Exhibit Overview and Methodology

This exhibit, "The Nubian Message in the 1990s," explores four major themes in the paper during the 1990s and how those themes reveal the state of race relations on campus and in broader American society during that time. The four themes and the exhibit sections to which they correspond are:

 

The four themes move from a local, concrete perspective, to a national, more abstract perspective to show how students' experiences on campus affected their interpretation of events, trends, and movements elsewhere. Even so, events elsewhere certainly affected students' interpretation of experiences on campus, which is seen in many articles in the paper. Exhibit sections therefore do not have to be read in order; in fact, in some cases, sections overlap, and articles used to illuminate one theme can also be used to illuminate another. Nevertheless, highlighting four distinct themes in the paper, as artificial as the distinction between those themes may be, helps to grasp the ways in which the paper's coverage of race-related issues changed over time and according to the specific circumstances of the issue.

 

Each of the four sections of this exhibit has three subsections. The first two subsections present and analyze specific articles published in The Nubian Message. Analysis is tied to the exhibit section theme and grounded in secondary-source scholarship; citations are provided. A final subsection draws connections between issues and opinions covered in The Nubian Message, and historical events, issues, and ideologies more broadly.