Working History

Earlier this year, workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted to join the UAW in a landslide. The Southern Labor Studies Association held our biannual meeting in Chattanooga last week, just as UAW Local 42 began negotiating its first contract. This panel, recorded live at the conference, is moderated by labor journalist Sarah Jaffe and features Zach Costello of UAW Local 42's organizing committee; Chris Brooks, chief strategist at the UAW; Michael Gilliland, the organizing director of CALEB in Chattanooga; and labor historian Nelson Lichtenstein.

Welcome to a new season of Working History! Series co-host Dave Anderson talks with Aimee Loiselle about her book Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class

This week's episode features a panel recorded live at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Southern Exposure magazine, held in March at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill's Wilson Library. The panel, which reflects on the founding of the Institute for Southern Studies and the creation of Southern Exposure, features Sue Thrasher, a co-founder of the Institute who later worked at the Highlander Center; Leah Wise, one of the Institute's early staff members and later the director of Southerners for Economic Justice; and Bob Hall, the founding editor of Southern Exposure, who spent many years at the Institute and was the longtime executive director of Democracy North Carolina. It is moderated by Chip Hughes, an early Institute staffer himself and occupational health and safety organizer before a career in public health. Produced in partnership with the Institute for Southern Studies. Show Notes: Episode transcription: https://www.facingsouth.org/2023/11/why-we-did-what-we-did-reflections-sue-thrasher-leah-wise-and-bob-hall Visit the Southern Exposure digital archive: https://www.facingsouth.org/southern-exposure A note from the archives editor: https://www.facingsouth.org/2023/03/archive-time-crisis More about the 50th anniversary event: https://www.facingsouth.org/2023/03/gathering-marks-half-century-southern-exposures-founding

Jennifer Brooks, Professor of History at Auburn University, discusses her book Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama, beginning with the book's origin story and then explaining the significance of Chinese and European immigrants in the New South and their interactions with employers, unions, African-Americans, the region's racial regime, and its legal system.

Thomas Castillo discusses his book Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami, beginning with the book's origin story, and then tracing Miami's working-class history from World War I to the mid-1930s.

Jefferson Cowie discusses his book Freedom's Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, beginning with the book's origin story, and then tracing the use of "freedom" to dominate others in Barbour County, Alabama, from Indian Removal in the 1830s through the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s Find information about the book at the publisher's page. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jefferson-cowie/freedoms-dominion/9781541672819/ Find the New York Times review of the book. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/review/freedoms-dominion-jefferson-cowie.html

Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and how she uses histories in her work. Show Notes: "A North Carolina Farmworker Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election," by Ben Stockton and Victoria Bouloubasis, Mother Jones, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and Enlace Latino NC: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/10/tobacco-reynolds-north-carolina-brent-jackson-tbij/ "How a Tobacco Company Funds a Mega-Farmer's Political Ambitions That Hurt Workers" podcast in English: https://soundcloud.com/enlacelatinoncpodcast/how-a-tobacco-company-funds-a-mega-farmers-political-ambitions-that-hurt-workers "Cómo una tabacalera financia las ambiciones políticas de granjero que perjudica a los trabajadores" podcast en español: https://soundcloud.com/enlacelatinoncpodcast/como-una-tabacalera-financia-las-ambiciones-politicas-de-un-granjero-que-perjudica-a-los-trabajadores Victoria's reporting for Enlace Latino NC: https://enlacelatinonc.org/author/victoria-bouloubasis/ Victoria's reporting for Southerly: https://southerlymag.org/author/victoria-bouloubasis/

Ismael García Colón discusses his new book, Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire, Puerto Rican migrant farmworkers, and their labor experiences in the post-World War II United States.

Michael Goldfield discusses his new book, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s, union organization in the South's leading industrial sectors, and how contests between labor and capital in the New Deal-era South continue to shape American politics today.

Mary Stanton discusses her book, Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930-1950, New Deal-era political activism, and movements for racial, economic, and social justice in the Jim Crow South.

