Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas recent issues

Editor's Introduction

Fink, L. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:37 PDT

Sweeping the Shop

Vorse, E. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:37 PDT

Race, Labor, and the City in the Obama Era: King's Unfinished Agenda

Honey, M. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

In "Race, Labor and the City in the Obama Era: King's Unfinished Agenda," Honey surveys what has happened in Memphis since the King assassination. He argues that King's phase one of civil rights has largely succeeded but that King's phase two of economic justice has not. As is the case all over the nation, the black working class has suffered disproportionately from deindustrialization, loss of unions, and the trickle-down economics of racial capitalism. Honey argues that the election of Barack Obama as president forty years after King's death provides unprecedented opportunity but only if a movement counters diluted proposals for "bipartisan" reform with demands that government implement King's unfinished agenda of ending racism, poverty, and war.

Beneath the Radar? Untold Stories and Hidden Politics

Arnesen, E. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Taproots and Monday-Morning Militants

Chappell, D. L. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Tom Sugrue shifts the diagnosis of racial conflict northward. That's an illuminating move: many of today's most crippling forms of discrimination originated in the North—not, that is to say, in pre-industrial slavery and Jim Crow laws. Most professional critics of racism are implicated in the modern racial policies, along with everybody else. Sugrue's other moves are less adventurous. His thorough though safely conventional narrative glorifies selected strains of activism that have been in fashion in elite universities since the baby boomers took over. Like most of the profession, Sugrue views racism through the lens of its inseparable twin, antiracist resistance. He pays lip-service to the ivory-tower dogma that grassroots determine the course of history. But his sources do extraordinary deeds, often with full-time persistence—more like taproots or roto-tillers than grassroots. Fortunately, Sugrue acknowledges (more than most scholars) the diversity among African American strategies for freedom. Unfortunately, he often echoes the judgment of the sensationalist media and the paranoid FBI: that the most bombastic talkers—those who spoke of armed insurrection—are the most significant activists. Sugrue scrupulously grants that his favored "radicals" and "militants" did not represent the majority of black America. His treatment is fortunately less skewed in their direction than is typical. Still he often gives short shrift to the quieter (and in the l960s more mature) activists, who may have accomplished more than those who bask in journalistic and academic ink. Worse, Sugrue passes up the opportunity to question the academy's comforting notion that radicalism and militancy boil down to stated intentions, rather than tangible accomplishments.

Relating the Civil Rights and Community Organizing Movements

Seligman, A. I. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Seligman's article asserts that Thomas J. Sugrue's Sweet Land of Liberty brings many strands together in a single narrative of the struggles of northern African Americans to combat discrimination in the twentieth century. By discovering the breadth of racial exclusion in the north and linking activists with diverse agendas and strategies, Sugrue does an important scholarly service. He particularly emphasizes the significance of actors—especially women—at the grassroots, who pushed the NAACP to pursue legal cases it might not have otherwise taken. Seligman's writes that the book, however, largely follows the traditional line of civil rights movement historiography in recognizing which areas were targets of urban activism: housing, education, and employment. If Sugrue had investigated the breadth of causes that African American community organizations were involved with, the book would have been much richer and much longer. Sweet Land of Liberty opens up the question of the relationship between the civil rights movement and the community organizing movement but does not close it.

Between Long Histories and Biography

McGreevy, J. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Toward a New Civil Rights History

Sugrue, T. J. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Private Secretaries in Early-Twentieth-Century America

Hoffert, S. D. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Based on legal documents, letters, and memoirs, this article describes the lives of private secretaries who often served as personal companions and the social context in which they worked, specifically focusing on the women who Alva Smith Vanderbilt Belmont, a New York society matron and woman's rights advocate, employed in that capacity from 1916 to 1933. It examines the nature of their employment, the emotional and social tensions that plagued their efforts to situate themselves into the world of wealth and privilege, and the way they negotiated those tensions. It argues that the work of women such as these was critical on both a practical and emotional level to the ability of society matrons to carry out their public lives.

