‘Black Folk’ Centers History and Activist Legacy of Black Working Class

KQED's Forum

KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 31 August 2023

⏱️ 57 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

“Our national mythos,” writes historian Blair LM Kelley, “leaves little room for Black workers, or to glean any lessons from their history.” Kelley’s latest book “Black Folk” offers a corrective, focusing on the lives of Black working people after the Southern Emancipation, the challenges they faced bringing their skills to bear and the networks of resistance they formed. Kelley’s book is also personal, grounded in the stories of her own ancestors, including her great, great grandfather, a highly skilled blacksmith who was enslaved. We’ll talk to Kelley about the origins of the Black working class and about the people who animate it, then and now. Guests: Blair LM Kelley, Blair LM Kelley, author, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class." She is the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies, director of the Center for the Study of the American South, and co-director of Southern Futures at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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1:45.1	From KQED in San Francisco, I'm Mina Kim. Coming up on forum, we talk with Blair L.M. Kelly about the history of the black working class. Though the term working class, Kelly says, conjures images of ruddy white men in hard hats or white waitresses and Midwestern diners, black people are more likely to be working class and union members.
1:48.8	And a closer look at the roots of the black working class and their distinct experience of coming out of enslavement
1:51.4	carries powerful lessons for a better future for working people of all races,
1:56.2	whether white, indigenous, Latino, or Asian.
1:59.1	Kelly's new book is called Black Vogue, and she joins us. After this news.
2:07.0	Welcome to Forum. I'm Mina Kim. Historian Blair L.M. Kelly's deep dive into the history of America's black working class is personal.
2:22.0	It's grounded in the stories of her own ancestors.
2:25.1	Her new book is called Black Folk, the Roots of the Black Working Class.
2:28.3	And in it, Kelly writes,
	...

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