Their efforts led to the creation of the United Farm Workers union under Cesar Chavez, with Philip Vera Cruz as its vice-president and highest-ranking Filipino officer.Philip Vera Cruz (1904-1994) embodied the experiences of the manong generation, an enormous wave of Filipino immigrants who came to the United States between 1910 and 1930. Instead of better opportunities, they found racial discrimination, deplorable living conditions, and oppressive labor practices. In his deeply reflective and thought-provoking oral memoir, Vera Cruz explores the toll these conditions took on both families and individuals.Craig Scharlin and Lilia V. Villanueva met Philip Vera Cruz in 1974 as volunteers in the construction of Agbayani Village, the United Farm Workers retirement complex in Delano, California. This oral history, first published in 1992, is the product of hundreds of hours of interviews. Elaine H. Kim teaches Asian American studies at the University of California, Berkeley, and is the author of Asian American Literature: An Introduction to the Writings and Their Social Context.

    Many of the stories would be funny if their causes hadn't been fed by such discontent. And lest you think this is unique or endemic to late-20th-century America, there are scores of historical quotations and anecdotes.

    James was one of the most significant writers of our times. James was born in 1901, in Trinidad. He died in London, in 1989. He lived a life which reflected many of the distinctive features of the twentieth century. James made an outstanding contribution to debates on politics, history, art, literature and sport. His revolutionary vision has inspired social movements in the United States, Britain, Africa and the Caribbean. It remains central to any understanding of the modern world.Until now much of his work has remained inaccessible; but Anna Grimshaw brings together here both published and unpublished material to give us the essential C.L.R. James. This Reader includes a selection of early fiction, the complete text of the play The Black Jacobins, numerous extracts from his personal archive and the classic essays, "The Case of West-Indian Self-Government," "Popular Art and the Cultural Tradition," and "Black Power." Prepared in collaboration with James in his final year of life, this collection offers a unique insight into the range and development of his life's work.

    Who Built America? is about working Americans -- artisans, servants, slaves, farm families, laborers, women working in the home, factory hands, and office clerks -- who played crucial roles in shaping modern America: what they thought, what they did, and what happened to them.The central focus of this two-volume history of the United States is the changing nature of the work that built, sustained, and transformed American society over the course of almost four centuries. It depicts the ways working people affected and were affected by the economic, social, cultural, and political processes that together make up the national experience. The result is a path-breaking integration of the history of community, family, gender roles, race, and ethnicity into the more familiar history of U.S. politics and economic development.Volume One takes the reader through the Civil War, Reconstruction, and the great railroad strike of 1877. Volume Two continues the story from the expansion of industrial capitalism during the Gilded Age and the rise of movements of opposition, through the decades of world war, depression, and industrial unionism, to the dramatic growth of U.S. military and economic power in the postwar era and the continuing struggle over the meaning of America in the contemporary era.

    MIDNIGHT OIL is a political journey through two decades of social struggles, ranging from the oil fields of the Middle East and Africa to the coal mines of Appalachia and the homes and neighborhoods of America and Europe. Tracing the unifying themes of work, energy, oil and war, it draws a physiognomy of the planetary proletariat, connecting escaped indentured servants from India to oil workers sabotaging production in the Niger Delta; Gulf War resisters in New York to Kurdish rebels in Iraq; insurrectionary Iranian students to wildcat autoworkers in Detroit; housewives on rent strike in Italy to Boston burners of midnight oil. This book suggests new boundaries, hidden political commonalities and possible strategies for confronting the "New World Order."

    1892, caused a congressional investigation and trials for treason, motivated a nearly successful assassination attempt on Frick, contributed to the defeat of President Benjamin Harrison for a second term, and changed the course of the American labor movement."The River Ran Red" commemorates the one-hundredth anniversary of the Homestead strike of 1892. Instead of retelling the story of the strike, it recreates the events of that summer in excerpts from contemporary newspapers and magazines, reproductions of pen-and-ink sketches and photographs made on the scene, passages from the congressional investigation that resulted from the strike, first-hand accounts by observers and participants, and poems, songs, and sermons from across the country. Contributions by outstanding scholars provide the context for understanding the social and cultural aspects of the strike, as well as its violence."The River Ran Red" is the collaboration of a team of writers, archivists, and historians, including Joseph Frazier Wall, who writes of the role of Andrew Carnegie at Homestead, and David Montgomery, who considers the significance of the Homestead Strike for the present. The book is both readable and richly illustrated. It recalls public and personal reactions to an event in our history who's reverberations can still be felt today.