Remaking an Older Deal: Chicago Employment Politics, 1932-1936

Dorrance, T. F. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

This article examines Chicago's trade unions during the early years of the Great Depression. The leadership of the Chicago and Illinois federations of labor, most notably Victor Olander, played an active role in the city's attempts to battle unemployment during the Hoover years. Labor leaders cooperated with business interests and local politicians in private campaigns like the American Legion Re-Employment campaign and in government organizations like the Illinois Emergency Relief Commission (IERC). After Franklin D. Roosevelt's election, New Deal relief relied upon local organizations like the IERC to distribute federal monies. This reliance on local practices for the distribution of relief in Chicago meant that trade unions were already at the center of the emerging New Deal relief administration as it grew during the early 1930s. Labor leaders used their union connections across the state of Illinois to facilitate the implementation of federal relief projects. In doing so, trade unions hoped their influence on New Deal projects would maintain and improve their prominence in Chicago's political economy. Before the Depression, trade unionists sought to maintain wages and work conditions through private contracts negotiated between unions and employers. During the New Deal, trade union leaders participated in the growing federal bureaucracy because of their commitment to local control over the economy in Chicago. The resulting compromise between federal expansion and local control created the foundation for both local and federal politics after World War II.

Why Is There No Labor Movement in the United States?

Merrill, M. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

The objective conditions requisite for a labor movement revival are palpable: more poverty, more income inequality, more families without health insurance, more retirees without adequate pensions, not to mention the recent near-collapse of global finance. Despite conditions so ripe for unionism, the labor movement barely holds its own. Why? And what can be done about it? Does the future lie in a "transformative" (i.e., revolutionary) anticapitalist class struggle? Or does it lie closer to the roots of the current social democratic contractualism of the mainstream labor movement? Two recent books provide an opportunity for Michael Merrill to explore these questions.

Killing for Coal: America's Deadliest Labor War

Kelly, B. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

The Power of the Zoot: Youth Culture and Resistance during World War II

Rodriguez, M. S. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Covering for the Bosses: Labor and the Southern Press

Carroll, F. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Household Accounts: Working-Class Family Economies in the Interwar United States

Levine, S. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Labor's Canvas: American Working-Class History and the WPA Art of the 1930s

Husbands, P. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Greenbackers, Knights of Labor, and Populists: Farmer-Labor Insurgency in the Late-Nineteenth-Century South

Stromquist, S. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

"They Are All Red Out Here": Socialist Politics in the Pacific Northwest 1895-1925

Cole, P. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

School Lunch Politics: The Surprising History of America's Favorite Welfare Program

Rose, E. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

The Farmworkers' Journey

Mapes, K. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Rural Resistance in the Land of Zapata: The Jaramillista Movement and the Myth of the Pax Prista, 1940-1962

Weber, J. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Working Hard, Drinking Hard: On Violence and Survival in Honduras

Smith, F. H. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Class and Gender Politics in Progressive-Era Seattle

Leidenberger, G. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Union-Free America: Workers and Antiunion Culture

Laurie, B. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Bodies of Work: Civic Display and Labor in Industrial Pittsburgh

Bender, D. E. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

After the Gold Rush: Tarnished Dreams in the Sacramento Valley

Gonzales, N. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Philadelphia Divided: Race and Politics in the City of Brotherly Love

Siskind, P. — Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

CONTRIBUTORS

Fri, 19 Mar 2010 10:08:38 PDT

Workers, the Nation-State, and Beyond: An Introduction to the Newberry Conference

Fink, L. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Welcome

Lee Crosfield, L. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Cartoon

Brown, J. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Exhibit Review: The UAW and the Release of Mandela

Brunsman, D. A. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

In February 2009, the Walter P. Reuther Library of Labor and Urban Affairs, Wayne State University, presented an exhibit titled Freedom: The UAW and the Release of Nelson Mandela. The exhibit documented the UAW's longtime financial and moral support for global movements against racial apartheid in South Africa. The union's efforts culminated in a flurry of activity that included leadership of the Shell Oil boycott, under its president, Owen Bieber, in the 1980s. In June 1990, Mandela recognized the work of the UAW by visiting Detroit during his U.S. Freedom Tour. The Reuther exhibit has opened an important and underappreciated perspective on the UAW's long history of international activism.

