posts from the year2023

Media and Memory: The Battle of Blair Mountain

by on November 10, 2023

“Logan County Bristles with Machine Guns… Gaunt Hollow-eyed Men hold Ridges…Every Path is Guarded.” On September 1st, 1921, Washington Times announced that headline from West Virginia. Ten thousand armed coal miners occupied Blair Mountain in the state’s southern coalfields. In pitched mountainside battles in the days afterward, the miners aimed their rifles at local and federal law enforcement, who responded with machine guns, bombs and poison gas, exchanging thousands of rounds of ammunition.

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The Labor Movement Made Me a Labor Historian

by on November 8, 2023

I became a labor historian in the spring of 2014. This was unexpected. I was already in the third year of a doctoral program in the history department at Columbia University, studying war and memory in United States political culture. For PhD programs, the end of the third year is a little late in the day to switch topics, let alone sub-disciplines.

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News

by on November 7, 2023

New Teaching Labor Story Entry

Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement’s [DRUM] list of Demands, 1969
Looking for a way to broaden and deepen discussions of race to include issues of work and
class?
Looking for ways to broaden and deepen discussions of work and class to include issues of
race?

Read more →

by on November 7, 2023

New Teaching Labor Story Entry

Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement’s [DRUM] list of Demands, 1969
Looking for a way to broaden and deepen discussions of race to include issues of work and
class?

Looking for ways to broaden and deepen discussions of work and class to include issues of
race?

Read more →