Asking questions about someone’s past doesn’t often lead to an award-winning book, but that's how it unfolded for Blair LM Kelley. She wrote the book Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class about Black laborers, a group that has been historically underrepresented in narratives about the American working class.
Kelley, who has a doctorate in history, is the director of the Center for the Study of the American South at the University of North Carolina, and she is the first Black woman to serve in that role. Kelley spoke with In Black America producer and host John L. Hanson Jr. about how her family history inspired her to write her second book, how Black laborers became the working class and Black women's role in labor unionization.
In Black America originally interviewed Kelley in December.
