Working History

When we think about the history of railroad labor, we often think of engineers, sleeping car porters, or the workers who constructed the railroads themselves. But what about the cooks, nurses, and laundresses who kept the railroads running? In this episode, Abosede George sits down with Kate Reed, a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago, to discuss her research on women workers on Mexico’s ra...

School may have returned for the fall, but what are the challenges facing teachers unions and their members as we approach the midway point of Trump 2.0?   In this week's episode of Working History, Joan Flores-Villalobos met with UTLA member Jake Roth, labor organizer Katie Miles from UC Berkeley, and historian Nick Juravich from UMass Boston to discuss how unions are confronting budgetary shortf...

It's official, "Working History" is back!  In our first episode back, Beth English—the founder, host, and producer of "Working History" vol 1—interviews Sarah McNamara, president of the Southern Labor Studies Association (SLSA), Eileen Boris, president of the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA), Julie Greene, editor of LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History , and Mae Ngai, senior...

After several long years off the air, the beloved labor history podcast is back! Now brought to you by the Southern Labor Studies Association, the Labor and Working-Class History Association, LABOR: Studies in Working-Class History, and International Labor and Working-Class History. New episodes will drop weekly, starting Thursday, September 24, 2026. Follow along and stay tuned for more Working H...

Step Up Louisiana co-founder and co-director Maria Harmon joins the podcast to talk about the group’s Freedom Summer-inspired voter turnout campaigns and grassroots mobilization efforts in New Orleans, Baton Rouge, and Jefferson Parish, New Orleans’ proposed Workers Bill of Rights, and the future of economic and education justice organizing in Louisiana.

Dr. Paul Ortiz, a professor of labor history at Cornell’s ILR School, joins co-host Olivia Paschal to discuss the history of higher education labor organizing in Florida, the resurgence of right-wing and austerity politics in public universities, and Dr. Ortiz’s work in higher education labor organizing. Until last year, Dr. Ortiz was a professor of history and director of the Samuel Proctor Oral...

Earlier this year, workers at the Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee voted to join the UAW in a landslide. The Southern Labor Studies Association held our biannual meeting at the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga last week, just as UAW Local 42 began negotiating its first contract. This panel, recorded live at the conference, is moderated by labor journalist Sarah Jaffe and features Z...

Welcome to a new season of Working History! Series co-host Dave Anderson talks with Aimee Loiselle about her book Beyond Norma Rae: How Puerto Rican and Southern White Women Fought for a Place in the American Working Class

This week’s episode features a panel recorded live at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Southern Exposure magazine, held in March at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill’s Wilson Library. The panel, which reflects on the founding of the Institute for Southern Studies and the creation of Southern Exposure, features Sue Thrasher, a co-founder of the Institute who later worked at the Hi...

Jennifer Brooks, Professor of History at Auburn University, discusses her book Resident Strangers: Immigrant Laborers in New South Alabama, beginning with the book's origin story and then explaining the significance of Chinese and European immigrants in the New South and their interactions with employers, unions, African-Americans, the region's racial regime, and its legal system.

Thomas Castillo discusses his book Working in the Magic City: Moral Economy in Early Twentieth-Century Miami, beginning with the book’s origin story, and then tracing Miami's working-class history from World War I to the mid-1930s.

Jefferson Cowie discusses his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, beginning with the book’s origin story, and then tracing the use of "freedom" to dominate others in Barbour County, Alabama, from Indian Removal in the 1830s through the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s Find information about the book at the publisher’s page. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jeff...

Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and how she uses histories in her work. Show Notes: "A North Carolina Farmworker Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election," by Ben Stockton and Victoria Bouloubasis, Mother Jones, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, a...

Ismael García Colón discusses his new book, Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire, Puerto Rican migrant farmworkers, and their labor experiences in the post-World War II United States.

Michael Goldfield discusses his new book, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s, union organization in the South's leading industrial sectors, and how contests between labor and capital in the New Deal-era South continue to shape American politics today.

Mary Stanton discusses her book, Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930-1950, New Deal-era political activism, and movements for racial, economic, and social justice in the Jim Crow South.

Emily E. LB. Twarog discusses her book, POLITICS OF THE PANTRY, the consumer activism of American housewives, and food's central role in consumer politics in the twentieth-century United States.

Jacquelyn Dowd Hall discusses her new book, SISTERS AND REBELS: A STRUGGLE FOR THE SOUL OF THE SOUTH, the southern upbringing of Grace and Katharine Lumpkin, their social activism, and contributions to the overlapping labor, feminist, and civil rights ferment in the pre-World War II South.

Eileen Boris discusses her new book MAKING THE WOMAN WORKER: PRECARIOUS LABOR AND THE FIGHT FOR GLOBAL STANDARDS, the history of the ILO's labor protections for women, domestic and home workers in the Global North and Global South, and ongoing fights to recognize precarious labor from the care economy to the gig economy.

Dr. Wendy Gonaver discusses her book, "The Peculiar Institution and the Making of Modern Psychiatry, 1840-1880," the Eastern Lunatic Asylum in Virginia, and the roles that race, the institution of slavery, and slave labor played in the development of psychiatric diagnosis and care through the nineteenth century and beyond.

Jody Allen, Assistant Professor of History at the College of William and Mary and Director of The Lemon Project: A Journey of Reconciliation, discusses William and Mary's slaveholding past and the genesis, research, and ongoing community outreach of The Lemon Project.

Joshua Specht discusses his new book, RED MEAT REPUBLIC, and how the history of beef production tells the story of broad changes in the American economy, society and political landscape during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Anthony Harkins (Western Kentucky University) and Meredith McCarroll (Bowdin College) discuss their edited volume, APPALACHIAN RECKONING: A REGION RESPONDS TO HILLBILLY ELEGY, the complexities of the region known as Appalachia, and challenging popular stereotypes of the region and the people who live there.

Jessica Wilkerson, Assistant Professor of History and Southern Studies at the University of Mississippi, discusses her book, "To Live Here You Have to Fight," and the recent history of feminist social justice activism in Appalachia.

Award-winning and New York Times bestselling author Wiley Cash discusses his novel, "The Last Ballad," writing fiction inspired by the South, and exploring the complexities of southern class, race, and gender relations against the backdrop of the 1929 Loray Mill strike.