ABSTRACT
Members of two organizations serve as the informants for this research. After holistic analysis and theoretic explanation of data from the first organization were accomplished, a second organization was sought for the purposes of validating our observation of and theorizing about the phenomena in question. What follows is a general description of each organization and then a specific description of the individuals interviewed. In this and several subsequent chapters, the data are analyzed and interpreted to develop a set of emergent theoretic models. True to our grounded theoretic stance, we analyzed and interpreted the data and developed our basic emergent models before turning to the literature for explanation and fuller understanding of the patterns we observed. However, to provide the reader with a rich understanding of the patterns in the data, and thus of the theoretic model that emerges, we interweave our data, findings, interpretation, and emergent theory with a continual consideration of the literatures on African-American communication and culture, African-American organizational experiences, Afrocentric theory, and a brief explication of the history of Africans in America. Such presentation accomplishes a more holistic understanding, while avoiding the linear, and thus fragmented and compartmentalized, nature of more "traditional" Eurocentrically-grounded modes of research reporting.
