Black in Boston and Beyond

In this episode Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with Jonathan Eig about his bestselling book King, A Life recently published by Farrar, Strauss, and Giroux in 2023. Williams is the Director of the Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts Boston and her research and teaching interests include African American intellectual history, Black women’s history, and race and ethnic studies. She is also the most recent president of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS) from 2021 to 2023. Eig is a journalist, biographer, and bestselling author of six books including Luckiest Man: The Life and Death of Lou Gehrig (2005), Opening Day: The Story of Jackie Robinson’s First Season (2007), and Ali: A Life (2017). His journalistic writings have appeared in The New York Times, Washington Post, and the online edition of The New Yorker. Eig’s new biography of Martin Luther King, Jr. has now become the definitive work on King and in this episode, we discuss his comprehensive biography of a man he refers to as one of the nation’s “founding fathers.” This stirring account of King’s life presents a more humanistic and whole portrait of a man who struggled with depression, was relentlessly pursued by the FBI, and called this nation to conscience on the issue of racism. It is a must read. 

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with Dr. Joseph N. Cooper about his experience as a Black man in academia and his work in sports studies. Williams is the director of the Trotter Institute at University of Massachusetts at Boston and a historian of the African American experience. There are less than 4 percent African American male full professors in the U.S. and Cooper is one of few in the nation who also occupies an endowed professorship at UMass Boston. He is also the inaugural Dr. J. Keith Motley Endowed Chair of Sport Leadership and Administration at the University of Massachusetts at Boston. His research concentrates on the intersection between sport, education, race, and culture with an emphasis on sport involvement as a catalyst for holistic development. Cooper is also the faculty founder of Collective Uplift (CU) which is an organization designed to educate, empower, inspire, and support individuals to maximize their holistic potential both within and beyond athletic contexts. This is a revealing conversation about what it means to be a Black male academic and one who studies sports from an interdisciplinary framework. For more information about Cooper click here Dr. Joseph N. Cooper and to order his books click here Books by Dr. Joseph N. Cooper 

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with Dr. Nada Ali about her experience as a Black woman on the campus of the University of Massachusetts at Boston and her work on women in the Sudan. Williams is Director of the Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston and Ali is a Senior Lecturer in the Department of Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies at the University of Massachusetts Boston. Ali’s research focuses on gender and development, governance, human rights, militarization, and post conflict settings using feminist theories and methodologies with a focus on societies in the Middle East, and Africa including Sudan, South Sudan, Nigeria, Zambia, Kenya and Egypt. She is also the author of Gender, Race and Sudan Exile Politics and several book chapters, journal articles, and academic policy reports. Ali also currently serves on the Trotter Institute Transition committee and the editorial board of the Trotter Review. #Trotter #TrotterInstitute #Sudan #BlackWomen

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Tejai Beulah Howard about Howard Thurman, Martin Luther King, Jr. and their intellectual connection as well as the experience of both men in Boston. Williams is the incoming director of the Trotter Institute at UMass Boston and Beulah-Howard is spiritual director, scholar of African American, race and American Christianity as well as a former senior editor with Black Perspectives the award- winning blog of the African American Intellectual History Society (AAIHS). She received her PhD from Drew University Theological School where she also received the Rev. Robert W. Edgar Prize for Social Justice for her dissertation on the Black freedom struggle.  She is also involved with Freedom Church of the Poor and several professional organizations. Dr. Beulah Howard’s recent writing is featured in the book, We Cry Justice: Reading the Bible with the Poor People’s Campaign (Broadleaf, 2021) edited by Rev. Liz Theoharis, The Other Journal, Interpretation: A Journal of Bible and Theology, and Journal of American Academy of Religion. She is currently at work on a monograph on the role of the black power movement and black evangelical preachers. Beulah Howard is fast becoming one of the foremost scholars studying Howard Thurman is the U.S. today as evidenced with the roundtable that she recently organized for Black Perspectives found here: Howard Thurman and the Civil Rights Movement and for more about her work as a spiritual director click here: A Soul Vibe LLC 

#Thurman #MLK #BlackinBoston

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Arjun Collins about the life and legacy of Ella Little Collins and Malcolm X. Williams is the incoming director of the Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at the University of Massachusetts Boston and Collins is the great nephew of Malcolm X and grandson of Ella Little Collins who was a long-time resident of Boston from the mid-1940s until her death in 1996. Ella Collins (born to Earl Little and Daisy Little in 1914 and the half-sister of Malcolm) became Malcolm’s legal guardian after his mother died when he was about 8 years old. Collins then had a major influence on Malcolm’s life and legacy by helping to raise him until age 21 and remaining actively engaged in supporting him throughout his life. It was she who first introduced him to Islam and took over the Organization of African Unity after he died. It was she who buried him when he died. Ella Little Collins was an activist in her own right in Boston where she was a community organizer and education advocate. Her children and grandchildren including Arjun Collins have carried on the legacy of social justice agitation down to the present. Arjun Collins here explains—at times in evocative terms—the legacy of his grandmother, uncle, and family. This is the uncut raw original edition of our interview. For more information about Arjun click here: Arjun Collins and look for his new book about the environmental and naturalist thought of his great uncle Malcolm X soon.   

