Laura Warren Hill: Strike the Hammer

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Laura Warren Hill will be in conversation with Kimberly Brown

Buy Strike the Hammer at our independent bookstore, Ampersand Books.

On July 24, 1964, chaos erupted in Rochester, NY. Strike the Hammer examines the unrest—rebellion by the city’s Black community, rampant police brutality—that would radically change the trajectory of the Civil Rights movement. Laura Warren Hill examines Rochester’s long Civil Rights history and, drawing extensively on oral accounts of the northern, urban community, offers rich and detailed stories of the area’s protest tradition. Augmenting oral testimonies with records from the NAACP, SCLC, and the local FIGHT, Strike the Hammer paints a compelling picture.

“Strike the Hammer offers much more than another case study of African American urban, northern, activism. Laura Warren Hill offers one of the first narrative analyses of the protest politics and urban community histories that gave rise to ‘Black Capitalism’ in many years.”

–Brian J. Purnell, Bowdoin College, author of Fighting Jim Crow in the County of Kings

Laura Warren Hill is Associate Professor of History at Bloomfield College. She is the co-editor of The Business of Black Power and has published in Journal for the Study of Radicalism and Journal of African American History. Follow her on Twitter @Mohojolo.

Kimberly Brown is an educator and a teacher leader in the Rochester City School District, where she currently teaches middle school English. She is also an adjunct professor at St. John Fisher College, where she facilitates English Methods and diversity classes. A dedicated advocate for social justice and equity in education and the community, she is an advisor for Penfield High School’s Black Student Union.

Buy Strike the Hammer at our independent bookstore, Ampersand Books.

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