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Join us when Blair Kelley visits to discuss her latest book, Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class.
About the author:
Blair Kelley is the director of the Center for the Study of the American South and codirector of the Southern Futures initiative at the University of North Carolina. Her first book, Right to Ride, won the Letitia Woods Brown Memorial Book Prize, and she received a Whiting Creative Nonfiction Grant to support her writing of Black Folk. She lives in Durham, North Carolina.
There have been countless books, articles, and televised reports in recent years about the almost-mythic “white working class,” a tide of commentary that has obscured the labor, and the very existence, of everyday Black workers. In her brilliant corrective, Black Folk, acclaimed historian Blair Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story. Spanning two hundred years—from Kelley’s earliest known ancestor, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the Covid pandemic—her narrative focuses on the laundresses, Pullman porters, and domestic maids who established the Black working class as a political force. Excluded by whites, Black workers found community in unexpected places, from stoops on city streets to the backyards of washerwomen. These networks of resistance and joy sustained them and became the foundation of their organizing for better jobs, better pay, and equal rights. With the resurgence of labor activism in our own time, Black Folk presents a stirring history of our possible future.
Books will be available for purchase courtesy of Mac's Backs - Books on Coventry.
TAGS: | Author Event |
The City of South Euclid will conduct a resurfacing project on South Green Road between Mayfield Road and Cedar Road that we anticipate will result in travel delays. The resurfacing project is expected to begin Monday, April 3, 2023, and continue through late fall. During that time, we encourage all visitors to the South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch of Cuyahoga County Public Library to plan accordingly and allow themselves ample travel time. The South Euclid-Lyndhurst Branch will remain open for normal hours of operation during construction.
Click here for more information about the Green Road resurfacing project from the Cuyahoga County Department of Public Works.