Gregg Andrews is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University. This interview is based on his new book, Hard Times in an American Workhouse, 1853–1920 (LSU Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Hard Times in an American […]
labor history
The Author’s Corner with David M. Emmons
David M. Emmons is Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Montana. This interview is based on his new book, History’s Erratics: Irish Catholic Dissidents and the Transformation of American Capitalism, 1870-1930 (University of Illinois Press, 2024). JF: What […]
The Author’s Corner with Peter Kolchin
Peter Kolchin is Reed Professor Emeritus of History at the University of Delaware. This interview is based on his new book, Emancipation: The Abolition and Aftermath of American Slavery and Russian Serfdom (Yale University Press, 2024). JF: What led you […]
The Author’s Corner with Connie Goddard
Connie Goddard is a journalist and independent scholar. This interview is based on her new book, Learning for Work: How Industrial Education Fostered Democratic Opportunity (University of Illinois Press, 2024). JF: What led you to write Learning for Work? CG: […]
The Teamsters will not endorse Kamala Harris. Why?
We learned yesterday that the Teamsters will not endorse any candidate for President. Some of you will remember that Teamster President Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in July. The union also just released this poll: Over at […]
The golden age of Wisconsin socialism
Here is historian Joshua Kluever at Jacobin on the rich history of Wisconsin socialism: From 1905 to 1945, the Wisconsin legislature passed over five hundred pieces of socialist-authored legislation. They accomplished this despite never holding more than 20 percent of […]
The Author’s Corner with Daniel J. Clark
Daniel J. Clark is Professor of History and Director of the Center for Public Humanities at Oakland University. This interview is based on his new book, Listening to Workers: Oral Histories of Metro Detroit Autoworkers in the 1950s (University of […]
The Author’s Corner with Oliver A. Rosales
Oliver A. Rosales is Professor of History at Bakersfield College. This interview is based on his new book, Civil Rights in Bakersfield: Segregation and Multiracial Activism in the Central Valley (University of Texas Press, 2024). JF: What led you to […]
The Author’s Corner with Andrew E. Busch
Andrew E. Busch is Associate Director of the Institute of American Civics at the Baker School of Public Policy and Public Affairs at the University of Tennessee. This interview is based on his new book, Ronald Reagan and the Firing […]
The GOP invited the head of the Teamsters to speak. The GOP is opposed to organized labor.
Yes, Sean O’Brien spoke at the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee. Yes, Republicans still hate labor. Timothy Noah explains at The New Republic: Let’s be clear. The Republican Party despises labor unions. Until recently it made little effort to hide […]
Sean O’Brien’s “return to Gompers”
As we have noted here, Sean O’Brien, the president of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, spoke Monday night at the TNC (Trump National Convention) in Milwaukee. We covered that speech here and here. Over at Jacobin, Dustin Guastella, the director […]
The Author’s Corner with Jesse Chanin
Jesse Chanin is a postdoctoral fellow at Tulane University’s Coalition for Compassionate Schools. This interview is based on her new book, Building Power, Breaking Power: The United Teachers of New Orleans, 1965-2008 (University of North Carolina Press, 2024). JF: What […]
“How is it…that work became culturally ascendant, and the pursuit of a career achieved a kind of centrality in the American psyche?”
It is strange to ask people, upon first meeting them, about their religion, political views, or leisure activities. But it is perfectly acceptable to ask them about their work. Over at Inside Higher Ed, historian Steven Mintz asks: Why do […]
The Author’s Corner with Shaun S. Nichols
Shaun S. Nichols is Assistant Professor of History at Boise State University. This interview is based on his new book, Manufacturing Catastrophe: Massachusetts and the Making of Global Capitalism, 1813 to the Present (Oxford University Press, 2024). JF: What led […]
A case for 1950s nostalgia
Today’s socialists are not longing for the days of Jim Crow. But, as Dustin Guastella of Teamsters Local 623 in Philadelphia argues, neither should they throw out the idea that the 1950s was a great time for the American worker. […]
The Author’s Corner with Aimee Loiselle
Aimee Loiselle is Assistant Professor of History at Central Connecticut State University. This interview is based on her new book, Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class (University […]
Episode 119: “How the Social Gospel Undermined Social Democracy”
There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called “Social Gospel.” Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new book The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that […]
Shawn Fain’s Christian radicalism
Earlier this week I wondered why people were not talking and writing more about UAW president Shawn Fain’s Christian faith. Church historian Heath Carter has published the piece I was hoping for. Here is a taste of his Jacobin article […]
The Christian faith of UAW’s Shawn Fain
He carries a Bible and regularly invokes his faith as he leads the United Auto Workers in a historic strike against the country’s three largest automakers. For Fain, the strike is a “righteous cause.” This reminds of Eugene Debs’s claim […]
Joe Biden joins the United Auto Workers picket line in support of striking workers
For the first time in United States history a sitting president joined a picket line. Here is Joe Biden at a General Motors warehouse in Van Buren Township, Michigan: More here. Interesting take from a Cambridge University historian: Socialist Jacobin […]