Graduate Program
History
Degree Name
Master of Arts (MA)
Semester of Degree Completion
2013
Thesis Director
Debra A. Reid
Thesis Committee Member
Mark Hubbard
Thesis Committee Member
Sace E. Elder
Abstract
This thesis approaches the construction of race through the vantage of one agrarian magazine, the Prairie Farmer. It analyzes the rhetoric of the people who wrote for this magazine to distinguish changing attitudes toward whiteness and blackness in the rural and agricultural Midwest from the end of the Civil War to the Great Migration. While whiteness was equated with what the Prairie Farmer saw as the active, progressive farmer, blackness was associated with stupidity, laziness, and threat to property. From this, the thesis argues we can build a base of knowledge from which to analyze the roots of racism in the rural Midwest that many historians take for granted when considering this era.
Recommended Citation
Mohr, Philip, "Separating the Whites from the Chaff: Whiteness, Blackness, Racial Exclusion in the Midwest Agrarian Mind" (2013). Masters Theses. 1187.
https://thekeep.eiu.edu/theses/1187
Included in
Race and Ethnicity Commons, Race, Ethnicity and Post-Colonial Studies Commons, Social History Commons, United States History Commons
