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"We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in
this country, a move which will lead-NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" With
these words echoing throughout the city, on February 6, 1919,
65,000 Seattle workers began one of the most important general
strikes in US history. For six tense yet nonviolent days, the
Central Labor Council negotiated with federal and local authorities
on behalf of the shipyard workers whose grievances initiated the
citywide walkout. Meanwhile, strikers organized to provide
essential services such as delivering supplies to hospitals and
markets, as well as feeding thousands at union-run dining
facilities. Robert L. Friedheim's classic account of the dramatic
events of 1919, first published in 1964 and now enhanced with a new
introduction, afterword, and photo essay by James N. Gregory,
vividly details what happened and why. Overturning conventional
understandings of the American Federation of Labor as a
conservative labor organization devoted to pure and simple
unionism, Friedheim shows the influence of socialists and the IWW
in the city's labor movement. While Seattle's strike ended in
disappointment, it led to massive strikes across the country that
determined the direction of labor, capital, and government for
decades. The Seattle General Strike is an exciting portrait of a
Seattle long gone and of events that shaped the city's reputation
for left-leaning activism into the twenty-first century.
"We are undertaking the most tremendous move ever made by LABOR in
this country, a move which will lead-NO ONE KNOWS WHERE!" With
these words echoing throughout the city, on February 6, 1919,
65,000 Seattle workers began one of the most important general
strikes in US history. For six tense yet nonviolent days, the
Central Labor Council negotiated with federal and local authorities
on behalf of the shipyard workers whose grievances initiated the
citywide walkout. Meanwhile, strikers organized to provide
essential services such as delivering supplies to hospitals and
markets, as well as feeding thousands at union-run dining
facilities. Robert L. Friedheim's classic account of the dramatic
events of 1919, first published in 1964 and now enhanced with a new
introduction, afterword, and photo essay by James N. Gregory,
vividly details what happened and why. Overturning conventional
understandings of the American Federation of Labor as a
conservative labor organization devoted to pure and simple
unionism, Friedheim shows the influence of socialists and the IWW
in the city's labor movement. While Seattle's strike ended in
disappointment, it led to massive strikes across the country that
determined the direction of labor, capital, and government for
decades. The Seattle General Strike is an exciting portrait of a
Seattle long gone and of events that shaped the city's reputation
for left-leaning activism into the twenty-first century.
Talks about the southern exodus and its impact on American life.
Between 1900 and the 1970s, twenty million southerners migrated
north and west. Weaving together for the first time the histories
of black and white migrants, James N. Gregory traces their paths
and experiences in a comprehensive new study that demonstrates how
this regional diaspora reshaped America by ""southernizing""
communities and transforming important cultural and political
institutions. Challenging the image of the migrants as helpless and
poor, Gregory shows how both black and white southerners used their
new surroundings to become agents of change. Combining personal
stories with cultural, political, and demographic analysis, he
argues that the migrants helped create both the modern civil rights
movement and modern conservatism. They spurred changes in American
religion, notably modern evangelical Protestantism, and in popular
culture, including the development of blues, jazz, and country
music. In a sweeping account that pioneers new understandings of
the impact of mass migrations, Gregory recasts the history of
twentieth-century America. He demonstrates that the southern
diaspora was crucial to transformations in the relationship between
American regions, in the politics of race and class, and in the
roles of religion, the media, and culture.
Here, reprinted for the first time since its original publication,
is muckraking journalist Upton Sinclair's lively, caustic account
of the 1934 election campaign that turned California upside down
and almost won him the governor's mansion.
Using his "End Poverty in California" movement (more commonly
called EPIC) as a springboard, Sinclair ran for governor as a
Democrat, equipped with a bold plan to end the Depression in
California by taking over idle land and factories and turning them
into cooperative ventures for the unemployed. To his surprise,
thousands rallied to the idea, converting what he had assumed would
be another of his utopian schemes into a mass political movement of
extraordinary dimensions. With a loosely knit organization of
hundreds of local EPIC clubs, Sinclair overwhelmed the moderate
Democratic opposition to capture the primary election. When it came
to the general election, however, his opposition employed highly
effective campaign tactics: overwhelming media hostility, vicious
red-baiting and voter intimidation, high-priced dirty tricks. The
result was a resounding defeat in November.
"I, Candidate" tells the story of Sinclair's campaign while also
capturing the turbulent political mood of the 1930s. Employing his
trademark muckraking style, Sinclair exposes the conspiracies of
power that ensured big-money control over the media and other
powerful institutions.
Fifty years ago, John Steinbeck's now classic novel, The Grapes of
Wrath, captured the epic story of an Oklahoma farm family driven
west to California by dust storms, drought, and economic hardship.
It was a story that generations of Americans have also come to know
through Dorothea Lange's unforgettable photos of migrant families
struggling to make a living in Depression-torn California. Now in
James N. Gregory's pathbreaking American Exodus, there is at last
an historical study that moves beyond the fiction of the 1930s to
uncover the full meaning of these events.
American Exodus takes us back to the Dust Bowl migration of the
1930s and the war boom influx of the 1940s to explore the
experiences of the more than one million Oklahomans, Arkansans,
Texans, and Missourians who sought opportunities in California.
Gregory reaches into the migrants' lives to reveal not only their
economic trials but also their impact on California's culture and
society. He traces the development of an "Okie subculture" that
over the years has grown into an essential element in California's
cultural landscape.
Gregory vividly depicts how Southwesterners brought with them on
their journey west an allegiance to evangelical Protestantism,
"plain-folk American" values, and a love of country music. These
values gave Okies an expanding cultural presence their new home. In
their neighborhoods, often called "Little Oklahomas," they created
a community of churches and saloons, of church-goers and
good-old-boys, mixing stern-minded religious thinking with
hard-drinking irreverence. Today, Baptist and Pentecostal churches
abound in this region, and from Gene Autry, "Oklahoma's singing
cowboy," to Woody Guthrie, Bob Wills, and Merle Haggard, the
special concerns of Southwesterners have long dominated the country
music industry in California. The legacy of the Dust Bowl migration
can also be measured in political terms. Throughout California and
especially in the San Joaquin Valley Okies have implanted their own
brand of populist conservatism.
The consequences reach far beyond California. The Dust Bowl
migration was part of a larger heartland diaspora that has sent
millions of Southerners and rural Midwesterners to the nation's
northern and western industrial perimeter. American Exodus is the
first book to examine the cultural implications of that massive
20th-century population shift. In this rich account of the
experiences and impact of these migrant heartlanders, Gregory fills
an important gap in recent American social history.
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