This dissertation investigates the development and influence of elocution pedagogy during the Reconstruction Era, a period when many U.S. citizens recognized the precarity and possibility of creating equitable opportunities for self-expression. In particular, it examines the embodied politics of American Delsartism, a repertoire of psycho-physical exercises designed to ease nervousness and cultivate confidence. By evaluating the gendered and racial messaging of this curriculum, Wings to Their Heels establishes American Delsartism’s prominent role in shaping cultural ideas about whose voices mattered and where and how they should be heard.

This dissertation explores the genesis of the United States’ penal system through the lens of one of America’s first prisons, the Virginia Penitentiary. The penitentiary in Richmond was built by Benjamin Henry Latrobe in 1797 and opened for operation in 1800. Because the institution was founded and operated in a slave society, bondage directly impacted the function of the prison system in ways not yet explored by historians.

Legislators never intended the institution to be used for the confinement of slaves, but as the judicial system expanded, citizens demanded the apprehension of convict slaves due to growing fears of revolt. For the first several decades of operation, the penitentiary was a pillar for the growing state government and the imbedded slave system. When the penitentiary first opened, the immense Virginia countryside spread westward toward modern day Ohio. There were no railroads, only sparsely useable routes on horseback, and just a small number of people lived sporadically across the largely undeveloped land. The transport of prisoners required infrastructure and the penitentiary system was one state entity that encouraged growth and organization.

By apprehending free citizens as well as slaves, residents began to depend on the penitentiary to dispense justice to offenders. The penitentiary became a staple in the state government, and when slaves were convicted of a crime, the state worked with slave owners to compensate them for their loss of property. The state then took ownership of convict slaves and sold them in states further south in the cotton empire.

Most literature on American prisons focuses on moral reform institutions found in Northern facilities, but historians have yet to analyze the importance of the Southern penitentiary model, founded in Virginia. While both regions implemented forced labor for convicts, attitudes toward labor differed in each region and transformed the goals of each system. While moral reform efforts prevailed in Northern penitentiaries, the Virginia system remained punitive. Despite the monetary difficulties of running the penitentiary, the state prison system worked in conjunction with the deeply rooted channels of slave society in order to expand and gain power. Eventually, the penitentiary acted as a pillar for the propagation of slavery in Virginia.

In the aftermath of the Civil War, state judges lost their long-held right to inquire into the legality of federal detentions. Habeas corpus—once almost solely the business of state courts—was largely transformed into a federal remedy. We argue that the wartime furor surrounding underage enlistees was a key factor in driving this legal change. Whereas scholarship on the use of habeas corpus at this time generally concentrates on cases involving freedom of speech or political association, thousands of parents and guardians also petitioned Union authorities and state courts to retrieve children who had enlisted without their consent. Parents, who understood their control over the personhood and labor of minors as one of the bedrocks of American liberty, angrily protested the state’s abrogation of their rights, while state court judges fought to retain their jurisdiction over such cases. We illuminate these conflicts by drawing on a rich array of sources that capture the perspectives of federal and state court judges, Lincoln Administration officials, elected representatives, military officers and parents, and minors themselves. In the process, we show the halting, contested nature of debates over habeas corpus, the outcome of which ultimately redefined the relationship between American citizens and their government, preventing aggrieved parents from using state courts to safeguard their rights against federal and military authorities, and blocking state courts from querying the legality of federal detentions of any kind.

My dissertation, Tell It Like It Is: Television and Social Change, 1960-1980, investigates the relationship between popular culture and social movements during the 1960s and 1970s. In an era marked by the rise of movements that challenged discrimination and second-class citizenship, TV producers attempted to represent and address societal tensions through the creation of more “realistic” programming that dealt with hot button social issues. With Black Power and feminism at the forefront of these movements, white male producers sought out underrepresented writers—people of color and white women—to translate their experiences to the small screen. This increased politicization in television engendered anxieties among reactionary viewers who complained that sitcoms and dramas could disrupt the status quo by presenting race and gender advancements in a positive light. Fans who wrote to networks, however, conversely claimed that Americans could learn from “authentic” shows that “tell it like it is.” Drawing on a wide range of sources—production files, correspondence, fan mail, script drafts, magazines, TV series, and writers meeting minutes—I argue that producers and viewers alike considered entertainment programming a tool that could alter social and political discourse.

Scholars of US social movements typically focus on what motivated people to organize and the extent to which they achieved their goals. Analyses of the relationship between activism and media are generally limited to the ways in which print and broadcast news propelled or undermined a movement’s agenda. Studying periods of resistance through the lens of popular culture, however, contributes to our understanding of how everyday people outside of social movements and from various racial and ethnic backgrounds understood the changes that activists demanded. Tell It Like It Is places entertainment television at the center of this dialogue to demonstrate how the politicized context in which television shows were produced and viewed during the 1960s and 1970s contributed to the general public’s engagement with current events.