Dr. Jesse Chanin describes how the United Teachers of New Orleans (UTNO) gained power and influence in a region hostile to unions from the mid-1960s to the mid-2000s by building trust in the community with transparent and democratic decision-making and a focus on racial and economic justice to improve the lives of the New Orleans community. In the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in 2005, however, politicians and charter school advocates fired 7,500 educators in New Orleans, dismantling the city’s public education system and decimating the union.  read more »

Dr. Jay Cephas considers two Depression-era murals in Detroit and their contrasting messaging about workers, labor, and power.  read more »

Dr. Say Burgin explains that contrary to the common belief that white activists were purged from the Black freedom movement in the mid-1960 and 1970s, Black-led organizations in Detroit – including the Northern Student Movement, the City-Wide Citizens Action Committee, and the League of Revolutionary Workers—called on white activists to organize within their own white networks to support Black self-determination in education, policing, employment, and labor unions.  read more »

Dr. Max Fraser shares the often overlooked story of the “hillbilly highway,” the route nearly eight million poor, rural, white Americans took in the 20th century from economically depressed areas in the Southeastern and Southern United States toward higher paying factory jobs in the Upper South and Midwest.  read more »

Rachel Shteir shares how Betty Friedan’s early experience as a labor reporter for the Federated Press informed her later work as a famed women’s rights activist, author of The Feminine Mystique, and co-founder of the National Organization for Women.  read more »