Creation of Black Youth-based Leadership

Humanities: 1st Place (The Ohio State University Edward F. Hayes Graduate Research Forum)The goal of this paper is to examine the response to, and judge the effectiveness of, the Freedom Schools that were built and conducted by the Student Non-violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) during its 1964 Freedom Summer project. Prior to this protest, African Americans in Mississippi were mired in one of the deepest states of educational poverty seen in modern American history. Only seven percent of the state’s black residents even held a high school diploma in 1964. Many black residents did not know how many states composed their country, or even what its capital was. A lot of them did not even know about the rights guaranteed to them by the 14th Amendment passed nearly 100 years before. To remedy this situation, SNCC brought hundreds of college-aged volunteers into the state during the summer of 1964. The research methods used for this paper vary greatly and include a variety of secondary sources, the vast collection of SNCC Papers, letters from volunteers, letters from students, various accounts recorded in diaries and programs, pictures, and even the actual projects done by the dynamic black students in 1964 in order to understand the effectiveness of the Freedom Schools. My research indicates that the Freedom Schools were by far the most successful aspect of the Summer project. Black youths attended the schools at more than 200% of the rate expected by SNCC. These students were incredibly enthusiastic and instantly became active leaders in their communities. After only a few weeks in the schools, African American children started leading sit-ins, voter registration campaigns, and creating their own organizations. In Hattiesburg, junior high students started a program for middle-aged adults where they would teach them how to fill out voter registration cards. The implications of this research are widespread. First, as several noted scholars have observed, Freedom Schools have often been overlooked, both then and now. The schools were largely considered to be women’s work and more attention was paid to other activities occurring during the 1964 protest. This paper not only discusses the strong role that women played in the project, but also forces historians to re-think the achievements of the civil rights movement. This research also follows a current trend in civil rights history that looks at the importance of grassroots activism. The Freedom Schools, I argue, were the purest form of grassroots activism to occur during the modern African American freedom struggle. They were based on the model developed by Myles Horton at the Highlander Folk School. This model of citizenship learning spread throughout the South during the 1940s and 1950s and became one of the most important ideological bases for the civil rights movement. This research on the Freedom Schools shows the power of this model. Freedom Schools became one of the most encouraging aspects of the civil rights movement, and this paper argues that this model should be copied for use in future protests or activism.A three-year embargo was granted for this item

The Impact of International Criminal Court Arrest Warrants on Peace Processes

On July 17, 1998, the international community created the Rome Statute, the document outlining the creation of the ICC. The Rome Statute was ratified by 60 countries by July 1, 2002, making the ICC a legitimate and operating institution (About the Court). The ICC is able to prosecute four categories of crime – genocide, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and crimes of aggression (Schabas 2011, 88) – for which it has temporal jurisdiction, personal jurisdiction, and territorial jurisdiction. Temporal jurisdiction limits the court to only considering crimes that occurred after the Rome Statute was ratified (Schabas 2011, 69). Personal jurisdiction allows the court to consider crimes where the accused is a national of a state party regardless of where the crimes occurred (Schabas 2011, 76). Finally, territorial jurisdiction empowers the ICC to exercise jurisdiction over crimes that occur within the territory of a state party to the ICC or where the United Nations Security Council gives jurisdiction to crimes occurring in a particular territory (Schabas 2011, 81). The ICC was created to end impunity for international criminals, and to subsequently stop and prevent international atrocities (Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court 2002, 1). Although the creation of a court to end impunity for international crimes was celebrated by many, critics worried about the impact of the ICC in ongoing conflicts. Specifically, some scholars argued that, “When faced with indictment and punishment, a human rights abuser might in fact dig in his heels, and refuse to give up or compromise” (Ginsburg 2009, 502). This debate over the ICC has been termed the “peace versus justice” debate with scholars wondering if the ICC forces a choice between peace and justice. The question this thesis grapples with is the whether the ICC does pursue justice to the detriment of a peace process.Bachelor of Art

Orientation relationships between icosahedral clusters in hexagonal MgZn2 and monoclinic Mg4Zn7 phases in Mg-Zn(-Y) alloys

Intermetallic precipitates formed in heat-treated and aged Mg-Zn and Mg-Zn-Y alloys have been investigated via electron microscopy. Coarse spheroidal precipitates formed on deformation twin boundaries contained domains belonging to either the MgZn2 hexagonal Laves phase or the monoclinic Mg4Zn7 phase. Both phases are structurally related to the quasi-crystalline phase formed in Mg-Zn-Y alloys, containing icosahedrally coordinated zinc atoms arranged as a series of broad rhombohedral units. This rhombohedral arrangement was also visible in intragranular precipitates where local regions with the structures of hexagonal MgZn2 and Mg4Zn7 were found. The orientation adopted by the MgZn2 and Mg4Zn7 phases in twin-boundary and intragranular precipitates was such that the icosahedral clusters were aligned similarly. These results highlight the close structural similarities between the precipitates of the Mg-Zn-Y alloy system.Comment: Corrected proof. 11 pages, 5 figures. Eleventh International Conference on Quasicrystals:13-18 June 2010, Sapporo. This is an electronic version of an article published in Philosophical Magazine, 91(19-21):2634-2644, 2011. doi: 10.1080/14786435.2010.541168 Philosophical Magazine is available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/tphm2

Vietnam's withdrawal from Cambodia: regional issues and realignments

Vietnamese armed forces invaded Cambodia in December 1978. A decade of Vietnamese occupation had important political and security consequences for Cambodians, for Vietnam, for the ASEAN states, for China and the superpowers and, indirectly, for Australia. Vietnam was condemned in UN General Assembly Resolutions passed annually since 1979. Most Vietnamese armed forces have now been withdrawn from Cambodia. The significance of the withdrawal and the regional impact of the end of possibly the last major war in the Western Pacific were examined at a symposium arranged by Professor Nancy Viviani of the ANU's Department of Political Science in October 1989. These papers are a product of that symposium. Generally, there was a strong view that the governments of Vietnam and Cambodia would eventually experience a less hostile attitude from China, the US and several of the key ASEAN states as the fact of the Vietnamese withdrawal was accepted. The Hun Sen government in Phnom Penh, or some variant of it, would also probably be recognised, provided it could survive renewed attacks by an increasingly isolated Khmer Rouge and if a suitably graceful exit was found for China. An alternative more pessimistic view was that most governments would continue to defer to Beijing, that the Khmer Rouge were a potent and ruthless force and that the Hun Sen government would be fighting for its life. While there was scepticism about the viability of the Hun Sen government and doubts about China's agenda, as well as expressions of opposition to recognition of what was described as a puppet regime established by the use of force, the symposium overall leaned towards cautious optimism about Cambodia's future and, notwithstanding some uncertainties in a period of change, improvements to regional security