Twentieth century US labor history: Pedagogy, politics, and controversies Part 1

Abstract

AbstractTwentieth Century labor history is far reaching and has had a major influence on the historical profession. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, most labor historians were economists, scholars responsible for describing industrial relations and labor as a movement. Beginning in the 1960s, twentieth century labor scholars, most of whom were trained as historians and influenced by the Civil Rights, anti‐war, and labor movements, began focusing on the working classes more broadly, highlighting the ways a wide range of workers, including men, women, and African Americans, lived their lives both on the shop floor and in their communities. Politically, most labor historians in this period wrote as leftists or liberals, and many sought to reach audiences beyond university seminar rooms. But labor historians, especially Marxist types, have faced many attacks from critics for supposedly paying insufficient attention to gender and racial issues. In general, these critics have overstated their cases, failing to appreciate the many pioneering studies by labor historians that examine gender and racial relations without losing sight of class divisions and struggles.