Developing Communitites: The UAW and Community Unions in Los Angeles, 1965 - 1974

Murphy, M. J. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

This article examines the history of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) during the 1960s and early 1970s from a transnational perspective, exploring the ideological overlap between the union's domestic organizing efforts and its international affairs program. The UAW believed workers and their institutions were the catalysts for economic and political development in poor communities in the United States and developing nations abroad. In the United States, the UAW attempted to address the problems facing poor urban areas with solutions that went beyond the shop floor and state anti-poverty programs. Without an industrial base to unite workers on the job, the UAW funded and staffed community unions to mobilize the largely African American neighborhood of Watts and the Mexican American community of East Los Angeles forging an alliance between poor people, workers, and the labor movement. The Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC) and the East Los Angeles Community Union (TELACU) were designed to create jobs and housing, revitalize the local economy, and ultimately raise the purchasing power and standard of living of residents in these economically and politically marginalized areas of Los Angeles. This article demonstrates the way the UAW's community union movement was influenced by ideas about race, culture, and development that transcended national boundaries, linking urban communities in the United States with developing nations abroad.

Indigenous Labor as Family Labor: Tributes, Migration, and Hispanicization in Colonial Guatemala

Komisaruk, C. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

It is well known in the history of Spanish America that early colonial-era tributes in labor and commodities were gradually converted to tributes in cash, and tribute labor was gradually replaced by privately contracted labor. For Mexico and Central America, scholarship on these processes has remained largely separate from new, gendered histories. This article revisits tribute and native labor procurement, placing gender and family structure at the center of analysis. Focusing on Guatemala, the article argues that the transition from draft tribute labor to privately contracted labor increasingly drew entire families into migratory labor at Spanish agricultural enterprises. As out-migration from native communities lengthened from eight-day draft turns to longer "voluntary" stints, women and children began accompanying their men to colonial estates. Some women stayed behind, typically with small children, while their men left to earn wages. These women could face dire straits if their husbands died or did not return from abroad. Native women with absent husbands were likely to seek wages by migrating to the Spanish city. Further, the restructuring of labor within the cash economy may have encouraged parents to put their children out to work. Wages earned by native children sent to the city were usually remitted to the parents in the sending community, where tributes were collected. Contrary to popular stereotypes, the article concludes, women and children were at the vanguard of urbanization and hispanicization.

"Many Zitas": The Young Catholic Worker and Household Workers in Cold War Chile

Hutchison, E. Q. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

This article reconstructs the origins and effects of radical Catholic activism on the expansion of household workers' associations in Chile during the Cold War. Joining the efforts of local priests affiliated with the Juventud Obrera Católica (JOC) in the 1950s, a generation of live-in household workers in Santiago and other urban centers nurtured a sizable movement for empleadas domésticas that was unique in the Americas—the JOC de Empleadas—which joined housing and vocational services with a lay Catholic movement to advance empleadas' labor rights. Impacted by both the radicalization of their religious leadership and the revolutionary politics of the period, the Catholic household workers' movement of the 1960s turned increasingly to union organizing and legislative reform to advance its agenda, pressing for greater recognition and regulation of domestic service as a matter of labor rights. Through its focus on the Catholic Church as a transnational and hegemonic actor in the mobilization of household workers, and on the changing discourse of domestic service as "labor," this article challenges the persistent stereotype of Latin American Catholicism in relation to workers' movements prior to Vatican II.

