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The Work Continues: The Past, Future, and Progress of Black Labor and Labor Organizing in the United States
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and the Poor People's Campaign Of 1968 by
This book introduces new audiences to Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s final initiative, the multiracial Poor People's Campaign (PPC) of 1968. Robert Hamilton depicts the experience of poor people who traveled to Washington in May 1968 to dramatize the issue of poverty by building a temporary city, Resurrection City. His narrative allows us to hear their voices and understand the strategies, objectives, and organization of the campaign. In addition, he highlights the campaign's educational aspect, showing that significant social movements are a means by which societies learn about themselves and framing the PPC as an initiative whose example can teach and inspire current and future generations. The study thus situates Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s legacy and teachings in relation to current events and further solidifies Dr. King's cultural and sociopolitical relevance.
Call Number: E185.97.K5 H259 2020ISBN: 9780820358284Publication Date: 2020
Marching Across the Color Line by
Once labeled the most dangerous black man in America, A. Philip Randolph was a tireless crusader for civil rights and economic justice. In Marching Across the Color Line: A. Philip Randolph and Civil Rights in the World War II Era, author David Welky examines Randolph's central role in the African American struggle for equality during the World War II era.
Call Number: E185.97.R27 W45 2013ISBN: 9780199998302Publication Date: 2013
Black Workers Remember by
Spanning the 1930s to the present, Black Workers Remember tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words.The individual stories are arranged thematically in chapters on labor organizing, Jim Crow in the workplace, police brutality, white union racism, and civil rights struggles. Taken together, the stories ask us to rethink the conventional understanding of the civil rights movement as one led by young people and preachers in the 1950s and 1960s.
Call Number: HD8081.A65 H66 1999ISBN: 0520217748Publication Date: 2000
Maida Springer by
Yevette Richards's biography of Maida Springer uniquely connects pan-Africanism, national and international labor relations, the Cold War, and African American, labor, women's, and civil rights histories. In addition to documenting Springer's role in international labor relations, the biography provides a larger view of a whole range of political leaders and social movements. Maida Springer is a stirring biography that spans the fields of women studies, African American studies, and labor history.
Call Number: HD8073.S64 R53 2000ISBN: 9780822941392Publication Date: 2000
Divided We Stand by
Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society--above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing mainly on longshoremen in the ports of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and on steelworkers in many of the nation's steel towns, it examines how European immigrants became American and "white" in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighborhood. As workers organized on the job, especially during the overlapping CIO and civil rights eras in the middle third of the twentieth century, trade unions became a vital arena in which "old" and "new" immigrants and black migrants forged new alliances and identities and tested the limits not only of class solidarity but of American democracy.
Call Number: HD8081.A65 N45 2001ISBN: 0691017328Publication Date: 2001
There's Always Work at the Post Office by
Black postal workers -- often college-educated military veterans -- fought their way into postal positions and unions and became a critical force for social change. They combined black labor protest and civic traditions to construct a civil rights unionism at the post office. They were a major factor in the 1970 nationwide postal wildcat strike, which resulted in full collective bargaining rights for the major postal unions under the newly established U.S. Postal Service in 1971. In making the fight for equality primary, African American postal workers were influential in shaping today's post office and postal unions.
Call Number: HE6499 .R82 2010ISBN: 9780807833421Publication Date: 2010
All Labor Has Dignity by
An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King's speeches on labor rights and economic justice People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. He fought throughout his life to connect the labor and civil rights movements, envisioning them as twin pillars for social reform.
Call Number: HD6971.8 .K56 2011ISBN: 9780807086001Publication Date: 2011
For Jobs and Freedom by
Lucy Audubon, Malinda Gatewood Bibb, Laura Clay, Enid Yandell, Cora Wilson Stewart, Mary Breckinridge, Alice Allison Dunnigan, and Loretta Lynn. These women had a vision of a better life for themselves and for others and the courage to make their ideas become real.
Call Number: HD8081.A65 Z54 2007ISBN: 9780813124605Publication Date: 2007
Going down Jericho Road by
The definitive history of the epic struggle for economic justice that became Martin Luther King Jr.'s last crusade. With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists; the first black members of the Memphis city council; the white upper crust who sought to prevent change or conflagration; and, finally, the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr., undertaking a Poor People's Campaign at the crossroads of his life, vilified as a subversive, hounded by the FBI, and seeing in the working poor of Memphis his hopes for a better America.
