Author: Kyle Friend

The New York Labor History Association is pleased to announce the Third Annual Debra E. Bernhardt Labor Journalism Prize.

The Bernhardt Prize is an award of $500 given to an article or series of articles that furthers the understanding of the history of working people. Articles focused on historical events AND articles about current issues (work, housing, organizing, health, education, and also workers’ organizations and unions) that include historical context are both welcome. The work should be published – in print or online – in a union or workers’ center publication or by an independent/free-lance journalist. By sponsoring this award we hope to inspire more great writing for a general audience about the history of work, workers, and their organizations. The award is co-sponsored by LaborArts; Metro New York Labor Communications Council; the NYC Central Labor Council, AFL-CIO; and the Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives at NYU’s Tamiment Library.

The deadline is August 1, 2017 – enter now at www.laborarts.org/Bernhardt.

 

Keith Danish of the NYLHA has written a new review of Jews in the American Labor Movement: Past, Present & Future, a booklet by author Bennett Muraskin.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

For previous book reviews click here.

BOOK NOTES: From time to time, we will publish a brief note to alert you to a recently-published work. The first one follows:

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Silk Stockings and Socialism: Philadelphia’s Radical Hosiery Workers from the Jazz Age to the New Deal

by Sharon McConnell-Sidorick, ©2017, University of North Carolina Press

The Kensington section of Philadelphia, “a ‘mill town’ set in the middle of a large
city”, was the birthplace of the Knights of Labor, founded by Uriah S, Stephens and other local garment workers. One of the Knights, John Makin, was a co-founder of the American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW), the union profiled in this book. Later re-named the American Federation of Hosiery Workers (AFHW) (until it merged with the Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA)), the union’s activism in the 1920’s and 1930’s is the focus of author Sharon McConnell-Sidorick, as it engaged in “follow the shops” organizing drives, community-based organizing, labor feminism, and support for the building of CIO unions. During that time period, the union openly espoused a Socialist ideology, as “ideological and activist descendants of Philadelphia’s Knights of Labor.”

[Note prepared by Keith Danish of the NYLHA]