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.

This week Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Mary Ellen Curtis about her recent book She Changed the Nation: Barbara Jordan’s Life and Legacy in Black Politics (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2025). Williams is a 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 University. Curtin is Associate Professor in the Department of Critical Race, Gender, and Culture Studies and Director of American Studies at American University in Washington, D.C. She is a historian of modern African American and women’s social and political history and the author of Black Prisoners and Their World, Alabama 1865-1900 (University Press of Virginia, 2000) that details the origins of the convict leasing system in Alabama as well as the lives of Black coal miners after emancipation. In this episode, she discusses her latest book about Barbara Jordan and Jordan’s role in both local and national politics as one of the most important Black women political figures of her generation. Click here to order a copy of She Changed the Nation