Michael K. Honey (born 1947) is an American historian, Guggenheim Fellow and Haley Professor of Humanities at the

University of Washington Tacoma The University of Washington Tacoma (UW Tacoma) is a campus of University of Washington in Tacoma, Washington. The UW Tacoma campus opened in leased space in 1990 and opened its permanent campus in 1997. History Following the establishment of ...

in the United States, where he teaches African-American, civil rights and labor history.

Early life

Honey is a graduate of

Northern Illinois University Northern Illinois University (NIU) is a public research university in DeKalb, Illinois. It was founded as Northern Illinois State Normal School on May 22, 1895, by Illinois Governor John P. Altgeld as part of an expansion of the state's system ...

(Ph.D.),

Howard University Howard University (Howard) is a Private university, private, University charter#Federal, federally chartered historically black research university in Washington, D.C. It is Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education, classifie ...

(M.A.) and Oakland University (B.A.).

Career

Honey served as the Harry Bridges Chair of Labor Studies for the

University of Washington The University of Washington (UW, simply Washington, or informally U-Dub) is a public research university in Seattle, Washington. Founded in 1861, Washington is one of the oldest universities on the West Coast; it was established in Seattl ...

, and as President of the

Labor and Working-Class History Association The Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) is a non-profit association of academics, educators, students, and labor movement and other activists that promotes research into and publication of materials on the history of the labor move ...

. Honey is best known for his scholarly research on the history of the American

civil rights Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life o ...

activist

Martin Luther King Jr. Martin Luther King Jr. (born Michael King Jr.; January 15, 1929 – April 4, 1968) was an American Baptist minister and activist, one of the most prominent leaders in the civil rights movement from 1955 until his assassination in 1968 ...

, and on the

labor history of the United States The labor history of the United States describes the history of organized labor, US labor law, and more general history of working people, in the United States. Beginning in the 1930s, unions became important allies of the Democratic Party. T ...

. In 2011 he was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship, ''"on the basis of his prior achievement and exceptional promise"'', from a field of almost 3,000 applicants from the United States and Canada. He has also received research grants and fellowships from the American Council of Learned Societies, the

National Endowment for the Humanities The National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) is an independent federal agency of the U.S. government, established by thNational Foundation on the Arts and the Humanities Act of 1965(), dedicated to supporting research, education, preserv ...

, the

National Humanities Center The National Humanities Center (NHC) is an independent institute for advanced study in the humanities. The NHC operates as a privately incorporated nonprofit and is not part of any university or federal agency. The center was planned under the auspi ...

, the Rockefeller Foundation's Bellagio Research and Conference Center, the

Huntington Library The Huntington Library, Art Museum and Botanical Gardens, known as The Huntington, is a collections-based educational and research institution established by Henry E. Huntington (1850–1927) and Arabella Huntington (c.1851–1924) in San Ma ...

, and the

Stanford Humanities Center Stanford University has many centers and institutes dedicated to the study of various specific topics. These centers and institutes may be within a department, within a school but across departments, an independent laboratory, institute or center ...

. In 2008 his book ''Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign'' won the Liberty Legacy Foundation Award, awarded annually for the best book written by a professional historian on the fights for civil rights in the United States anytime from 1776 to the present. It also received the Robert F. Kennedy Center for Justice and Human Rights 2011 Book award given annually to a novelist who "most faithfully and forcefully reflects Robert Kennedy's purposes - his concern for the poor and the powerless, his struggle for honest and even-handed justice, his conviction that a decent society must assure all young people a fair chance, and his faith that a free democracy can act to remedy disparities of power and opportunity." His current work is on the oral history of John Handcox, a Great Depression-era

tenant farmer A tenant farmer is a person (farmer or farmworker) who resides on land owned by a landlord. Tenant farming is an agricultural production system in which landowners contribute their land and often a measure of operating capital and management, ...

from

Arkansas Arkansas ( ) is a landlocked state in the South Central United States. It is bordered by Missouri to the north, Tennessee and Mississippi to the east, Louisiana to the south, and Texas and Oklahoma to the west. Its name is from the O ...

and advocate for the

Southern Tenant Farmers Union The Southern Tenant Farmers Union (STFU) (1934–1970) was founded as a civil farmer's union to organize tenant farmers in the Southern United States. Originally set up in July 1934 during the Great Depression, the STFU was founded to help sha ...

, known for his political songs and poetry.

Selected works

* ''Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers'' (1993) * "Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle (1999) * ''Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign'', W. W. Norton (2008) * ''All Labor Has Dignity'' (ed., 2011) , Martin Luther King's speeches on labor rights and economic justice, in the King Legacy Series of Beacon Press * ''To the Promised Land: Martin Luther King and the Fight for Economic Justice'', W. W. Norton (2018)

Early life

Career

Selected works

References

Archives