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Mark Twain

The Impossible Contradictions of Mark Twain

Populist and patrician, hustler and moralist, salesman and satirist, he embodied the tensions within his America, and ours.
by Lauren Michele Jackson via The New Yorker on April 28, 2025
Political cartoon of men chopping down the tree of slavery.

The Root and The Branch: Working-Class Reform and Antislavery, 1790–1860

On the robust influence of labor reform and antislavery ideas and movements on each other from the early National period to the Civil War.
by Rosemary Fuerer, Sean Griffin via LaborOnline on April 9, 2025
A group of women textile workers outside of their boarding house.
partner

Lowell’s Forgotten House Mothers

As vital to the success of industrial New England as the mill girls who toiled in the factories were the women who oversaw their lodging.
by Sarah Buchmeier via JSTOR Daily on April 2, 2025
Train emerging from the Hoosac Tunnel, 1911.

The Hoosac Tunnel

A history of the Bloody Pit.
by John Bulmer via Restoration Obscura on March 29, 2025
Book Cover of "An Ordinary White."

Basic Stuff About Reality

On David Roediger’s “An Ordinary White: My Antiracist Education.”
by Devin Thomas O’Shea via Los Angeles Review of Books on March 28, 2025
The Inspection Room at Ellis Island in New York circa 1910.
partner

The History of Categorizing Immigrants as Either Good or Bad

In the 19th century, debates about contract workers sorted immigrants into "natural" and "unnatural" categories.
by Hidetaka Hirota via Made By History on March 26, 2025
Women working at the Social Security Administration in Baltimore, Maryland, 1937.

Women’s Work: Section 213 and the Women Fired from the Federal Government

In 1932, married women were among the first targets in a campaign to reduce federal spending and balance the budget.
by Tanya L. Roth via The Saturday Evening Post on March 24, 2025
Aerial view of Oakland.

The Future Happens in Oakland First. That’s a Cautionary Tale for Global Cities

International trade boomed with the city’s early adoption of technological and economic changes, but Black neighborhoods became ‘sacrifice zones.’
by Lois Beckett, Alexis C. Madrigal via The Guardian on March 22, 2025
Bethlehem Steel Mill.

The Steel Mill That Built America

Bethlehem Steel was the birthplace of skyscrapers, bridges, and battleships. What happened after the plant's furnaces went cold?
by Matthew Christopher via Atlas Obscura on February 25, 2025
A man in a suit with angel wings clipped to his back, tipping a hat with six different arms.

The Cult of the Entrepreneur

Why do Americans idealize people who found businesses?
by Robin Kaiser-Schatzlein via The New Republic on February 17, 2025
W.E.B. DuBois, seated in garden reading book, while Shirley Graham DuBois waters plants.

How Black Marxists Have Understood Racial Oppression

Black Marxist thought emphasizes the centrality of capitalism to racial oppression and the destructiveness of that oppression for all workers.
by Jeff Goodwin, Jonah Birch via Jacobin on February 17, 2025
A crew of inmate firefighters begins to work on containment during the Hughes Fire in California in 2025.
partner

The Troubling Slavery-Era Origins of Inmate Firefighting

The history of enslaved firefighters offers a cautionary tale about the dangers of relying on involuntary labor to fight blazes.
by Justin Hawkins via Made By History on January 31, 2025
A drawing of a man riding a train and laying down train tracks in front of him.

The Insidious Charms of the Entrepreneurial Work Ethic

You’re passionate. Purpose-driven. Dreaming big, working hard, making it happen. And now they’ve got you where they want you.
by Anna Wiener via The New Yorker on January 27, 2025
Federal employees wait for treatment at a public health dispensary.

Trump Isn’t the First to Upend the Federal Workforce Because of Race

President Woodrow Wilson presided over the segregation of government workers, putting Black people behind screens and in cages in 1913.
by Petula Dvorak via Retropolis on January 23, 2025
Workers with shovels constructing the Panama Canal.
partner

Trump’s Talk of the Panama Canal Taps Into Old Myths About U.S. Power

By threatening to reclaim the Panama Canal, Trump is evoking false stories about U.S. beneficence.
by Julie Greene via Made By History on January 22, 2025
Drawings of refugees arriving at Fort Monroe.
partner

Expect Freedom Upon Arrival

On the slow path to federal action on emancipation during the Civil War.
by Bennett Parten via HNN on January 22, 2025
Jimmy Carter in 1980.

