Border Communities: Race, Gender, and Community Formation in Arizona's Verde Valley Copper Towns, 1875-1941

Megowan, Amy D (2022) Border Communities: Race, Gender, and Community Formation in Arizona's Verde Valley Copper Towns, 1875-1941. Masters thesis, Northern Arizona University.

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Abstract

This thesis examines community formation among diverse groups of women in Jerome, Clarkdale, and Clemenceau, Arizona, from the late-nineteenth to early-twentieth centuries. During the late-nineteenth century, environmental and landscape limitations, anxieties about settling in an alien place and society, and crude, masculine social settings compelled women to remain within the sanctity of their homes. Consequently, community development was largely delayed. In the first decades of the twentieth century, a sense of belonging emerged, but it was contained within ethnic-specific locales. Ethnic enclaves in neighborhoods and organizations emerged from external pressures and internal preferences. Like individuals created neighborly networks and organizations for companionship and out of necessity. Throughout the 1920s and 1930s, the inter-ethnic image of community expanded in tandem with increased cross-cultural communications. Americanization programs, the Great Depression and New Deal, mass culture, and a rebellion against gendered standards and roles all factored into a more pluralistic community that included different generations, classes, races, and nationalities. Of course, persistent discriminatory policies and practices ensured that true integration into mainstream American society was reserved for select European ethnicities. Nevertheless, there was greater social harmony in the 1920s and 1930s than in previous decades. Women were at the center of each phase of community development.

Item Type:	Thesis (Masters)
Publisher’s Statement:	© Copyright is held by the author. Digital access to this material is made possible by the Cline Library, Northern Arizona University. Further transmission, reproduction or presentation of protected items is prohibited except with permission of the author.
Subjects:	F History United States, Canada, Latin America > F001 United States local history
NAU Depositing Author Academic Status:	Student
Department/Unit:	Graduate College > Theses and Dissertations College of Arts and Letters > History
Date Deposited:	25 May 2023 21:51
Last Modified:	25 May 2023 21:51
URI:	https://openknowledge.nau.edu/id/eprint/5903

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