The first instance of the word blurb, according to Wikipedia.

One of the reasons why I loved my magazine journalism classes so much was that we were challenged to make something cohesive out of disparate pieces and departments. Back then, the gold standard was set by the September issue of Vogue, Sports Illustrated’s investigative reports. We also scrutinized the short-lived startups like George Magazine and Nerve. I loved reading magazines because embedded in the act of reading an entire issue was a little detective mystery of discerning how exactly all these elements fit. Now, as a writer and historian, ‘back of book’ means something entirely different: blurbs.

Blurbs are the endorsements that you read on the back cover of a book, which ostensibly helps a potential reader make a commitment of time (and sometimes money) to a book. Readers may be surprised to learn that blurbs are usually collected by writers, as well as editors, on behalf of the book. The writer is sometimes asked to reach out to colleagues and friends directly, as well as provide a list of potential people to provide blurbs. I have always found this an awkward and uncomfortable practice, because I know how much time it takes to read an advanced copy of a book in order to provide a solid endorsement. Some blurbing readers skim a manuscript, choosing to read the introduction and the conclusion. Others, I’m sure they wouldn’t admit it, use ‘vibes’ to write a blurb. I’m a big believer that I have to read an entire book before I blurb it. I learned this lesson from a colleague who agreed to blurb a book once and then realized it was riddled with misinterpretations of her research area. Readers can report errors or issues with advanced copies, but there are no guarantees that your concerns will be addressed.

No matter how a blurb comes together, it can be a difficult process because as a writer you want to let readers know that other writers in your subject matter orbit find your book engaging, or smart, or worthwhile. The New York Times wrote an article a few months ago announcing Simon and Schuster’s decision to no longer have writers collect blurbs, and the piece questioned if blurbs matter at all. I don’t know if there is a definitive answer to how blurbs shape purchasing and reading decisions, but as a writer, I appreciate them and I try to fulfill most requests for them. But, it’s becoming more difficult to say yes. The joy in giving a blurb comes from know that you are cheering an author on as they approach a finish line. Pulitzer Prize winning biographer Ilyon Woo put it best on what receiving a blurb feels like: “When I was writing, I was in the deep, dark basement of my mind…and the blurbs were the first signs of life outside the book.”

With that being said, I’m happy to share an early blurb for my forthcoming book, HOW BRIGHT THE PATH GROWS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE WOMEN WHO MADE THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON, from writer Caleb Gayle. I’ve known Caleb since my days teaching at the University of Oklahoma, and he has been an incredible interpreter of the racial politics of the Southwest and West, with his two books, We Refuse to Forget and Black Moses and many articles. I’m grateful for his kind words.

“Chatelain has done what I didn’t know was possible. She has rendered, with clarity and care, the lives of women who shaped the March on Washington but have been relegated to the margins of its memories. How Bright the Path Grows is more than a corrective. It is as much revelation as it is instruction. Chatelain teaches us how to tell fuller, truer stories. This is the model for recovering what we have been quick to forget.”—Caleb Gayle, author of Black Moses

Until Next Class,

Your Favorite Prof

Then, the world shut down in 2020, and conferences were moved online, where they became yet another obligation in front of a screen. Many professional societies and fellowship-granting institutions were quite creative in making Zoom conferences more interactive and more pleasant than a staff meeting, but nothing could replicate the experiences of running into a graduate school classmate by the hotel escalator (or a high school friend in my case at American Studies in Toronto in 2015!), the moment when you and another conference goer discuss a mutual interest in a display copy of a book at the exhibit hall, or the excitement of checking out a few tourist attractions after your paper presentation. I did appreciate that in 2021, when conferences were still virtual, that I could celebrate receiving the OAH’s Lawrence Levine Award for my book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, without having to leave my living room or my then two-week old baby.

Conferences can be exhausting, drama-filled, and deeply overwhelming, but having been missing from these temporary intellectual hubs for more than five years, I realized how good they are for me this past weekend at the OAH. As a parent of a small child, I weigh my travel schedule carefully, and most of the time, I can’t spare too many days away from home, and frankly I don’t want to most of the time. But, this year was a little different. With the upcoming release of my book in September, my return to conferences was made extra special by the good people at the Penguin Random House Higher Education booth. They brought 40 copies of Advanced Readers Copies, or ARCs, to the conference, so I can practice some book signing and get a sense of just how beautiful my book will look in the fall. There were too many highlights to list here, but I did get the opportunity to sign the first copy to my former research assistant and Ph.D. student Emily Norweg, who guided me through two books, way too many speaking engagements, and some of my largest classes as a teaching assistant at Georgetown University.

If you missed OAH and want to snag an early copy, you have until April 28, to sign up for a giveaway from Goodreads!

Until next class,

Your Favorite Prof

Hello class,

It has been a minute since I’ve posted here, and while I was away, I was still hard at work teaching and learning. Since I started YOUR FAVORITE PROF, a few things have changed: I’m now a faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania’s Department of Africana Studies, a parent to a deeply introspective and funny toddler, and even more anxious to understand our many political and social crises through the study of history. I’ll be posting more about all of these experiences, but for now, I just wanted to share some good news.

My new book: HOW BRIGHT THE PATH GROWS: THE UNTOLD STORY OF THE WOMEN WHO MADE THE MARCH ON WASHINGTON will be out September 29 from Pantheon Press. The book tells the story of the iconic 1963 March on Washington from the perspective of the Black women who helped plan the March, who were honorees of their “Tribute to Negro Women Fighters for Freedom” and the musical talents that wowed the crowd.

Enjoy the amazing cover below, and learn more about the book here.

Okay, I can’t end this post without a few homework assignments. If you are curious about the cover photo, it is one of the many treasures among photographer Leonard Freed’s collection of images from the 1963 March on Washington. I first learned about Freed as a co-convener of a German Historical Institute (Washington, D.C.) conference on the 50th anniversary of the March on Washington. Alongside scholars Sharon Monteith and Britta Walschmidst-Nelson, we welcomed researchers from Germany, the U.K., and the U.S. to Washington, D.C. to reflect on the March. I met civil rights activists, March organizers and volunteers, including Courtland Cox, Ella Kelly, and Joanne Trumpauer Mullholland. Clayborne Carson, the founding director of Stanford University’s now-named Martin Luther King, Jr. Research and Education Institute delivered the keynote. As I like to say, “It was like something out of a movie.” Carson’s lecture and the evening reception was elegant and deeply engaging. The testimony of the Marchers was inspiring, and we even got to watch a special video message from the late John Lewis. Several of my Georgetown students attended Carson’s address, and many of them told me it was a transformational moment in their education. The conference yielded the edited collection, “Staging a Dream: Untold Stories and Transatlantic Legacies of the March on Washington.” Enjoy learning more about Leonard Freed and his archive at the Library of Congress and his photos with visual powerhouse Magnum. Also, consider picking up a copy of the coffee table book, Paul Farber’s curated collection, “This is the Day: The March on Washington.”

