Introduction

The

Columbia Undergraduate Journal of History

is pleased to presentits second issue. While we began by only publishing papers writtenby students at Columbia University, for the current issue the editorssolicited nominations from universities and colleges across the UnitedStates and Canada. We thank the professors who nominated more thansixty papers from nearly thirty universities and colleges. The editorsare excited by the progress in fostering critical intellectual dialogueand recognizing outstanding undergraduate scholarship in the field of history, a process we hope continues at the upcoming Herbert ApthekerUndergraduate History Conference. This issue includes five articles reflecting diverse historical interestsand methods that both individually and collectively show the importanceof the historical discipline. Jeffrey Martin of Brown University impressed the editors withhis rigorous interpretative framework and careful reading of archivalsources. Exploring the key historical topics of power and the processof class formation, Martin uses the temperance movement in RhodeIsland to examine class relations and middle class legitimation in theage of the market revolution and an emerging capitalist society. Written while at Duke University, Barnes Hauptfuhrer’s articlelikewise reflects a wide and careful reading of published and unpublishedprimary sources. Exploring the politics of unionism and secession inNorth Carolina, Hauptfuhrer cautions against historical narrativesthat stress the ‘inevitability’ of secession by revealing the complex andcontested local politics from the election of Lincoln to the Fort Sumtercrisis. Hauptfuhrer effectively uses an intensive local focus to examine

larger questions of Civil War politics.Keisha N. Benjamin of Binghamton University offers an insistentintervention in the historical literature with her attempt to restore the voices of rank and ﬁle women to the historiography of the UniversalNegro Improvement Association. Only the perspectives of eliteGarveyite women have been studied, Benjamin contends, and her useof the “Women’s Page” of the

Negro World

provides an interesting attempt to reconstruct rank and ﬁle feminist sentiment.In addition to publication in the journal, the articles by Jeffrey Martin, Barnes Hauptfuhrer, and Keisha N. Benjamin have beenselected for the Herbert Aptheker Undergraduate History Prize. Thecombination of extensive archival research with attempts to ask andaddress important historical questions in their scholarship reﬂectsthe tradition of Herbert Aptheker, a Columbia undergraduate andpioneering historian of slavery whose work challenged generations of racist historiography. The editors eagerly anticipate the lectures thatthese scholars will give during the Herbert Aptheker UndergraduateHistory Conference at Columbia University on February 10, 2009. This issue of the journal includes two additional articles. JasonZuckerbrod, of our own Columbia University, contributes an excellentpaper on consensus politics in Britain during the Second World War.Zuckerbrod uses a small but carefully analyzed selection of newspaperarticles in prominent journals to explore how different ideologicalorientations from the right to the left understood and came to supporteducational programs for the military. Against interpretations thatemphasize the Labour’s post-war ascendancy, Zuckerbrod’s analysiscautions against simplistically equating agreement over particularpolicies with ideological consensus.

The editors are also eager to include Emma O’Brien’s article, written at the University of Minnesota. Its contemporary focus anduse of interviews and other unique sources distinguish O’Brien’s work from the more traditional historical narratives published in thisissue. Her study of the power of place within the hip hop scene in

COLUMBIA UNDERGRADUATE JOURNAL OF HISTORY * The editors would like to note that while Jason Zuckerbrod was initially onthe editorial board of the journal, during the middle and ﬁnal stages of selectionfor publication and prizes, Zuckerbrod recused himself from all editorial decisionsand participation in the work of the editorial board.