African American labor history : a survey of the scholarship from Jim Crow to the new millennium.

The author surveys perspectives on African American and women laborers within the field of labor history, noting that black scholars initiated the field of African-American labor history at the turn of the twentieth century. The scholarship of W. E. B. DuBois is highlighted, which, focused on workers' experiences beyond the point of production, would later influence the "new labor history" of the post-World War II era. Following a survey of the development of African American labor history in the early 20th century, Hunter discusses how, in the period following World War II, the influence of the modern civil rights movement and the Black Power movement helped shift the focus of historical research from an earlier emphasis on trade unionism to social history and the labor history of African Americans and women. As the demarcations of the fields and sub-fields of social history in the 1960s advanced, the history of slavery would largely be treated separately from labor history, and the study of slavery mostly focused on non-work issues, Hay says. The author explores how new emphases on race and gender, in addition to class, divided the labor history field, as some feared the fragmentation of the discipline, leading to a national conference in 1984. Debates over race, gender, and class in labor history point to the persistent dilemmas that historians of the working-class continue to face in trying to negotiate analyses of these social relations. The greatest advances in rethinking the analytical categories, reformulating the paradigms, broadening the theoretical basis for the field, and expanding the subjects have come since 1980, Hunter notes, arguing that while the chicken-egg debate of race, class, and gender has not entirely abated, historians have also been able to move beyond it. Following the essay, a bibliography of recommended reading, a chronology of American American labor history from 1619 to 1997, and a glossary of historical persons, organizations, and movements are presented.