The Great Migration and Asbury Park

10/09/22 • 54 min

This Week in Black History, Society, and Culture

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.

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Masters of Health: Slavery and Racial Thinking in Medical Schools

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.

Next Episode

Black Soldiers and their Families During the Civil War Era

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.