ABOUT THIS BOOK

Contains the Bryant Spann Memorial Prize in Literature for 1997, an award-winning essay, "The Very Last Hurrah" by Eric Leif Davin

This collection of articles delves into the little-known community-based unionism of the 1930s. Worlds apart from bureaucratic business unions like the AFL-CIO, these organizations emerged from workers involved in many kinds of labor, from African American nutpickers in St. Louis to chemical and rubber workers in Akron, and from bootleg miners in Pennsylvania to tenant farmers in the Mississippi Delta. 

The contributors draw on eyewitness interviews, first-person narratives, trade union documents, and other primary sources to describe experimental forms of worker activism during the period. This alternative unionism was democratic, deeply rooted in mutual aid among workers in different crafts and work sites, and politically independent. The key to it was a value system based on egalitarianism. The cry, "We are all leaders!" resonated among rank-and-file activists. Their struggle, though often overlooked by historians, has much to teach us about union organizing today. 

Contributors: John Borsos, Eric Leif Davin, Elizabeth Faue, Rosemary Feurer, Janet Irons, Michael Kozura, Mark D. Naison, Peter Rachleff, and Stan Weir

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY
Staughton Lynd taught American history at Spelman College and Yale University. In 1964, he worked as director of Freedom Schools during Mississippi Freedom Summer and later became an attorney. His books include Doing History from the Bottom Up: On E.P. Thompson, Howard Zinn, and Rebuilding the Labor Movement from Below and Intellectual Origins of American Radicalism.

REVIEWS

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction Staughton Lynd 1
1 The Nutpickers' Union, 1933-34 Crossing the Boundaries of Community and Workplace Rosemary Faurer 27
2 Organizing "Wall to Wall" The Independent Union of All Workers, 1933-37 Peter Rachleff 51
3 The Challenge of National Coordination Southern Textile Workers and the General Textile Strike of 1934 Janet Irons 72
4 The Southern Tenant Farmers' Union and the CIO Mark D. Naison 102
5 The Very Last Hurrah? The Defeat of the Labor Party Idea, 1934-36 Eric Leif Davin 117
6 Paths of Unionization Community, Bureaucracy, and Gender in the Minneapolis Labor Movement of the 1930s Elizabeth Faue 172
7 We Stood Our Ground Anthracite Miners and the Expropriation of Corporate Property, 1930-41 Michael Kozura 199
8 "We Make You This Appeal in the Name of Every Union Man and Woman in Barberton" Solidarity Unionism in Barberton, Ohio, 1933-41 John Borsos 238
9 Unions with Leaders Who Stay on the Job Stan Weir 294
Contributors 335
Index 337