Beth T. Bates

Beth Bates earned a B.A. degree in philosophy from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a Ph.D in Americanhistoryfrom Columbia University. Bates's scholarship has focused on political, social, and economic developments within the 20th century African American community. Her book, Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945 (University of North Carolina Press, 2001), explores the transformation of black politics in America between World War I and World War II. Bates's book shows how A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters turned a campaign to form a union of Pullman sleeping car porters into a movement that paved the way for the modern civil rights movement.

Dr. Bates also published an article on a related topic, A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP, 1933-1941, in the American Historical Review [Vol. 102:2 (Spring 1997)]. This essay examines how black activists organized in labor and community institutions challenged the agenda of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People and helped shape the direction of civil rights politics, moving it beyond the paternalism of "racial uplift" to incorporate the interests of new-crowd networks. Bates's current project is a Detroit-based study of the evolution of radical black politics from the 1930s to the 1960s.

Professor Bates teaches courses in black labor history, black social movements, black urban history and a survey of African American Culture.

Beth Bates, Associate Professor   - Email:  aa3086@wayne.edu