Brian Kelly (historian)
Encyclopedia
Brian Kelly is a US-born historian and a Reader in American History
teaching at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland
. His work is mainly concerned with labor
and race in the American South
, though much of his most recent scholarship focuses on the aftermath of slave emancipation. He directs an international collaborative research project, After Slavery: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas [www.afterslavery.com] and is a fellow of the Institute for Southern Studies of the University of South Carolina
and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute
at Harvard University
. Awarded his doctorate at Brandeis University
, Kelly has published widely on race and class in the nineteenth and twentieth-century United States, including an award-winning book on working-class interracialism in the Alabama mines, Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921 (Illinois, 2001) and an extended introduction to the reissue of Bernard Mandel's Old Left classic, Labor: Free and Slave. In March 2010 Kelly and the After Slavery Project hosted the Conference on Race, Labor and Citizenship in the Post-Emancipation South at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.
History of the United States
The history of the United States traditionally starts with the Declaration of Independence in the year 1776, although its territory was inhabited by Native Americans since prehistoric times and then by European colonists who followed the voyages of Christopher Columbus starting in 1492. The...
teaching at Queen's University Belfast in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland is one of the four countries of the United Kingdom. Situated in the north-east of the island of Ireland, it shares a border with the Republic of Ireland to the south and west...
. His work is mainly concerned with labor
Labor history of the United States
The labor history of the United States describes the history of organized labor, as well as the more general history of working people, in the United States. Pressures dictating the nature and power of organized labor have included the evolution and power of the corporation, efforts by employers...
and race in the American South
History of the Southern United States
The history of the Southern United States reaches back hundreds of years and includes the Mississippian people, well known for their mound building. European history in the region began in the very earliest days of the exploration and colonization of North America...
, though much of his most recent scholarship focuses on the aftermath of slave emancipation. He directs an international collaborative research project, After Slavery: Race, Labor and Politics in the Post-Emancipation Carolinas [www.afterslavery.com] and is a fellow of the Institute for Southern Studies of the University of South Carolina
University of South Carolina
The University of South Carolina is a public, co-educational research university located in Columbia, South Carolina, United States, with 7 surrounding satellite campuses. Its historic campus covers over in downtown Columbia not far from the South Carolina State House...
and the W. E. B. Du Bois Institute
W. E. B. Du Bois Institute
The W. E. B. Du Bois Institute for African and African-American Research is located at Harvard University and was established in 1969. It is named after W. E. B. Du Bois who was the first African American to receive a Ph.D. from Harvard University...
at Harvard University
Harvard University
Harvard University is a private Ivy League university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts, United States, established in 1636 by the Massachusetts legislature. Harvard is the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States and the first corporation chartered in the country...
. Awarded his doctorate at Brandeis University
Brandeis University
Brandeis University is an American private research university with a liberal arts focus. It is located in the southwestern corner of Waltham, Massachusetts, nine miles west of Boston. The University has an enrollment of approximately 3,200 undergraduate and 2,100 graduate students. In 2011, it...
, Kelly has published widely on race and class in the nineteenth and twentieth-century United States, including an award-winning book on working-class interracialism in the Alabama mines, Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921 (Illinois, 2001) and an extended introduction to the reissue of Bernard Mandel's Old Left classic, Labor: Free and Slave. In March 2010 Kelly and the After Slavery Project hosted the Conference on Race, Labor and Citizenship in the Post-Emancipation South at the College of Charleston in South Carolina.
Books
- Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921 (University of Illinois Press, 2001).
- This book won four major awards and was selected as an Outstanding Academic Title for 2001 by Choice Magazine. The Southern Historical Association awarded it the H. L. Mitchell Prize for an outstanding book in Southern working-class history and the Frances Butler Simkins Award for the best first book by an author in Southern history. It won the Richard L. Wentworth Prize for History from the University of Illinois Press and the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for new and innovative scholarship in or about the marxist tradition. It is found in almost 500 WorldCat libraries
- Reviewed by N Ahmed in: Economic History Review 55, Part 2 (2002): 379
- Reviewed by G Feldman in: The Journal of American history. 91, no. 3, (2004): 1066
- Reviewed by A Draper in Labor History , 43, Part 4 (2002): 561
- Reviewed by Robert H Zieger in International Review of Social History 47, Part 3 (2002): 501
- Reviewed by J White in Ethnic and Racial Studies 26, Part 1 (2003): 200
- Reviewedby J H M Laslett in International Labor and Working Class History no. 64, (2003): 219-220
Articles
- 'Mapping Alternate Routes to Antislavery' Contribution to ‘Up for Debate’ in Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 5:4 (Winter 2008): 69-73.
- ‘Emancipations and Reversals: Labor, Race and the Boundaries of American Freedom in the Age of Capital’. International Labor and Working Class History (Nov. 2008).
- 'Labor and Place: The Contours of Freedpeoples’ Mobilization in Reconstruction South Carolina'. Journal of Peasant Studies: Special Issue on ‘Rethinking Agrarian History’ (Nov. 2008).
- ‘Martin Luther King, the Memphis Sanitation Strike, and the Unfinished Business of the American Civil Rights Movement’. International Socialism Journal 118 (Spring 2008).
- 'Industrial Sentinels Confront the "Rabid Faction"': Booker T. Washington, Industrial Accommodation, and the Labor Question in the Jim Crow South'. In Eric Arnesen (ed.), The Black Worker: Race and Labor Activism since Emancipation (Illinois, 2006).
- 'Black workers, the Republican Party, and the crisis of Reconstruction in lowcountry South Carolina'. International Review of Social History 51:3 (2006).
- 'Materialism and the Persistence of Race in the Jim Crow South' in Historical Materialism 12 (2004).
- 'Beyond the "Talented Tenth"': Black Workers, Black Elites, and the Limits of Accommodation in Industrial Birmingham, 1900–1920'. In Adam Green and Charles Payne (eds), Time Longer than Rope: A Century of African-American Activism, 1850–1950 (New York, 2003).
Miscellaneous
- Bernard Mandel. Labor, Free and Slave: Workingmen and the Antislavery Movement in the United States. (Illinois, 2007) Introduction to reprint.
External links
- Academic homepage at Queen's University's site
- After Slavery Website
- Google Books