Best of
Labor

1977

Poor People's Movements: Why They Succeed, How They Fail


Frances Fox Piven - 1977
    Have the poor fared best by participating in conventional electoral politics or by engaging in mass defiance and disruption? The authors of the classic Regulating The Poor assess the successes and failures of these two strategies as they examine, in this provocative study, four protest movements of lower-class groups in 20th century America:-- The mobilization of the unemployed during the Great Depression that gave rise to the Workers' Alliance of America-- The industrial strikes that resulted in the formation of the CIO-- The Southern Civil Rights Movement-- The movement of welfare recipients led by the National Welfare Rights Organization.

Slave Testimony: Two Centuries of Letters, Speeches, Interviews, and Autobiographies


John W. Blassingame - 1977
    This illumination of the slave as an individual is really what the book is all about."--Journal of Southern History"A mammoth presentation of two centuries of slave recollections . . . extraordinary firsthand narratives that should become the premier reference volume on the slave experience for years to come."--Columbia (SC) State"The largest collection of annotated and authenticated accounts of slaves ever published in one volume. . . . So valuable a compilation is this study that its real worth cannot be measured for some time to come."--Richmond News Leader

Worlds Of Pain: Life In The Working-class Family


Lillian B. Rubin - 1977
    Katz Professor of History, York UniversityThis is a sensitive and compassionate portrayal of childhood, marriage, and adult life among the hard-working not-quite poor. It is an important contribution to our understanding of ourselves.--Robert S. Weiss, author of Marital Separation

Teamster Bureaucracy


Farrell Dobbs - 1977
    Written by a leader of the communist movement in the U.S. and organizer of the Teamsters union during the rise of the CIO. Indispensable tools for advancing revolutionary politics, organization, and trade union strategy.How the rank-and-file Teamsters leadership organized to oppose World War II, racism, and government efforts -- backed by the international officialdom of the AFL, the CIO, and the Teamsters -- to gag class-struggle-minded workers.

The Great Labor Uprising of 1877


Philip S. Foner - 1977
    The first generalized confrontation between labor and capital in the United States, which effectively shut down the entire railway system.

Voices from the Nueva Frontera: Latino Immigration in Dalton, Georgia


Donald Edward Davis - 1977
    In 2006, a Washington Post article referred to the carpet-manufacturing city of Dalton as a “U.S. border town,” even though the community lies more than twelve hundred miles from Mexico. Voices from the Nueva Frontera explores this phenomenon, providing an in-depth picture of Latino immigration and dispersal in rural America along with a framework for understanding the economic integration of the South with Latin America.Voices from the Nueva Frontera sheds new light on the often invisible changes that have transformed this north Georgia town over the last thirty years. The book's contributors explore the changes to labor markets and educational, religious, and social organizations and show that Dalton provides a largely successful example of a community that has provided a home to a newly arriving immigrant work force. While debates about immigration have raged in the public spotlight in recent years, some of the most important voices-those of the immigrants themselves-have been nearly unheard. In this pathbreaking book, therefore, each chapter opens with an interview of a worker, student, teacher, or other professional involved in the immigrant experience. These narratives add human faces to the realities of dramatic change occurring in rural industrial towns.Sure to spark lively discussion in the classroom and beyond, Voices from the Nueva Frontera gives readers a look at individual human stories and provides much-needed documentation for what might be the most important social change in recent southern history.Donald E. Davis, Thomas M. Deaton, and David Boyle are on the faculty at Dalton State College. Jo-Anne Schick is the former director of the Georgia Project.

John L. Lewis: A Biography


Melvyn Dubofsky - 1977
    Lewis (1880-1969), who ruled the United Mine Workers for four decades beginning in 1919, defied presidents, challenged Congress, and kept American political life in an uproar. Drawing upon previously untapped resources in the UMW archives and upon oral histories by major figures of the 1930s and 1940s, the authors have created a remarkable portrait of this 'self-made man' and his times.