Until next time class,

Your Favorite Prof

On this Martin Luther King, Jr. holiday, I’m sure you have read a plethora of hot, bubbling takes on King’s legacy. King was a radical. King was a believer in economic justice. King was a contemplative soul, who understood the importance of rest (that one is from me). King deserves more than the tweets from people he would have likely found objectionable if he was with us today. I have very little to offer among the incredibly thoughtful perspectives on MLK’s legacy. But, I have videos! An original tribute to Dr. King plus an interview with his longtime assistant, Dora McDonald!

This content, from McDonald’s, set me on the path to ask: Why did I learn more about Black history at my local McDonald’s than at my elementary and high schools? Honestly, in 1986, when I first saw these, I probably didn’t ask such a sophisticated question. It took years for me to realize that the then very new federal holiday was still a contentious issue in the United States in the late 1980s, and I think that McDonald’s showing their support for the MLK holiday was one crucial step in the acceptance (and the depoliticization) of the holiday. More than 30 years have passed since I first watched these Dr. King tributes, and the inclusion of African-American history has come a long way since then. But, on the same day that the King holiday turned 36 (the actual legislation was passed in 1983, with 1986 as the first official observance), the governor of Virginia initiated his term with an executive order that fulfilled his campaign position of anti-critical race theory schools. (Big sigh and feelings of irritation).

This swing in the culture war pendulum may yield another generation of children whose first encounters with Black history from McDonald’s commercials rather than lessons at schools. Let’s hope that Dr. King was right, and the arc of the moral universe will bend toward justice.

Save the Date:

1/24, 7-8 EST, Virtual Screening and Panel Discussion, PBS’s “Preserving Democracy” documentary

1/29, 11 a.m. EST, The Joy Keys Show, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America

We are almost at the end of the school year, and the calendar year, and congratulations for surviving it all. I can’t wait for Winter Break, and for many educators, we use the holiday term to catch our breaths a bit! I can’t think of a better way to do that than to catch up on some absorbing reading about all things not-so-serious to very serious. The major newspapers and magazines often provide lists of the very best books of the year, but I have a few recommendations that didn’t make those lists, but are equally amazing!

At the end of all my classes, I ask graduating seniors to identify themselves and share one piece of wisdom with the other students. Often, the students offer that they wished they had focused more on learning rather than grades, and they encourage less seasoned classmates to find something outside of their comfort zones and engage with it. It’s a nice tradition, and I think that we all have a lot of wisdom to share considering all the challenges of this past year. So, here’s an idea: If you are giving gifts to friends and family this year, consider adding a word of wisdom inside one of these books! If your holiday plans include zero books, I have a few podcast and TV/documentary picks, as well. Learning never takes a break!

Your Favorite Prof

For the History Enthusiast who enjoyed my book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America and Season 2 of Fargo on FX:

Soul City: Race, Equality, and the Lost Dream of An American Utopia, Thomas Healy

Often the punchline of American history, the United States in the 1970s is still fighting for respectful consideration, especially among histories of the Civil Rights era. Although the 1950s and 1960s ushered in a spate of pro-civil rights legislation and actions, it was the 1970s that compelled the most dynamic and idealistic experimentation. In this book, Thomas Healy chronicles the utopian idea of a self-sufficient, all-Black community in North Carolina. As you can imagine, the idea had to confront political and public scrutiny, and Healy thoughtfully tells the story of long-forgotten experiment in creating a world anew. If you can’t get enough soul, check out this 2018 documentary “Mr. Soul, The Movie” about a groundbreaking Black television show that captured the heart of the 1970s.

For the Music Buff who loved Hulu’s “Summer of Soul” concert documentary and has a killer record collection:

Energy Never Dies: Afro-Optimism and Creativity in Chicago, Ayana Conteras

When you think of the soulful sounds of the 1970s, you may assume that the music reflects the sensibility of creative capitals like Detroit or Harlem or Los Angeles. But, Ayana Contreras makes a case for the Chicago aesthetic and the importance of the city for musicians from Earth, Wind, and Fire to Natalie Cole and Donny Hathaway. In a series of thoughtful essays, Contreras emphasizes the ways that Black cultural institutions and businesses inspired and funded Black musicians, record companies, and performance spaces. Unlike most popular books about the end of Chicago’s Great Migration era, Contreras doesn’t dwell on narratives of urban decline or deprivation. Rather, she wants to celebrate the transfer of energies from South to North, idea to poem, individual to community. After reading this book, I beefed up my Spotify playlists, and magically I found myself back to my hometown. Check out this short documentary on Gramaphone Records in Chicago before diving in to this book!

For the Reader/Educator who is critical of how we talk about Educational Diversity and enjoyed the New York Times podcast “Nice White Parents:”

Blue Eyes, Brown Eyes: A Cautionary Tale of Race and Brutality, Stephen Bloom

If you grew up watching “Oprah” in the 1990s, you definitely remember seeing Jane Elliott, the teacher from Iowa who rose to fame by constructing an experiment to teach her all-white students what it meant to be discriminated against. The lesson was created for class the day after Martin Luther King, Jr. was assassinated in 1968. Using eye color as a proxy for race, Elliott spent two days teaching her students to degrade their classmates and noted how quickly they devolved into hatred and cruelty. From her classroom in Riceville, Iowa to the stage of The Johnny Carson Show to corporate seminars, Elliott became a leading authority on diversity training, and she reproduced the eye color experiment with White adults for decades. In a well-researched and thoughtful history of the exercise, Bloom tells the story of Elliott’s own background and her strained relationships with her neighbors and school system before the experiment, and he raises important ethical questions about her methods. If you want to watch the iconic “Oprah” episode featuring the exercise and some really upset studio audience members, check it out below.

For the Science Nerd in your life who enjoyed Michael Pollan’s Netflix documentaries Food, Inc. and Cooked:

Seed Money: Monsanto’s Past and Our Food Future, Bartow Elmore

I love a good corporate history, obviously, and this is an extremely thorough look at the evolution of Monsanto, the company that has become synonymous with the excesses of Big Ag and the anxieties about GMO (genetically modified foods). In this sweeping account, you learn about Monsanto’s shapeshifting from a chemical company to an agricultural chemical company to food technology company over the course of a century. Elmore is particularly adept at scene setting, and whether he brings you into Monsanto’s corporate offices in St. Louis or to Soda Springs, Utah, a small town that has been absorbing the environmental waste produced by Monsanto’s phosphorous plants for decades, this is a science book that attends to the stories of real people.

You can get a sneak peek into the book with this video of a conversation between me and Elmore this past year.

And, for the New Year, a few things to look forward to in 2022 (and we really need something to look forward to):

Yours truly in the documentary “Preserving Democracy: Pursuing a More Perfect Union” on January 6, 2022, with appearances by Bill Moyers, Jelani Cobb, and Alexis Coe (subject of this week’s subscribers-only interview “What’s Your Order?”) Check your local PBS listings. And, join the conversation about the film on December 14, 5 p.m. EST. Register here.

A new book by Mike Amezcua on Mexican-Americans in Chicago, Making Mexican Chicago: From Postwar Settlement to the Age of Gentrification (February 2022). I’ll be joining the author as the moderator for a conversation about this fantastic book in February. watch my Twitter feed for more details.

