Ashley Howard, "Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement" (UNC Press, 2025)

New Books in African American Studies · Jul 24, 2025 · 1h 9m

This episode features Dr. Ashley Howard, assistant professor of History and African American Studies at the University of Iowa, discussing her book, Midwest Unrest: 1960s Urban Rebellions and the Black Freedom Movement, which was published by the University of North Carolina Press in June 2025. In six thoroughly researched chapters, Midwest Unrest argues that urban rebellions were a working-class response to the failure of traditional civil rights activism and growing fissures between the Black working and middle classes in the 1960s. Howard focuses on three Midwestern sites–Cincinnati…