Blair LM Kelley, Ph.D., discusses her research and book, Black Folk, The Roots of the Black Working Class, which was named one of the Smithsonian's Best Books of 2023. Black Folk was awarded a 2020 Creative Nonfiction Grant by the Whiting Foundation, and the 2022-23 John Hope Franklin/NEH Fellowship by National Humanities Center. 

Kelley is an award-winning author, historian, and scholar of the African American experience. A dedicated public historian, Kelley works to amplify the histories of Black people, chronicling the everyday impact of their activism. Dr. Kelley is currently the Joel R. Williamson Distinguished Professor of Southern Studies at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and the incoming director of the Center for the Study of the American South, the first Black woman to serve in that role in the center’s thirty-year history.

Free and open to the public.

This presentation is the keynote address for the 2024 Graduate Student Association Conference, "Old South, New South, No South."