May 2022 not resemble 2021 or 2020!

Your Favorite Prof

I hope your fall is off to a good start.  As the leaves change, and the evenings seem to arrive a little quicker, we brace ourselves for the holiday seasons…and the pumpkin spice lobby’s many attempt to challenge our tastebuds. Do we want to live in world in which such terrible things as a pumpkin spice salmon and pumpkin spice Pringles chips are considered a seasonal treat?  Spooky season, indeed!  Now that I’m several weeks into a new school term, all the active learning and intellectual engagement has inspired me to tackle one of the most important questions I’ve ever been asked about my research on fast food:

Is McDonaldland character Grimace Black?

What a nuanced and layered idea!  Is the iconic, triangular-shaped, purple being in fact Black? And of all the McDonaldland characters, why is Grimace the target of this question in my NUMEROUS conversations about the citizens of the world of McDonald’s Happy Meal toys.

Bear with me as I unpack this question that first appeared in a conversation about my book Franchise sponsored by the good people at Lafayette College and posed by food studies scholar Dr. Shayne Figueroa (who is on Twitter). NPR’s Code Switch host with the most Gene Demby also encouraged this research challenge. 

So, in order to tackle this burning question, we need to address three other issues first: Who is Grimace? What exactly is a Grimace? Can a puppet have a race?

Who is Grimace? Grimace’s origins began in 1971, when the McDonaldland universe introduced a new resident named Evil Grimace; so our purple protagonist was introduced as a malevolent force, and he repeatedly stole milkshakes from the good people of McDonaldland.  Grimace’s initial criminalization and scary vibes didn’t sit well with his target audience—children—and he was revamped, and Grimace (kind of like Beyonce), became a one-named icon. No longer a thief, he was a connoisseur of legally acquired milkshakes.  The Grimace transformation is not that unusual in the history of fast food characters. Sometimes these changes were done so the characters could appear less scary or, more importantly, less legally precarious, in a copyright way.  See Sid and Marty Krofft Television Productions Inc vs. McDonald’s Corp (1977) to learn about the successful lawsuit filed against McDonald’s over an aborted deal with the team behind children’s television show H.R. Pufnstuf.  The courts had to deal with challenging questions about Mayor McCheese’s phenotype and his relationship to the other City Hall dweller, the Honorable Pufnstuf of Living Island.

Although there was no lawsuit involved, McDonald’s was probably cautious when they gave Captain Crook the hook.  Crook began as super scary and was later made a little friendly before he walked the plank.  If you squint, you may think you are encountering Disney’s Captain Hook with a penchant for stealing Filet-o-Fish sandwiches.

As an aside, according to one Disney wiki site, Captain Hook has a lot of work to do in therapy.

Jake and the Never Land Pirates reveals that Hook had a rather miserable childhood. As a young buccaneer, he was trained in the ways of piracy by his mother, Mama Hook, though he was pitiful at the craft. It was also revealed that James was heavily ostracized as a child, with his birthdays being particularly lonesome.

What exactly is a Grimace? Strangely, a purple monster devoted to capturing his joy, has been named with the word that means “an ugly, twisted expression on a person’s face, typically expressing disgust, pain, or wry amusement.”  So grimace the noun doesn’t quite fit Grimace the proper noun. Grimace is probably best described as some kind of monster, and recently a Canadian McDonald’s manager described Grimace as an enormous taste bud. Grimace has also been suggested to actually be a milkshake, as McDonald’s internal archivist indicated in this tweet; his source was the archive of Grimace lore. So, is Grimace as a sort of self-owning entity that steals the very thing that he is…this theory has existential levels to it.  

Can a puppet have a race?  Of course, as the excellent scholarship on race, comedy, and minstrelsy indicates, fictional characters—from puppets to cartoon characters to people in novels—can be racialized without any mention of their race.  This essay by Amber West spells out the relationship between minstrelsy and puppetry nicely.  She writes:

[Famed puppeteer] Paul McPharlin started a trend in early twentieth-century American puppetry in which puppeteers made distinctions between exaggerated blackface minstrel puppet characters, which they used for lowbrow puppetry (i.e., lighter themes, clowning, and farce), and more realistic-looking (albeit exoticized) representations of black people, which were often used for more “highbrow” or “high art” puppet shows (i.e., serious themes and drama). “The less the puppeteers wish their ‘negro puppets’ to play the fool,” Fisler argues, “the more likely they are to try to shape their vestiges within the boundaries of photographic realism.” He also calculates that ten percent of American puppeteers adapted Helen Bannerman’s 1900 children’s book, Little Black Sambo, to the puppet stage during the 1930s , and that twenty-five percent of American puppeteers depended on blackface puppets for their livelihood in 1934. Particularly in puppetry produced in rural frontier communities or for children’s audiences, blackface puppetry “was as widely circulated as puppetry itself.”

The history of puppetry is rife with these practices, and the exaggerated voices and movement of puppets can lead to uncomfortable audience reception, even when the intention is to create positive representation of a character’s race and culture. Take the case of Roosevelt Franklin, formerly of Sesame Street. Roosevelt now visits only on special occasions.

Although the Children’s Television Workshop created Sesame Street and cast its adult actors in the spirit of representing a multiracial and multiethnic community, their choice of an African-American Vernacular English-speaking puppet named Roosevelt Franklin didn’t sit well with audiences. Roosevelt did last five seasons living on Sesame Street until he was sent to live elsewhere.

Roosevelt Franklin appeared on Sesame Street from Season 1 (1970) to Season 7 (1975). It goes without saying that his name is simply a reversal of that of president Franklin D. Roosevelt. The precocious Roosevelt Franklin attended Roosevelt Franklin Elementary School, where he taught the class as often as not. He taught concepts like family, pride, respect, geography and not drinking poison. Roosevelt was a cool kid who loved to scat, rhyme and sing the blues. His mother was proud of him.

In the case of puppets that are not explicitly ‘raced’ as was the case of Roosevelt, sometimes racial stereotypes are heaped upon the character, so that the trained mind an eye can assign a sort of label or frame of difference onto the character without explicit naming.  This is the basis of a lot of comedy tropes in film and television.

So, what can we say about Grimace?

Based on the tropes we find in popular culture—the initial criminalization of Grimace, the ways that Grimace is marked as driven by his impulsive need for dairy desserts rather than his intellect, and (in combination with his size) Grimace’s color makes him stick out among his other primary-colored friends. Additionally, Grimace, like a number of African Americans in the U.S., has ancestral ties to Ireland due to slavery (see Uncle O’Grimacey, a spokesperson for the Shamrock Shake) Contributing to the racialization of Grimace are a series of memes, which I won’t link here, suggesting that Grimace’s style is evocative of a 1970s Blaxploitation film character involved in the exploitation of sex workers. You get my drift.

So, is Grimace Black? I don’t know if I can answer the question definitively, but I can say that popular culture gives us a lot of excellent food for thought when it comes to the ways that racial stereotypes are reference, recycled, and represented in the most unlikely of places.

