Working History Working History

Jefferson Cowie discusses his book Freedom’s Dominion: A Saga of White Resistance to Federal Power, beginning with the book’s origin story, and then tracing the use of "freedom" to dominate others in Barbour County, Alabama, from Indian Removal in the 1830s through the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s

Find information about the book at the publisher’s page. https://www.basicbooks.com/titles/jefferson-cowie/freedoms-dominion/9781541672819/

Find the New York Times review of the book. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/12/12/books/review/freedoms-dominion-jefferson-cowie.html

Journalist Victoria Bouloubasis discusses her career reporting on agricultural and food labor in North Carolina, her approach to labor journalism, and how she uses histories in her work.

Show Notes:

"A North Carolina Farmworker Was Accused of Abusing His Workers. Then Big Tobacco Backed His Election," by Ben Stockton and Victoria Bouloubasis, Mother Jones, The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and Enlace Latino NC: https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2022/10/tobacco-reynolds-north-carolina-brent-jackson-tbij/

"How a Tobacco Company Funds a Mega-Farmer’s Political Ambitions That Hurt Workers" podcast in English: https://soundcloud.com/enlacelatinoncpodcast/how-a-tobacco-company-funds-a-mega-farmers-political-ambitions-that-hurt-workers

"Cómo una tabacalera financia las ambiciones políticas de granjero que perjudica a los trabajadores" podcast en español: https://soundcloud.com/enlacelatinoncpodcast/como-una-tabacalera-financia-las-ambiciones-politicas-de-un-granjero-que-perjudica-a-los-trabajadores

Victoria's reporting for Enlace Latino NC: https://enlacelatinonc.org/author/victoria-bouloubasis/

Victoria's reporting for Southerly: https://southerlymag.org/author/victoria-bouloubasis/

Ismael García Colón discusses his new book, Colonial Migrants at the Heart of Empire, Puerto Rican migrant farmworkers, and their labor experiences in the post-World War II United States.

Michael Goldfield discusses his new book, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s, union organization in the South's leading industrial sectors, and how contests between labor and capital in the New Deal-era South continue to shape American politics today.

Mary Stanton discusses her book, Red, Black, White: The Alabama Communist Party, 1930-1950, New Deal-era political activism, and movements for racial, economic, and social justice in the Jim Crow South.

Emily E. LB. Twarog discusses her book, POLITICS OF THE PANTRY, the consumer activism of American housewives, and food's central role in consumer politics in the twentieth-century United States.