In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in discussion with writer John Vercher about his critically acclaimed book Devil is Fine. Williams is a professor of history at Monmouth University and Vercher is the author of three notable novels and currently an Assistant Professor in the Department of English at Monmouth University. Vercher’s works signal the tradition of Afro-Surrealism that began in the Harlem Renaissance with writers such as George Schuyler as represented with his work Black No More originally published in 1931. His debut novel Three-Fifths was listed as one of the best books of 2019 by the Chicago, nominated for the 2020 Edgar Award for Best First Novel, and The Strand Critics Award for Best Debut Novel. This book also received critical acclaim abroad and named Book of the Year by the U.K.’s The Sunday Times, The Financial Times, and The Guardian. Devil is Fine is Vercher’s third novel and it is a moving work that helps to extend the tradition of Afro-surrealism in the context of contemporary American fiction. It is a book about love, loss, grief, and fathers and sons. Vercher’s book can be ordered from Amazon here: Devil is Fine

#JohnVercher #DevilisFine #BlackFiction #Writing #Writers

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Angela Simms about the Black Middle Class in a Baltimore suburb. Williams is professor of history and director of the African Diaspora Studies program at Monmouth University and Simms is currently an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Urban Studies at Barnard College Columbia University. Simms is also the author of the book Fighting for a Foothold: How Government and Markets Undermine Black Middle-Class Suburbia recently published by the Russell Sage Foundation in 2026. Fighting for a Foothold is the focus of our conversation. In this text, Simms argues that Prince George’s County located in the Washington, D.C. metro area is the jurisdiction in the United States with the highest concentration of Black middle-class residents. Despite this fact, the county is unable to consistently provide high-quality public services to the residents residing in the county. This is due in part to the hording of resources and services in adjacent majority white counties. Simms illustrates in her text the multiple factors that contribute to the inability of the county in providing services of a higher standard to much of its population. #BlackHistory #BlackMiddleClass #BlackBaltimore

This week Dr. Hettie V. Williams is in conversation with Dr. Jeanne Theoharis about the Civil Rights Movement in the North. Williams is professor of history in the Department of History and Anthropology at Monmouth University and the current director of the African Diaspora Studies Program at Monmouth. Theoharis is Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Brooklyn College of the City University of New York. She is also the author of the New York Times bestselling book The Rebellious Life of Mrs. Rosa Parks and winner of the 2014 NAACP Image Award for Outstanding Literary Work Biography/Autobiography and the Lettia Woods Brown Award from the Association of Black Women Historians. She is a renowned scholar of the Black freedom struggle in U.S. history and society. In this conversation, we focus primarily on the latest book by Theoharis King of the North: Martin Luther King Jr’s Life of Struggle Outside of the South (The New Press, 2025) that argues King’s northern campaigns were fundamentally instrumental in shaping his larger quest for equity and justice across the nation. King spent substantial time in the North first as a student then as a mature activist in places such as New Jersey, New York, and in cities such as Chicago and Los Angeles. Theoharis in fact advances the thesis in King of the North that locales such as New York, Los Angeles, and Chicago were “at the heart of his campaign for racial justice.” This groundbreaking book disrupts our understanding of the Civil Rights Movement in a myriad of ways. Click here to order a copy of The King of the North

#MLK #CivilRightsMovement #SocialJustice