The first in a series of three lectures from Professor Robin D. G. Kelley given at the Havens Wright Center Spring 2021 Visiting Scholar Program.

Robin D. G. Kelley is Distinguished Professor of History & Gary B. Nash Endowed Chair in U.S. History at UCLA.   His books include, Thelonious Monk: The Life and Times of an American Original (2009); Africa Speaks, America Answers: Modern Jazz in Revolutionary Times (2012); Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination (2002); Race Rebels: Culture Politics and the Black Working Class (1994); Yo’ Mama’s DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in Urban America (1997); and Three Strikes: Miners, Musicians, Salesgirls, and the Fighting Spirit of Labor’s Last Century, written collaboratively with Dana Frank and Howard Zinn (Beacon 2001). The University of North Carolina Press recently issued a 25th anniversary edition of his first book, Hammer and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (2015). He is currently completing three book projects: Black Bodies Swinging: An American Postmortem (Metropolitan Books), a genealogy of the Black Spring protests of 2020 by way of a deep examination of state-sanctioned racialized violence and a history of resistance; The Education of Ms. Grace Halsell: An Intimate History of the American Century, a biography of the late Grace Halsell; and a general survey of African American history, in collaboration with Professor Tera Hunter.