Jimmy Carter Was No Friend of Union Workers Like Me

As a worker in the 1970s, I looked forward to a Jimmy Carter administration. By the end of his term in office, I felt betrayed.
by Chris Townsend via Jacobin on December 29, 2024
Karen Silkwood.

Whistleblower Karen Silkwood’s Urgent Message for Us

Karen Silkwood death and smear campaign highlights how retaliation against whistleblowers deflects scrutiny from power by targeting the messenger.
by Sarah Milov, Katherine Turk via Jacobin on December 28, 2024
David Montgomery in a picket line during a 1955 UE strike.

The People in the Shop

A new collection of essays by David Montgomery shows how he used labor history as a means of grappling with the largest questions in American history.
by Kim Phillips-Fein via The Nation on December 17, 2024
A map dedication from Osgood Carlton "to the select men of the town of Boston" in 1795.

Practical Knowledge and the New Republic

Osgood Carleton and his forgotten 1795 map of Boston.
by John W. Mackey via American Revolutionary Geographies Online on December 17, 2024
Blair LM Kelley

Talking Black Joy and Black Freedom with Blair LM Kelley

“The world didn’t give It, but the world can’t take It away.”
by Regina Bradley, Blair LM Kelley via Public Books on December 16, 2024
Bracero workers in line getting paperwork filled out.

A New Bracero Program Is Not the Solution

An Eisenhower-era initiative holds key lessons for Trump’s immigration policy.
by Mae Ngai via The Atlantic on December 9, 2024
Linda McMahon speaking at the Republican National Convention on July 18 in Milwaukee.

Back to the Future

Why “Let’s have public schools like the Founding Fathers had” is such a terrible idea.
by Adam Laats via Slate on November 20, 2024
Chinese laborers engaged to work on the American Transcontinental Railroad system.

America's First Major Immigration Crackdown and the Making and Breaking of the West

Chinese immigrants sacrificed to create America's first transcontinental railroad. Its completion contributed to a backlash that led to immigration clampdown.
by Greg Rosalsky via NPR on November 19, 2024
Hazel Fellows sewing an Apollo A7L spacesuit at International Latex Corporation

Common Threads: From Playtex to Prada — NASA’s Surprising Spacesuit Collaborations

NASA recently announced a partnership with a couture designer, but in the 1960s, the first spacesuits were made by a company known for bras and girdles.
by Einav Rabinovitch-Fox via The Saturday Evening Post on November 19, 2024
Protestors after Nixon's Election protesting the end to war.

US Labor and the Gaza War: Historical Perspective

Are we doomed to repetition? It’s something I worry about.
by Tim Barker via Origins of Our Time on November 15, 2024
A Chinese American woman riveter at work.
partner

Could “Rosie the Riveter” Be Chinese American?

Despite having their citizenship withheld before the war, Chinese American women in the Bay Area made significant contributions to the wartime labor force.
by H. M. A. Leow, Xiaojian Zhao via JSTOR Daily on November 9, 2024
A graphic of a megaphone with a group of people inside the horn holding smaller megaphones.

Gags and Grievance: The Labor Origins of Whistleblowing

The forgotten history of the Lloyd-La Follette Act and of whistleblowing in the federal workforce.
by Sarah Milov via Knight First Amendment Institute on October 28, 2024
A drawing of 10 identical women in historical cooking, but nine of them are colored green and one of them is red.

Anthony Bourdain on the Life and Legacy of a Truly Infamous Cook: Typhoid Mary

“Mary Mallon was a cook. And her story, first and foremost, is the story of a cook.”
by Anthony Bourdain via Literary Hub on October 15, 2024

The Making of the Springfield Working Class

Each generation of this country’s workforce has always been urged to detest the next—to come up with its own fantasies of cat-eating immigrants.
by Gabriel Winant via New York Review of Books on September 30, 2024
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