The Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s in the United States galvanized millions of Americans to fight for a more free and democratic society, banding together to protest racial segregation and other forms of systemic racism such as police violence against minorities. Newspapers covered these actions extensively, spreading the message of civil rights across the US. People eager for change in cities far from the centers of civil rights activism in the South, such as Seattle, responded to this national political fervor by fighting for change locally. In Seattle, activists sought an end to job and housing discrimination, de facto school segregation, and police violence through non-violent direct action. Seattle’s major print newspapers, The Seattle Times and the Seattle Post-Intelligencer covered these issues extensively, spreading news and controversial developments to their readers. In my research, I analyze newspaper coverage on activism and cases of police violence which garnered a strong public demand for justice. With the support of other sources, such as the biographies of Seattle activists, the histories of local civil rights organizations, and studies on media coverage of the police, I construct an analysis of how these newspapers shifted their coverage of civil rights activism and police violence throughout the 1960s as a response to community activism. This critical angle focuses on how the actions of Seattle’s activist community influenced newspaper media, prompting the newspapers to include more activist perspectives in their news coverage. This research, therefore, displays the power that local activists held in influencing print media coverage of their actions, and with that, the influence that activists had to shift the public perspective towards activism in the 1960s in Seattle.

Mount St. Helens shook local communities and spewed volcanic ash into the sky for two months before it finally had its major eruption. In those two months newspapers eagerly tracked the activity, crafted a story, and relayed it to their audiences. When the mountain erupted on May 18, 1980, the world caught a glimpse of nature’s power and found a dramatic climax to their two-month story. In the immediate aftermath, accounts of what had happened took various forms, ranging from personal hymns to films, with each of them showing a different response to the eruption. These responses showcase a population reconsidering what it means to live alongside nature. Today, forty years later, Mount St. Helens’ story is still being told through a wide array of sources. In my research, I analyze works approaching the eruption, reacting in the immediate aftermath, and those which have come out in memory. I note the content of these sources as well as their framing to construct an analysis of how changing treatment of the Mount St. Helens story reveals society’s approach to nature before the eruption and how that approach changed in response to the events of May 18. I specifically focus on sources consumed and produced by the broader public, such as films and songs, using private correspondence or scientific conferences only as a source of what does not make widespread narratives. This approach encapsulates how people of various communities make sense of living alongside the natural world, and especially how they conceptualize sudden change events like volcanic eruptions. My research uncovers both flaws in the population’s conceptual relationship to nature as well as their tendencies to remember natural events, specifically Mount St. Helens, in a way that maintains or minimally changes the way the see themselves in the world.

In October 1962, China and India waged a war to contest the demarcation of their shared border, a culmination of years of escalating hostilities between the two governments. One month later, after overwhelming the Indian military, the Chinese declared a unilateral ceasefire. By contrast, seven years earlier at the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung, Indonesia, leaders from each country signed pledges for peace and mutual non-aggression. Speeches by Indonesian host and president Sukarno, Indian prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru, and Chinese foreign minister Zhou Enlai imparted on attendees, most of whom represented newly decolonized countries, a sense of cautious optimism for their collective advancement. However, the "Bandung spirit" dissipated by 1965, as evidenced by the cancellation of the Second Asian-African Conference in Algeria. While most scholars focus on the Sino-Soviet Split and 1965 Algerian coup to explain the Bandung spirit's rupture, I study the 1962 border war and failed mediation efforts by neutralist governments, like Indonesia, as evidence of the Asian-African alliance's early fracturing. Drawing from primary sources such as English and Indonesian language newspapers, Indian, Chinese, and Indonesian government documents, and the writings of Indian and Indonesian politicians, I argue that Indonesians advocated for a stricter definition, relative to Nehru, of anti-imperialism tinged with Asian nationalism. Indonesian leaders’ reluctance to defend Nehru, their partner at Bandung, demonstrate that the Sino-Indian War exposed ideological differences between India and Indonesia, thus facilitating the Bandung Spirit’s demise. By framing the war with the Bandung Conference, I explore how governments fall short of their lofty visions of anti-imperialism and perpetuate the nationalistic hierarchies they originally eschew.