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Michelle Obama at the Democratic National Convention.
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Michelle Obama Was Right to Clap Back at Trump on 'Black Jobs'

The idea of "Black jobs" owes to 18th and 19th century divisions of labor designed to uphold slavery and white supremacy.
Crowd marches against high inflation and unemployment in 1973.

What Would Studs Terkel Make of 'Essential Workers'?

What American workers have lost since 1974 — and how some are getting it back.
Illustration of a man typing on his laptop on a rollercoaster ride.

Work Sucks. What Could Salvage It?

New books examine the place of work in our lives—and how people throughout history have tried to change it.
Lebanese auto worker Eva Habib in her work coveralls in 1929.

Arab American Labor

On the centrality of the working classes to the Arab American immigrant experience and the pivotal roles Arab Americans played in American labor.
Painting of a young boy working as an apprentice, wearing an apron

How Long Did the School Year Last in Early America?

Even throwing off of a colonial power, representative institutions, Protestantism, and local autonomy in school decisions did not produce an egalitarian system.
Scientists carrying a log by using straps around their heads.

1,000 Years Ago, Ancient Puebloans Built a Mysteriously Vast City. We May Finally Know How.

High up on the Colorado Plateau, in what is today the state of New Mexico, sit the remains of what was once a city of epic proportions.
Illustration of Abraham Lincoln writing the Emancipation Proclamation.

Abraham Lincoln Is a Hero of the Left

Leftists have regarded Lincoln as a pro-labor hero who helped vanquish chattel slavery. We should celebrate him today within the radical democratic tradition.
An public work space

The Idea of Work, From Below

Ideas about working from the employee perspective.

The Once and Future Temp

What can the history of the temp-work industry teach us about the precarity of modern working life?
John Henry swinging a hammer, with the steam drill behind him.

John Henry and the Divinity of Labor

Variations in the legend of a steel-driving man tell us about differing American views of the value and purpose of work.
Newsies smoking at Skeeter's Branch.

Lewis Hine, Photographer of the American Working Class

Lewis Hine captured the misery, dignity, and occasional bursts of solidarity within US working-class life in the early twentieth century.
Galveston Central Wharf in 1861

Granger’s Juneteenth Orders and the Limiting of Freedom

To what extent did the Union general's famous orders actually liberate the enslaved in Texas?
Men observing teams of horses and mules.

Andrew Jackson and the Chesapeake and Ohio Canal

How the so-called champion of the common man set a precedent for using federal troops to quash labor unrest.

Factory Made

A history of modernity as a history of factories struggles to see beyond their walls.
Teachers and their supporters picketing.
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The Media Still Gets the Working Class Wrong — But Not in the Way You Think.

The U.S. working class is tremendously diverse — and growing in strength.

Why Did White Workers Leave the Democratic Party?

Historian Judith Stein debunks liberal myths about racism, the New Deal, and why the Democrats moved right.
An oil rig sprays crude oil into the air.
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Voices from the Oilfields

Using oral histories of early East Texas oil workers, recorded in the 1950s, we hear about the chaos and excess that accompanied the discovery of oil.

The Bisbee Deportation of 1917

It had not only a pivotal effect in Arizona's own labor history, but also on labor activity throughout the country.
Photo of Black woman and boy posing with a car packed with their belongings during the Great Migration.

The Hosts of Black Labor

The South must reform its attitude toward the Negro. The North must reform its attitude toward common labor. 
Bracero workers in line getting paperwork filled out.

A New Bracero Program Is Not the Solution

An Eisenhower-era initiative holds key lessons for Trump’s immigration policy.
Linda McMahon speaking at the Republican National Convention on July 18 in Milwaukee.

Does Trump’s WWE Lady Really Have a Vision for Schools in America? Yes—It Would Make Everyone Mad

Trump's education vision echoes the Founding Era: vouchers, privatization, and apprenticeships risk inequality, education deserts, and child labor abuse.
A Chinese American woman riveter at work.

Could “Rosie the Riveter” Be Chinese American?

Despite having their citizenship withheld before the war, Chinese American women in the Bay Area made significant contributions to the wartime labor force.
A graphic of a megaphone with a group of people inside the horn holding smaller megaphones.

Gags and Grievance: The Labor Origins of Whistleblowing

The forgotten history of the Lloyd-La Follette Act and of whistleblowing in the federal workforce.
A drawing of 10 identical women in historical cooking, but nine of them are colored green and one of them is red.

Anthony Bourdain on the Life and Legacy of a Truly Infamous Cook: Typhoid Mary

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”

The Making of the Springfield Working Class

Each generation of this country’s workforce has always been urged to detest the next—to come up with its own fantasies of cat-eating immigrants.
Battleship NEW YORK at the Puget Sound Naval Shipyard dry dock, Bremerton, Washington, 1914

Postcolonial Pacific: The Story of Philippine Seattle

The growth of Seattle in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries is inseparable from the arrival of laborers from the US-colonized Philippines.
Samuel Gompers giving a speech in front of a crowd with his arms open wide.

A Return to Gompers

Samuel Gompers, the Teamsters at the Republican National Convention, and where unions fit into party politics.
A homesteader woman feeding chickens.

Some Country for Some Women

As women stretch themselves thin, homesteader influencers sell them an image of containment.
The Executive Board of UCAPAWA in 1937.

Challenging the New Deal’s “Contemptible Neglect”

In the midst of the Great Depression, one CIO union used the new administrative state to influence legislation on behalf of people considered outcasts.
"Winter Scene in Brooklyn," 1820 painting by Francis Guy.

How Brooklyn’s Earliest Black Residents Found Empowerment and Solidarity in Their Diverse Community

The little known history of 19th-century New York City.

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