Dr. Karida Brown Lecture and Book Discussion

Dr. Karida L. Brown, Professor of Sociology at Emory University, will visit the University of Kentucky campus to discuss her book, Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia, on Thursday, March 30th at 5:00 pm in Kincaid Auditorium, Gatton College of Business and Economics. 

Dr. Brown’s visit is made possible through the Miriam Jane Van Dyke Barager Endowment for Diversity and Inclusion at the UK Martin School of Public Policy and Administration, and through co-sponsors the Appalachian Center and Appalachian Studies Program; the Commonwealth Institute for Black Studies; the College of Agriculture, Food, and Environment Office of Diversity; the College of Arts & Sciences Department of Sociology; and the Graduate School Office of Diversity and Inclusion. 

The event is free and open to the public.

Gone Home: Race and Roots Through Appalachia

Description from UNC Press: Since the 2016 presidential election, Americans have witnessed countless stories about Appalachia: its changing political leanings, its opioid crisis, its increasing joblessness, and its declining population. These stories, however, largely ignore black Appalachian lives. Karida L. Brown’s Gone Home offers a much-needed corrective to the current whitewashing of Appalachia. In telling the stories of African Americans living and working in Appalachian coal towns, Brown offers a sweeping look at race, identity, changes in politics and policy, and black migration in the region and beyond. Drawn from over 150 original oral history interviews with former and current residents of Harlan County, Kentucky, Brown shows that as the nation experienced enormous transformation from the pre- to the post-civil rights era, so too did black Americans. In reconstructing the life histories of black coal miners, Brown shows the mutable and shifting nature of collective identity, the struggles of labor and representation, and that Appalachia is far more diverse than you think.