Call Number: HD5325 .S2572 1968 M465 2007ISBN: 9780393043396Publication Date: 2007
To the Promised Land by
Drawing on a new generation of scholarship about the civil rights era in America, To the Promised Land goes beyond the iconic view of Martin Luther King as an advocate of racial harmony to explore his profound commitment to the poor and working class, and his call for "non-violent resistance" to all forms of oppression, including economic injustice.
Call Number: E185.97.K5 H59 2018ISBN: 9780393651263Publication Date: 2018
Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights by
Widely praised upon publication and now considered a classic study, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights chronicles the southern industrial union movement from the Great Depression to the Cold War, a history that created the context for the sanitation workers' strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis in April 1968. Michael K. Honey documents the dramatic labor battles and sometimes heroic activities of workers and organizers that helped to set the stage for segregation's demise.
Call Number: HD6519.M45 H66 1993ISBN: 9780252063053Publication Date: 1993
Reverend Addie Wyatt by
Labor leader, civil rights activist, outspoken feminist, African American clergywoman--Reverend Addie Wyatt stood at the confluence of many rivers of change in twentieth century America. The first female president of a local chapter of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, Wyatt worked alongside Martin Luther King Jr. and Eleanor Roosevelt and appeared as one of Time magazine's Women of the Year in 1975.
Call Number: HQ1421 .W35 2016ISBN: 9780252040528Publication Date: 2016
Memphis, Martin, and the Mountaintop by
Outraged at the city's refusal to recognize a labor union that would fight for higher pay and safer working conditions, sanitation workers went on strike. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated in his Memphis hotel the day after delivering his "I've Been to the Mountaintop" sermon in Mason Temple Church. Inspired by the memories of a teacher who participated in the strike as a child, author Alice Faye Duncan reveals the story of the Memphis sanitation strike from the perspective of a young girl with a riveting combination of poetry and prose.
Call Number: Folio PS3554.U4633942 M46 2018ISBN: 9781629797182Publication Date: 2018
Radicalism at the Crossroads by
In this exciting work of historical recovery, Dayo F. Gore unearths and examines a dynamic, extended network of black radical women during the early Cold War, including established Communist Party activists such as Claudia Jones, artists and writers such as Beulah Richardson, and lesser known organizers such as Vicki Garvin and Thelma Dale. These women were part of a black left that laid much of the groundwork for both the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s and later strains of black radicalism. Radicalism at the Crossroads offers a sustained and in-depth analysis of the political thought and activism of black women radicals during the Cold War period and adds a new dimension to our understanding of this tumultuous time in United States history.
Call Number: E185.615 .G668 2011ISBN: 9780814732366Publication Date: 2011
Unprotected Labor by
Through an analysis of women's reform, domestic worker activism, and cultural values attached to public and private space, Vanessa May explains how and why domestic workers, the largest category of working women before 1940, were excluded from labor protections that formed the foundation of the welfare state. Looking at the debate over domestic service from both sides of the class divide, Unprotected Labor assesses middle-class women's reform programs as well as household workers' efforts to determine their own working conditions. May argues that working-class women sought to define the middle-class home as a workplace even as employers and reformers regarded the home as private space.
Call Number: HD6072.2.U52 N676 2011ISBN: 9780807834770Publication Date: 2011
Youngblood by
John Oliver Killens's landmark novel of social protest chronicles the lives of the Youngblood family and their friends in Crossroads, Georgia, from the turn of the century to the Great Depression. Its large cast of powerfully affecting characters includes Joe Youngblood, a tragic figure of heroic physical strength; Laurie Lee, his beautiful and strong-willed wife; Richard Myles, a young high school teacher from New York; and Robby, the Youngbloods' son, who takes the large risk of becoming involved in the labor movement.