Emily E. LB. Twarog discusses her book, POLITICS OF THE PANTRY, the consumer activism of American housewives, and food's central role in consumer politics in the twentieth-century United States.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall discusses her new book, SISTERS AND REBELS: A STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE SOUTH, the southern upbringing of Grace and Katharine Lumpkin, their social activism, and contributions to the overlapping labor, feminist, and civil rights ferment in the pre-World War II South.

Eileen Boris discusses her new book MAKING THE WOMAN WORKER: PRECARIOUS LABOR AND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL STANDARDS, the history of the ILO's labor protections for women, domestic and home workers in the Global North and Global South, and ongoing fights to recognize precarious labor from the care economy to the gig economy.

Dr. Wendy Gonaver discusses her book, "The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880," the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Virginia, and the roles that race, the institution of slavery, and slave labor played in the development of psychiatric diagnosis and care through the nineteenth century and beyond.

Jody Allen, Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary and Director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, discusses William and Mary's slaveholding past and the genesis, research, and ongoing community outreach of The Lemon Project.

Joshua Specht discusses his new book, RED MEAT REPUBLIC, and how the history of beef production tells the story of broad changes in the American economy, society and political landscape during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Anthony Harkins (Western Kentucky University) and Meredith McCarroll (Bowdin College) discuss their edited volume, APPALACHIAN RECKONING: A REGION RESPONDS TO HILLBILLY ELEGY, the complexities of the region known as Appalachia, and challenging popular stereotypes of the region and the people who live there.

Jessica Wilkerson, Assistant Professor of History and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, discusses her book, "To Live Here You Have to Fight," and the recent history of feminist social justice activism in Appalachia.

Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash discusses his novel, "The Last Ballad," writing fiction inspired by the South, and exploring the complexities of southern class, race, and gender relations against the backdrop of the 1929 Loray Mill strike.

Matthew Hild and Keri Leigh Merritt discuss their new edited volume, Reconsidering Southern Labor History, the nexus of race, class and power in the history of labor in the South, and how a new generation of southern labor scholars are changing our understanding of labor's past, present and future in the region.

Blain Roberts and Ethan J. Kytle, Professors of History at California State University—Fresno, discuss their co-authored book, Denmark Vesey’s Garden: Slavery and Memory in the Cradle of the Confederacy, competing narratives about slavery in the South, and the fraught history of race, memory and memorialization in the region.

Paul Ortiz, Associate Professor and Director of the Samuel Proctor Oral History Program at the University of Florida, discusses his most recent book, An African American and Latinx History of the United States, the myth of American exceptionalism, and globalizing America's past.

Katherine Rye Jewell, Assistant Professor of History at Fitchburg State University, discusses her book, Dollars for Dixie, and the evolution of political and economic conservatism in the twentieth-century South.

Karen Cox, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, discusses her new book, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, and what one murder case in 1930s Mississippi reveals about race relations, criminal justice, and life in the Jim Crow South.

J. Blake Perkins, assistant professor of history at Williams Baptist College, discusses his new book, Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks, regional relations with the federal government, and the evolution of grassroots politics.

Keri Leigh Merritt discusses her book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, and intersections of race, class, politics, and slavery in the pre-Civil War South.

Bryant Simon, Professor of History at Temple University, discusses his new book, The Hamlet Fire: A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives, and the tragic consequences of the ethos of "cheap" for workers, communities, and the nation.

Lane Windham, Associate Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, discusses her book, Knocking on Labor’s Door, and why the 1970s should be seen as more than a moment of decline for the U.S. labor movement.

Traci JoLeigh Drummond, archivist for the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University in Atlanta, discusses the preservation of materials related to southern labor history, new collections open to researchers, digital access to archival sources, and what makes a collection of records "archive worthy."

Joshua Hollands, of the Institute of the Americas at University College London, discusses his award-winning essay, “There’s a Bigot in Your Biscuit’: Workplace Discrimination at Cracker Barrel, Civil Rights, and Corporate Activism in the Southern United States,” and the past and present of LGBT discrimination and activism in the southern workplace.

Professor Adrienne Petty discusses her book, Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War, the black and white farmers in the South who were part of the "small farming class," and their evolving strategies for holding onto their land through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Professor Greta de Jong of the University of Nevada, Reno, discusses her book, You Can't Eat Freedom, rural organizing, social justice movements, and the connected histories of the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty in the US South.

