Reconsidering Southern Labor History

Abstract

Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power presents fresh and original scholarship that reexamines and reinterprets the field. The first collection of essays on southern labor history in six years, its broad chronological sweep distinguishes it from all of the collections that have appeared during the last forty years. Collectively, these essays cover virtually the entire span of United States history, from the early national period following the American Revolution through the twenty-first century. The essays that examine the antebellum South demonstrate that the problems of southern labor in that era still carry relevance in the twenty-first century and merit scholars’ attention. Furthermore, whereas the “new labor history” that was prevalent from the 1970s to the 1990s generally discouraged a focus upon institutional history (i.e., labor unions), the recent trend, as labor unions have gone into sharp decline in the United States in the last thirty-five years, has been to give unions and their importance more careful consideration while still maintaining focus on issues of class, race, gender, and the agency of individual workers. Many of these essays reflect this trend, as they bring unions or antebellum workingmen’s associations back into labor history without abandoning the methodologies and perspectives that were developed by new labor historians of previous generations.