Journey back Inside The Blanket Fort as we spotlight an excellent collection of SIU Press books in honor of Black History Month.

In the groundbreaking From Du Bois to Obama: African American Intellectuals in the Public Forum, Charles Pete Banner-Haley explores the history of African American intellectualism and reveals the efforts of black intellectuals in the ongoing struggle against racism, showing how they have responded to Jim Crow segregation, violence against black Americans, and the more subtle racism of the postintegration age.

Between 1910 and 1920, the Chicago Federation of Labor inaugurated a massive organizing drive in the city’s meatpacking and steel industries. Although the CFL sought legitimately progressive goals, worked earnestly to organize an interracial union, and made major inroads among both black and white workers, their efforts resulted in a bitter defeat. In The Ordeal of the Jungle: Race and the Chicago Federation of Labor, 1903–1922, David Bates provides a clear picture of how even the most progressive of intentions can be ground to a halt.

Black Writing from Chicago: In the World, Not of It? takes readers on a cultural trip through Chicago’s literary history. Editor Richard R. Guzman compiles the first comprehensive collection of the works of Chicago’s black writers from 1861 to the present day.