The Unproductive Prisoner: Labor and Medicine in Canadian Penitentiaries, 1867-1900

McCoy, T. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Labor played a central role in nineteenth-century penitentiaries. It was intended to provide guidance and discipline to prisoners whose behavior was outside of social, moral, and economic norms. This article examines the relationship between medicine and labor in Canadian federal penitentiaries between 1867 and 1900. As penitentiaries grew and expanded throughout the century, increasing numbers of prisoners were unable to participate in penitentiary labor due to illness or disability. In these cases, penitentiary medicine helped form part of an "enlightened" response to nonworking prisoners. It suggests that medical records from this period demonstrate how penitentiaries reconciled nonworking prisoners with the prevailing model of reform constructed around labor. The article looks at two such groups. The first is sick prisoners, including physical and mental ailments. Mental illness was an increasingly vexing problem for penitentiaries in this era as they struggled to form appropriate responses to mentally ill prisoners within the prevailing penitentiary model. The second group is prisoners with disability, including physical and intellectual disability. Although both groups were understood through medical categories, their status as "unproductive" prisoners sometimes played a larger role in determining their experience of confinement. The article looks at the influence of ideas about labor on the delivery of medical services in penitentiaries and the resulting experience of illness. Although prison medicine in Canada expanded and improved throughout this period, the sick and disabled often experienced marginalization and moral condemnation on the basis of their uncertain relationship to penitentiary labor.

Mexican Chicago: Race, Identity, and Nation, 1916-39

Garcia, J. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

On the Global Waterfront: The Fight to Free the Charleston 5

Castree, N. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

A Revolution for Our Rights: Indigenous Struggles for Land and Justice in Bolivia, 1880-1952

Gould, J. L. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

With Our Labor and Sweat: Indigenous Women and the Formation of Colonial Society in Peru, 1550-1700

Beatty-Medina, C. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

In from the Cold: Latin America's New Encounter with the Cold War

Pensado, J. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Remembering a Massacre in El Salvador: The Insurrection of 1932, Roque Dalton, and the Politics of Historical Memory

McCreery, D. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Linhas de montagem: O industrialismo nacional-desenvolvimentista e a sindicalizacao dos trabalhadores [Assembly Lines: National-Developmentalist Industrialism and the Unionization of the Workers]

French, J. D. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Beyond the Boycott: Labor Rights, Human Rights, and Transnational Activism

Boris, E. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

The Sausage Rebellion: Public Health, Private Enterprise, and Meat in Mexico City, 1890-1917

Macias-Gonzalez, V. M. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Saltwater Slavery: A Middle Passage from Africa to American Diaspora

Lovejoy, P. E. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Chicken: The Dangerous Transformation of America's Favorite Food

Bennett, E. P. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

The Coolie Speaks: Chinese Indentured Laborers and African Slaves in Cuba

Young, E. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

The Reaper's Garden: Death and Power in the World of Atlantic Slavery

Jackson, M. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Red Chicago: American Communism at Its Grassroots, 1928-35

Feuer, R. — Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

CONTRIBUTORS

Wed, 13 Jan 2010 09:10:13 PST

Editor's Introduction

Fink, L. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Closing Time

Jeffire, J. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

The Short, Radical Life of Pearl McGill

Rousmaniere, K. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

This essay draws on the surviving letters of an early 20th century Iowa woman who moved rapidly from participation in a local factory strike, to activism in some of the most radical political movements of the day, to career as a rural school teacher, to victim of domestic violence. Pearl McGill's life is both typical of the struggles and tragedies of working women and political activists, and is exceptional in its drama. Also exceptional is that her story survives at all.

Primitive Accumulation

Holton, W. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Nearly every free American who lived through the recession of the 1780s blamed it, in part, on the thirteen state governments. However, two main camps staked out diametrically-opposed positions on what precisely the states had done wrong. James Madison, George Washington, Alexander Hamilton, and many of the other men who went on to write the United States Constitution believed the states had damaged the economy by caving in to farmers' demands for tax-reduction and debt-mitigation measures that brought temporary relief while wreaking long-term havoc. They believed the excessively-democratic state assemblies had bungled their way into a vivid demonstration of the perils of popular rule. On the other hand, thousands of other Americans contended that the assemblies had undercut farmers' productive capacity with stringent monetary policies and predatory taxes. They blamed the recession on elite, not popular, misrule. This debate is important if only because the elitist analysis associated with men like Hamilton and Madison became the basis for the adoption of the Constitution.

