WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass., Feb. 23, 2009 -- The Frederick Jackson Turner Award, given by the Organization of American Historians for an author's first book on some significant phase of American History will be awarded to Leslie Brown, assistant professor of history at Williams College.  The award for "Upbuilding Black Durham: Gender, Class, and Black Community Development in the Urban South" (UNC, Chapel Hill, 2008) will be presented to Brown at the organization's annual meeting in March.

Before joining the Williams faculty in 2008, Brown taught at Skidmore College, Washington University, and Duke University.  While at Duke, she co-coordinated the project "Behind the Veil: Documenting African American Life in the Jim Crow South," at the Center for Documentary Studies.  She received her B.A. from Tufts University in 1977 and a Ph.D. in history from Duke University in 1997.

Her book "Upbuilding Black Durham" focuses on Durham, North Carolina, exploring black community politics during the Jim Crow era.  Using interviews, narratives, and family stories, Brown illuminates the city's black history from emancipation to the civil rights era, and the struggle to give meaning to black freedom and to generate progress.

In her book, Brown argues that African Americans' multifaceted identity neither unified nor divided them in Durham, despite Jim Crow.  Instead, the alliances and alienation experienced within the interrelated structures of gender and class and the resulting relationships were both interconnected and disjointed, as men and women among the migrants, working, middle, and elite classes sought to carve their own niche in a new free society.

Her work has been included in a number of anthologies, including "The Practice of U.S. Women's History: Narratives, Intersections, and Dialogues," "Telling Stories: Black Women in the Academy," "Her Past Around Us: Interpreting Sites for Women's History," and "Stepping Forward: Black Women in Africa and the Americas."  

Brown is currently working on a book on black women's migration, an edited collection of interviews, a documents collection, and a volume of the writings and speeches of Congresswoman Shirley Chisholm.

Of particular interest to Brown are working-class black women.  "Theirs was the usual experience of African Americans in the urban south," she writes.  These women acted as arbiters on behalf of the community, taking up issues of wages and work conditions.  While women of the professional classes focused on respectability, education, and career opportunities, working-class women rallied their efforts behind alleviating the immediate causes and effects of poverty.  Throughout their struggles, working-class women challenged both the black elite and middle class within the community, as well as Jim Crow.  Their resources helped build Durham's reputation as the "Capital of the Black Middle Class."
 
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Williams College is consistently ranked one of the nation's top liberal arts colleges.  The college's 2,000 students are taught by a faculty noted for the quality of their teaching and research, and the achievement of academic goals includes active participation of students with faculty in this research.  Students' educational experience is enriched by the residential campus environment, which provides a host of opportunities for interaction with one another and with faculty beyond the classroom.  Admission decisions are made regardless of a student's financial ability, and the college provides grants and other assistance to meet the demonstrated needs of all who are admitted.  Founded in 1793, it is the second oldest institution of higher learning in Massachusetts.  The college is located in Williamstown, Mass.  To visit the college on the Internet:  www.williams.edu