Author Talk (Aug 03)
Join us for an in-person conversation with Dr. Marcia Chatelain as she discusses her Pulitzer prize-winning book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. We will meet at the Aull Center for Local History and Genealogy at 2:00pm where Dr. Chatelain will be live-streamed. Following the author’s presentation we will have a short discussion. Registration is not required for this in-person event.
Can’t make it to the Aull Center? You have the option of watching the presentation from your home. You must register through our Library Speakers Consortium site if you want to participate virtually.
Dr. Marcia Chatelain set out to answer the question of how fast-food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods. McDonald’s has often been blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans. In Franchise, Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast-food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who–in the troubled years after King’s assassination–believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality.
About the author: Dr. Marcia Chatelain is a Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. She is also the author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration. In 2021, Chatelain received the Pulitzer Prize in History, the Hagley Prize in Business History, and the Organization of American Historians (OAH) Lawrence W. Levine Award for Franchise. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. In 2016, the Chronicle of Higher Education named her a Top Influencer in academia in recognition of her social media campaign #FergusonSyllabus, which implored educators to facilitate discussions about the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014.
This event is part of the Library Speakers Consortium. You will have several opportunities each month to stream best-selling author talks live or watch them back at your convenience. This is accessible to anyone with a Morgantown Public Library System card holder.