Research

Research

I am a specialist in twentieth century postwar political and social American history, with a special interest in the history of race in the United States and the relationship between public policy and mainstream political institutions and movements for social, economic and political change.

My doctoral research (completed September 2013) focused upon the period from the mid-1960s to the late-1970s, and offered a grass-roots analysis and reassessment of Black Power, alongside a top-down federal and local government perspective, within a national historical narrative of the political culture. Central to my work was an examination of the relationship between the War on Poverty, the African American community groups which engaged in it, and the Black Power movement itself. It then explored the roles these played in the ostensible growth of black political power and political engagement that unfolded during the late-1960s onwards.

Publications

• ‘Black Power in Action: The Bedford-Stuyvesant Restoration Corporation, Robert Kennedy and the Politics of the Urban Crisis,’ Journal of American History, 100, No. 3, (December 2013), pp.736-760

• Book review: ‘Not in Our Lifetimes: The Future of Black Politics.’ By Michael C. Dawson, London School of Economics Review of Books (October 2012)

In Press

• ‘Review Essay: The Economics of the Black Freedom Struggle,’ Journal of American Studies (forthcoming)

• ‘The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee,’ Encyclopedia of Race, Ethnicity, and Nationalism (Wiley Blackwell, 2014) (forthcoming)

Work Under Review/ In Progress

• Black Power in the American Political Mainstream -This is a revised book-version of my doctoral thesis which is currently under review with a leading U.S. academic press

• Anne-Marie Angelo & Tom Adam Davies, ‘John F. Kennedy and Africa: 50 Years On’ (Under review)

• ‘A Pathway to Political Office: African Americans and the War on Poverty in New York City’ (in progress)