Schemes of Ambition

Edling, M. M. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Traditionally, the framing and adoption of the Constitution have been interpreted as an attempt by the social and economic elite to halt the democratization of American political life. In contrast, recent scholarship on the Constitution have argued that the rationale behind constitutional reform was the need to create a central government that could address political problems arising from inter-state and international relationships. An important aspect of this reform was the centralization of fiscal and financial powers that would allow the federal government to act vigorously on the international arena in defence of American interests.

The Marx of the Constitutional Era?

Kulikoff, A. M. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Using a political economy framework, Woody Holton argues that state fiscal policies during the 1780s constitute primitive accumulation, that violent process by which powerful men steal the means of subsistence of common folk, thus forcing them into waged labor and creating a class of proletarians. Clearly, the process was not completed in the nineteenth century. But this is not, I would argue, because the ruling class acquiesced in the demands of small farmers, as Holton argues, but resulted from a fierce conflict between small producers and capitalists and their allies that lasted more than a century.

Response to Woody Holton's "Primitive Accumulation"

Zagarri, R. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Holton's maintains that in explaining the origins of the U.S. Constitution historians have emphasized the concerns expressed by elites while overlooking the issues that most troubled large numbers of "ordinary" Americans. The strength of the argument is that Holton gives voice to the protests and grievances of small farmers and debtors, who believed that the state governments were imposing oppressive and unjust taxes during the 1780s. Yet his argument has several weaknesses. First, he overlooks regional differences within the country in the way that state legislatures responded to the taxation issues of the 1780s. Southern states, in which slave labor was most important, addressed the complaints quickly and minimized conflict among whites. Second, Holton overlooks the work of the historian Jackson Turner Main, which suggests that there was no definite connection between indebtedness and opposition to the U.S. Constitution. Finally, Holton's narrow focus on economic issues obscures the broader motives that led to writing and ratification of the U.S. Constitution.

Rebuttal

Holton, W. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Death at the Machine: Critiques of Industrial Capitalism in the Fiction of Labor Activist Lizzie M. Holmes

Percy, R. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

At the beginning of the twentieth century former socialist and anarchist Lizzie Swank Holmes wrote a series of eight fictional stories for the American Federation of Labor journal. Financial necessity was no doubt an important motivator, but Holmes likely also recognized the large and diverse potential readership American Federationist could offer. Examination of these stories thus pushes us to consider the complex rather than linear relationship between an individual's radical and labour politics and her journalist and literary production. Through Holmes we consider the ease with which many individuals moved between and through a number of different organizations, some of which appear in opposition with one another.

The Rise of American Democracy: Jefferson to Lincoln

Laurie, B. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Linked Labor Histories: New England, Colombia, and the Making of a Global Working Class

English, B. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Glass Towns: Industry, Labor, and Political Economy in Appalachia, 1890-1930s

Licht, W. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Defying Dixie: The Radical Roots of Civil Rights, 1919-1950

Thompson, H. A. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party

Boyle, K. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles

Leonard, K. A. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

On Strike and on Film: Mexican American Families and Blacklisted Filmmakers in Cold War America

Gonzalez, G. G. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Getting the Goods: Ports, Labor, and the Logistics Revolution

Lichtenstein, N. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Bitter Harvest: The Social Transformation of Morelos, Mexico, and the Origins of the Zapatista Revolution, 1840-1910

Caplan, K. D. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Making a Living: Work and Environment in the United States

Lipin, L. M. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Citizen Docker: Making a New Deal on the Vancouver Waterfront, 1919-1939

Goings, A. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

The Great Strikes of 1877

Brecher, J. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Social Democracy in the Global Periphery: Origins, Challenges, Prospects

French, J. D. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

Labor and Laborers of the Loom: Mechanization and Handloom Weavers, 1780-1840

Ouellette, S. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

A Power among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America

Merithew, C. W. — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:06 PDT

CONTRIBUTORS

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 14:56:07 PDT

Editor's Introduction

Fink, L. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

First Job

Scarff, K. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Introduction

Arnesen, E. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Racism, Society, and Law in Israel on the Appomattox

Schmidt, J. D. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

James Schmidt evaluates the analysis of law and society in Israel on the Appomattox. Schmidt notes that Ely makes a signal contribution to our understanding about how the daily practice of law regarding free people of color in the antebellum South diverged significantly from the restrictive assertions of statute. Southern legal sources from outside Virginia support Ely's view. From a broader viewpoint, Schmidt suggests, these everyday legal enactments shored up social categories asserted through the raced language of the law, authorizing the in-between status of "free people of color" and constricting access to citizenship for free people of color.

