We invite you to an invigorating discourse of scholarship and cultural history with Dr. Marcia Chatelain as she discusses her Pulitzer prize-winning book, Franchise: The Golden Arches in Black America. Dr. Chatelain, a highly accomplished professor and scholar of African American life and culture, is a frequent public speaker with expertise in food justice, race and ethnicity, and Urban Policy and consults for many media outlets including, The Atlantic, C-Span, MSNBC, CNN, and BBC America.

In Franchise, Dr. Chatelain set out to discover the interplay between fast-food restaurants and their saturation within black neighborhoods. McDonald’s has often been blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans. Dr. Chatelain uncovers an underappreciated intersection of capitalism and racism in a surprising history of cooperation among fast-food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who–in the troubled years after Dr. King’s assassination–believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. Join us for an illuminating talk about the history of urban development, race relations, and fast food that is sure to whet your intellectual appetite – Q&A with the author to follow!

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