Call Number: PS3561.I37 Y6 2000ISBN: 0820322016Publication Date: 2000
The Salt Eaters by
A community of Black faith healers witness an event that will change their lives forever in this "hard-nosed, wise, funny" novel (Los Angeles Times). Set in a fictional city in the American South, the novel also "inhabits the nonlinear, sacred space and sacred time of traditional African religion" (The New York Times Book Review).From the men who live off welfare women to the mud mothers who carry their children in their hides, the novel brilliantly explores the narcissistic aspect of despair and the tremendous responsibility that comes with physical, spiritual, and mental well-being.
Call Number: PS3552.A473 S2 1992ISBN: 9780679740766Publication Date: 1992
Where Are All the Librarians of Color? by
This book offers a comprehensive look at the experiences of people of color after the recruitment is over, the diversity box is checked, and the statistics are reported. What are the retention, job satisfaction, and tenure experiences of librarians of color? The authors look at the history of librarians of color in academia, review of the literature, obstacles, roles, leadership, and the tenure process for those that endure. What are the recruitment and retention methods employed to create a diverse workforce, successes and failures? Finally what are some mentoring strategies that work to make the library environment less exploitative and toxic for librarians of color?
Call Number: Z682.4.M56 W48 2015ISBN: 9781936117833Publication Date: 2016
Africentric Social Work by
This edited collection focuses on Africentric social work practice, providing invaluable assistance to undergraduate students in developing foundational skills and knowledge to further their understanding of how to initiate and maintain best practices with African Canadians. In social work education and field practice, students will benefit from the depth and breadth of this book's discussions of social, health, and educational concerns related to Black people across Canada.
Call Number: HV3199.B52 A37 2021ISBN: 9781773631523Publication Date: 2021
Creating a Home in Schools by
The authors of this book provide caring advice to Black, Indigenous, and Teachers of Color (BITOC) to help sustain them into and through the teaching profession. Through an examination of BITOC in the education workforce, the assets that these educators bring to the teaching profession are identified, as are some of the most critical challenges they face in today's schools. The book illuminates the importance of cultivating and supporting social cultural identities as resources that will serve prospective teachers and their increasingly diverse students.
Call Number: LB2844.1.M56 R56 2021ISBN: 9780807765272Publication Date: 2021
The Black Professional Middle Class by
Through an in-depth case study of the black professional middle class in Oakland, this book provides an analysis of the experiences of black professionals in the workplace, community, and local politics. Brown shows how overlapping dynamics of class formation and racial formation have produced historically powerful processes of what he terms "racialized class formation," resulting in a distinct (and internally differentiated) entity, not merely a subset of a larger professional middle class.
Call Number: E185.86 .B6974 2014ISBN: 9780415657846Publication Date: 2013
African American Performance and Theater History by
African-American Performance and Theatre History is an anthology of critical writings that explores the intersections of race, theater, and performance in America. Assembled by two respected scholars in black theater and composed of essays from acknowledged authorities in the field (Joseph Roach and Henry Louis Gates, Jr. among other), this volume is organized into four sections representative of the ways black theater, drama, and performance past and present interact and enact continuous social, cultural, and political dialogues. The premise behind the book is that analyzing African-American theater and performance traditions offers insight into how race has operated and continues to operate in American society.
Call Number: PN2270.A35 A46 2001ISBN: 0195127242Publication Date: 2001
Transitions by
Becoming a director is not just about making a film, webseries,commercial, or music video. The opportunity to direct for television isnot a given because you've successfully completed a project in anothermedium. Turning your passion into your profession requires the abilityto make transitions at the exact moment a pivot is needed, withcreativity and confidence. Chatmon's book helps directors across allmediums shape their career with targeted anecdotes, worksheets, andother resources, all of which fall into three designated categories:How-To, Self-Help, and Inspiration.
Call Number: PN1992.4.C494 A3 2022ISBN: 9781615933310Publication Date: 2022
No More Invisible Man by
. Wingfield’s intersectional analysis deftly charts the ways that gender, race, and class collectively shape black professional men’s work experiences. In its examination of men’s interactions with women and other men, as well as men’s performances of masculinity and their emotional demeanors in these jobs, "No More Invisible Man" extends our understanding of racial- and gender-based dynamics in professional work.
Call Number: HD8038.U5 W564 2013ISBN: 9781439909720Publication Date: 2012
Race, Work, and Leadership by
Rethinking How to Build Inclusive Organizations Race, Work, and Leadership is a rare and important compilation of essays that examines how race matters in people's experience of work and leadership. What does it mean to be black in corporate America today? How are racial dynamics in organizations changing?
Call Number: HF5549.5.M5 R34 2019ISBN: 9781633698017Publication Date: 2019
Lovely One by
With this unflinching account, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson invites readers into her life and world, tracing her family's ascent from segregation to her confirmation on America's highest court within the span of one generation. Named "Ketanji Onyika," meaning "Lovely One," based on a suggestion from her aunt, a Peace Corps worker stationed in West Africa, Justice Jackson learned from her educator parents to take pride in her heritage since birth.
Call Number: KF8745.J25 A3 2024ISBN: 9780593729908Publication Date: 2024
Structural Inequality by
Structural Inequality relates this disparity through the stories of twenty black architects from around the United States and examines the sociological context of architectural practice. Through these experiences, research, and observation, Victoria Kaplan explores the role systemic racism plays in an occupation commonly referred to as the "white gentlemen's profession." Given the shifting demographics of the United States, Kaplan demonstrates that it is incumbent on the profession to act now to create a multicultural field of practitioners who mirror the changing client base.
Call Number: NA738.N5 K37 2006ISBN: 9780742545823Publication Date: 2006
Our Separate Ways by
In Our Separate Ways, authors Ella Bell and Stella Nkomo take an unflinching look at the surprising differences between black and white women's trials and triumphs on their way up the corporate ladder. Based on groundbreaking research that spanned eight years, Our Separate Ways compares and contrasts the experiences of 120 black and white female managers in the American business arena. In-depth histories bring to life the women's powerful and often difficult journeys from childhood to professional success, highlighting the roles that gender, race, and class played in their development.
Call Number: HD6054.4.U6 B45 2001ISBN: 1578512778Publication Date: 2001
Belabored Professions by
According to nineteenth-century racial uplift ideology, African American women served their race best as reformers and activists, or as "doers of the word." In Belabored Professions, Xiomara Santamarina examines the autobiographies of four women who diverged from that ideal and defended the legitimacy of their self-supporting wage labor. She argues that beyond black reformers' calls for abolitionist work, these former slaves and freeborn black women wrote about their own overlooked or disparaged work as socially and culturally valuable to the nation.
Call Number: PS366.A35 S26 2005ISBN: 0807829811Publication Date: 2005
Here by
Celebrated designer, writer, activist, and educator Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller's memoir of a life in advocacy and her journey to answer the question "Where are the Black designers?" Cheryl D. Holmes-Miller is one of the design field's most respected figures. She is legendary for her decades of scholarship and activism and is known as a touchstone and conscience for the design profession. This long-awaited book documents the history of the question she has been asking for decades: "Where are the Black designers?" along with related questions that are urgent to the design profession: Where did they originate? Where have they been? Why haven't they been represented in design histories and canons? Holmes-Miller traces her development as a designer and leader, beginning with her own family and its rich multiethnic history. She narrates her experiences as a design student at Rhode Island School of Design, Maryland Institute College of Art, and Pratt, leading up to her oft-cited Pratt thesis examining barriers to success for Black designers. Holmes-Miller describes the work of her eponymous studio for noted clients that included NASA, Time Inc., and the nascent Black Entertainment Television, as well as the story of her later critiques of the industry in the design press, most notably in Print magazine. Miller also recounts the parallel history of collective efforts by fellow scholars and advocates over the past fifty years to identify and celebrate Black designers. Enhanced with a foreword by Crystal Williams, president of Rhode Island School of Design, award-winning poet, and noted advocate for equity and justice in the fields of art and education, HERE is part memoir, part investigation, and part urgent call for justice and recognition for Black designers, making it an invaluable resource for graphic design professionals, teachers, and students.
Call Number: NC999.4.H65 A3 2024ISBN: 9781797225722Publication Date: 2024
Black Women As Leaders by
Black Women as Leaders analyzes the commitment of contemporary black women to social justice issues from the perspective of adaptive leadership. It shows how black women are often forced into the public practice of leadership due to violent attacks from people with whom they are in engaged in interpersonal relationships. The book also breaks new ground by revealing how black women suffer from the devaluation and vilification of their engagement in the practice of leadership in private settings, such as their homes and selected religious and institutional settings.
Call Number: HD6054.2.U6 M347 2019ISBN: 9781440866241Publication Date: 2019
Working While Black by
In recent years, there has been a rise in diverse racial representation on television. In particular, Black characters have become more actualized and have started extending beyond racial stereotypes. In this collection of essays, the representation of Black characters in professionally defined careers is examined. Commentary is also provided on the portrayal of Black people in relation to stereotypes alongside the importance of Black representation on screen. This work also introduces the idea of Black-collar, a category which highlights the Black experience in white-collar jobs. The essays are divided into six parts based on themes, including profession, and focuses on a select number of Black characters on TV since the 1990s.
Call Number: PN1992.8.A34 W67 2021ISBN: 9781476675213Publication Date: 2021
Raising the Race by
Popular discussions of professional women often dwell on the conflicts faced by the woman who attempts to "have it all," raising children while climbing up the corporate ladder. Yet for all the articles and books written on this subject, there has been little work that focuses on the experience of African American professional women or asks how their perspectives on work-family balance might be unique.
Call Number: HD6054.2.U6 B37 2016ISBN: 9780813561998Publication Date: 2015
Beyond Banneker by
Based on archival research and in-depth interviews with thirty mathematicians, this important and timely book vividly captures important narratives about mathematics teaching and learning in multiple contexts, as well as the unique historical and contemporary settings related to race, opportunity, and excellence that Black mathematicians experience. Walker draws upon these narratives to suggest ways to capitalize on the power and potential of underserved communities to respond to the national imperative for developing math success for new generations of young people.
Call Number: QA28 .W35 2014ISBN: 9781438452159Publication Date: 2014
Hidden Figures by
The #1 New York Times bestseller The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory history essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America. The basis for the smash Academy Award-nominated film starring Taraji P. Henson, Octavia Spencer, Janelle Monae, Kirsten Dunst, and Kevin Costner. Before John Glenn orbited the earth, or Neil Armstrong walked on the moon, a group of dedicated female mathematicians known as "human computers" used pencils, slide rules and adding machines to calculate the numbers that would launch rockets, and astronauts, into space.
ISBN: 9780062363602Publication Date: 2016
Black Liberation Through the Marketplace by
If we face America's racial history squarely, will it mean that the American project is a failure? Conversely, if we think the American project is a worthy endeavor, do we have to lie, downplay, or equivocate about our past? In this book, we use the classical liberal lens to ask Americans on the political right to seriously reckon with America's deep racial pain--much of which arises from violations of rights that conservatives say they deeply value, such as property rights, freedom of contract, and the protection of the rule of law.
Call Number: E185 .F47 2022ISBN: 9781637583449Publication Date: 2022
Toxic Ivory Towers by
Toxic Ivory Towers seeks to document the professional work experiences of underrepresented minority (URM) faculty in U.S. higher education, and simultaneously address the social and economic inequalities in their life course trajectory. Ruth Enid Zambrana finds that despite the changing demographics of the nation, the percentages of Black and Hispanic faculty have increased only slightly, while the percentages obtaining tenure and earning promotion to full professor have remained relatively stagnant. Toxic Ivory Towers is the first book to take a look at the institutional factors impacting the ability of URM faculty to be successful at their jobs, and to flourish in academia.
Call Number: LB1778.2 .Z35 2018ISBN: 9780813592985Publication Date: 2018
A Working People by
In this book, historian Steven A. Reich examines the economic, political and cultural forces that have beaten and built America's black workforce since Emancipation. From the abolition of slavery through the Civil Rights Movement and Great Recession, African Americans have faced a unique set of obstacles and prejudices on their way to becoming a productive and indispensable portion of the American workforce. Repeatedly denied access to the opportunities all Americans are to be afforded under the Constitution, African Americans have combined decades of collective action and community mobilization with the trailblazing heroism of a select few to pave their own way to prosperity.
Call Number: HD8081.A65 R45 2013ISBN: 9781442203327Publication Date: 2013
The Age of Garvey by
Jamaican activist Marcus Garvey (1887-1940) organized the Universal Negro Improvement Association in Harlem in 1917. By the early 1920s, his program of African liberation and racial uplift had attracted millions of supporters, both in the United States and abroad. The Age of Garvey presents an expansive global history of the movement that came to be known as Garveyism. Offering a groundbreaking new interpretation of global black politics between the First and Second World Wars, Adam Ewing charts Garveyism's emergence, its remarkable global transmission, and its influence in the responses among African descendants to white supremacy and colonial rule in Africa, the Caribbean, and the United States.
Call Number: E185.97.G3 E95 2014ISBN: 9780691157795Publication Date: 2014
Hidden Figures by
The phenomenal true story of the black female mathematicians at NASA at the leading edge of the feminist and civil rights movement, whose calculations helped fuel some of America's greatest achievements in space--a powerful, revelatory contribution that is as essential to our understanding of race, discrimination, and achievement in modern America as Between the World and Me and The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks.
Call Number: QA27.5 .L44 2016ISBN: 9780062363596Publication Date: 2016
I Fight for a Living by
Louis Moore draws on the life stories of African American fighters active from 1880 to 1915 to explore working-class black manhood. Moore shows how each fighter conformed to middle-class ideas of masculinity based on his own judgment of what culture would accept. Finally, he argues that African American success in the ring shattered the myth of black inferiority despite media and government efforts to defend white privilege.
Call Number: GV1125 .M66 2017ISBN: 9780252041341Publication Date: 2017
Whose Detroit? by
In Whose Detroit?, Heather Ann Thompson focuses in detail on the African American struggles for full equality and equal justice under the law that shaped the Motor City during the 1960s and 1970s. Even after Great Society liberals committed themselves to improving conditions in Detroit, Thompson argues, poverty and police brutality continued to plague both neighborhoods and workplaces. Frustration with entrenched discrimination and the lack of meaningful remedies not only led black residents to erupt in the infamous urban uprising of 1967, but it also sparked myriad grassroots challenges to postwar liberalism in the wake of that rebellion.
Call Number: F574.D457 T48 2017ISBN: 9781501709210Publication Date: 2017
Sex Workers, Psychics, and Numbers Runners by
During the early twentieth century, a diverse group of African American women carved out unique niches for themselves within New York City's expansive informal economy. LaShawn Harris illuminates the labor patterns and economic activity of three perennials within this kaleidoscope of underground industry: sex work, numbers running for gambling enterprises, and the supernatural consulting business. Mining police and prison records, newspaper accounts, and period literature, Harris teases out answers to essential questions about these women and their working lives.
Call Number: HD6057.5.U52 N4843 2016ISBN: 9780252040207Publication Date: 2016
Guerrillas in the Industrial Jungle by
Guerrillas in the Industrial Jungle traces the history of industrial and primitive metaphors in radical American political activism from the 1960s to the present. Focusing on the Black Panther Party; the League of Revolutionary Black Workers; the International Socialists and the Socialist Workers Party in the 1970s; and twenty-first-century anarchists, Ursula McTaggart analyzes the rhetoric and imagery of these groups alongside African American literature from the same time periods.
Call Number: HD6490.R2 M38 2012ISBN: 9781438439044Publication Date: 2012
Slavery by Another Name by
In this groundbreaking book, Blackmon brings to light one of the most shameful chapters in American history--the re-enslavement of black Americans from the Civil War to World War II--in a moving, sobering account that explores the insidious legacy of white racism that reverberates today.
Call Number: E185.2 .B545 2008ISBN: 9780385506250Publication Date: 2008
Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945 by
Between World War I and World War II, African Americans' quest for civil rights took on a more aggressive character as a new group of black activists challenged the politics of civility traditionally embraced by old-guard leaders in favor of a more forceful protest strategy. Beth Tompkins Bates traces the rise of this new protest politics--which was grounded in making demands and backing them up with collective action--by focusing on the struggle of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to form a union in Chicago, headquarters of the Pullman Company.
Call Number: HD8039.R362 U63 2001ISBN: 0807826146Publication Date: 2001
Working the Diaspora by
In Working the Diaspora, Frederick Knight examines work cultures on both sides of the Atlantic, from West and West Central Africa to British North America and the Caribbean. Knight demonstrates that the knowledge that Africans carried across the Atlantic shaped Anglo-American agricultural development and made particularly important contributions to cotton, indigo, tobacco, and staple food cultivation. The book also compellingly argues that the work experience of slaves shaped their views of the natural world.
Call Number: HD4865.A45 K65 2010ISBN: 9780814748183Publication Date: 2010
Black Girls by
In today's Europe, migrant domestic workers are indispensable in supporting many households which, without their employment, would lack sufficient domestic and care labour. Black Girls collects and explores the stories of some of the first among these workers. They are the Afro-Surinamese and the Eritrean women who in the 1960s and 70s migrated to the former colonising country, the Netherlands and Italy respectively, and there became domestic and care workers.
Call Number: HD6072.2.N4 M37 2014ISBN: 9789004276925Publication Date: 2014
Farming While Black by
Farming While Black is the first comprehensive "how to" guide for aspiring African-heritage growers to reclaim their dignity as agriculturists and for all farmers to understand the distinct, technical contributions of African-heritage people to sustainable agriculture. At Soul Fire Farm, author Leah Penniman co-created the Black and Latinx Farmers Immersion (BLFI) program as a container for new farmers to share growing skills in a culturally relevant and supportive environment led by people of color.
Call Number: HD1476.U6 P46 2018ISBN: 9781603587617Publication Date: 2018
Black Freedom Fighters in Steel by
Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism by Ruth Needleman adds a new dimension to the literature on race and labor. It tells the story of five men born in the South who migrated north for a chance to work the dirtiest and most dangerous jobs in the steel mills. Individually they fought for equality and justice; collectively they helped construct economic and union democracy in postwar America.
Call Number: HD8039.I52 U5744 2003ISBN: 0801488583Publication Date: 2003
Competition in the Promised Land by
Competition in the Promised Land provides a comprehensive account of the long-lasting effects of the influx of black workers on labor markets and urban space in receiving areas. Traditionally, the Great Black Migration has been lauded as a path to general black economic progress. Leah Boustan challenges this view, arguing instead that the migration produced winners and losers within the black community.
Call Number: E185.6 .B77 2016ISBN: 9780691150871Publication Date: 2016
Chained in Silence by
In 1868, the state of Georgia began to make its rapidly growing population of prisoners available for hire. The resulting convict leasing system ensnared not only men but also African American women, who were forced to labor in camps and factories to make profits for private investors. In this vivid work of history, Talitha L. LeFlouria draws from a rich array of primary sources to piece together the stories of these women, recounting what they endured in Georgia's prison system and what their labor accomplished.
Call Number: HV8929.G42 L44 2015ISBN: 9781469622477Publication Date: 2015
Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal by
In Ecowomanism at the Panamá Canal: Black Women, Labor, and Environmental Ethics, Sofia Betancourt constructs a transnational ecowomanist ethic that reclaims inherited environmental cultures across multiple sites of displacement. Betancourt argues that women in the African diaspora have a unique understanding of how a moral refusal to compromise their humanity provides the very understanding needed to survive what was once an inconceivable level of environmental devastation.
Call Number: HQ1495.5 .B38 2022ISBN: 9781793641380Publication Date: 2022
Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow by
The forces that shaped the institution of slavery in the American South endured, albeit in altered form, long after slavery was abolished. Toiling in sweltering Virginia tobacco factories or in the kitchens of white families in Chicago, black women felt a stultifying combination of racial discrimination and sexual prejudice. In Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow, historian Jacqueline Jones offers a powerful account of the changing role of black women, lending a voice to an unsung struggle from the depths of slavery to the ongoing fight for civil rights.
Call Number: HD6057.5.U5 J66 2010ISBN: 9780465018819Publication Date: 2009
The Labor of Faith by
In The Labor of Faith Judith Casselberry examines the material and spiritual labor of the women of the Church of Our Lord Jesus Christ of the Apostolic Faith, Inc., which is based in Harlem and one of the oldest and largest historically Black Pentecostal denominations in the United States. This male-headed church only functions through the work of the church's women, who, despite making up three-quarters of its adult membership, hold no formal positions of power. Casselberry shows how the women negotiate this contradiction by using their work to produce and claim a spiritual authority that provides them with a particular form of power.
Call Number: BR1644.3 .C37 2017ISBN: 9780822363835Publication Date: 2017
Black and Blue by
Black and Blue explores the politics and history that led to this dramatic integration of organized labor. In the process, the book tells a broader story about how the Democratic Party unintentionally sowed the seeds of labor's decline. The labor and civil rights movements are the cornerstones of the Democratic Party, but for much of the twentieth century these movements worked independently of one another.
Call Number: HD8072 .F86 2008ISBN: 0691130817Publication Date: 2007
Black Ethnics by
In an age where racial and ethnic identity intersect, intertwine, and interact in increasingly complex ways, Black Ethnics: Race, Immigration, and the Pursuit of the American Dream offers a superb and rigorous analysis of black politics and coalitions in the post-Civil Rights era. Using an original survey of a New York City labor population and multiple national data sources, author Christina M. Greer explores the political significance of ethnicity for new immigrant and native-born blacks. Black Ethnics concludes that racial and ethnic identities affect the ways in which black ethnic groups conceptualize their possibilities for advancement and placement within the American polity.
Call Number: E185.625 .G64 2013ISBN: 9780199989300Publication Date: 2013
Black Americans and Organized Labor by
In Black Americans and Organized Labor, Paul D. Moreno offers a bold reinterpretation of the role of race and racial discrimination in the American labor movement. Moreno applies insights of the law-and-economics movement to formulate a powerfully compelling labor-race theorem of elegant simplicity: White unionists found that race was a convenient basis on which to do what unions do -- control the labor supply. Not racism pure and simple but "the economics of discrimination" explains historic black absence and under-representation in unions.
Call Number: HD6490 .R22 U649 2006ISBN: 9780807133323Publication Date: 2008
No Right to an Honest Living (Winner of the Pulitzer Prize) by
In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.
Call Number: F73.44 .J66 2023ISBN: 9781541619791Publication Date: 2023
Hunting and Fishing in the New South by
For whites, the ability to hunt and fish freely and employ black laborers became a conspicuous display of their wealth and social standing. But hunting and fishing had been a way of life for all Southerners--blacks included--since colonial times. After the war, African Americans used their mastery of these sports to enter into market activities normally denied people of color, thereby becoming more economically independent from their white employers.
Call Number: SK43 .G55 2008ISBN: 9780801890239Publication Date: 2008
Black Labor, White Sugar by
Early in the twentieth century, the Cuban sugarcane industry faced a labor crisis when Cuban and European workers balked at the inhumane conditions they endured in the cane fields. Rather than reforming their practices, sugar companies gained permission from the Cuban government to import thousands of black workers from other Caribbean colonies, primarily Haiti and Jamaica. Black Labor, White Sugar illuminates the story of these immigrants, their exploitation by the sugarcane companies, and the strategies they used to fight back.
Call Number: HD8039.S86 C853 2015ISBN: 9780807159521Publication Date: 2015
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying by
Detroit: I Do Mind Dying tracks the extraordinary development of the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers as they became two of the landmark political organizations of the 1960s and 1970s. It is widely heralded as one the most important books on the black liberation movement. Marvin Surkin received his PhD in political science from New York University and is a specialist in comparative urban politics and social change
Call Number: HN80.D6 G46ISBN: 1608462218Publication Date: 2012
Hammer and Hoe by
Between 1929 and 1941, the Communist Party organized and led a radical, militantly antiracist movement in Alabama -- the center of Party activity in the Depression South. Hammer and Hoe documents the efforts of the Alabama Communist Party and its allies to secure racial, economic, and political reforms. Sensitive to the complexities of gender, race, culture and class without compromising the political narrative, Robin Kelley illustrates one of the most unique and least understood radical movements in American history.
Call Number: HX91.A2 K45 1990ISBN: 0807819212Publication Date: 1990