Freedom, Slavery, and Homo Economicus

Stanley, A. D. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

In "Freedom, Slavery, and Homo Economicus," Amy Dru Stanley explores two provocative claims advanced by Melvin Patrick Ely in Israel on the Appomattox—first, that the very existence of slavery allowed for the freedoms asserted by black persons who were not chattel and, second, that the worldview of Israel Hill's free blacks had much in common with that of other propertied persons in antebellum America. Focusing on the latter point, Stanley argues that Ely's work disrupts assumptions about the stark dualities of the Old South and the Yankee North. Accordingly, she suggests that questions raised regarding Northern white freeholders might fruitfully apply to Southern black freeholders: were the Israelites acquisitive, individualistic economic actors? At stake, Stanley writes, is ultimately the nature of sovereignty—the lived relations of personal dominion in Israel Hill. Invoking a recent debate between Douglas Egerton and Walter Johnson about the libratory power of money in the slave South, Stanley sketches the clashing worldviews that might have existed on Israel Hill—a possessive subjectivity animated by acquisitive individualism or a collective subjectivity rooted in racial kinship. Stanley claims that regardless of whether Israelites conceived of themselves as the "we" of the racial subject, the "I" of the bourgeois subject, or some fusion of the two, their market pursuits disrupted the Southern system of racial sovereignty and confused the relationship between bondage and freedom, rendering still more provocative Ely's argument that slavery itself enabled the freedom of black people not owned as chattel property.

Beyond the Appomattox: Comments on Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War, by Melvin Patrick Ely

Saville, J. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Inspired by Israel on the Appomattox's imaginative reconstruction of the contingencies of manumission and conditional emancipation prior to the Civil War, Julie Saville considers gradual emancipation's resemblances to aspects of twentieth-century notions of "minimalist democracy." A premise that economic activities can be meaningfully separated from political participation and human rights undergirds many of the institutional and customary interactions that the book has uncovered. Melvin Ely also sheds new light on the symbolic work that racial stereotypes accomplished for their producers. Such features would seem to make the Virginians' projects of gradual emancipation less "visionary" but no less significant than this important study has revealed.

Freedom, Ideology, and White Supremacy: A Comment on Melvin Patrick Ely's Israel on the Appomattox

Capers, C. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

This commentary focuses on the discrepancies between the use of the concepts freedom and ideology in Ely's Israel on the Appomattox. Though the slippage between the two terms is pervasive in the historiography and not limited to Ely's book, Corey Capers argues that we need a more scrupulous accounting of their historical and historiographic use. Through contrasting the deployment of both concepts in discussions of American Revolutionary discourse and practice by Ely and Bernard Bailyn (among others), Capers demonstrates how freedom and ideology function differently for free African Americans and free whites in Ely's book. For example, in Ely's discussion, revolutionary ideology motivates Richard Randolph's action to liberate his slaves, while racist ideology supporting white supremacy is presented as distinct from actual behavior. Similarly, for American revolutionaries freedom meant some form of political sovereignty (republican or popular), whereas for formerly enslaved African Americans freedom is limited to freedom from enslavement. Finally, Capers takes issue with Ely's interpretation of the impact of the capriciousness of white supremacy, arguing that such capriciousness is itself endemic to power and terror.

Comment on Israel on the Appomattox

Perman, M. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Israel on the Appomattox is a wonderful account of a large and successful settlement of freed slaves in antebellum Virginia. As such, it makes a valuable contribution to the literature on the experience of former slaves as an anomalous social group in the slave South, but Michael Perman argues that it does not significantly alter current views about how the freed slaves fared and were treated, despite the claims of author Melvyn Ely and, to an even greater extent, the reviewers of the book.

