Jesse Montgomery

Jesse Montgomery is an assistant professor of English at Berea College who works on American literature after 1945, Appalachian outmigration, and radical culture. He received his BA in English from Oberlin College in 2010, and his Ph.D. in English from Vanderbilt University in 2020. He is the author of It Is Not Enough to Survive: The Young Patriots Story (University of North Carolina Press, 2026). Formed in the late 1960s, the Young Patriots Organization (YPO) was a Chicago-based radical group made up of young white migrants from Appalachia and the South who helped found Fred Hampton’s Rainbow Coalition. This book tells the story of how the YPO grew from a local street gang into a powerful political and social force in the city’s Uptown neighborhood, where they fought against police brutality, racism, economic exploitation, and displacement through community organization, the establishment of survival programs and working-class cultural organizations.

He is currently at work as part of an editorial team on Gurney Norman: Confluence & Influence, forthcoming from the University of Kentucky Press. Jesse’s writing has appeared in n+1, Popula, Full Stop, and the Journal of Popular Music Studies.

At Berea, he teaches courses on American literature, Appalachian studies, and contemporary media.