Working History

Karen Cox, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, discusses her new book, Goat Castle: A True Story of Murder, Race, and the Gothic South, and what one murder case in 1930s Mississippi reveals about race relations, criminal justice, and life in the Jim Crow South.

J. Blake Perkins, assistant professor of history at Williams Baptist College, discusses his new book, Hillbilly Hellraisers: Federal Power and Populist Defiance in the Ozarks, regional relations with the federal government, and the evolution of grassroots politics.

Keri Leigh Merritt discusses her book, Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, and intersections of race, class, politics, and slavery in the pre-Civil War South.

Bryant Simon, Professor of History at Temple University, discusses his new book, The Hamlet Fire: A Story of Cheap Food, Cheap Government, and Cheap Lives, and the tragic consequences of the ethos of "cheap" for workers, communities, and the nation.

Lane Windham, Associate Director of the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University, discusses her book, Knocking on Labor’s Door, and why the 1970s should be seen as more than a moment of decline for the U.S. labor movement.

Traci JoLeigh Drummond, archivist for the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University in Atlanta, discusses the preservation of materials related to southern labor history, new collections open to researchers, digital access to archival sources, and what makes a collection of records "archive worthy."

Joshua Hollands, of the Institute of the Americas at University College London, discusses his award-winning essay, “There’s a Bigot in Your Biscuit’: Workplace Discrimination at Cracker Barrel, Civil Rights, and Corporate Activism in the Southern United States,” and the past and present of LGBT discrimination and activism in the southern workplace.

Professor Adrienne Petty discusses her book, Standing Their Ground: Small Farmers in North Carolina Since the Civil War, the black and white farmers in the South who were part of the "small farming class," and their evolving strategies for holding onto their land through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Professor Greta de Jong of the University of Nevada, Reno, discusses her book, You Can't Eat Freedom, rural organizing, social justice movements, and the connected histories of the Civil Rights Movement and the War on Poverty in the US South.

Professor Cindy Hahamovitch of the University of Georgia discusses her research connecting the global histories of 19th-century indentured servants and today's guestworkers.

Professor Julie Weise of the University of Oregon discusses her book, Corazón de Dixie, the long history of Mexican migration to states in the Deep South, and the roots of anti-immigrant politics and policies in the region today.

Professor Blain Roberts of California State University, Fresno, talks about intersections of race, identity, and memory in the South in a wide-ranging discussion that starts in the segregated beauty parlors of the Jim Crow era and ends with remembrances of slavery in modern-day Charleston, South Carolina.

Professor Robyn Muncy of the University of Maryland discusses the history of the term "working class" and its uses in American politics from the 1930s to today.

John Weber, Assistant Professor of History at Old Dominion University, discusses his book, "From South Texas to the Nation," migrant agricultural labor, immigration policy, and the long-term impacts of the labor relations model that developed in South Texas during the early twentieth century.

Alex Lichtenstein, Associate Professor of History at Indiana University, discusses his new book with co-author Rick Halpern, "Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid," photojournalism, and writing transnational histories of labor and social justice movements.

Derek Krissoff, Director of the West Virginia University Press, discusses academic publishing and university presses, the open access movement, and current trends in history publishing.

Professor Ellen Griffith Spears of the University of Alabama, author of "Baptized in PCBs: Race, Pollution, and Justice in an All-American Town," discusses the decades long struggle for environmental and civil rights justice in Anniston, Alabama, and broader lessons to be learned from this fight to address one community's exposure to toxic chemicals.

Professors Melissa Walker of Converse College and Giselle Roberts of Australia’s La Trobe University, editors of the Women’s Diaries and Letters of the South series, discuss the field of documentary editing and how the personal writings of southern women reveal the broader history of life in the U.S. South during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Professor Chad Pearson of Collin College, author of "Reform or Repression," traces the roots of modern anti-unionism in the U.S. to the early 20th century open shop movement and a push by business interests nationwide to break unions and stall the momentum of organized labor.

Scott Nelson, Legum Professor of History at the College of William & Mary and SLSA’s immediate past president, presents the lecture, “The White Whale: Why Moby Dick Is a Story about the Fate of Southern Labor in the Age of Slavery.” The lecture and Q&A session were recorded at the SLSA luncheon at the 2015 Southern Historical Association meeting in Little Rock, Arkansas.

Professor Michael Honey of the University of Washington, Tacoma, discusses the documentary that he directed and co-produced, "Love and Solidarity: The Story of Rev. James Lawson," and Lawson's work of building solidarity and movements for social justice from the Civil Rights Era to today.

Professor Michelle Haberland of Georgia Southern University, author of "Striking Beauties: Women Apparel Workers in the U.S. South," discusses the dynamics of gender, class, race and globalization in the southern apparel industry from the 1930s to today.

Professor Kenneth Fones-Wolf of West Virginia University discusses his book, co-authored with Elizabeth Fones-Wolf, "Struggle for the Soul of the Postwar South," the role of religion in the CIO's Operation Dixie, and provides perspective on the participation of faith communities in the modern labor movement.

Professor Jacob Remes of SUNY Empire State College discusses his book, "Disaster Citizenship," and challenges prevailing assumptions about how ordinary people, governments, and institutions act in the wake of natural disasters.

Professor Talitha LeFlouria, a fellow at the Carter G. Woodson Institute at the University of Virginia, discusses her book, "Chained in Silence," and the lives, labors, and legacies of incarcerated black women and the convict lease system in the early 20th century South.