Exploring Black America: A historian’s unique path of inquiry

Marcia Chatelain began her academic journey intending to work as a journalist but instead became transfixed by larger issues of religion, race, and history—“just wanting to tell stories that had a little more space for background, a little more space for asking questions,” she says.

Five years ago, that resulted in a Pulitzer Prize for “Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America,” an exploration of how the fast-food industry affected and shaped the Black community.

“What historians can provide is not necessarily a prediction of what is to come,” Chatelain says. “Rather, it’s an opportunity to think about some of the patterns to be aware of and some of the potential pitfalls.”

Arriving at Penn three years ago, Chatelain is the Penn Presidential Compact Professor of Africana Studies and serves as the undergraduate chair in the Department of Africana Studies. She has a new book coming this fall and is at work on her next, both about the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s.

“I wish that more people listened to historians, not in order to decide what they think, but to understand where they stand,” she says.

The story behind ‘Franchise’

Chatelain’s book “Franchise,” which traces the growth of Black fast-food franchisees starting with Herman Petty in Chicago, had its origins in the early 2000s “food sovereignty” movement. “People were always just kind of shocked and appalled that people would eat fast food or let their kids eat fast food. And I thought that was strange because it seemed like fast food is a reality—that no one was willing to recognize the power it had,” Chatelain says.

McDonald’s president Ray Kroc “did not quite understand the pressures that Black professionals inside of his organization faced, and he may not have cared,” Chatelain wrote. “But he understood the bottom line, and as long as Black franchisees could deliver profits and deliver QSCV—quality, service, cleanliness, and value—he was willing to meet them where they were.”

Inside the Ferguson syllabus

In August 2014, Chatelain led the Ferguson Syllabus, a crowdsourced social media-driven initiative, which arose from the Ferguson, Missouri, protests in response to the death of Michael Brown. She says the impetus for the project came when it was clear that a number of schools would be opening without addressing what had occurred that summer. “Millions of people were going to start an educational process without kind of framing what the moment was like,” she says.

The result was a massive compilation of resources for students and classrooms at all levels, including articles and books, contributed by scholars, teachers, counselors, and experts around the country. “People were open to thinking about the implications of racial injustice in their time, and I think a lot of people got a lot out of it,” she says.

Her work on the Ferguson Syllabus also earned national attention and praise.

Favorite courses

At Penn, Chatelain has taught courses in Black women’s activism, Black childhood, and other topics, as well as a variety of specialized independent studies and seminars. Her favorite course is Sex, Love, and Race in African American Life and History, focused on how the law shapes personal experiences and relationships. “All that history is really bound up into a history of race and either strengthening or trying to loosen ideas about the color line,” Chatelain says.

She’s looking forward to teaching classes on Black food studies and Black capitalism, which contain insights from “Franchise” and her research into fast food. “A lot of social media culture suggests to us that the most interesting thing about us are the things that we purchase or the things that we use, and I want students to have an opportunity to think about what that does for us all as a society,” she says.

Projects on the Civil Rights Movement

Chatelain’s forthcoming book, “How Bright the Path Grows: The Untold Story of the Women Who Made the March on Washington,” is due out this fall. It highlights “the women who were given an opportunity to be recognized but not fully heard”—those who were honored, who performed music, or who spoke briefly on the historic day in 1963.

Her next project examines leadership in the Civil Rights Movement after Martin Luther King Jr.’s assassination in 1968. Chatelain says the book will explore the question, “Why isn’t there a next King?,” and how that expectation has dominated the analysis of Black politics. “I was curious about what was that actual moment like, what did people between April of 1968 and April of 1969 think about that idea,” she says.

Chatelain says that, as a historian, she can get very mired in detail and asking critical questions, and that has driven many of her articles and books. “For a lot of these moments, I just assume, ‘I’m sure someone’s figured this part out,’” she says. “But no, no one’s asked this question, no one’s figured this out—at least not to my satisfaction.”