Join me this week for a virtual conversation with Bartow Elmore, hosted by New America, on October 27, 1:00 p.m. EST. Elmore is a historian and author of the new book Seed Money: Monsanto’s Post and Our Food Future, a dazzling history of a chemical company, agribusiness, and excessive corporate power. It’s a fantastic follow-up to his excellent first book, Citizen Coke: The Making of Coca-Cola Capitalism.

Until next time,

Your Favorite Prof

I had a nice summer break, and I’m so excited to jump back into YOUR FAVORITE PROF this fall. Many of you signed up for my newsletter this summer, and I’d like to reintroduce myself.  I’m a teacher.  I’m a historian.  And, I’m obsessed with fast food.  I wrote a book called Franchise about it, and it won the Pulitzer Prize in History.  I didn’t see that coming.  I often appear on podcasts, documentaries, and wherever a talking head is needed to provide historical framing, a little context, or a hot, bubbling take.  Recently, I published a piece in The Washington Post about the relationship between fast food and evangelical Christianity.  I see fast food everywhere.  And, I see this newsletter as an opportunity to share my great loves (other than my spouse and my five-month old baby, who is unquestionably the cutest baby of our time)—fast food and good teaching with you.

I’m teaching two of my favorite courses this semester, Women and the Civil Rights Movement and a seminar on the Great Migration. This week we are reading Jo Ann Gibson Robinson’s The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women who Started It and Farrah Jasmine Griffin’s Who Set You Flowin’: The African American Great Migration Narrative. I’ve been showing students clips of a not-the-very-best 2002 made-for-TV movie about Rosa Parks, starring national treasures Angela Bassett and Cicely Tyson. Watching the film while reading the scholarship on the movement highlights the cultural misunderstandings of the momentous boycott of 1955. For the Migration class, a pair of students created a Spotify channel with the blues and gospel songs referenced in Griffin’s book. Playlists are a great way of creating a student project, that can be shared virtually, and for students interested in music and performing arts, it opens up space for them to shine.Teaching both of these courses in light of recent events has reminded me of what I’ve learned after more than a decade of college-level teaching: The content may stay the same and enlighten students, but the shifting context in which I teach is what really make a difference.  Teaching a class on migration while the world watches droves of people fleeing Afghanistan has opened up new routes for conversation about the conditions that push people out of the land of their birth and the uncertainties that meet people when they resettle in new ones.  Each time I teach about the ways that misogyny and homophobia silenced and truncated the participation of some civil rights workers and leaders, students can connect the problems of the past with contemporary circumstances when groups can be united on one front and bifurcated on others.  All of this is to say, we are all teaching in fascinating times, and it’s a privilege to do so!

There has been a wealth of fascinating fast food news the past few months, and my back-to-school energy makes me think a lot about school lunches, particularly the issue of fast food being served in school cafeterias. In 1990, a McDonald’s franchisee in San Antonio took over the cafeteria at his son’s school, after the small Catholic high school had lost tens of thousands of dollars in staff and operation costs for its cafeteria.  That same year in Boulder, Colorado, a school invited a McDonald’s franchisee to set up shop in a high school cafeteria to boost student participation in the lunch program.  In a number of press articles about the Golden Arches on high school campuses, the reports marked the early 1990s as the first time McDonald’s elbowed onto lunch lady turf (which when you think about it, they have a lot in common with McDonald’s workers in that they are not unionized, have no access to benefits and often work for low wages).  Often, McDonald’s corporate reps assured the public that this was not going to be a trend.  But, curiously enough, I found an article from 1976, about a McDonald’s taking over the cafeteria operations of a Benton, Arkansas high school in an attempt to boost revenue for the school.  Students could order everything but milkshakes at school (school administrators didn’t want milkshakes to compete with federal milk allocations).   The slow creep of fast food into school lunches didn’t start and stop with Ronald McDonald donning a hair net and throwing a few burgers on trays; other brands saw the opportunity in going to school as well.  The image of Ronald McDonald as a cafeteria worker is really terrifying.  Sorry I did that. 

Anyway, in 1993, Taco Bell began supplying burritos to suburban Southern California high schools, a move which sparked concerned among its food service staff that their jobs would be at risk if the school continued to relied on pre-made foods from an outside supplier, rather than the fare created by the kitchen staff.  In 1984, Pizza Hut launched the BOOK IT! program to award children who read books with gift certificates for personal pan pizzas and Pizza Hut ephemera as part of their corporate social responsibility project of child literacy.  While xennials like myself remember the BOOK IT prizes and redeeming their own slice of heaven at America’s favorite restaurant with trapezoidal windows, few may know that Pizza Hut has also launched a direct-to-schools delivery program called A+ Pizza Program, after a battle with the USDA to seek exemption from regulations about inspecting meats served in schools. Pizza Hut also adjusted its recipe to make sure that their pizzas are light enough on calories to meet national school lunch standards for calories and fat content, as well as overall nutrition.

The trend continued, and the fast food additions to schools helped boost much needed cafeteria revenues. By the late 1990s, fast food chains were in about 13% of U.S. school cafeterias.  Naomi Klein noted this in her brilliant 1999 book No Logo.

“Subway supplies 767 schools with sandwiches; Pizza Hut corners the market in approximately 4,000 schools; and a staggering 20,000 schools participate in Taco Bell’s ‘frozen burrito product line.”  By playing on fears of students cutting classes or hanging out at fast food joints, school administrators just brought fast food to school.  

Although Klein noted that school lunch agreements did not allow children who used reduced and free lunch vouchers to access this style of catering, research shows that poor children are consuming fast food outside of school at rates higher than their affluent peers.  When I was in high school, the issue of fast food in school cafeterias was excellent fodder for advocates for childhood nutrition to sound the alarms about youth and eating preferences; they argued that school should be the last place to offer high-fat, high-salt, high-sugar foods and drinks to children, and these campaigns were effective in banning not only fast food on the menu, but also provisioning vending machines with ‘healthier’ options (is apple juice nutrient rich) that were often packed to the brim with sodas and chips. 

Although it is easy to line up against fast food being sold inside of schools, more recent crack downs on food in school have pivoted around a different issue—social class and the expansion of food delivery services.  Recently, a number of schools have banned meal delivery to school campuses or the practice of parents bringing fast food to students for birthdays or as a special treat at school, out of concern about the ways these acts alienate students without the financial means to order foods.  In a diversion from the traditional tropes of school discipline—we all do the same thing; we should all consume what we deem healthy—the centering of financial disparities points to one of the central purposes of school meals: reducing hunger among poor children and reducing stigma about eating at school by making food available to everyone. 

The school lunch has had a long, contentious history in the United States.  One excellent longform piece about it from Huffington Post describes school lunch as

…an $11.7 billion behemoth that feeds more than 31 million children each day, is a mess, and has been for years. Conflicts of interest were built into the program. It was pushed through Congress after World War II with the support of military leaders who wanted to ensure that there would be enough healthy young men to fight the next war, and of farmers who were looking for a place to unload their surplus corn, milk and meat. The result was that schools became the dumping ground for the cheap calories our modern agricultural system was designed to overproduce.

