I first met Jane LaTour over forty years ago on a picket line in the northern New Jersey town of Hillside. Jane was working as an organizer for District 65, and I was coordinating the J. P. Stevens boycott in New Jersey for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union. Walking the picket line on that cold, rainy morning created an immediate bond, leading to a warm friendship rooted in a set of shared beliefs, values, and sensibilities. Although our geographic trajectories diverged, with Jane becoming ensconced in New York City and me traversing the northeast before settling in the Pacific Northwest, we remained in frequent contact over the years. Reviewing the “archival record” of our correspondence provides ample evidence of the qualities that made Jane such an influential figure and a valued and loyal friend. Jane’s profound commitments to the working class and the union movement were reflected in her multiple professional identities: journalist; historian; archivist; educator; organizer. She chose important institutional settings–the Association for Union Democracy, the Wagner Archives at New York University, AFSCME District Council 37’s newspaper, the New York Labor History Association–as venues where she could pursue her passions and practice her principles. Immersing herself in New York’s rich history and culture, Jane sought to honor the city’s diverse working class by making sense of its experience and becoming a vital resource for others who shared a similar mission. Oral history became the perfect vehicle for some of Jane’s best work. An astute and empathetic interviewer, she helped workers tell their stories, recount their struggles and successes, and gain recognition for their achievements. Her indispensable collection of oral histories, Sisters in the Brotherhoods, told the stories of women entering traditionally male occupations and “making a way out of no way” as they “organized for equality in New York City.” Sisters ranks among our finest labor oral history publications, one that will set the standard for generations to come. Jane’s deep affection for the union movement led her to speak truth to power throughout her career, repeatedly calling attention to instances where labor fell short of fulfilling its ideals. For Jane, the barometer of the union movement’s legitimacy rested in its willingness to welcome all workers, to amplify their voices, and to create opportunities for democratic engagement. Her final book, which will regrettably appear posthumously, uses oral history to report on the struggle for democracy within New York City’s unions. In an email she sent me several months ago, Jane wryly described the book as her “Pandemic Polemic” and eloquently explained her purpose: “I anticipate lots of blowback for this book, but my feeling is that we need to examine the topic in order to get the labor movement we need and not the one we have… the long history of sweeping it all under the rug is not the answer. So, onward.” Vintage Jane: candid; direct; visionary; and hopeful. Jane’s unflinching honesty and integrity coexisted with a gentle wit, a generous spirit, and a deep sense of humility. She was one of the most gracious people I have ever known, expressing encouragement, appreciation, and solidarity as we shared stories about our personal and public lives. In every email she sent and in each of our personal encounters over the past few decades, Jane displayed these qualities, reminding me, as she put it in inscribing my copy of Sisters in the Brotherhoods, why our four-decades long friendship remained “one that endures.” While perusing a shelf in my university’s library a few years ago, I made an unexpected discovery; Sisters in the Brotherhoods was standing directly next to my book, Fighting for Total Person Unionism. I am so pleased that my friend Jane and I will always be “next-door neighbors,” a fate that seems less like coincidence and more like destiny. Read more →

On March 27, a  week ahead of the 2023 Chicago mayoral race, this webinar offered a historical view on multiracial coalitions in Chicago and their legacy in the city, particularly in relation to the 2023 mayoral contest between Paul Vallas and Brandon Johnson. Read more →

This is the final entry for a symposium on Steven High’s Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).  The book tracks what High calls the “structural violence” and “social ruination” involved in the term deindustrialization. It traces the fate of Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighborhood  and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighborhood that is home to the city’s English-speaking Black community. We started with Lizabeth Cohen, who wrote an appreciation and posed questions. Next Austin McCoy offered reflections aimed at questions of activism and democracy. Then Ted Rutland probed the theoretical considerations that High deployed.  Now we have a response to these entries from  Stephen High. The symposium was organized by Ian Rocksborough-Smith, assistant professor of history at University of the Fraser Valley. Read more →

This is the third entry for a symposium on Steven High’s Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).  The book tracks what High calls the “structural violence” and “social ruination” involved in the term deindustrialization. It traces the fate of Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighborhood  and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighborhood that is home to the city’s English-speaking Black community. We started with Lizabeth Cohen, who wrote an appreciation and posed questions. Then Austin McCoy offered reflections aimed at questions of activism and democracy. Now Ted Rutland weighs in by probing the theoretical considerations that High deploys. Next we’ll have a response by author Steven High. The symposium was organized by Ian Rocksborough-Smith, assistant professor of history at University of the Fraser Valley. Read more →

This is the second entry for a symposium on Steven High’s Deindustrializing Montreal: Entangled Histories of Race, Residence, and Class (Montreal: McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2022).  The book tracks what High calls the “structural violence” and “social ruination” involved in the term deindustrialization. It traces the fate of Point Saint-Charles, a historically white working-class neighborhood  and Little Burgundy, a multiracial neighborhood that is home to the city’s English-speaking Black community. Yesterday, Lizabeth Cohen wrote an appreciation and posed questions. Today Austin McCoy offers reflections aimed at questions of activism and democracy. We follow up with Ted Rutland, and a response by author Steven High. The symposium was organized by Ian Rocksborough-Smith, assistant professor of history at University of the Fraser Valley. Read more →

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Ahmed White recently published Under the Iron Heel: The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers. It takes a closer look at the legal and extralegal  repression meted out against the Industrial Workers of the World, organized in 1905 as an industrial union committed to organizing all workers in opposition to the American Federation of Labor. The book is “the first comprehensive account of this campaign.” Randi Storch author interviewed him about his findings. Read more →

The new issue of the journal Labor: Studies in Working-Class History is out, and we are pleased to move  Sara Stanford McIntyre’s essay from behind the paywall for three months, thanks to Duke University Press. The essay reveals that women were part of the early oil industry, if in a conflicted position. We asked the author to provide a wrap around introduction with additional photos. –Editor Desk and Derrick was a female-only petroleum industry employees’ club, founded in 1947. Uncovering the club’s hidden history emphasizes the importance of women – white women who largely made up the industry’s clerical and support staff — to the development of the twentieth-century American oil industry. Read more →

Is there life after coal, what future for the collier? The scab and the hardliner both, wear the blue scars of the miner Rising up now from the earth, we’re branded and we’re blinded The sunlight and the dole queue boast, the blue scars of the miner Is there anything but drink, drugs and last reminders A single tear drop rolling down, the blue scars of the miner

–Lyrics from the “Blue Scars of the Miner,” The Freakons, 2022.

  As the camera floats over a dense forest at the start of Sherwood, the new BBC crime drama, the voice of Arthur Scargill, president of Great Britain’s National Union of Mineworkers (NUM), breaks through the rustling of the treetops. Read more →