Uploaded July 2024 | Updated September 2026, 1 day ago
Watch more Left of Black: https://fhi.duke.edu/engagement/left-black/
Too often, the drive for upward mobility and the desire to identify with the middle class causes us to discredit the value of blue collar workers, particularly those African Americans who are working class. Award-winning author and historian Dr. Blair LM Kelley joins host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal to discuss her latest book, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class"–– Winner of the 2020 Creative Nonfiction Grant from The Whiting Foundation and the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award.
Dr. Kelley is also the first Black woman to serve as the director of the Center for the Study of the American South in its thirty-year history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at UNC.
Find her book here, named one of Smithsonian's Best Books of 2023: wwnorton.com/books/9781631496554
Learn more about Dr. Kelley here: profblmkelley.com
Left of Black is the Webby Award-nominated series featuring interviews with Black Studies scholars, created and hosted by the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies Dr. Mark Anthony Neal. From 2010-2020, it was produced by the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Global Studies. In 2020, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute took over production, with funding support from Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
Directed & edited by Eric Barstow, M.F.A.
Camera & assistant editor, Jakiah Glass
@dukeuniversity @FranklinHumanities @dukeuniversitysdepartmento2485 @FranklinCenterAtDuke @uncchapelhill @centerforthestudyoftheamer9263
Watch more Left of Black: https://fhi.duke.edu/engagement/left-black/
Too often, the drive for upward mobility and the desire to identify with the middle class causes us to discredit the value of blue collar workers, particularly those African Americans who are working class. Award-winning author and historian Dr. Blair LM Kelley joins host Dr. Mark Anthony Neal to discuss her latest book, "Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class"–– Winner of the 2020 Creative Nonfiction Grant from The Whiting Foundation and the 2024 Robert F. Kennedy Human Rights Book Award.
Dr. Kelley is also the first Black woman to serve as the director of the Center for the Study of the American South in its thirty-year history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is currently the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at UNC.
Find her book here, named one of Smithsonian's Best Books of 2023: wwnorton.com/books/9781631496554
Learn more about Dr. Kelley here: profblmkelley.com
Left of Black is the Webby Award-nominated series featuring interviews with Black Studies scholars, created and hosted by the James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of African and African American Studies Dr. Mark Anthony Neal. From 2010-2020, it was produced by the John Hope Franklin Center for International and Global Studies. In 2020, the John Hope Franklin Humanities Institute took over production, with funding support from Trinity College of Arts & Sciences.
Directed & edited by Eric Barstow, M.F.A.
Camera & assistant editor, Jakiah Glass
@dukeuniversity @FranklinHumanities @dukeuniversitysdepartmento2485 @FranklinCenterAtDuke @uncchapelhill @centerforthestudyoftheamer9263