School lunch became nationally available for all poor children via federal subsidy until 1946; throughout the 1960s, Johnson’s War on Poverty created provisions for free breakfast, free milk, and summer meals to boost child nutrition.  The article continues:

What makes school lunch so contentious, though, isn’t just the question of what kids eat, but of which kids are doing the eating. As Poppendieck recounts in her book, Free for All: Fixing School Food in America, the original program provided schools with food and, later, cash to subsidize the cost of meals. But by the early 1960s, schools weren’t receiving enough to feed all their students, and many pulled out of the program. As a result, middle-class students, whose parents could cover the difference between the government subsidy and the actual cost of a meal, ended up benefiting the most from school lunch, while the truly needy went hungry. This moral failing became clear in 1968, when a landmark report called “Their Daily Bread” revealed that only one-third of the 6 million children living in poverty were receiving free or subsidized lunch. Schools’ ability to pay for food was so limited that one in Mississippi rotated 100 lunches among more than 400 students, while another in Alabama had just 15 meals for 1,000 needy kids. School lunch had its first official scandal.

As school boards tried to trim budgets and cut overhead costs during the lean years starting in the 1970s, fast food restaurants became a more common site on campus to serve up meals or as suppliers of convenience foods that encouraged more students to purchase meals in lieu of packing a lunch. 

School lunch is often the convenient object of debate about the boundaries between the state and the family.  Michelle Obama’s advocacy for The Healthy, Hunger-Free Kids Act, which tightened school lunch standards was excellent fodder for the reactionary Right’s anti-nanny state sentiments. 

The final standards make the same kinds of practical changes that many parents are already encouraging at home, including:

• Ensuring students are offered both fruits and vegetables every day of the week

• Substantially increasing offerings of whole grain-rich foods;

• Offering only fat-free or low-fat milk varieties;

• Limiting calories based on the age of children being served to ensure proper portion size; and

• Increasing the focus on reducing the amounts of saturated fat, trans fats and sodium.

We’ve all heard the arguments before about parents and guardians deciding what their children should eat, rather than school boards. In a time in which battles over mandatory mask policies at schools have inspired outrageous behavior—from death threats to actual violence, we are reminded of the ways that school battles are rarely just about protecting children.  Rather, from fights over integration, school prayer, sex education, English language instruction, approval of gay-straight alliances, and so on and so forth, schools provide the perfect space to air ideological and political grievances.  More often than not, it really isn’t about the kids. 

If you are in Chicago this weekend, drop by the Printer’s Row Literary Festival.  I’ll be in conversation with Elizabeth Taylor of the National Book Review (and…who I incidentally sat across from when I was an intern at The Chicago Tribune in college when she was a literary editor at the newspaper) about Franchise.  I’ll be on the CSPAN Stage from 12-1 CST on Saturday, September 11, and then I’m signing books. 

Until Next Time,

Your Favorite Prof

After taking a brief summer vacation, I’ve returned from my break with even more excitement about my love of fast food and good teaching. My July was pretty quiet, except for some more good news for my book FRANCHISE: The Golden Arches in Black America, which was recently named the winner of the Benjamin L. Hooks Institute for Social Change National Book Award! The Institute, based at the University of Memphis, celebrates the legacy of hometown hero, Benjamin Hooks (1925-2010), a civil rights attorney and former head of the NAACP. Among his many accolades was his being named the first Black judge for the Shelby County Criminal Court and later held the distinction of being the first Black FCC commissioner. Fewer people realize that Hooks was the head of the short-lived Mahalia’s Glori-Fried Chicken franchise in the late 1960s. Check out this image of the official launch of the restaurant in 1968. Hooks is pictured at the podium.

I had the pleasure of talking to New Yorker editor David Remnick about FRANCHISE for the New Yorker Radio Hour podcast, Marissa Rothkopf’s books-and-baking podcast The Secret Life of Cookies, and Jacobin published this generous review of the book. Today rounded out with the airing of an interview I did with Jeffrey Brown from PBS Newshour about Black capitalism, fast food, and history.

And, it was a reunion of sorts this month, when I returned to Slate’s The Waves podcast to talk with. about the recently vacated conviction of Bill Cosby. The episode delved into the legal issues that led to the decision to overturn Cosby’s sentence for sexual assault, and the potential implications for #MeToo activism.

Despite decades of evidence that the Olympics are a bad idea all around and a global pandemic, the 2020-1 Olympics are upon us, and I’ve accepted that some of my favorite television shows will be pre-empted, and I will need to watch just enough coverage to maintain casual conversations with friends and family. At this point, I only read historian of sport Amira Rose Davis when I want to understand sports, and follow her on Twitter to catch up on her MULTIPLE podcast interviews and television appearances deconstructing the games (including the chatter around Simone Biles’s decision to withdraw from parts of the competition), as well as her articles about sports, race, and politics, including this illuminating set of interviews with Black women Olympians. It’s really good stuff.

But, you didn’t come here to hear why I think recreating an entire (very socially and economically expensive) society every few years, promoting quasi-nationalist feats of strength competitions, and encouraging gross public spending is terrible, you came here for the fast food. And, when you think of The Olympics, you often think about McDonald’s. Although McDonald’s ended its partnership with The Olympics in 2018, few companies have been so strongly associated with the Games than McDonald’s, from its direct sponsorship of the events to its commercials.

Few moments among the highlight and lowlight reels of the Golden Arches and the Olympics stand out like The 1984 U.S. Wins, You Win Fiasco. Perhaps one of the most appealing aspects of the Olympics, is that by virtue of your national identity, you can feel victorious about someone else’s achievement, while expending no energy at all. Maybe this is why I don’t like sports that much, it seems like a lot of people rejoice in the hard work of very few people. I don’t know if that makes me radically egalitarian or a big jerk, but anyway, the McDonald’s promotion of 1984 spread the Olympic love by offering free food to customers when members of Team USA won medals. How many medals could the U.S. actually win? Well, in 1984, the world soon found out after 14 countries boycotted the Los Angeles Games in solidarity with the Soviet Union, who accused the U.S. of anti-Soviet rhetoric prior to the games (also the U.S. boycotted the 1980 games—so an eye for an eye?) and an additional three declined to participate for other reasons, essentially reducing the number of overall participants. Lo and behold, Olympians from the United States were not only on home turf, but they also avoided competing against Olympic powerhouses from the Soviet Union and East Germany. What did that mean for fans of McDonald’s? LAist sums it up here:

Before the start of the 1984 Olympics, McDonald's struck up the idea of giving away free items for every medal that the U.S. won. How it worked was that a patron, upon purchasing an item at Mickey D's, would get a scratch-off card with an Olympic event on it. If the U.S. team won gold in that event, the patron would get a Big Mac. If the team won silver, the patron got french fries. Bronze meant a free soft drink. In certain respects, this was a genius idea because it gave us a tangible investment in the Games; Carl Lewis' success would be our success. We were participating from the seats of our own couch. The motto was "U.S. Wins, You Win."

