Episode #19 (Dr. Erik Gellman - Death Blow to Jim Crow - Interview by Serena Barbieri)

Erik Gellman is Associate Professor of History and Director of African American Studies at Roosevelt University in Chicago. Gellman holds a Ph.D. from Northwestern University. His first book The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in the New Deal America coauthored with Jarod Roll, argued that Christianity became a driving force for the Southern workingmen’s political and economic advancement in the New Deal era. By examining the lives of two preachers and labor activists, Owen Whitfield and Claude Williams, Gellman explained an unusual and innovative link between labor and religious history. In 2012, Gellman published Death Blow to Jim Crow, which examines the birth and development of the National Negro Congress and its role as a militant civil rights organization in the mid-twentieth century.Serena Barbieri is a graduate student in history at Sam Houston State University.