    Homestead was a town made by steel, and its history is that of a mighty corporation, a bloody strike, and a bloodless but very real civic death in 1986, when the last plant closed. Photos. rint.

    The great virtue of this splendid little book is that it reminds us that there was radicalism in working class America and that it was defeated by means neither democratic nor even decent. From the brutality of the Pinkertons and the National Guard to the paternalism of the National Civic Federation, from the judicial murders of the Haymarket martyrs to the vigilante lynching of Frank Little, this is the story of injunction and imprisonment, of the framing up and the gunning down of dissident workers. No assessment of American radicalism, or of American democracy, is complete without the kind of information Professor Fusfeld provides. [Dave Roediger]

    Responding to feminist critiques of ‘sex-blind’ historical materialism, Seccombe argues that family forms must be seen to be at the heart of modes of production. He takes issue with the mainstream consensus in family history which argues that capitalism did not fundamentally alter the structure of the nuclear family, and makes a controversial intervention in the long-standing debate over European marriage patterns and their relation to industrialization. Drawing on an astonishing range of studies in family history, historical demography and economic history, A Millennium of Family Change provides an integrated overview of the long transition from feudalism to capitalism, illuminating the far-reaching changes in familial relations from peasant subsistence to the making of the modern working class.

    The firm hired a variety of workers, including the native-born, immigrants, the skilled, the unskilled, and eventually women and a small number of blacks. Stephen Meyer presents a history of the Allis-Chalmers workers, and of the growth and destruction of the militant, left-wing union they built. The story of these workers and their union serves as a microcosm of the history of American labor in the twentieth century.Meyer describes how skilled workers, fearful of mechanization, worked to develop a robust union in the 1930s. He details the battle for unionization among the more militant CIO, the conservative AFL, Communists, and Allis-Chalmers management officials. Meyer tells us about several of the key players in this battle--Harold Story, the Allis-Chalmers vice president and chief labor strategist, and Harold Christoffel, the electrical worker who became the powerful first president of the union.Meyer also analyzes the technical and social transition from batch to mass production, the social and cultural world of the ordinary workers at the workplace, and the factional struggles on the shop floor and picket line. He concludes by examining the CIO's entry into Wisconsin politics, the subsequent campaign against union leftists, the rise of Joseph McCarthy, the consolidation of Walter Reuther's position as UAW president, and the passage of the Taft-Hartley law.

    In Agriculture and Slavery in Missouri's Little Dixie, Douglas Hurt provides the first systematic study of agriculture and rural life in one of the most vital sections of Missouri prior to the Civil War. This seven-county area along the Missouri River known as Little Dixie was the most important hemp-, tobacco-, and live-stock-producing region of the state, as well as a major slaveholding area. The people who settled Little Dixie had emigrated primarily from Kentucky, Virginia, and Tennessee. They brought southern culture with them and adapted it to their new environment economically, socially, and politically. Although the settlers began as subsistence farmers, unlimited opportunities and access by river to New Orleans and St. Louis made commercial farming possible almost immediately. Hurt provides the reader with a broad discussion of land acquisition, settlement, and town development in the region. He surveys the major agricultural endeavors of the southerners who settled there, considering technological change, agricultural organization, breed improvement, and transportation. Hurt also traces the development of rural life, emphasizing the importance of religion, education, and mercantile activities. Slavery permeated all aspects of society in Little Dixie. Hurt discusses the acquisition and sale of slaves, their management, and the political protection of slavery, and he relates the significance of slavery in Little Dixie to the Deep South. One of his most important findings concerns the extensive trade of slave children in Little Dixie. Farmers and planters, driven by the struggle for profit, supported both slavery and the Union. Consequently, political division in the state mirrored the national debate over slavery but also showed the uniqueness of Missouri, both ge

    path-breaking... a fine community study... " --Journal of American Studies"Thomas's work is essential reading... succeeds in providing a bridge of information on the social, political, legal, and economic development of the Detroit black community between the turn of the century and 1945." --Michigan Historical ReviewThe black community in Detroit developed into one of the major centers of black progress. Richard Thomas traces the building of this community from its roots in the 19th century, through the key period 1915-1945, by focusing on how industrial workers, ministers, politicians, business leaders, youth, and community activists contributed to the process.

    With the rapid increase in commercial activity, products previously restricted to use by the elite became commodities for mass consumption. Likewise, labor power became a commodity as hired laborers replaced traditional corv�e workers in the commercial realm and contracted servants supplanted lifetime, hereditary workers in households. Focusing on a class system mediated increasingly by money, Leupp explores the ways employers and employees dealt with each other and the steps taken by government officials to control rising hostilities.