Forum From the Archives: ‘Black Folk’ Centers History and Activist Legacy of Black Working Class

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KQED

Politics, News, News Commentary

4.6 • 656 Ratings

🗓️ 15 January 2024

⏱️ 56 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, author, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class." She is the director of the Center for the Study of the American South and co-director of the Southern Futures initiative at the University of North Carolina. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Support for Forum comes from Rancho LaPuerta, a health resort with 85 years of wellness experience,
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0:42.8	From KQED.
0:43.8	From KQBD in San Francisco, I'm Nina Kim.
1:02.4	Coming up on forum, an encore of my August conversation with Blair L.M. Kelly about the history of the black working class.
1:09.7	Though the term working class, Kelly says,
1:11.8	conjures images of ruddy white men in hard hats
1:14.7	or white waitresses and Midwestern diners,
1:17.4	black people are more likely to be working class and union members.
1:21.0	And a closer look at the roots of the black working class
1:23.2	and their distinct experience of coming out of enslavement
	...

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