The Depression brought unprecedented changes for American workers
and organized labor. As the economy plummeted, employers cut wages
and laid off workers, while simultaneously attempting to wrest more
work from those who remained employed. In mills, mines, and
factories workers organized and resisted, striking for higher
wages, improved working conditions, and the right to bargain
collectively. As workers walked the picket line or sat down on the
shop floor, they could be heard singing. This book examines the
songs they sang at three different strikes- the Gastonia, North
Carolina, textile mill strike (1929), Harlan County, Kentucky, coal
mining strike (1931-32), and Flint, Michigan, automobile sit-down
strike (1936-37). Whether in the Carolina Piedmont, the Kentucky
hills, or the streets of Michigan, the workers' songs were
decidedly class-conscious. All show the workers' understanding of
the necessity of solidarity and collective action. In Flint the
strikers sang: The trouble in our homestead Was brought about this
way When a dashing corporation Had the audacity to say You must all
renounce your union And forswear your liberties, And we'll offer
you a chance To live and die in slavery. As a shared experience,
the singing of songs not only sent the message of collective action
but also provided the very means by which the message was
communicated and promoted. Singing was a communal experience,
whether on picket lines, at union rallies, or on shop floors. By
providing the psychological space for striking workers to speak
their minds, singing nurtured a sense of community and class
consciousness. When strikers retold the events of their strike, as
they did in songs, they spread and preserved their common history
and further strengthened the bonds among themselves. In the strike
songs the roles of gender were pronounced and vivid. Wives and
mothers sang out of their concerns for home, family, and children.
Men sang in the name of worker loyalty and brotherhood, championing
male solidarity and comaraderie. Informed by the new social
history, this critical examination of strike songs from three
different industries in three different regions gives voice to a
group too often deemed as inarticulate. This study, the only
book-length examination of this subject, tells history ""from the
bottom up"" and furthers an understanding of worker culture during
the tumultuous Depression years. Timothy P. Lynch is an associate
professor of history at the College of Mount St. Joseph in
Cincinnati, Ohio. He has been published in the Michigan Historical
Review and the Encyclopedia of American Social History.
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