With medal counts like these, it was no wonder that franchises ran out of Big Macs and counted down the days until the Olympic closing ceremony. Look at the top 10 medal earners of the 1980, 1984, and 1988 Olympics, and see for yourself why 1984 has gone down in the annals of Olympic promotion disasters.

1980

1984

1988

McDonald’s wasn’t deterred by the You Win promotion debacle, and continued to support the Olympics long after, but the giveaways were less costly and easier to plan for because they were not tied to individual performance. In the 1990s, regardless of the geopolitics of the Olympics, you could still be a winner, but this time, the Olympics collaboration featured the stars of the 1992 U.S. Men’s Basketball Team, also known as the Dream Team. You too could be a winner with these collectible cups, (if you bought a large drink).

McDonald’s last official Summer Olympics was in 2016. My favorite fast food news writer Kate Taylor answered the question: “Do Olympic athletes actually eat McDonald’s?” If you check out the photos from Rio’s Olympic Village or the Twitter accounts of post-competition Olympians, the answer is YES. So much so, the Olympic Village McDonald’s locations had to limit orders to TWENTY items per person, and Olympians turned to McDonald’s as their first junk food treat after months of following restrictive diets.

For those of you who are teaching summer school, the Olympics provide great impromptu conversation topics. From how cities pay for Olympics to how athletics engages in discourses on race and gender to the long history of Olympic controversies, the possibilities are endless. If you have found great ways to incorporate this current event in your teaching, share your idea with me at: chatelainoperations@gmail.com.

Continue to go for the gold folks!

Until next time,

Your Favorite Prof

I hope that your week was filled with all sorts of learning and fun! My week was pretty full. I had the pleasure of joining the Brooklyn Public Library for a conversation about reparations. The library has curated some resources for people who want to learn more about the issue. Later that evening, I talked to Mehdi Hasan about fast food, capitalism, and racial justice on his show. I returned to my Catholic school roots and talked economic justice and Jesuit spirituality on AMDG, a Jesuit podcast. On Friday, I joined GBH-Boston Public Radio for a conversation about my book Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America, and yes, Dunkin’ Donuts came up (when talking to people in Rome…). The platform that brings you YOUR FAVORITE PROF, Substack interviewed me about why fast food and good teaching capture my heart and mind, and I mentioned some of my favorite newsletters. I also talked to Politico’s newsletter about Black women and tenure (more on this later in today’s teaching note).

On Monday, July 12, I’ll be giving a talk to the Smithsonian Associates about my first book, South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration.

The fast food industry thrives on consistency. The food, the packaging, the uniforms, and the feelings surrounding your favorite taco or burger or chicken sandwich are supposed to be the same coast to coast, border to border. But, there is always room for something a little special—the seasonal, the cross-promotional, the little gift to reward the loyalty of returning customers. Here are some of my favorites (while supplies last):

1. In future editions of YOUR FAVORITE PROF, we will discuss the most iconic of Happy Meal toys (remember the Beanie Babies panics of the 1990s?), but I would be remiss not to mention the Halloween Pumpkin Happy Meal promotions, in which the vessel for your Happy Meal could be reused as a vessel for collecting Halloween candy. Levels of genius in this one. These pails have inspired some excellent historical analysis.

   2. Since the 1970s, fast food companies have linked up with Hollywood to create limited-edition ephemera, and collectible soda fountain cups provide the perfect canvas to tease movie scenes and highlight characters. I loved “The Jetsons” as a child, and the cartoon’s rendering of a future of robot domestic workers, self-driving spaceships, and entire meals served in capsule form made me wonder what the 2000s had in store. The Jetson family lived in 2062, and hopefully I’ll be around to see if the Hanna-Barbera vision of our world was accurate.

   3. Sometimes a promotion isn’t an opportunity to gather more plastic items, but rather a convoluted game of sorts, that leaves customers confused and mildly irritated. In 1985, Burger King launched a campaign based on a fictional character named Herb. Herb was ostensibly the only person in the United States who had never had a Whopper, so if you saw Herb while at Burger King, you could win $5000 and then enter a drawing to win $1 million. In the meantime, if you declared you were not Herb while ordering at Burger King, you were eligible for a 99 cent Whopper. But, if your name was in fact Herb, but you weren’t the pursued Herb, you would say something to the effect that you were not THAT Herb. What? Exactly. This two-year campaign ended with the firing of the advertising agency that cooked this idea up, a consumer fraud condemnation in Delaware, and an appearance on Wrestlemania.

   4. The way my brain works is that when I see commercials for fast food promotions, all I can think about is, “HOW MANY LAWYERS DID THEY NEED FOR THIS?” In the 1970s until the 1980s (or later), Dairy Queen offered up sundaes in plastic helmets that represented Major League Baseball teams. The mini helmets were automatic collectors items, and the lure of completing the set ensured that children and adults would visit their local Dairy Queens all summer long.

Hope you enjoyed that trip down memory lane or that path into the past!

So, a word about the other kind of promotion. This week, journalist Nikole Hannah-Jones announced that she was offered tenure and promotion (see what I’m doing here) at the University of North Carolina—Chapel Hill, after a contentious fight involving her initial hire as an untenured Knight Chair in Investigative Journalism and Race. She declined the revised offer with tenure and instead will be a Knight Chair at Howard University. The announcement and accompanying statement, fueled a number of conversations about race, gender, higher education, and continued discrimination in the workplace. I weighed in briefly on the matter in the Politico article I linked above, and I could speak endlessly about the fundamental flaws in the tenure and promotion system at colleges and universities. I’m happy that Nikole Hannah-Jones found a place to land. More importantly, I’m glad that her story was able to provide an opportunity for the public to better understand the dangerous overreach of university trustees—many of whom have little to no knowledge of education. Lots of smart people have written about this moment, amplified the tenure denials and politics of tenure denials among less prominent scholars, and pointed out the ways that the COVID-19 crisis has revealed that in fact tenure does not mean a job for life in light of massive budget cuts and shortfalls. The only thing I want to add to the conversation is that tenure denials and the firing of tenured educators is also tied to the moral panic that has been mounted under the umbrella of critical race theory. In last week’s subscribers only edition of YOUR FAVORITE PROF, I talked about why the campaigns to stop ethnic studies and critical race theory are as dangerous and nonsensical as other classroom battles in the past. The majority of students in K-12, college, and even law schools, where critical race theory originated, are not engaged in the study of critical race theory. This fact remains unimportant for the discourse. What is happening is that schools that have long ignored the teaching of non-White scholars, ignored the disparities among learning experiences of non-White students, and have recently considered anti-racist teaching and practice, are being targeted as doing something other than teaching students for the world as it is today. Whether it’s in the case of UNC being influenced by a donor’s opposition to Hannah-Jones’s framing of American history via The 1619 Project or this most recent case of a tenured teacher in Tennessee allegedly losing his job because of assigned readings about race, the organized efforts to peddle in alternative facts, organize around white grievance at the expense of truth telling, and suggest to students that squeaky wheels (rather than educators) set curriculum is creating a problem for all people who believe that learning is indeed a growth process that requires struggle and challenge. I’m sure attorneys and teachers unions are prepared to defend the dismissed, but the toll of the firings, the very public battles, and the constant threats to livelihood and safety won’t be resolved when jobs are reinstated, work is replaced, or settlement documents are signed. I have no doubt that some of the fly-by-night organizations and laws drafted to fight critical race theory will collapse under the weight of court cases and the thinness of their arguments, but the chilling effect for teachers and communities will be enough to undo the thoughtful and brave work of accurate and fact-based teaching. This is how a backlash works. When the parent groups stop meeting with principals and the “No Critical Race Theory” signs are thrown away and the “Make U.S. History Great Again” t-shirts are relegated to the bottom drawers, what remains is the satisfaction that bullying, threats of withholding tuition dollars and financial gifts, and fabricating information works. And, some of us are still brave.

