This is Fresh Air.

I'm Tanya Mosley.

Over the last few years, University of North Carolina

professor Blair Kelly would often bristle when she heard

the way TV commentators use the term white working class.

She felt the news media was obscuring the existence

of one of America's vital workforces.

From slavery to the formation of labor unions,

as we know them, it is the black working class, Kelly writes

in her new book, that is also at the center

of the American story.

Black folk, the roots of the black working class,

gives a portrait of the laundresses, pullman

porters, domestic maids, and postal workers

who contribute it to the wealth and prosperity of this country,

playing major roles in organizing for better jobs, better

pay, and equal rights.

Blair Kelly gives an expansive view spanning 200 years

from one of her earliest known ancestors

to the essential workers during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Blair Kelly is director of the Center for the Study

of the American South, a Joel R. Williamson

...