About this item
WINNER * 2021 PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY Winner * 2022 James Beard Foundation Book Award [Writing]. The "stunning" (David W. Blight) untold history of how fast food became one of the greatest generators of black wealth in America. Just as The Color of Law provided a vital understanding of redlining and racial segregation, Marcia Chatelains Franchise investigates the complex interrelationship between black communities and Americas largest, most popular fast food chain. Taking us from the first McDonalds drive-in in San Bernardino to the franchise on Florissant Avenue in Ferguson, Missouri, in the summer of 2014, Chatelain shows how fast food is a source of both power -- economic and political -- and despair for African Americans. As she contends, fast food is, more than ever before, a key battlefield in the fight for racial justice. 8 chapter openers
About the Author
Marcia Chatelain is a Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. The author of South Side Girls: Growing up in the Great Migration (Duke University Press, 2015) she teaches about women's and girls' history, as well as black capitalism. Her latest book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America (Liveright Publishing Co./ W.W. Norton, January 2020) will examine the intricate relationship among African American politicians, civil rights organizations, communities, and the fast food industry. Franchise won the 2021 Pulitzer Prize in History, the Hagley Medal for Business History, and the Lawrence Levine Award from the Organization of American Historians. An active public speaker and educational consultant, Chatelain has received awards and honors from the Ford Foundation, the American Association of University Women, and the German Marshall Fund of the United States. At Georgetown, she has won several teaching awards. In 2016, the Chronicle of Higher Education named her a Top Influencer in academia in recognition of her social media campaign #FergusonSyllabus, which implored educators to facilitate discussions about the crisis in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014. She has held an Eric and Wendy Schmidt Fellowship at New America, a National Endowment for the Humanities Faculty Fellowship, and an Andrew Carnegie Fellowship.
