LARB is cooking up a storm!

For today only, donate $50 or more and get our limited-edition LARB Tea Towel designed by Mads Gobbo.

Donate Today

Randal Maurice Jelks

Randal Maurice Jelks is a professor of American studies and African and African American studies at the University of Kansas. His recent books include Faith and Struggle in the Lives of Four African Americans: Ethel Waters, Mary Lou Williams, Eldridge Cleaver, and Muhammad Ali and Letters to Martin: Meditations on Democracy in Black America.

Close Ranks: On Three New Books Exploring African Americans, Patriotism, and the US Armed Forces
Randal Maurice Jelks reviews three books about the African American experience in war: Beth Bailey’s “An Army Afire: How the US Army Confronted Its Racial Crisis in the Vietnam Era,” Matthew F. Delmont’s “Half American: The Epic Story of African Americans Fighting World War II at Home and Abroad,“ and Chad L. Williams’s “The Wounded World: W. E. B. Du Bois and the First World War.”...
Randal Maurice JelksJul 17
- History
Which Way the NAACP: On A. J. Baime’s “White Lies” and Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s “Civil Rights Queen”
Randal Jelks considers two books about underappreciated Civil Rights figures, A. J. Baime’s “White Lies: The Double Life of Walter F. White and America’s Darkest Secret” and Tomiko Brown-Nagin’s “ Civil Rights Queen: Constance Baker Motley and the Struggle for Equality.”...
Randal Maurice JelksSep 29, 2022
How to Tell Africa’s History?
The saga of a continent, told by a longtime journalist....
Randal Maurice JelksJan 29, 2022
- History
The Struggle for Black Education: On Jarvis R. Givens’s “Fugitive Pedagogy”
An outstanding contribution to the history of Black education that focuses on the career of Carter G. Woodson....
Randal Maurice JelksSep 12, 2021
- Education
All Souls Rising
An anthology of African American literature arrives right on time....
Randal Maurice JelksFeb 22, 2021
- History
- Politics and Economics