Guest Scholars Examine Social Justice in the 1930s and 1940s

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FAYETTEVILLE, Ark. – The co-authors of The Gospel of the Working Class: Labor’s Southern Prophets in New Deal America will be on campus next week to discuss their book. Guest scholars Erik Gellman and Jarod Roll will present “Labor’s Prophets in New Deal Arkansas and America” at 1:30 p.m. on Monday, Oct. 22, in room 314 of Kimpel Hall. A book signing will follow the lecture.

The authors construct a dual biography using cultural history to examine the impact of two southern activist preachers, one black and one white. Owen Whitfield and Claude Williams and their wives, Zelda Whitfield and Joyce Williams, used their ministry to organize the working class in the 1930s and 1940s across lines of gender, race and geography. The activists used their religious beliefs to encourage ordinary men and women to demand social and economic justice during the Great Depression, the New Deal and World War II. 

Gellman and Roll link the activism of the 1930s and 1940s to that of the 1960s, emphasizing the central role of these four individuals who later established the People’s Institute for Applied Religion. 

According to the synopsis provided by the University of Illinois Press, The Gospel of the Working Class “situates Christian theology within the struggles of some of America's most downtrodden workers, transforming the dominant narratives of the era and offering a fresh view of the promise and instability of religion and civil rights unionism.”

Gellman is an associate professor in the department of history and philosophy at Roosevelt University. Roll is a senior lecturer at Sussex University. He also serves as director of the Marcus Cunliffe center for the study of the American south.

This event is sponsored by the African and American studies program and the department of history in the J. William Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences.