Forum on Labor and Civil Liberties in the June 2013 Issue of the Journal of the Historical Society

Randall Stephens

The latest issue of the Journal of the Historical Society should be in mailboxes and on the shelves of libraries now.  The June 2013 issue features a forum on Jennifer Luff's 2012 UNC Press book Commonsense Anticommunism: Labor and Civil Liberties between the World Wars. The introduction to the forum notes that: 
 

Luff finds that during the 1920s and into the '30s, the American Federation of Labor developed a policy position between labor radicalism and state intervention: the AFL's “commonsense anticommunism” promoted voluntarist efforts to curb Communist influence within its unions while also opposing legislation that would outlaw Communist agitation. This position would shift over time, but Luff reveals much about “labor conservatives” that should surprise readers accustomed to the usual popular narrative about the varied strands of the labor movement, J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, and American anticommunism. After Luff introduces her work to our readers, we present commentary by a number of scholars: Eric Arnesen of The George Washington University; Jennifer Delton of Skidmore College; Harvey Klehr of Emory University; Judy Kutulas of St. Olaf College; Tony Michels of the University of Wisconsin, Madison; and Steve Rosswurm of Lake Forest College. To conclude the forum, Professor Luff responds to the commentary on her important book.

Labor History Roundup

Rebecca J. Rosen, "Augmented-Reality Game Brings a Story of Jewish Labor Organizers Back to Life," Atlantic, June 6 2013

There is a feeling you get when you stand on, say, the ground at Gettysburg or the steps of the Lincoln Monument and you know that something momentous, a piece of history, occurred right on that part of the Earth right beneath your feet.

But what about the history that went down at less noted locations, places that you pass every day on your way to work or when you take your dog out for a walk? It's easy to never see those stories, to relegate them to museums and books, away from the physical locations where they took place. But what if the city itself became our history museum, and its sites bore their pasts more prominently?>>>

Rich Yeselson, "Fortress Unionism: Decades after its passage, the Taft-Hartley Act still casts a shadow on labor. Unions have a future—but only if they accept some difficult realities," Democracy: A Journal of Ideas (Summer 2013)

. . . . With the long decline of the labor movement has come a parallel decline in our historical memory of its once-extraordinary influence, and of the effort to curtail that influence. Books about Truman give only passing mention to the most contentious law passed during his presidency. Taft, the son of a President and a man who might have become President himself, is barely remembered. And it is unimaginable today that a President would give a national address vociferously defending labor unions.>>>

Josh Eidelson and Sarah Jaffe, "Belabored Podcast #9: Who Stole My Wages?" Dissent, June 7, 2013

Uprisings in Turkey and the role of labor unions, international actions targeting McDonald’s, ongoing conflict at Palermo’s Pizza, and an independent organizing campaign at an upscale New York deli. Plus the debut of Belabored Explainers!>>>

"The Desperate Would-be Housewife of New York," Smithsonian, June 13, 2013

In the early evening of January 30, 1857, a middle-aged dentist named Harvey Burdell left his townhouse at 31 Bond Street, a respectable if not truly chic section of Manhattan, and set out for a local hotel. Burdell had recently been taking his dinners there, even though he had a cook on his household staff. His relationship with one of his tenants (and a regular at his table), Emma Cunningham, had become strained. Burdell had accused Cunningham, a 34-year-old widow with four children, of stealing a promissory note from his office safe. She in turn had had Burdell arrested for breach of promise to marry, which was then a criminal offense.>>>

Field Trip: A Report from the Bright Side of Fourth-Grade History Education

Chris Beneke

Guided tour at Lowell National Park. 
Photo courtesy of www.nps.gov/lowe

If the experiences of my kids are at all representative, the glum accounts you’ve heard or read about elementary and secondary education in the U.S. have some basis in fact. Public school students move in virtual lock-step with their classmates, get a meager fifteen minutes for recess, and take tests with unsettling regularity. Meanwhile, their hardworking teachers and principals must manage both rigid curriculum standards and large classes.

In light of these oft-repeated concerns, my perspective brightened last week while chaperoning my son’s fourth-grade class trip to the Lowell National Park, the splendid and well-preserved site of the famous textile mills where America’s industrial revolution took off in the 1830s and 1840s. I didn’t come away feeling like a Finnish parent probably feels after accompanying his or her child on a field trip. Still, the experience left me much more optimistic about the trajectory of early history education: the kids arrived well-prepared and the museum’s activities were engaging, hands-on, well-paced, and occasionally revelatory.

Robert Zieger, 1938-2013

Paul Ortiz

Robert H. Zieger, distinguished professor of history emeritus at the University of Florida, passed away on March 6, 2013.

Professor Zieger was one of the preeminent labor historians of the United States. He was a two-time recipient of the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award for the best book in labor history. He was a prolific writer and authored classic works including, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (University Press of Kentucky, 2007),  The CIO, 1935-1955 (University of North Carolina Press, 1995), and America's Great War: World War I and the American Experience (Rowman & Littlefield, 2001).

In addition Bob was a spirited and rigorous historian who introduced countless scholars, students, union members, and community organizers to the field of labor history. He edited several key volumes in southern labor history including Life and Labor in the New New South (University Press of Florida, 2012) which presented some of the best new work in the field of southern labor studies.  Bob also penned essays on baseball for Harper's magazine, on labor race, and gender for Reviews in American History, and on the lessons of the past for Historically Speaking.

Black History Month: What We Owe to the Black Domestic Servants of the Jim Crow South

Katherine van Wormer*

Cheering a speaker in a Montgomery
bus boycott church meeting. From Life
magazine, February 6, 1956.

For Black History Month, let us honor the women who worked as domestic servants for white families in the Jim Crow South. They endured the indignities of segregation to help support their families. Moving in between black and white worlds, such women played enormously important roles in the first successful Civil Rights struggle: the Montgomery bus boycott of 1955-56, where the young Martin Luther King, Jr., got his start. 

David W. Jackson III, Charletta Sudduth, and I (one the descendant of Louisiana slave owners, the others the descendants of slaves) have written a book based on interviews with former housekeepers, caretakers, and cooks and members of the white families they worked for, The Maid Narratives: Black Domestics and White Families in the Jim CrowSouth (Louisiana State University Press, 2012). 

George McGovern: Historian

Jonathan Rees

In the day since former Senator George McGovern died, I have read wonderful tributes to his campaign for the presidency in 1972.  Thankfully, President Obama mentioned McGovern’s heroism during World War II in his statement marking opposition to the Vietnam War and his ill-fated but noble the Senator’s death.  However, the only mentions that I’ve read of McGovern’s career as a professional historian seem somewhat surprised that he was ever a college professor. 

Of course, this confusion is understandable, and if I didn’t teach in Colorado I would probably share it right now even though I have been a huge George McGovern fan for a very long time.  McGovern ran for President when I was six years old, and I distinctly remember rooting for him both because my parents supported him and because I have always liked going against the crowd.  When I was in Middle School, I did a book report on his campaign biography.  I must have learned about his professional life before he entered politics then, but with no inkling of what my own profession would eventually be I’m sure I forgot.

In 1988, I was a volunteer at the Democratic National Convention in Atlanta.  At that time, I had a particular skill for recognizing politicians, but I really didn’t want to bother any of them.  I made an exception for George McGovern.  I walked up to him outside the hall, and said, “I’m really glad to meet you,” as I shook his hand.  He replied, “I’m really glad to meet you too,” and then he got swarmed by a throng of admirers.  I thought I’d never get a chance to meet him again.  I was completely wrong.

Labor Battles and Exploring the Past Online

Randall Stephens

Nelson Lichtenstein writes about "The Long History of Labor Bashing" in the March 6 Chronicle. What are the antecedents of the current struggles over benefits and bargaining? What light does history shine on all this? asks Lichtenstein.

This right-wing critique of trade unionism has often been contradictory and inconsistent. At the turn of the 20th century, many establishment figures in the news media and politics saw the unionism of their era as but a manifestation of immigrant radicalism, often violent and subversive. After World War I, the business offensive against the unions went by the name of "The American Plan," with the American Legion and other patriotic groups often serving as the antilabor militants who broke picket lines and physically manhandled union activists.

At the very same moment, a quite contradictory discourse, which portrayed the unions as retrograde rather than radical, was emergent. Progressives, as well as conservatives, often denounced unions as self-serving job trusts, corrupt and parasitic enterprises linked to ethnic politicians and underworld figures.>>>

After reading that I went over to the Library of Congress's Chronicling America website, an excellent, free historical newspapers resource. My search for the exact words "labor," "anarchists," and "immigrant" brought back 8 results for 1890-1900. Here's a fairly typical article from the Chicago Eagle, June 15, 1895. Notice that the author acknowledges that the Haymarket Riot at least drew the public and the experts to acknowledge the labor troubles of the day.

A little over nine years ago Chicago's Haymarket tragedy occurred. On the night of May 4, 1880, a bomb was thrown into the ranks of the police, who had gone to disperse an anarchist meeting. One policeman was killed outright, six were mortally wounded, and sixty more or loss injured. The number of the crowd killed or hurt was never known. Chicago never witnessed excitement so intense, and she at once achieved the reputation of being the center of anarchism for the whole world. No one event ever brought labor troubles and agitation to the notice of so many people, and probably no other influence has done so much to cause a widespread study of social economy. Four men wore hanged for the Haymarket crime, and one killed himself in jail by blowing his head to pieces with a dynamite cartridge exploded in his mouth. It was never discovered who threw the bomb. When it exploded it blew Chicago anarchy to pieces and answered the directly opposite purpose its thrower evidently intended.

A similar search on Google Books (from 1890-1900) for "anarchy," "labor," "unions," "immigrants," and "radical" returned 21 results. Of course, word searches like this cannot pick up on the subtleties of meaning and the distances between the words on the page. But they still represent a huge leap in the way we do or can do our research. Journalists, too, must be taking advantage of these relatively new ways to access the past. (One could spend hours and hours searching and browsing through countless other databases to harvest similar sources.)

(In the coming days I'll be posting here a video interview I did with Robert Darnton, Carl H. Pforzheimer University Professor at Harvard and director of the Harvard University Library. I ask Darnton about what is being called the Digital Public Library of America, the range of digital resources on the web, and the ways historians are using these new materials.)

Thirty years ago a historian who knew little about labor history, but wanted to learn more about how the present compared to the past, might have had to spend hours in the library, browsing indexes, thumbing through moldy card catalogs, or roaming the stacks. Not any more. Though, I still love to browse the stacks!