Until next time,

YOUR FAVORITE PROF

Thanks for all the notes of congratulations on my book Franchise winning the 2021 Pulitzer Prize for History. If you are new to the newsletter, I write about fast food and good teaching. These are my two great passions. Hope you enjoy.

This week, I’ll introduce you to the very best in fast food writing (and then some), so you can choose your own adventure for summer reading. Considering the past year was probably a little on the rough side, my summer reading list includes articles, quick takes, hot takes, books, as well as podcasts.

Over at the Heir Mail Substack, Meredith Haggerty gave a few thoughts about the movement to revive the old brand, roadside restaurant Stuckey’s in a recent edition of her newsletter. And, she added a great tidbit on the life of a KFC heiress. Trust me, you want to read this.

Speaking of KFC, you may not know that the Colonel has become a staple of the Japanese Christmas season. Atlas Obscura published a fascinating piece about the origins of a modern tradition, that isn’t really that much of a tradition.

One of the reasons why KFC took off in Japan was it made chicken cheaper to purchase; it had previously been a luxury item. If the price of food is a topic of interest, Substacker MoneyLemma wrote a fantastic post on why bananas are so damn cheap and what it tells us about history and economics.

When we think of fast food, we think of its low price, but rarely do we imagine the highly complicated machines that make the components of our favorite orders. Wired Magazine uncovered the bizarre case of two people who cracked the code of McDonald’s ice cream machines in an effort to fix these frequently broken dessert makers. Then, they got in big trouble. The story was also covered by the Sporkful podcast. It’s a fascinating look into the world of fast food machines, franchisee agreements, and a little bit of corporate intrigue.

If you like to rate and rank fast food and chain restaurants with your friends, you may enjoy the “Doughboys” podcast, in which hosts Nick Wiger and Mike Mitchell talk about the franchises of our lives with guests, mostly comedians and writers. From deep dives into Burger King to dissecting the sides menu of Boston Market, this is a great podcast to binge while doing your summer chores.

If you want a complete meal comprising a podcast, short film, and an article to read about fried chicken, Gravy from the Southern Foodways Alliance will fill you up with this package on Mahalia Jackson’s foray into fast food. You can watch the short film below

And, if you are still craving something longer to read, consider these excellent books:

Bryant Simon, The Hamlet Fire: A Tragic Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives examines the 1991 industrial accident that killed dozens of workers at a chicken processing plant in Hamlet, North Carolina. Simon connects the demand for cheap foods, like the chickens processed at the factory before becoming fried chicken tenders, and the exploitation of labor.

Friend-of-the-Newsletter Adam Chandler’s Drive-Thru Dreams: A Journey Through the Heart of America's Fast-Food Kingdom is now in paperback!

If you have a young reader in your life who is interested in food, consider getting them a copy of Chew on This: Everything You Don’t Want to Know About Fast Food, an accessible version of Eric Schlosser’s very important Fast Food Nation: The Dark Side of an All-American Meal, which was also fictionalized into a 2006 film. Here’s the trailer:

One of the greatest fictions about being an educator is that you have your summers off. Yes, you aren’t in the classroom on a regular schedule during the summer months, but your care for your students, your new ideas for teaching, and your desire to improve your craft don’t melt away after the Memorial Day holiday. I’ve worked with a number of teachers over the years about improving their teaching, creating more inclusive classrooms, and revamping their curricular content. So, I get a lot of asks from teachers about what to read, often over the summer, to get ready for the following fall start of the school year. After the past 15 months that most educators experienced, I’m always hesitant to assign more summer homework, but teachers are relentless in their desire to be better and do better, so, this is what I can advise: Spend some time thinking about the world your students live in. What does that mean? Think about the demographic of the students you typically teach. How old are they? Where are they from? What is the context in which they exist and, in turn, the context that shapes how they appear in your classroom?

For me, as a professor who often teaches students between the ages of 18 and 22, I’ve prioritized asking and learning about the news outlets they tune into, the popular culture they enjoy, and each year, I make sure I know the cost of the college I work at because the cost of education often informs how students experience it. I read the campus newspaper faithfully, and when students meet with me, I often ask, “What are some of the issues you and your friends are talking about?”

If you haven’t already done so, I recommend you read The New York Times piece from Susan Dominus about the school year for a group of high school students in Columbia, Missouri (where I went to college, and where I taught summer high school for many years). Dominus reports on how COVID-19, as well as other realities of race and class that existed long before the pandemic, framed the school year. This would be an excellent reading to start the school year off for colleagues, as well as students, to help them process the mixed emotions of return. Dominus also reflected on the experience of reporting this piece and her own time as a parent supervising Zoom school.

Whatever resources you have available to you, I implore you to use to think about the world your student inhabits and use this information to guide the illustrations you use in class, make you more sensitive to the stresses they may be under, and select the material you teach. On the college level, students can come from so many different places, that it may seem impossible to fully know all you want, but it’s still a worthwhile enterprise. One of the many barriers to good teaching and fruitful learning is a generation gap. We teachers get older, the students usually stay the same age. There is no way to change that. But, taking a context-centered approach to teaching can help create a stronger common ground for the great exchanges that can happen in the classroom. So, your homework is simple, learn about your students, and I promise they will learn so much more from you.

Until next time,

Your Favorite Prof

I had big plans on Friday:

1. Bake a cake.

2. Clean my closet.

3. Write the newsletter and feature the best fast food writing for your summer reading list, and write something heartfelt about my students.

But, the day kind of got ahead of me because…

The past 48 hours has been a whirlwind of emails, texts, and tweets. So, next week, I’ll have your reading list and some stories about teaching.