#MalcolmX #BlackinBostonandBeyond #Blackequality  

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Zebulon Vance Miletsky about his book Before Busing: A History of Boston’s Long Black Freedom Struggle (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). Williams is incoming director of the Trotter Institute at UMass Boston and Miletsky is Associate Professor of Africana Studies at Stonybrook in New York. Before Busing takes us through the long history of the Civil Rights Movement in Boston. Miletsky begins his text by discussing the roots of American liberty and bondage in the Boston and continues with a discussion of the early push to desegregate the school system in Boston during the nineteenth century. His work is changing the way we look at the Black freedom struggle by arguing that there are more apparent links between racism in the South and North. Boston’s Black citizens were in many ways leaders in the demand for civil rights reform in the public school system and in public places. In this episode, he goes as far as to reconceptualize the notion of the sundown town to the idea that given the deep segregation in sections of the city of Boston we might begin to think of the space as having a history as a “sundown city.” Before Busing is changing the way that we think about the history of the civil rights movement in the North and in the nation. For more about Dr. Miletsky click here Dr. Zebulon Vance Miletsky and for information on ordering his book click here: Before Busing: A History of Boston's Long Black Freedom Struggle #BlackBoston #BlackinBostonandBeyond

In this episode Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Ben Railton about the concept of critical patriotism. Dr. Williams is the director of the Trotter Institute at UMass Boston and Railton is Professor of English Studies at Fitchburg State University a public institution in Fitchburg Massachusetts. He is also the author of Of Thee I Sing: The Contested History of American Patriotism (Rowman & Littlefield, 2021) in which he claims that there are four competing concepts of American patriotism including critical, active, mythic, and celebratory. Railton argues that critical patriotism is the type of patriotism operationalized to “move the nation closer to its ideals” through critique and highlighting the “nation’s shortcomings” or flaws. African Americans he further contends have been central to this history of critical patriotism from the acts of Crispus Attucks during the American Revolution to the writings of James Baldwin in the mid-twentieth century. Railton identifies several Black Bostonians as practitioners of these four types of patriotism including Attucks, Phillis Wheatley, Elizabeth Freeman (MumBet), and David Walker. For more about Railton’s book click here Of Thee I Sing and another example of Black critical patriotism here Black Critical Patriotism and on the tourist site he mentions click here The Black Heritage Trail #BlackBostonians #BlackFreedom #BlackCriticalPatriots 

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Drs. Rachel Jessica Daniel Director of the Center for Employee Enrichment and Development (CEED) at Massasoit Community College in Brockton, Massachusetts, and President of the Bay State National Council on Black American Affairs, and Carine Sauvignon Executive Dean for the Canton Campus at Massasoit Community College. Massasoit has one of the first Black Studies majors at a community college in the state of Massachusetts. This program came took a decade long struggle to get certified but given that Massasoit is one of the more diverse community colleges in the state the students helped to demand this change. The program is interdisciplinary in scope and includes courses on African American literature, history, music, and culture. Professors from several academic units teach for the program and Sauvignon is one of the architects of the curriculum along with a range of other faculty on the campus. Devlin and Sauvignon tell a detailed story of how the Black Studies program at their institution came into development. These women are lively and passionate about this two-year program in a time when Black Studies is under assault across the nation. Massachusetts has been a leader in this area with some of the earliest Black Studies programs in the nation appearing at schools such as Brandeis University in 1969. There are also plans to ensure that transfer agreements are in places with institutions such as the University of Massachusetts at Boston. For more information about this program at Massasoit click here Black Studies at Massasoit Community College       

In this episode, Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in discussion about Martin Luther King, Jr. with Dr. Maurice O. Wallace. Williams is Director of the Trotter Institute at UMass Boston and Wallace is Professor of English at Rutgers University-New Brunswick, author of Constructing the Black Masculine: Identity and Ideality in African American Men’s Literature and Culture, 1775-1995, and coeditor of Pictures of Progress: Early Photography and the Making of African American Identity. Williams and Wallace discuss his latest book King’s Vibrato: Modernism, Blackness, and the Sonic Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. (Duke University Press, 2022) in which he explores the history of sound in the Black experience through an analysis of King’s vibrato. In this text, Wallace conjoins history and critical theory to discuss the “modernist soundscapes” that shaped King’s voice and expression. He further argues that King’s vibrato was produced out of a series of elements including ecclesiastical architecture, instrumentation (the organ), the audience, song, and technology. For more about Wallace click here Maurice O. Wallace and to order his book click on this link King's Vibrato: Modernism, Blackness, and the Sonic Life of Martin Luther King, Jr. 

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Joy Springfield, Esq. about race and legal services. Williams is the Director of the Trotter Institute at the University of Massachusetts at Boston and Springfield is the current Pro Bono Director at Kansas Legal Services. Springfield attended an HBCU (Howard University) where she earned a B.B.A in finance and earned her J.D. from the University of Baltimore School of Law with a concentration in Business Law. She has extensive experience in legal services and a long record of giving back to her community having devoted “hours” to pro bono work before she joined Kansas Legal Services. In her work as an attorney, she has represented numerous low-income clients in divorce cases, criminal, guardianship and on expungements. Joy shares her knowledge with us about the legal services available to poor and working-class communities as well as how to go about securing an expungement in this episode. For more information about Joy click here: Joy Springfield and for the resources she mentions in the show click here: Kansas Legal Services Website and click here for information on expungement and for information on legal services in the Boston region click here: Massachusetts and for a list of services nationwide click on this: list of legal services in the U.S.