Year: 1994
Type: article
Abstract: Panels addressing a variety of issues in American labor history were well represented at the Third Social History Conference, held at the University of Cincinnati on October 30, 1993.Featured sessions included "Race, Gender, and Work in the Gilded Age," "Labor and Community Organizing in the Late 19th-century United States," "Race and Labor in the 1920s," "The State, Law, Labor, and Gender Relations in the 20th-century United States," and "Labor and the Homefront in World War II."Several panels focused on race and gender.On the panel, "Race, Gender, and Work in the Gilded Age," Dean Ferguson (Purdue University) presented a paper on informal black workers in Louisville, titled '"Living By Means Unknown to their Neighbors': Alley Life and the Makeshift Economy of Louisville's Blacks, 1865-1880."At the same session, Robin Bachin (University of Michigan) presented a paper on the ways in which the company attempted to construct gender at Pullman, titled '"The One Great Impediment': Working Women and Domesticity in Pullman, IL 1881-1894."Both papers made for an interesting contrast, as Ferguson took a "bottom-up" approach, while Bachin presented a view from the top down.Issues of race and social control over the work force also took center stage in Robyn Spencer's (Columbia University) paper, titled "Contested Terrain: The Mississippi Flood of 1927 and the Struggle to Control Black Labor."Spencer described the attempt of white planters to detain black sharecroppers and tenant farmers with the help of relief camp staff and National Guard troops during the 1927 Mississippi flood.She also explored how the relief camp experience changed the consciousness of the sharecroppers and tenant farmers.Issues of community and class provided the focus in the session on "Labor and Community Organizing in the Late 19th-century United States."David Stowell (SUNY Buffalo) gave a paper on middle-class support for striking railroad workers in 1877.Challenging the notion that middle-class groups supported the workers due to shared republican values, Stowell argued that the key to understanding this cross-class cooperation was recognizing that the use of city streets by railroads was particularly damaging to the interests of such middle-class businessmen as grocers and saloon keepers.In recent years, labor historians have taken a fresh look at the role of
Authors: Thomas Winter, Andrew Kersten
Institution: University of Cincinnati
Language: English
Topic: Labor Movements and Unions
Subfield: Public Administration
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: bronze
OpenAlex ID: W2143886581