This Week in Black History, Society, and Culture

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses jailing and mass incarceration with Dr. Melanie D. Newport. Williams is Associate Professor of African American History at Monmouth University and Newport is an Assistant Professor of history at the University of Connecticut and the author of This is My Jail: Local Politics and the Rise of Mass Incarceration (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2022). This conversation is structured mainly around Newport’s recently published book on jailing with a focus on the Cook County Jail in Chicago. In this text, Newport argues that jailing has been central to the mass incarceration project in the modern history of the United States. She links jailing to local politics and, also, community activism. Newport contends that there is a longer history of mass incarceration connected to racialized “politically repressive” jailing. She includes in this history a discussion of a host of historical actors key to this history such as wardens, correction officers, sheriffs, jailed people themselves and the network of community activists who sought to reform and imagine “their jail.” This is a groundbreaking work in the ever-expanding history of the carceral state. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Black music, culture, and criticism with Dr. Guthrie Ramsey. Williams is Associate Professor of African American History at Monmouth University and Ramsey is Emeritus Professor of Music at the University of Pennsylvania and the author of Who Hears Here? On Black Music, Pasts and Present published by the University of California Press in 2022. Ramsey is a noted pianist, composer, and Professor of African American music, history, and culture. He is also a Guggenheim Fellow and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Ramsey has authored several books on African American music history and culture. He is one of the nation’s foremost scholars of Black music culture. 

In this episode, Hettie. V. Williams discusses Black women and roller skating with Lauren T. Rorie. Williams is Associate Professor of African American History at Monmouth University and Rorie is an Adjunct Instructor in the Interdisciplinary Perspectives Program at Monmouth. Rorie’s work centers on Black women in art, culture and the Africa Diaspora including popular culture. She is currently interested in and writing about the history of Black women in roller skating, the Black freedom struggle, and community building. She finds that there are connections between social movements and Black recreation such as with activities surrounding roller skating.   

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Black soldiers and families through the Civil War era with Holly A. Pinheiro, Jr. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University and Pinheiro is Assistant Professor of African American history at Furman University and the author of The Families’ Civil War: Black Soldiers and the Fight for Racial Justice published by the University of Georgia Press in 2022. This conversation is focused on Pinheiro’s discussion of Black free born soldiers from Philadelphia, their war time service, and post-war attempts to secure their pensions including how the Civil War impacted Black families. These families faced racial discrimination before, during, and after the war. This was particularly prevalent in their attempts to receive their pensions when the war was over leading to in some cases the devastation. Pinheiro finds that the processes for securing pensions were often discriminatory and invasive. This book The Families’ Civil War is a groundbreaking work of history that anyone interested in the history of the Civil War, gender politics, family and race in U.S. history should consider readings.        

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses a short documentary film on Asbury Park, New Jersey titled “The Great Migration and Asbury Park” with Erin Fleming, and Claude Taylor. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University, Fleming is the Director of Production Services at Monmouth, and Taylor is a Professor of Communication and Director for Academic Transition and Inclusion at Monmouth. Fleming is the producer and director of the short film “Asbury Park and the Great Migration.” This short film features Claude Taylor, who was born and raised in Asbury Park, New Jersey, and Madonna Carter Jackson, who also spent her early life in Asbury Park, and preeminent scholar of African Americans in New Jersey Graham Russell Gao Hodges. Hodges is author of Black New Jersey: 1664 to the Present published by Rutgers University Press. African Americans have populated the city of Asbury Park for decades and this is a region that has contributed greatly to the history of African Americans from the rise of the Great Migration, the formation of the NAACP, through the Civil Rights Movement, to the present.  

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Christopher Willoughby. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history in the Department of History at Monmouth University. Willoughby is a Visiting Assistant Professor in the History of Medicine and Health at Pitzer College and the author of Masters of Health: Racial Science and Slavery in U.S. Medical Schools published by the University of North Carolina Press in 2022. He is also the editor of Medicine and Healing in the Age of Slavery. This conversation focuses primarily on Willoughby’s Masters of Health and the disturbing history of race, medicine, and health in the U.S. White supremacist thinking and racial science permeated American medical schools alongside the rise of modern medicine through the era of racial slavery. Willoughby traces this history in startling detail and including some conversation about the misuse and abuse of Black bodies in medical science down to the present.   

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Black and Asian solidarity with Dr. Zaneta Rago-Craft founding Director of the Intercultural Center at Monmouth University. Dr. Z identifies as multiracial and tells us some about her own Asian ancestry. She speaks here as both a DEI expert and from her personal experiences as a woman of color in the academy. This is Part II of our series on Black and Asian solidarity. We find this to be a necessary ongoing conversation, at the moment, with the rise of Anti-Asian hate that has emerged with the COVID-19 pandemic. There is an expansive history of Black and Asian solidarity as illustrated with the life-long collaboration between James and Grace Lee Boggs, Robert Williams and his travels to China, and Martin Luther King, Jr.’s friendship with Buddhist Monk Thich Nhat Hanh. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams discusses Black and Asian solidarity with Dr. Rekha Datta. This conversation is a part of a series that will run on This Week over the next season of the show. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University in the Department of History and Anthropology and Dr. Datta is a Professor of Political Science in the Department of Political Science at Monmouth University, and the former Interim Provost at the institution, she is also the Freed Endowed Chair in Social Sciences. Datta speaks from her own experience here as an Indian American and as a person with wide experience in higher education as a professor and administrator. She was also the founding Director of the Global Understanding Project “an integral part of the Institute of Global Understanding at Monmouth” which she also founded; and a recipient of a U.S. Senior Fulbright Scholar Award for her research and teaching in India. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with Reighan Gillam about race and media in Brazil. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University and Gillam is an Associate Professor of Anthropology at the University of Southern California. She is also the author of Visualizing Black Lives: Ownership and Control in Afro-Brazilian Media published by the University of Illinois Press in 2022. This conversation is focused on her recent book Visualizing Black Lives. 

In this episode, Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with Professor Kristin Henning about the criminalization of Black youth in the U.S. and the juvenile justice system. Williams is Associate Professor of African American history at Monmouth University. Henning is an attorney and nationally recognized trainer and consultant on race, adolescence and policing. She is currently the Blume Professor of Law and Director of the Juvenile Justice Clinic and Initiative at the Georgetown University Law Center and previously the lead attorney of the Juvenile Unit at the Public Defender Service for the District of Columbia. Henning is also the author of The Rage of Innocence: How America Criminalizes Black Youth (Pantheon Books, 1921).