This Week in Black History, Society, and Culture
"This Week in Black History, Society, and Culture" is a monthly podcast produced by Dr. Hettie V. Williams Professor of History in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University. Williams is the author of several essays, articles, book chapters and the author/editor of seven books. Her research interests include African American intellectual and cultural history, women's history, and race/ethnic studies. She is also the former director of the Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston. Williams periodically interviews scholars, authors, activists, and community leaders on matters related to the history, society, and culture of Black and African American communities in the United States (U.S.) and the world. These podcast episodes are on a variety of subjects including, but not limited to, higher education, economics, criminal justice, reparations, mental health, history, science, gender, popular culture, women, and politics. A new episode will be released monthly on Monday mornings from September to May during each academic term.
This Week in Black History, Society, and Culture
The King of the North: A Discussion with Jeanne Theoharis
This week Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis about the Civil Rights Movement in the North. Williams is professor of history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University and the current director of the African Diaspora Studies Program at Monmouth. Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography and the Lettia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. She is a renowned scholar of the Black freedom struggle in U.S. history and society. In this conversation, we focus primarily on the latest book by Theoharis King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr’s Life of Struggle Outside of the South (The New Press, 2025) that argues King’s northern campaigns were fundamentally instrumental in shaping his larger quest for equity and justice across the nation. King spent substantial time in the North first as a student then as a mature activist in places such as New Jersey, New York, and in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. Theoharis in fact advances the thesis in King of the North that locales such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago were “at the heart of his campaign for racial justice.” This groundbreaking book disrupts our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement in a myriad of ways. Click here to order a copy of The King of the North
#MLK #CivilRightsMovement #SocialJustice
