Africana Studies

Publications

Brian Purnell, Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings: The Congress of Racial Equality in Brooklyn (Lexington, KY: University Press of Kentucky, 2013)

**Winner of the New York State Historical Association 2012 Dixon Ryan Fox Manuscript Prize

Brian Purnell, " 'What We Need is Brick and Mortar:' Race, Gender and Early Leadership of the Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation," in Laura Warren Hill and Julia Rabig (eds)., The Business of Black Power: Community Development, Capitalism, and Corporate Responsibility in Postwar America (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2012), 217-244.

Brian Purnell, "Spotlight on New York's 'Law Against Discrimination,' " (PDF) New York Archives, 10:4, 10-13

Brian Purnell, “ ‘Revolution Has Come to Brooklyn:’ The Campaign against Discrimination in the Construction Trades and Growing Militancy in the Northern Black Freedom Movement,”  in Black Power at Work, edited by David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey (Cornell University Press, 2010)

Brian Purnell, “Interview with Dr. John Hope Franklin" (PDF)  Journal of African American History, (94:3), 407-421

Brian Purnell, “Desegregating the Jim Crow North: Bronx African Americans and the Fight to Integrate the Castle Hill Beach Club – 1953-1963,”  (PDF) Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, (32:2), 47-78

Brian Purnell and Oneka LaBennett, “The Bronx African American History Project (BAAHP) and Approaches to Scholarship About/For Black Communities,” (PDF)  Introduction to Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, July 2009 (32:2), special issue on scholarship produced in connection to the Bronx African American History Project, co-guest edited by Oneka LaBennett and Brian Purnell

Brian Purnell, “ ‘Taxation without Sanitation is Tyranny’: Civil Rights Struggles Over Garbage Collection in Brooklyn, New York During the Fall of 1962,” (PDF) in Afro-Americans in New York Life and History, July 2007 (31:2), 61-88. ** Reprinted in Clarence Taylor, editor, Civil Rights in New York City: From World War II to the Giuliani Era (Fordham University Press, 2010), 79-105

Brian Purnell, “ ‘Drive Awhile for Freedom’: Brooklyn CORE’s 1964 Stall-In and Public Discourses on Protest Violence,” in Jeanne F. Theoharis and Komozi Woodard (eds.), Ground Work: Local Black Freedom Movements in America (New York: New York University Press, 2005), 45-75

Select Exhibits

Reflections on Community Development: Stories from Bedford Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Brooklyn, New York, Brooklyn Historical Society, February – August 2008

Select Review Essays

Brian Purnell, “Review of The African Burial Ground National Monument,” (PDF) Journal of American History, 97:3 (December 2010)

Brian Purnell, “Review of Glenda Gilmore’s Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950,” North Carolina Historical Review, 87:3 (July 2010)

Brian Purnell, “Review of Joseph Wolfinger, Philadelphia Divided,” The Journal of African American History, 93:4 (Fall 2008)

Brian Purnell, “Review of Steven Lawson’s Civil Rights Crossroads: Nation, Community, and the Black Freedom Struggle,” North Carolina Historical Review (April 2006)

Brian Purnell, “Boundary Crossings: Nigger, White Boy, and Living Race in America,” Souls 4:4 (Fall 2002), 102-108

Miscellaneous

Brooklyn Connections: Teachers Workshop on the Civil Rights Movement in Brooklyn

Bowdoin Daily Sun: Purnell Civil Rights Book-Manuscript Wins Prize 

Brian Purnell is featured on C-SPAN show, Lectures in History

Bowdoin Daily Sun: Slide show of pictures from the taping of Lectures in History  

Brian Purnell speaks on a labor history panel at the 2011 Brooklyn Book Festival 

Academic Spotlight: Remembering the Forgotten King: Prof. Purnell Shares Thoughts on Breadth of MLK Legacy

"The White-Collar Working Class: Has the American Middle Class Gone into Foreclosure?" (12/22/08), originally published in History News Network and reprinted in LA Progressive

Additional Information and Student Resources

Letters of Recommendation