This research project explores relationships between queer activist organizations and the business community in Portland, Oregon, during the early 1990s. By examining the fight against Ballot Measure 9, which would have curtailed LGBT rights in Oregon if it had passed, this paper shows how queer activism was shaped and developed during the late 20th century, by both internal and external concerns. As they led the charge against Ballot Measure 9, queer organizations in Portland actively sought to engage businesses for their monetary support and tacit endorsement of LGBT rights. By comparing and contrasting the experiences of one queer organization that was developed specifically for this fight and one that had long-standing grassroots ties, this paper illuminates the scope and variety of queer-business connections. My focus on the opposition movement to Measure 9, composed of queer organizations and their business allies, also demonstrates the critical nature of these alliances to the political success of queer organizations, starting in the 1990s, with an impact reaching well beyond the specific context of this specific ballot measure. This project, centered around extensive archival research that was supported by Pacific Lutheran University’s Benson Summer Research Fellowship, offers a new layer of understanding to American queer activism during this period, with implications that still shape current-day affairs in both the U.S. queer community and the U.S. business community.

After the Mexican Revolution fought from 1910-1920, the Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI) which dominated Mexican politics onwards, openly embraced mestizaje, an ideology rooted in the assimilation of Mexican citizens to produce a national identity. This marginalized Indigenous subjects while valorizing Mexico’s unique pre-hispanic heritage, a process that proved to be unsustainable in the wake of the 1994 Zapatista Uprising in Chiapas, which brought attention across Latin America to the struggle. Scholars have written on how the neighboring state of Oaxaca became divided on the struggle for Indigenous rights throughout the 1990s, while others have focused on the history of Oaxacan radicalism and resurgence in dissent politics present during the 2006 Oaxacan social movement to argue against narratives of defeat. My research examines Teotitlan del Valle, a Zapotec community in the central valleys of Oaxaca, throughout the twentieth century into the 2000s, in order to explore the roles played by Indigenous communities not explicitly involved in dissident politics. My work builds on cultural studies conducted in Indigenous Oaxaca which examine the unique versions of ethnicity and their purposes. I focus on translations of press coverage and Spanish-language advertisements from the period, along with an oral history interview I conducted with a citizen from Teotitlán del Valle to reexamine the definition and redefinition of the local identity, connecting it to the history of Oaxacan radicalism. I argue that, while Teotitlan’s elite took advantage of mestizaje and commodified the community’s local identity, regular citizens of Teotitlan have pushed against this process to different degrees with varying effects. In doing so, this research proposes that the Zapotec villages in the central valleys of Oaxaca, who are often left out in the history of Oaxacan radicalism and it’s resurgence in 2006, are a central component to understanding the strengths and limitations of Oaxacan radicalism.

In 2020 Seattle experienced a divide in support behind three separate movements, Black Lives Matter, Stop Asian Hate, and The Kisaan Morcha/Farmers Protest. These three movements represent a key identity of three minorities within the region, Black, Japanese and Desi-Americans. The division between the three has long-standing roots within 20th century Seattle, and is full of moments of allyship and division. Each group has dealt with White racism and division in their own ways, but it's the way these narratives have fed into the societies that effects the relationship we see today. My research will focus on three time frames of Seattle History: Early 1900's (1910-1920s), Mid 1900's (1930s - 1950s), and Late 1900s (1960s - 1990s). Each of these sections represent a different timeframe for Seattleites: Settlement and the formation of communities, Civil Rights Era, and Modern implications/results. Each section will conclude of three main subsections that creates the basis of my argument. They will be based on: discrimination in the Workplace, Social Identity, and Economic Mobility. What I will be arguing is while each community has dealt with their own levels of discrimination and set-backs, Black Seattleites have constantly dealt with the brunt of the racial actions from White Seattleites, and have reaped the least amount of benefits compared to the other two communities. 

Daniel Kevles’ The Physicists: The History of a Scientific Community in Modern America details how physics in academia, industry, and government became increasingly intertwined within the national security state. He focuses on members of the physics elite who gained political power within the federal government and orchestrated the militarization of the field. However, his emphasis on these elite physicists, who were predominantly white males, overlooks the labor of non-white physicists. Drawing on Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism: The Making of the Black Radical Tradition, which outlines a racial capitalist framework recognizing the inherent racialization of American labor hierarchies and national imperial interests, this paper theorizes the function of Cold War-era physics within a racial capitalist political economy. Specifically, it examines how the military-industrial complex exploited domestic racial capitalist structures to wield Black scientific labor. Using archival documents and the American Institute of Physics (AIP) oral history interviews with Black physicists, this paper will argue that the national security state co-opted the goals of the Civil Rights Movement to bolster national scientific manpower, advancing Cold War-era imperial expansion while reinforcing racialized labor hierarchies within physics.