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...
There was a profound difference between Christian Socialism and the so-called “Social Gospel.” Janine Giordano Drake explains these differences in her new bookĀ The Gospel of Church: How Mainline Protestants Vilified Christian Socialism and Fractured the Labor Movement. Drake argues that...
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...
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...
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...
Michael McCulloch is Associate Professor of Architecture and Master of Architecture Program Chair at Kendall College of Art and Design of Ferris State University. This interview is based on his new book, Building a Social Contract: Modern Workers’ Houses in Early-Twentieth Century...
William Riddell is Assistant Professor of History at the University of Toronto, Scarborough. This interview is based on his new book, On the Waves of Empire: U.S. Imperialism and Merchant Sailors, 1872-1924 (University of Illinois Press, 2023). JF: What led...
Over at Jacobin, historian Eben Miller tells the story of the 1933 Amenia conference. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) hosted the event in Amenia, New York. W.E.B. Du Bois was co-organizer. Some of the country’s...
Mark Erlich is the Wertheim Fellow at The Center for Labor and a Just Economy at Harvard Law School and the retired Executive Secretary Treasurer of the New England Regional Council of Carpenters. This interview is based on his new...
Benjamin Jenkins is Associate Professor of History and University Archivist at the University of La Verne. This interview is based on his new book, Octopus’s Garden: How Railroads and Citrus Transformed Southern California (University Press of Kansas, 2023). JF: What...
The National Basketball Association is a multi-billion-dollar industry driven by Black athletes with global influence. But as our guest Theresa Runstedtler argues, the success of today’s NBA players rests on the labor activism of 1970s NBA stars who fought with...
As Shawn Gude writes at Jacobin: “May Day is not a holiday for Florida governor Ron DeSantis, much as he might pose as a working-class champion. For a more robust vision of freedom, we can look to the Florida Socialists...
Here is a taste of Jacobin‘s Daniel Denvir’s interview with Yale labor historian Michael Denning: DANIEL DENVIR: This argument has implications for what has often been called āfalse consciousnessā: the question of what to make of people holding beliefs that...
Thomas A. Castillo is Associate Professor of History at Coastal Carolina University. This interview is based on his book, Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami (University of Illinois Press, 2022). JF: What led you to...
Jacqueline Jones is Ellen C. Temple Professor of Womenās History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin. This interview is based on her new book, No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Bostonās Black Workers in the...
Over at Commonweal, CosticÄ BrÄdÄÅ£an writes about how a year of factory work in the auto industry led French philosopher Simone Weil to Jesus Christ. Here is a taste: As Weil was processing the significance of her factory experience, she...
Gregory A. Andrews is Distinguished Professor Emeritus of History at Texas State University. This interview is based on his new book, Shantyboats and Roustabouts: The River Poor of St. Louis, 1875ā1930 (LSU Press, 2022.) JF: What led you to write Shantyboats...
Chad Pearson is Principal Lecturer of History at the University of North Texas. This interview is based on his new book, Capital’s Terrorists: Klansmen, Lawmen, and Employers in the Long Nineteenth Century (University of North Carolina Press, 2022). JF: What...
Ahmed White is Nicholas Rosenbaum Professor of Law at the University of Colorado Boulder Law School. This interview is based on his new book, Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers (University of California Press, 2022). JF:...
Alan J. M. Noonan is an independent historian. This interview is based on his new book, Mining Irish-American Lives: Western Communities from 1849-1920 (University Press of Colorado, 2022). JF: What led you to write Mining Irish-American Lives? AN: I have...
