SPEAKING ENGAGEMENTS

Keynote Addresses + Invited Talks

  • “From the Same Ground: The Roots of the Black Working Class”

    Center for Race and Public Education in the South, School of Education and Human Development, University of Virginia, April 16, 2025.

  • “Labor and the Living Arts,”

    2025 Project Threadways Symposium, Florence, Alabama, April 25, 2025.

  • “Studying the Black Working Class”

    C. G. Gordon Moss Lecture, Moton Museum and Longwood University, Farmville, VA, March 19, 2025.

  • “The Roots of the Black Working Class”

    Black History Month Lecture, Monmouth University, West Long Branch, NJ, February 26, 2025.

  • “Fervent Vision of Freedom: Finding the Black Working Class”

    2025 Distinguished Black History Month Lecture, University of Missouri, Columbia, MO, February 6, 2025.

  • “Places of Possibility: Why Restaurant Work Matters”

    2024 Southern Foodways Symposium, Raleigh, NC, October 28, 2024.

  • “Black Folk and Black Labor”

    SEIU 2024 Summer Student Institute, North Carolina A&T, Greensboro, NC July 17, 2024.

  • “The Study of the Roots of the Black Working Class"

    Littlefield Lecture Series, Department of History, The University of Texas at Austin, March 26, 2024.

  • “History Remembers Them: King and Legacy of the Black Working Class”

    Rhodes College, March 5, 2024.

  • “Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class"

    The Public Square Speaker Series, Martin Luther King, Jr. Memorial Library, Washington, D.C., February 10, 2024.

  • “Black Folk”

    Community Book Study, The School District of University City, Missouri, January 26, 2024.

  • “The Trouble at Okolona”

    Race and Southern-ness Inaugural Symposium, The DeLaney Center, Washingon and Lee University, Lexington, Virginia, December 1, 2023.

  • “Black Folk”

    Labor and Working-Class History Association/Association for the Study of African American Life and History, November 16, 2023.

  • “Black Folk”

    Writer’s Discussion Series, Sonja Haynes Stone Center, University of North Carolina, November 2, 2023.

  • “The Roots of the Black Working Class”

    A. Scott Bulllitt Lecture in American History, Seattle Public Library, Northwest African American Museum, October 25, 2023.

  • “A People’s History of the Black Working Class”

    Zinn Education Project, October 16, 2023.

  • “The Roots of the Black Working Class”

    Author Talk, SEIU, National Domestic Workers, DePaul University, Chicago, Illinois, October 19, 2023.

  • “Black Folk"

    The New York Society Library, New York City, N.Y., September 28, 2023.

  • “Black Folk: Book Talk with Blair LM Kelley”

    Weeksville Heritage Center, Brooklyn, NY, August 17, 2023.

  • “Black Folk”

    Free Library of Philadelphia, Philadelphia, PA, June 26, 2023.

  • “Black Genealogy and the Black Working Class:

    National Museum of African American History and Culture, Washington, D.C., June 24, 2023.

  • “Studying the Roots of the Black Working Class”

    Enoch Pratt Library, Baltimore, MD, June 22, 2023.

  • “Oral History: An Approach to Pedagogy and Practice”

    Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, Harvard University, November 2, 2022.

  • “Generational Pain: Black Histories of Disease and the Impact of COVID-19 on the Black Working Class,”

    A Nation in Peril: Race, Health, and Democracy, Africana Studies Symposium, Department of Africana Studies, UNC-Charlotte, April 22, 2021.ion goes here

  • “The Promise of the Black Working Class”

    Skotheim Lecture, Department of History, Whitman College, April 1, 2021.

  • “Deep Roots: Martin Luther King Jr. and the History of Black Protest”

    2021 Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Endowed Lecture, Bridgewater College, January 18, 2021.

  • “Black Postal Workers and the History of Resistance”

    New Student Experience - Creativity, Community, and Change, "Voice and Vote: Developing an Inclusive Society”, The City College of New York-CUNY, October 2, 2020.