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- All Subjects: American History
- Creators: Warren-Findley, Jannelle
Description
At the turn of the twenty-first century, the population of Surprise Arizona exploded, increasing from 31,000 to 100,000 in just eight years. Developers filled acres of former cotton fields and citrus groves with walled neighborhoods of stucco and tile-roofed homes surrounded by palm trees and oleander bushes. Priced for middle-class families and retirees, this planned and standardized landscape stood in stark contrast to that of the town's first decades when dirt roads served migrant farm labor families living in makeshift homes with outdoor privies. This study explores how a community with an identity based on farm labor and networks of kinship and friendship evolved into an icon of the twenty-first century housing boom. This analysis relies on evidence from multiple sources. A community history initiative, the Surprise History Project, produced photographs, documents, and oral histories. City records, newspaper accounts, county documents, and census reports offer further insight into the external and internal factors that shaped and reshaped the meaning of community in Surprise. A socially and politically constructed concept, community identity evolves in response to the intricate interplay of contingencies, external forces, and the actions and decisions of civic leaders and residents. In the case of Surprise, this complex mix of factors also set the foundation for its emergence as a twenty-first century boomburb. The rapid expansion of the Phoenix metropolitan area, the emergence of age-restricted communities, and federal programs reset the social, economic, and political algorithms of the community. Internally, changing demographics, racial and ethnic diversity, and an ever-expanding population produced differing and continuously evolving ideas about community identity, a matter of intense importance to many. For seven decades, Surprise residents with competing ideas about place came into conflict. Concurrently, these individuals participated in official and vernacular events, activities, and celebrations. These gatherings, which evolved as the town grew and changed, also shaped community identity. While attending the Fourth of July festivities or debating city leaders' decisions at town council meetings, Surprise residents defined and redefined their community.
ContributorsPalmer, Carol S (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Gullett, Gayle (Committee member) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2012
Description
This thesis examines the immediate post-World War II operational strategy of Valley National Bank of Arizona, a Phoenix-based institution in operation from 1899 until its 1992 acquisition by Ohio-based Banc One Corporation (now JPMorgan Chase). For the purposes of this study, the immediate post-war period is defined as 1944 to January 20, 1953, a span that opens with the bank's wartime planning efforts for the post-war period and ends with the 1953 retirement of bank president Walter Bimson. By the end of World War II, Valley National ranked as the largest financial institution in the eight-state Rocky Mountain region, as measured by total deposits. However, post-war regulatory issues, competitor expansion, and an inability to generate deposit volume sufficient to meet subject period loan demands challenged bank leaders seeking to maintain market share and grow company profitability and stock value. In response to these difficulties, the bank focused on a three-pronged operational strategy emphasizing advertising, market-appropriate deposit and loan product offerings, and an aggressive branching and acquisition campaign. This strategy did not result in unmitigated success as the bank did experience a decrease in average deposit account balances, lost mortgage market share, and undertook acquisition activity that later resulted in federal antitrust action. However, by the end of the subject period, the three-pronged strategy employed by the bank did result in an increase in deposit dollar market share, as measured by deposits controlled directly and indirectly by the institution, rising annual net profits, and substantial share price appreciation. The findings related to bank strategy and results presented in this thesis are based primarily upon information found in the 169-box Valley National Bank Collection housed at the Arizona Historical Society. Extensive newspaper research conducted using targeted date range and keyword searches and careful consideration of secondary source materials relating to the bank, the banking industry, and state, regional, and national politics, economics, and culture during the subject period provided additional information used in this study, and corroborated much of the material found in the Valley National Bank Collection files.
ContributorsSouthard, John (Author) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Thesis advisor) / Vandermeer, Philip (Committee member) / Gammage, Jr., Grady (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
This thesis explores the story behind the long effort to achieve Native American suffrage in Arizona. It focuses on two Arizona Supreme Court cases, in which American Indians attempted, and were denied the right to register to vote. The first trial occurred in 1928, four years after the Indian Citizenship Act granted citizenship to all Native Americans born or naturalized in the United States. The Arizona Supreme Court rejected the Native American plaintiff's appeal to register for the electorate, and subsequently disenfranchised Native Americans residing on reservations for the next twenty years. In 1948, a new generation of Arizona Supreme Court Justices overturned the court's previous ruling and finally awarded voting rights to all qualified Native Americans in the state. However, voting rights during the Civil Rights era did not necessarily mean equal voting rights. Therefore, this thesis also investigates how the Voting Rights Act of 1965 greatly reduced the detrimental effects of voter discrimination. This study examines how national events, like world war and the Great Depression influenced the two trials. In particular, this thesis focuses on the construction of political and social power in Arizona as it related to Native American voting rights. In addition, it discusses the evolution of native citizenship in the United States at large and for the most part within Arizona. The thesis also considers how the goal of native assimilation into American society affected American Indian citizenship, and how a paternalistic and conservative American Indian policy of the 1920s greatly influenced the outcome of the first trial. Another thread of this story is the development of mainstream white views of Native Americans. Lastly, this thesis identifies the major players of this story, especially the American Indian activists and their supporters whose courage and perseverance led to an outcome that positively changed the legal rights of generations of Native Americans in Arizona for years to come.
ContributorsBassett, Jenna (Author) / Fixico, Donald (Thesis advisor) / Osburn, Katherine (Committee member) / Sturgeon, Melanie (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011
Description
Women have played a vital role in Nevada's lawmaking process since first lobbying the Territorial Legislature in 1861. In subsequent decades, women increased in numbers as lobbyists, staff, and reporters. By 1914, when Nevada women won the right to vote and be elected to office, male legislators were accustomed to a female presence in the Capitol. With enfranchisement, however, came a more direct role for women in the state's lawmaking process. Featuring the twenty-nine women who served in the Nevada Legislature in the first half of the twentieth century, this dissertation enhances knowledge about public women between what are commonly called the two feminist waves. In addition to a general analysis of their partisan and legislative activities, this dissertation specifically contemplates women's participation in shifting Nevada's tax base from residents to nonresidents. This dissertation argues that these women legislators were influenced primarily by their experiences in the business sector. Suffrage provided the opportunity to hold public office, but it did not define their politics. More useful for understanding women lawmakers in the first half of the twentieth century is what I call "fiscal maternalism." Women legislators mitigated their social concerns with their understanding of the state's economic limitations. Their votes on controversial issues such as legalized gambling, easy divorce, and regulated prostitution reflected a perspective of these issues as economic first and moral second. Demonstrating a motherly care for the state's economy and the tax burden on families, women invoked both their maternal authority and financial acumen to construct their legislative authority. Combining policy history and women's history, this dissertation documents that a legislator's sex did not necessarily predict her vote on legislation and advances the gendered analysis of state lawmaking beyond the dichotomy that emerges with the application of the label "women's issues." In addition, this dissertation demonstrates that the digitization of newspapers provides a fruitful new resource for historians, particularly those interested in women. The ability to search within articles removes the reliance on headlines and reveals that the previously-disregarded society pages are valuable tools for tracing women's business activities and political networks.
ContributorsBennett, Dana R. (Author) / Gray, Susan E (Thesis advisor) / Critchlow, Donald (Committee member) / Warren-Findley, Jannelle (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2011