Ronald E. McNair Program


Melissa Ivory
 Name: Melissa Nona Ivory
School: The University of Mississippi
Major: English
Mentor: Dr. Ethel Young-Minor
Expected Graduation Date: May 2008 
Organizations & Honors: 
  • Who’s Who American College and University Students
  • University Of Mississippi Orientation Leader 
  • University of Mississippi MOST Conference Mentor 
  • Volunteer at Baptist Memorial Hospital 
  • Associated Student Body (Student Life Committee) 
  • University of Mississippi Gospel Choir 
  • University of Mississippi Ambassador 
  • Summer Counselor Leadership Outreach Programs (JumpStart, Upward Bound, Lott Leadership, Rebel Quest) 
  • Big Brothers and Big Sisters of America 
  • University of Mississippi Tele-counselor 
  • University of Orientation Lab Assistant 
  • Ole Miss Year Book Staff 
  • University of Mississippi Black Student Union 
  • Ronald E. McNair Scholar 
E-MAIL: mnivory@olemiss.edu 

COMMENTS:
The Ronald E. McNair Program has served both academically and socially in my college career. The program provided me with graduate school information, hands-on activities, and an in-depth look at research. The McNair enrichment program has introduced me to many new aspects of higher education and leadership skills. Special thanks to Dr. Ethel Young-Minor, Dr. Cole, Ms. Hereford, and all the 2007 summer participants!

ABSTRACT

What is Education?: Teaching to Transgress Black Southern Oppression in the fiction of Mildred Taylor

This paper will take a close look at how novelist Mildred Taylor describes the cultural and systemic education of Cassie Logan in Roll of Thunder Hear My Cry (1976). Cassie Logan’s experiences with formal and informal educational programs provide insight into how many Black Americans had to be educated in the first half of the twentieth century. In order to emerge as radical leaders, Blacks who lived in the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s, had to learn more than the standard curriculum of “reading, writing, and arithmetic”. If they were going to surpass the limitations of early twentieth-century racism, they also had to master the curriculum of white oppression operating in their communities and identify ways that Black Americans could to subvert this oppression without losing their lives.