Tag: Labor

Riot and Reclamation

Riot and Reclamation

Micah Khater
“Now We Work Just as One”

“Now We Work Just as One”

Terrell Orr

This article examines the first five years of the United Farm Workers' unionization of Minute Maid's workers in Florida. The UFW in Florida was a multiracial organization that reflected the "Nuevo South's" changing demographics in the 1970s. UFW organizers Mack and Diana Lyons, along with volunteer staff and rank-and-file members, cultivated a difficult but tenacious solidarity across racial lines through conscious, day-to-day activity in the union and in the community.

A Search for Rural Justice

A Search for Rural Justice

Jill Kiedaisch

My book is about my work toward structural change in agriculture. We founded this country, I say we collectively, to be governed by “We the People.” That looked good on paper, but of course we know that Jefferson didn’t really mean everybody. What we’ve had since 1776 is a grand experiment in making a representative democracy work.

Faces of Time: The Braceros of Ciudad Juárez

Faces of Time: The Braceros of Ciudad Juárez

Charles D. Thompson Jr.
Superstar Reverend J. M. Gates and Working Class Black Uplift

Superstar Reverend J. M. Gates and Working Class Black Uplift

Marko Maunula
The Lady Was a Sharecropper: Myrtle Lawrence and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

The Lady Was a Sharecropper: Myrtle Lawrence and the Southern Tenant Farmers’ Union

Elizabeth Anne Payne
Lessons of Core Sound Workboats

Lessons of Core Sound Workboats

Lawrence S. Earley

Core Sound is a shallow body of water in eastern North Carolina that carries the Core Sound National Seashore on its eastern shoulder and the Carteret County peninsula on its west. Between Beaufort, the mainland town that has prettied itself up over recent decades, and Cedar Island, a jumping-off point by ferry for the tourist destination of Ocracoke, a handful of small fishing villages comprise the area locally known as “Down East.”

The Saga of Ella May Wiggins

The Saga of Ella May Wiggins

Annette Cox

While doing research on textiles during the Great Depression, I found this poem about Ella May Wiggins on the March 8, 1932 editorial page of the Greensboro Daily News in a regular column titled “Shucks and Nubbins.” The author signed the piece with the initials S. A. J., but did not provide any other information about the poem.

Remembrances of the Past, Concerns for the Future, and the Potential Resilience of a Southern Coastal Town

Remembrances of the Past, Concerns for the Future, and the Potential Resilience of a Southern Coastal Town

Gavin Paul Smith
Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954-1968 by Alan Draper (Review)

Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South, 1954-1968 by Alan Draper (Review)

John Salmond
Saturday Night in Country Music: The Gospel According to Juke

Saturday Night in Country Music: The Gospel According to Juke

Jimmie N. Rogers

The American South has always been a mythic land of contrast and juxtaposition—black and white, rich and poor, mountaineer and planter, hospitality and violence, unregulated development and a sense of place, greed and grace, illiteracy and great writing—and it remains so today. One of the more intriguing paradoxes is the image of the South as the Bible Belt, a place where fundamentalist zealots constantly damn deviant behavior, and as the land of the honky-tonk, a place where good ole boys and girls push the limits of drinking, dancing, dalliance, and debauchery.