Publications

The Book

• Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-1974 (University of North Carolina Press, 2013) – inaugural volume of Justice, Power, and Politics series, edited by Heather Thompson and Rhonda Williams

Through an analysis of multiracial anti-poverty organizing in the 1960s and 1970s, my book argues that race-based identity politics and class-based coalition politics were not antithetical, but mutually reinforcing.  African Americans’ and Mexican Americans’ fight against poverty held the greatest potential for multiracial cooperation at the time. Yet such efforts – most prominently the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968 – also exposed the complex dynamics between the nation’s two largest minority groups, including distinct definitions of justice among activists. Such collaboration was difficult, rarely sustained, and even symbolic at times. Some meaningful coalition occurred, but more often it facilitated productive race-based activism by African Americans and Mexican Americans in attaining political and cultural power in the 1970s. The development of such bases of power, in turn, made multiracial collaboration more possible in the future.  This book challenges the prevailing understanding of racial binaries in modern U.S. history, recasts the relationship between blacks and Mexican Americans, and complicates our understanding of a “long civil rights movement,” modern identity politics, and origins of the Chicano movement.

Articles, Book Chapters, and Other Publications

• “12 Years a Slave as a Bridge to Primary Source Research,” Prompt: A Journal of Academic Writing Assignments 1:1 (2017): 29-34
• “Is It Time for the Kneeling Freedman Statue to Go?” Public Seminar (October 2017)
• “Where Do We Go From Here? Toward a New Freedom Budget,” co-authored with James Tracy, Rooflines: A Shelterforce Blog (March 2017)
• “Rainbow Reformers: Black-Brown Activism and the Election of Harold Washington,” in Civil Rights and Beyond: African American Activism and Latino/a Activism in the Twentieth-Century United States, ed. Brian Behnken (University of Georgia Press, 2016)
• “Black, Brown, and Poor: Civil Rights and the Making of the Chicano Movement,” in The Struggle in Black and Brown: African American/Mexican American Race Relations During the Civil Rights Era, ed. Brian Behnken (University of Nebraska Press, 2012)
• “King’s Assassination Provided a Window of Opportunity for the Poor People’s Campaign,” in Perspectives on Modern World History: The Martin Luther King Jr. Assassination, ed. Noah Berlatsky (Greenhaven Press, 2011), 111-122
•  “ ‘The Press Did You In’: The Poor People’s Campaign and the Mass Media,” The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 3:1 (June 2010) — Winning article for the Ronald T. and Gayla D. Farrar Media and Civil Rights Award, 2011

Book Reviews

• Prisoners of Hope: Lyndon B. Johnson, The Great Society and the Limits of Liberalism, by Randall B. Woods, in The Sixties: A Journal of History, Politics and Culture 10:1 (Spring 2017)
• Not Free, Not For All: Public Libraries in the Age of Jim Crow, by Cheryl Knott, in Journal of Southern History (May 2017)
• In the Spirit of a New People: The Cultural Politics of the Chicano Movement, by Randy J. Ontiveros, in Journal of American History (February 2015)
• A Renegade Union, by Lisa Phillips, Labor (Winter 2014)
• Hillbilly Nationalists, by Amy Sonnie and James Tracy, The Sixties (Fall 2012)
• The Music Has Gone Out of the Movement, by David Carter, Journal of American History 97:1 (June 2010)

Invited book talks and media events

• University of Baltimore, Baltimore, slated for February 2018
• Texas A&M University, College Station, Tx., slated for February 2018
• Potters House, Washington, D.C., slated for April 2018
• “Today in Native History: Natives Participate in Poor People’s Campaign; Protest BIA,” Indian Country Today, June 2017
• American Friends Service Committee 100th ann. symposium, Philadelphia, April 2017
• Virginia Theological Seminary, Alexandria, Va., April 2017
• Library of Congress black-brown civil rights symposium, Washington, September 2014
• Civil Rights Heritage Center, South Bend, Ind., March 2014
• University of California, Santa Barbara, February 2014
• Durham Public Library, Durham, N.C., January 2014
• “Live from Heartland,” 88.7 WLUW, Chicago, Ill., June 2013
• “Crunchtime!” Vivelo Hoy (Chicago Tribune), Chicago, Ill., June 2013
• The Green Arcade Bookshop, San Francisco, Calif., April 2013
• “State of Things,” 90.5 WUNC, Durham, N.C., March 2013
• Flyleaf Books, Chapel Hill, N.C., March 2013
• The Regulator Bookshop, Durham, N.C., February 2013

