Off the Shelf: Revolutionary Readings in Times of Crisis Humanities Research Institute

 In this episode, we hear from guest David Walton, history professor and founding director of the Global Black Studies program at Western Carolina University. Walton takes the listener back to his childhood, when he developed an interest in reading foundational works by public intellectuals like Malcolm X, Bobby Seale, and Huey Newton. After stints with teaching and military service, Walton returned to those readings and dug deeper into histories both global and local— even discovering connections among his own family—as he completed dual PhD degrees.

Episode web page and show notes

“Centering the voice of working people is so important to the work that I do.” -Dr. Williams

In this episode, host Augustus Wood talks to Labor Studies professor—and self-described “historian of the working people”—Naomi R Williams (Rutgers University), whose research in southeast Wisconsin labor history sheds new light on the pivotal role of Black workers in forging and leveraging union solidarity in the 1970s and 80s. Throughout their work, Williams emphasizes the importance of keeping workers' voices at the center—especially those typically missing from the historical narrative.

As Wood says, “Those of us that do this kind of work, we see the people as the engines of history, the living archive.”

Some of the books noted during their conversation include Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South by Robert R. Korstad, Continually Working: Black Women, Community Intellectualism, and Economic Justice in Postwar Milwaukee by Crystal Moten, and The Future We Need: Organizing for a Better Democracy in the 21st Century by Erica Smiley and Sarita Gupta.

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In the this episode, host Augustus Wood talks to legendary writer, scholar, and trade unionist Bill Fletcher Jr. They cover Fletcher’s storied life from his early years as a teen activist and then college, labor organizing, and leadership in the Black Radical Congress, among other experiences. Today, Fletcher is a frequent columnist and contributor to a number of media outlets, speaking on social justice, labor, and electoral and international politics.

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In this season opener, host Augustus Wood and guest Joe William Trotter Jr. (history and social justice, Carnegie Mellon University) engage in a deep discussion of Black working class history, grounded in Trotter's pathbreaking research and published works, notably Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45 and Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America.
Trotter illuminates an often-untold story: that Black labor was essential to the building of industrial America and that workers "produced and enriched the cities in which they lived." Wood and Trotter unpack why the story of Black labor must include not only workers' agency and productivity, but also an accounting of the struggles experienced then and now. Note: this episode was recorded in May 2022.

Show notes and transcript

 In Episode 5, guest Alonzo Ward (history, Eastern Illinois University) and host Augustus Wood explore the less well known threads of American labor history, specifically Black labor in Illinois. Beyond any easy, simplified reading of the past—Black workers as "strike breakers," for example—they ask listeners to look deeper at the real, lived conditions and context of people's lives.

As history is written, are the subjects' voices part of the narrative? Is the multifaceted nature of their lives, in all of its complexity, incorporated into the analysis? As they discuss the importance of agency and complicating the story of Black labor in the 19th and 20th centuries, Ward and Wood find connections to labor trends unfolding today.  View Episode 5 show notes and transcript.

Episode 4’s featured guest recently received the Pearl Birnbaum Hurwitz Award for Humanism in Healthcare, which honors a woman who exemplifies humanism and has advanced the well-being of underserved or vulnerable populations in the healthcare arena. It’s a fitting honor for Dr. Ruby Mendenhall, whose extensive interdisciplinary research and publicly engaged work focuses on building healthy, equitable communities—with those communities solidly at the center, working together on solutions.
In this episode, Mendenhall discusses the interconnection of racial oppression, trauma, and violence with both physical and mental health. Learn about her current projects, including a MacArthur-funded initiative to create programming and wellness tools (such as art and a forthcoming wellness store) to foster healing from racial trauma in Black and Latinx high school students and young adults living in Chicago. Along the way, she highlights the scholars, works, and mentors who informed her path forward. Visit the show notes and transcript.