While at Brown, Chatelain received the University of California-Santa Barbara’s Black Studies Dissertation Fellowship. in American Civilization from Brown University. In 2008, Chatelain graduated with her Ph.D. After graduating the University of Missouri in 2001, Chatelain worked in Washington, D.C.

Previously, she was the Reach for Excellence Assistant Professor of Honors and African American Studies at the University of Oklahoma’s Honors College. Marcia Chatelain is a Provost’s Distinguished Associate Professor of History and African American Studies at Georgetown University. Synthesizing years of research, Franchise tells a troubling success story of an industry that blossomed the very moment a freedom movement began to wither. With the discourse of social welfare all but evaporated, federal programs under presidents Johnson and Nixon promoted a new vision for racial justice: that the franchising of fast food restaurants, by black citizens in their own neighborhoods, could finally improve the quality of black life. In Franchise, acclaimed historian Marcia Chatelain uncovers a surprising history of cooperation among fast food companies, black capitalists, and civil rights leaders, who-in the troubled years after King’s assassination-believed they found an economic answer to the problem of racial inequality. But how did fast food restaurants so thoroughly saturate black neighborhoods in the first place? Often blamed for the rising rates of obesity and diabetes among black Americans, fast food restaurants like McDonald’s have long symbolized capitalism’s villainous effects on our nation’s most vulnerable communities.

Franchise marcia chatelain