In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Angela Simms about the Black Middle Class in a Baltimore suburb. Williams is professor of history and director of the African Diaspora Studies program at Monmouth University and Simms is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Barnard College Columbia University. Simms is also the author of the book Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia recently published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2026. Fighting for a Foothold is the focus of our conversation. In this text, Simms argues that Prince George’s County located in the Washington, D.C. metro area is the jurisdiction in the United States with the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents. Despite this fact, the county is unable to consistently provide high-quality public services to the residents residing in the county. This is due in part to the hording of resources and services in adjacent majority white counties. Simms illustrates in her text the multiple factors that contribute to the inability of the county in providing services of a higher standard to much of its population. #BlackHistory #BlackMiddleClass #BlackBaltimore

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

This week Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Lewis F. Thomas, III about education, Black men, and mentoring. Williams is a professor of history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University and the director of the African Diaspora Studies (ADS) program at Monmouth. Thomas has more than thirty years of experience in the field of education working in several urban environments including in Philadelphia and New York. This week we focus on his extensive career as a teacher and administrator in various locales as well as his work specifically on the development of Black men in society with such initiatives as the Black Fathers Institute a research-to-practice hub that amplifies the voice of Black fathers and advances radical hope and healing for families. Thomas has through his extensive experience as an educator implemented mentoring programs focused on data informed, culturally responsive, restorative justice approaches.