Stunned,

Your Favorite Prof

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Last week, I delved into the reasons why the idea that nobody wants to work right now is inaccurate, and why the myth of a labor shortage is being used as a weapon to clip federal benefits to struggling people. Adam Chandler, fellow fast food scholar, wrote about this for The Washington Post. The labor crisis is the figment of the nefarious imaginations of service industry leaders who can’t believe that workers don’t want jobs that are harmful and pay too little for survival. This talking point also deflects attention from the important scrutiny that continues to question the quality of jobs, the unaddressed harassment, and the especially low wages in the fast food sector. Chandler sums it up beautifully:

This is why when we talk about the recovery and the return of the low-wage workers who were disproportionately affected by pandemic unemployment, we should be looking at the jobs on offer and not the people. Before the pandemic, the state of hourly work was fossilized by a federal minimum wage standard that hasn’t budged in more than a decade along with real wages that haven’t moved in over 40 years. Instead of supporting comprehensive benefits, lawmakers in some states introduced ostensibly progressive initiatives such as predictive scheduling, which ensured that some hourly workers could, at least, know their work schedule more than a few hours ahead of time so they could plan their lives and secure child care. In the shadow of an unparalleled public health crisis, the default factory settings for American workers seem even more absurd. And yet, these conditions have only changed in a few cases since the pandemic began and, in many instances, have only gotten worse.

As this myth has been debunked by a number of economists, think tankers, and journalists, workers have continued to articulate the fundamental problems of fast food labor. On May 19, workers across sectors—trucking, gig economy, apparel manufacturing, and food processing—participated in one-day strikes to raise awareness about low pay, hazardous working conditions, and suppression of worker organizing.

In the fast food world, McDonald’s workers in cities from Orlando to Los Angeles —mostly organized by Fight for $15—walked off the job in the service of the movement’s two demands: A labor union and $15 an hour. As I wrote last week, $15 an hour is a modest wage in most parts of the country, but some argue that it’s a solid start considering that $15 is a little over double the current wage of $7.25. As Sarah Jaffe wrote in The American Prospect on May 19, one Fight for $15 worker, who was recently offered a $14 an hour position at McDonald’s, is far from enjoying financial security after years of making poverty wages:

Precious Cole first went on strike when one of her co-workers at Freddy’s Frozen Custard & Steakburgers in Durham, North Carolina, contracted COVID. She and her co-workers, she said, were told they had to quarantine for two weeks, unpaid, or provide proof of a negative test.

Cole is 34 and has spent many years in food service, at one point working full-time while homeless, unable to afford shelter. She’s now living with her mother, who was recently hospitalized with a blood clot in her lungs and cannot work due to her health. 

“It’s a start,” Cole said. “We’re gonna stand in solidarity, we want the $15. We want a union, so that stuff like this can’t happen and that we have a voice. This is us letting them know, ‘We’re here to stay and we’re going to be in your face. Every time you turn around, we will be there.’”

Cole’s story reminds me of the devastating experience of McDonald’s worker Cristian Cardona, the subject of Eleni Schirmer’s New Yorker article about the Fight for $15 in Orlando, Florida. A car accident—one of the many kinds of unexpected events that can derail a poor person for months, if not years—upended Cardona’s life.

Cardona, who is twenty-one, has been working at McDonald’s since 2017. He currently makes eleven dollars and thirty cents per hour. He lives with his parents and younger sister, in Orlando. His mother works as a cleaner for a bank. His father worked as a hotel-shuttle driver, but when the pandemic decimated tourist industries he lost his job; he has since found work doing construction and odd jobs. Cardona’s parents each make less than twelve dollars per hour.

Many of the workers featured in these investigative pieces about fast food workers are Black or Latinx, and the majority of them are women. The perception that workers are lazy or are willing to abuse the largesse of a benevolent federal government is magnified when the workers in questions are not White. The punitive, state-level responses to workers’ hesitancy or resistance to rejoining the fast food workforce not only reflects a conservative approach to state assistance, but it is also fuels racist and sexist ideas about the value of labor. As Jaffe notes:

Workers in the service industry and on unemployment tend to be Black and Latino. Fifty percent of South Carolina’s UI recipients are Black, rising to a whopping 66 percent in Mississippi…Food service work is at once women-dominated and low-paid.

So, what is a thoughtful consumer to do?

This one is a tough one. Voting with your feet and stomach, or all-out boycott, can feel like it punishes the people most dependent on revenues to keep their jobs. Also, unorganized boycotts can fail to deliver when there aren’t clear goals about which levers need to be pulled or just dismantled. As a historian of the civil rights movement, I try to emphasize to students how much skill and planning went into boycotts of the 1940s, 50s, and 60s. In the digital age, it’s easy to believe that with more channels of communication available to us that boycotts only need some messaging and an ask. This piece by Zephyr Teachout offers some insights into the dilemma of boycotts, and why corporate structures are harder to punch in the gut. Yet, the strategy is still worthy of our praise. I appreciate the unsexy and very bureaucratic way that Jo Ann Gibson Robinson describes the mechanism that made the Montgomery Bus Boycott possible in this sliver of history, The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women who Started it: The Memoir of Jo Ann Gibson Robinson. It’s one of the most descriptive explanations of how the sausage was made at mid-century: She explains how she and her friends, including the seasoned activist Rosa Parks, got access to mimeograph machines and paper, and she includes things like how you ensure boycotting people had hardy shoes to sustain them during 381 of public transportation abstinence. Robinson once said:

“That boycott was not supported by a few people; it was supported by 52,000 people."

Fifty-two thousand is the number of leaflets that the city’s Women’s Political Council made to circulate the announcement that a boycott was being mounted.

As someone who is a more than a little skeptical of conscious consumerism, I think your best bet for supporting fast food workers is to support policies that work for all workers. Support candidates that run on a platform that calls for raising local and state wages. If you are not an hourly worker, do you know where your state stands on the issue? Take a look at this info graphic from the Department of Labor and read this summary to learn about what people are being paid where you live.

Finally, support campaigns and organizations that are confronting the systemic problems that allows for employers to exploit workers. I’m a big fan of the reignited Poor People’s Campaign, which is co-chaired by Rev. William Barber. Barber has effectively presented the interlocking issues of racial and economic justice in a framework that calls upon the nation to engage in a ‘moral revival.’ If you haven’t had an opportunity to hear Rev. Barber layout the argument for this shift, head over to YouTube and check him out. You wont’ be sorry.

To all the educators who are approaching or have crossed that finish line, congratulations! If you are looking for suggestions for summer reading to be a better teacher (or be less racist, or be more organized)—I can’t help you with that! Actually, I have read and seen tons of books promising to help us all do these things, but after a year plus of pandemic teaching, let’s rethink the impulse to use summers for self-improvement a little differently. Instead of assigning ‘teacher homework’ to the educators I have been working with this year, I’ve been asking them to focus their energies on what they want to become. It’s a simple exercise, but it can possibly unlock a deeper understanding of yourself and the work you do. Fill in the blanks:

I want to be a better teacher in my classroom, so the places in my life in which I can build my confidence are…

I want to be a better teacher, so the way I can engage more with people from an empathetic place is…

I want to be a better teacher, so I can do the following things to manage my anxiety…

Who we are in the classroom is often a reflection of who we are in the outside world—for good or for bad. Trust me, when we address the personality traits and character flaws that make our out-of-school lives challenging, we find our students more responsive and we are able to engage more deeply with the relationships in front of us. Over the following summer, I will continue to offer a few insights into how we can reduce some of the barriers to good teaching.

We made it!

YOUR FAVORITE PROF