Professor Cindy Hahamovitch of the University of Georgia discusses her research connecting the global histories of 19th-century indentured servants and today's guestworkers.

Professor Julie Weise of the University of Oregon discusses her book, Corazón de Dixie, the long history of Mexican migration to states in the Deep South, and the roots of anti-immigrant politics and policies in the region today.

Professor Blain Roberts of California State University, Fresno, talks about intersections of race, identity, and memory in the South in a wide-ranging discussion that starts in the segregated beauty parlors of the Jim Crow era and ends with remembrances of slavery in modern-day Charleston, South Carolina.

Professor Robyn Muncy of the University of Maryland discusses the history of the term "working class" and its uses in American politics from the 1930s to today.

John Weber, Assistant Professor of History at Old Dominion University, discusses his book, "From South Texas to the Nation," migrant agricultural labor, immigration policy, and the long-term impacts of the labor relations model that developed in South Texas during the early twentieth century.

Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, discusses his new book with co-author Rick Halpern, "Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid," photojournalism, and writing transnational histories of labor and social justice movements.

Derek Krissoff, Director of the West Virginia University Press, discusses academic publishing and university presses, the open access movement, and current trends in history publishing.

Professor Ellen Griffith Spears of the University of Alabama, author of "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town," discusses the decades long struggle for environmental and civil rights justice in Anniston, Alabama, and broader lessons to be learned from this fight to address one community's exposure to toxic chemicals.

Professors Melissa Walker of Converse College and Giselle Roberts of Australia’s La Trobe University, editors of the Women’s Diaries and Letters of the South series, discuss the field of documentary editing and how the personal writings of southern women reveal the broader history of life in the U.S. South during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Professor Chad Pearson of Collin College, author of "Reform or Repression," traces the roots of modern anti-unionism in the U.S. to the early 20th century open shop movement and a push by business interests nationwide to break unions and stall the momentum of organized labor.

Scott Nelson, Legum Professor of History at the College of William & Mary and SLSA’s immediate past president, presents the lecture, “The White Whale: Why Moby Dick Is a Story about the Fate of Southern Labor in the Age of Slavery.” The lecture and Q&A session were recorded at the SLSA luncheon at the 2015 Southern Historical Association meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Professor Michael Honey of the University of Washington, Tacoma, discusses the documentary that he directed and co-produced, "Love and Solidarity: The Story of Rev. James Lawson," and Lawson's work of building solidarity and movements for social justice from the Civil Rights Era to today.

Professor Michelle Haberland of Georgia Southern University, author of "Striking Beauties: Women Apparel Workers in the U.S. South," discusses the dynamics of gender, class, race and globalization in the southern apparel industry from the 1930s to today.

Professor Kenneth Fones-Wolf of West Virginia University discusses his book, co-authored with Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, "Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South," the role of religion in the CIO's Operation Dixie, and provides perspective on the participation of faith communities in the modern labor movement.

Professor Jacob Remes of SUNY Empire State College discusses his book, "Disaster Citizenship," and challenges prevailing assumptions about how ordinary people, governments, and institutions act in the wake of natural disasters.

Professor Talitha LeFlouria, a fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, discusses her book, "Chained in Silence," and the lives, labors, and legacies of incarcerated black women and the convict lease system in the early 20th century South.

Julie Greene, Professor of History at the University of Maryland and author of the forthcoming book, “Box 25: The World of Caribbean Workers,” discusses the men who built the Panama Canal, working and living conditions in the Canal Zone, and how U.S. expansionism at the turn of the twentieth century fueled the growth of a transnational working class.

Activist and grassroots organizer Anton Flores of Alterna discusses immigrant rights, federal immigration policy, and the detention of undocumented immigrants at the Stewart Detention Center in Georgia. Guest hosted by Professor Jennifer Brooks of Auburn University.

Professor Evan Bennett of Florida Atlantic University, author of "When Tobacco Was King," discusses the development and demise of family tobacco farms, tobacco farming culture, and the New Deal's Federal Tobacco Program.