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Title details for Black Folk by Blair L.M. Kelley - Available

Black Folk

The Roots of the Black Working Class

by Blair L.M. Kelley
Anika Noni Rose
Audiobook
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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 even the very existence, of entire groups of working people, including everyday Black workers. In this brilliant corrective, Black Folk, acclaimed historian Blair LM Kelley restores the Black working class to the center of the American story. Spanning two hundred years-from one of Kelley's earliest known ancestors, an enslaved blacksmith, to the essential workers of the Covid-19 pandemic-Black Folk highlights the lives of the laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, and postal workers who established the Black working class as a force in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Taking jobs white people didn't want and confined to segregated neighborhoods, Black workers found community in intimate spaces, from stoops on city streets to the backyards of washerwomen, where multiple generations labored from dawn to dusk, talking and laughing in a space free of white supervision. As millions of Black people left the violence of the American South for the promise of a better life in the North and West, these networks of resistance and joy sustained early arrivals and newcomers alike and laid the groundwork for organizing for better jobs, better pay, and equal rights.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    September 19, 2023

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781696612609
      • File size: 260398 KB
      • Duration: 09:02:29

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      May 31, 2024

      Historian Kelley (director, Ctr. for the Study of the American South at the Univ. of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; Right To Ride) offers a deeply researched chronicle of the Black working class in the United States; it was a Smithsonian magazine best book of 2023. Drawing upon her own family history, Kelley shares the many stories of people comprising the Black working class, a group she considers the nation's "most active, most engaged, most informed, and most impassioned working class." Spanning two centuries, beginning with Henry, her earliest known enslaved ancestor, Kelley tells the stories of Black laundresses, Pullman porters, domestic maids, postal workers, factory workers, and more. She traces the lineage of the Duncan, Raeford, and McCracken families, who migrated through Georgia, Virginia, South Carolina, and Maryland, working for little pay as they hoped for a better future. Anika Noni Rose narrates, sensitively performing Kelley's book with her melodic, captivating voice. Rose's eloquent narration pays homage to the many hardworking people Kelley illuminates. Listeners will be riveted by this incisive, deeply affecting account. VERDICT Kelley's powerful, corrective history is not to be missed. Share with listeners seeking a different take on traditional interpretations of U.S. labor history.--Mitzi Mack

      Copyright 2024 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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