Comments on Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War, by Melvin Patrick Ely

Dailey, J. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Jane Dailey's commentary raises methodological issues at play in Ely's book but also of concern to the wider world of historical writing. Ely focuses on human behavior in antebellum Virginia rather than on human thought or ideology. This kind of division between behavior and thought visible in Israel on the Appomattox is reproduced at the methodological level in the historical discipline as a whole. Some historians claim the triumph of social history, others economic or intellectual or cultural history. This sort of oppositional choice—behavior matters more than ideas—needs to be thought of not dogmatically but strategically. It is one thing to divide thought and action heuristically, in order to discover something unknown about one or the other—we can separate x from y in order to see x more clearly. However, privileging day-to-day behavior over law and ideology does not take us any closer to a model of history that accounts for the complexity of society and for the possibility of that society to generate all types of potential and conflicting histories, many of which are never realized. Dividing cognitive and ideological structures from everyday behavior constrains our ability to explain why behavior matters. Histories are punctuated equilibriums. The behavioral model can go a long way toward explaining equilibriums, but it has a hard time explaining punctuations.

Response

Ely, M. P. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Premature Anti-Communists?: American Anarchism, the Russian Revolution, and Left-Wing Libertarian Anti-Communism, 1917-1939

Zimmer, K. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

Initially among the Bolshevik Revolution's most ardent supporters in the United States, anarchists rapidly became its most outspoken left-wing critics. This article focuses on the transnational exchanges of information, analyses, and individuals that caused this about-face and its repercussions. Hundreds of Russian-born anarchists returned from the United States in 1917 and participated in the revolutionary upheavals in Russia, only to subsequently face repression and disillusionment. Their experiences in turn provided the basis for their American comrades' understanding of Soviet Communism as a betrayal of the popular revolution originating "from below" and an inherently authoritarian system. Anarchists' new anti-Communist imperative decisively shaped their activities in 1920s and 1930s, while simultaneously leading to their increasing marginalization within the labor movement and the Left. Conflict between anarchists and Communists erupted within the Industrial Workers of the World and the International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union, to the detriment of all. It also spilled over into the anti-Fascist movement and, subsequently, into anarchist understandings of, and participation in, the Spanish Civil War. The Bolshevik consolidation of power, the advent of the Popular Front, and the fall of Spain simultaneously provided anarchists with important insights into the nature of Soviet Communism, cemented their antiauthoritarian beliefs, and rendered them ineffective by placing them outside of the emerging Cold War dichotomy of the Stalinist "Left" and anti-Stalinist "Right."

Reforming Repression: Labor, Anarchy, and Reform in the Shaping of the Chicago Police Department, 1879-1888

Mitrani, S. — Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT

In the article "Reforming Repression: Labor, Anarchy, and Reform in the Shaping of the Chicago Police Department, 1879-1888," Sam Mitrani examines the dramatic strengthening of the Chicago Police Department in the 1880s. Beginning in 1879, Mayor Carter Harrison pulled the department back from its least popular activities, such as enforcing temperance regulations and breaking strikes, to increase the legitimacy of the force. This was part of Harrison's policy of class collaboration aimed at calming the tension in the city after the strike and riot of 1877. His administration also hired hundreds of new officers and funded an extensive police telegraph system. Meanwhile, the city's workers were organizing in new unions, anarchist organizations were growing, and the city's business leaders were preparing for new clashes by organizing themselves in a citizens' association and an organization known as the Commercial Club. When a new strike wave began in 1885 and his class collaborationist policies ceased to ensure civic peace, Harrison deployed the newly strengthened force against strikers and their anarchist allies, with telling effect. After the Haymarket bombing and the repression of the anarchists in 1886, the police department further consolidated and reinforced itself with increased support from the city's business leaders and their organizations. The article concludes that the Chicago Police Department was largely built in this era in reaction to the labor movement. The department's main task was to contain that movement and protect "order" as defined by businessmen.

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Tue, 19 May 2009 14:03:00 PDT