In conversation with Marc Lamont Hill

Referred to by acclaimed author and academic Michael Eric Dyson as “one of the most important works of history to come across my desk in a long time,” Blair LM Kelley’s Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class is an exhaustive coast-to-coast narrative that seeks to reclaim Black workers’ central contribution to workers’ rights throughout U.S. history. Kelley is also the author of Right to Ride: Streetcar Boycotts and African American Citizenship, winner of the Letitia Woods Brown Best Book Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. 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, she has contributed work to such publications as The New York Times and The Washington Post, and she has appeared on MSNBC’s All In and NPR’s Here and Now, among other media outlets.

The Steve Charles Chair in Media, Cities and Solutions at Temple University, Marc Lamont Hill is the host of BET News and the Coffee and Books podcast. The recipient of honors from the National Association of Black Journalists, GLAAD, and the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, he is the author of six books, including Beats, Rhymes, and Classroom Life; Nobody: Casualties of America's War on the Vulnerable, from Ferguson to Flint and Beyond; and Except for Palestine: The Limits of Progressive Politics.