Selected Presentations

• “Harold Washington: The Black Mayor in a Balkanized City,” to present at annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Sacramento, Calif., April 2018
• “Uptown Liberals and Poor White Newcomers, 1955-1964,” to provide formal comments on Devin Hunter’s paper at Newberry Labor Seminar, Chicago, January 2018
• “The Press Did You In,” to present on invited panel on Poor People’s Campaign at annual meeting of the D.C. Historical Studies Association, Washington, November 2017
• “Community-Making and Coalitions in California, 1960s-1980s,” chaired and commented for panel at annual meeting of Pacific Coast Branch-American Historical Association, Los Angeles, August 2017
• “Beyond Celebration: Student Publications in Writing Pedagogy,” annual meeting of the Conference on College Composition and Communication, Portland, Ore., March 2017
• “Chicago Mayors and the Challenges of Postwar Urban Governance,” remarks at biennial meeting of the Urban History Association, Chicago, October 2016
• “ ‘We Have Won’? Harold Washington and Multiracial Politics in the Age of Reagan,” monthly GW history department colloquium, December 2015
• “State of the Field: Crossing Racial Divides in the 20th Century West,” remarks at annual meeting of the Western History Association, Portland, Ore., September 2015
• “Using Student Publications in the Writing Classroom,” annual meeting of the Council of Writing Program Administrators, Boise, Idaho, July 2015
• ‘It’s Our Turn’: Immigration, Coalition, and Working-Class Organizing for Harold Washington,” annual meeting of the Labor and Working-Class History Association, Washington, D.C., May 2015
• “Radical Political Histories of the Midwest,” chaired and commented for panel at annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, St. Louis, April 2015
• “Black and Brown Ballots: Building Electoral and Labor Coalitions in an Age of Limits,” annual meeting of the Southern Labor Studies Conference, Washington, March 2015
• “When Poor People Marched on (and in) Washington,” annual meeting of the D.C. Historical Studies Association, Washington, November 2014
• “Book Roundtable: Building a Latino Civil Rights Movement,” annual meeting of the American Studies Association, Los Angeles, November 2014
• “Immigration, Coalition, and the Rise of Black-Brown Politics in Chicago,” to be presented at the annual meeting of the Organization of American Historians, Atlanta, April 2014
• “Immigration, Coalition, and Black-Brown Working-Class Politics in Chicago,” presented at Labor History seminar of the Newberry Library, Chicago, December 2013
• “ ‘We Have Won’: Harold Washington, Black Politics, and the Rise of Latino Power in Chicago,” presented at the annual meeting of the Triangle African American History Colloquium, Chapel Hill, February 2013
• “ African American and Latino Voices in 1980s Chicago,” presented at the annual meeting of the International Oral History Association, Buenos Aires, Argentina, September 2012
• “Black and Brown Power in the Fight Against Poverty,” presented at “The Fire Every Time: Reframing Black Power” conference, Charleston, S.C., September 2012
•  “Multiracial Efforts, Intra-racial Gains: Chicanos in the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968,” presented at Chicano historiography conference, UCSB, Santa Barbara, Calif., February 2012
• “ ‘With Whom We Are Friendly and Have Mutual Respect’:  Corky Gonzales, African Americans and the Limits of Multiracial Politics,” presented at the annual meeting of the American Studies Association, Baltimore, Md., October 2011
• “ ‘The Press Did You In’: Media Framing, Class, and the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968,” Farrar Award recipient talk, presented at first annual meeting of the Media & Civil Rights History Symposium, Columbia, S.C., March 2011
• “Poor Power: Exploring Chicago’s Interracial Activism in an Age of Limits,” annual meeting of American Historical Association, San Diego, January 2010
• “Black, Brown, and Poor: Civil Rights and the Making of the Chicano Movement,” annual meeting of Organization of American Historians, Seattle, March 2009
• “Memory and the Movement: Martin Luther King Jr., the Poor People’s Campaign and Its Legacies,” Human Rights Forum, North Carolina Central University, Durham, January 2008
• “Grassroots Voices, Memory, and the Poor People’s Campaign,” annual meeting of Oral History Association, Oakland, Calif., October 2007
• “Interethnic Efforts, Intra-ethnic Gains: Chicanos in the Poor People’s Campaign of 1968,” annual meeting of Western History Association, Oklahoma City, Okla., October 2007
• “ ‘Jobs or Income’: Welfare, Work and the Challenge to Anti-Poverty Coalition-Building in the 1960s,” annual meeting of Southern Labor Studies / LAWCHA Conference “Working Class Activism in the South and the Nation: Contemporary Challenges in Historical Context,” Duke University, Durham, N.C., May 2007
• “ ‘The Black Republic’ in White City: Analyzing Frederick Douglass’ Lecture on Haiti,” annual meeting of South Eastern Council on Latin American Studies, Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tenn., April 2005
• “ ‘I’m Against the Way It Is Being Done’: School Desegregation in Pinellas County, Florida,” Conference of Florida Historians, Jacksonville State University, Jacksonville, Fla., March 2003