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Photograph of author Mike Davis.

Mike Davis Revisits His 1986 Labor History Classic, Prisoners of the American Dream

The late socialist writer's first book was a deep exploration of how the US labor movement became so weakened.
by Mike Davis, Daniel Denvir via Jacobin on October 31, 2022
Workers working on ruins after the US Civil War, circa 1865.

The Abolitionist Legacy of the Civil War Belongs to the Left

The US Civil War was a revolutionary upheaval that crushed slavery and stoked hopes of a broader emancipation against the rule of property.
by Dale Kretz via Jacobin on April 6, 2022

How the Labor Movement Built New York

A new museum exhibit shows that you cannot understand the city’s history without understanding its workers.  
by Nick Juravich via The Nation on December 10, 2019

The Vexed Meaning of Equality in Gilded Age America

How three late 19th century equality movements failed to promote equality.
by Eric Foner via The Nation on September 24, 2019

America’s Missing Labor Party

The history of labor strikes shows that, in order to achieve lasting success, workers need to capture political power.
by David Sessions via The New Republic on October 2, 2018

The Massacre That Spelled the End of Unionized Farm Labor in the South for Decades

In 1887, African-American cane workers in Louisiana attempted to organize—and many paid with their lives.
by Calvin Schermerhorn via Smithsonian on November 21, 2017
Antiwar march on October 31, 1970. Marchers holding a banner reading "Chicano Power" and "Remember Reuben Salazar."

Mapping American Social Movements

Interactive maps showing the historical geography of influential American social movements since the late 19th century.
by Civil Rights History Consortium via University of Washington
United Auto Workers President Shawn Fain wears a shirt reading ‘Trump is a Scab’ at the Democratic National Convention.

How Organized Labor Shames Its Traitors − The Story of the ‘Scab’

It’s important to understand why some workers might be motivated to weather scorn, rejection and even violence from their peers.
by Ian Afflerbach via The Conversation on August 23, 2024
People seated at town hall meeting.

What We Get Wrong About White Workers

Deindustrialization has helped create a right-wing turn in many Midwestern towns. Long traditions of labor militancy can explain why it hasn’t in others.
by Chris Maisano, Stephanie Ternullo via Jacobin on July 9, 2024
Uncle Sam on ladder hanging up Postal Savings Bank sign

A People’s Bank at the Post Office

The Postal Savings System offered depositors a US government-backed guarantee of security, but it was undone by for-profit private banks.
by Matthew Wills, Christopher W. Shaw via JSTOR Daily on April 16, 2024
Eugene V Debs speaking at a rally, c1912-18. Photo courtesy the Library of Congress.

For Socialism and Freedom: The Life of Eugene Debs

How Eugene V. Debs turned American republicanism against the chiefs of capitalism – and became a true crusader for freedom.
by Tom O’Shea via Aeon on October 2, 2023
Detail from a Brotherhood of Locomotive Engineers graphic, 1877.

America’s Oldest Railway Union Must Break With Its Right-Wing Past

Why does the government have the power to break massive union strikes? Part of the story is a history of conciliatory railway unionism.
by Maya Adereth via Jacobin on January 9, 2023
Sketch of workers with clubs attacking a national guardsman during the Great Railroad Strike, 1877.

The 1877 Class War That America Forgot

In 1877, one million workers went on strike and fought police and federal troops in cities across America.
by Ryan Zickgraf via Jacobin on July 3, 2022
A crowd gathered around a railroad track at the ceremony marking the completion of the first transcontinental railroad.

Breaking the Myth About America’s ‘Great’ Railroad Expansion

Historian Richard White on the greed, ineptitude and economic cost behind the transcontinental railroads, and the implications for infrastructure policy today.
by Richard White, Jake Blumgart via Governing on November 18, 2021
Front-page photo of James E. Shepperson from the Black newspaper, the Seattle Republican, on Oct. 26, 1900.

How Wyoming’s Black Coal Miners Shaped Their Own History

Many early Wyoming coal towns had thriving Black communities.
by Brigida R. Blasi via High Country News on January 28, 2021
A man sitting on a table.

A More Perfect Union

On the Black labor organizers who fought for civil rights after Reconstruction and through the twentieth century.
by Arvind Dilawar via Lapham’s Quarterly on November 16, 2020

The United States Has a Long History of Mutual Aid Organizing

On the roots of the community-based model that reemerged in the COVID era to counter the absence of adequate state support.
by Maya Adereth via Jacobin on June 14, 2020
United Mine Workers on a picket line.

The Past and Future of the American Strike

A new book tells the history of America through its workplace struggles.
by Richard Yeselson via The Nation on March 21, 2019

May Day's Radical History

The date of Occupy's strike has ties to the eight-hour day movement, immigrant workers and American anarchism.
by Jacob Remes via Salon on April 30, 2012

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