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Acknowledgments Many people have offered me encouragement in the decade that it has taken to produce this work. Not all are named here, but none are forgotten. I thank Meredith Morris-Babb and the staff at the University Press of Florida for supporting this project. The reviewers were especially helpful and made this manuscript infinitely more accurate and readable. I offer gratitude to members of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History (ASALH), who have been generous with their time and professional guidance, especially Sheila Flemming-Hunter, Gloria Dickinson, Daryl Scott, and V. P. Franklin. Thanks to scholars at Howard University’s Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, especially Thomas Battle, Ida Jones, Donna Wells, and Joellen El Bashir, for allowing me access to the hallowed halls where the treasures are kept. I am grateful for assistance from archivists at Bethune-Cookman College, Middlebury College, Oberlin College, University of Pennsylvania, University of Chicago, Texas College, Shoreham and O.H.I.O. Historical Societies , the Sorbonne University, and the historian Marilyn Richardson. I am grateful for discussions with colleagues at Cornell, Berea, the Sorbonne, and the University of Cambridge. Funding from the University of Florida College of Liberal Arts and Sciences , Paris Research Center, Center for Women’s Studies and Gender Research , and African American Studies Program made this project possible. Thanks to Terry Mills, Angel Kwolek-Folland, Millagros Pena, Paula Ambroso , Debra Walker King, Colette Taylor, Melvina Johnson, and the Association of Black Faculty and Staff for encouragement. Go Gators! I offer special thanks to Ms. Sharon Burney, who (along with her two beautiful daughters) staved off my periodic despair with creativity, humor, and good sense that is not so common. Thanks to Willie Baber, Stephanie J. Evans, Crystal Patterson, Imani Hope, Carrie Roberts, Taylor Ramsey, Louise Newman, Brian Ward, Jack Davis, Matt Gallman, Linda Behar-Horenstein , Keisha Duncan, and Pero Dagbovie for editorial suggestions. Without Susan Brady’s professional editing service, this manuscript would be a hot mess; thanks for your keen eye. The W.E.B. Du Bois Department of Afro-American Studies doctoral program at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, provided rigorous and unwieldy workloads, for which I am eternally grateful. Thanks to my dissertation committee, John H. Bracey Jr., Robert Paul Wolff, Bill Strickland , and Alexandrina Deschamps, for your trust and patience during times when I had neither. Thank you to UMass professors, staff, my cohort, and my peers for demonstrating what “collegial” really means. UMass Women’s Studies, Commonwealth Honors College, Five Colleges, and the Office of Community Service-Learning offered fruitful collaborations, which I appreciate tremendously. Time I spent at the Swearer Center for Public Service (Brown University) and the Haas Center for Public Service (Stanford University) provided vital opportunities to test the validity of my research; special thanks to Kerri Heffernan and Nadinne Cruz. I am grateful to Rebecca Rockefeller, the environmentalist , for offering her insightful perspective. I am indebted to the National Black Graduate Student Association (NBGSA), Southern Regional Educational Board (SREB), and Sisters of the Academy for professional development opportunities and to Orlando Taylor of Howard University for sustained encouragement. I extend special thanks to the students, staff, and administration of California State University, Long Beach. Go Beach! Without the Ronald E. McNair Scholars Program and TRIO funding, this book would not exist. Thank you Cherryl Arnold for investing in me personally and professionally (Ciao!). Thanks to Dr. Costa and my McNair peers, especially Mike and Amanda, and to President and Mrs. Maxson for their leadership. Women’s Studies and Black Studies at CSULB, the Sally Cassanova Pre-Doctoral Program, the Academic Advising Center, and Patricia Rozee of the Office of Community Service-Learning offered immeasurable support. Also, my yearlong study of Greek and “dead White men” at St. John’s College was expensive but invaluable ; I’m glad to have been a “Johnny.” To all the students whom I have had the privilege to instruct, I hope this manuscript shows that you have taught me well. Blessings to my sisters in the Gainesville reading group, the Mu Upsilon Omega chapter of Alpha Kappa Alpha Sorority, Incorporated, and the Twelve Virtuous Women, for sisterhood that gives me faith, strength, courage, and wisdom. I appreciate my parents, W. Annette Edmonds, Booker T. and Barbara McKim-Evans, and the Nalley family to whom this work is also lovingly dedicated . Last, I thank my family and loved ones across the globe who, with God’s grace and mercy, have sustained me throughout...

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