The October issue of PMHB includes articles on a rare opportunity for Black education in early America; the literary aspirations and disappointments of little-known Black activist James Samuel Stemons; and the filmic portrayal of working-class veterans of the Vietnam and Iraq Wars.

Contents

The Philadelphia Bray Schools: A Story of Black Education in Early America, 1758–1845

John Van Horne and Grant Stanton

"written with the heart’s blood": An Unpublished Novel by Black Activist James Samuel Stemons, 1903

Cynthia Patterson

Spiraling down the Smelting Pot: Determinism and the Working-Class Hero in The Deer Hunter (Cimino, 1978) and Out of the Furnace (Cooper, 2013)

Julie Assouly