Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and the Lower Sort During the American Revolution - Paperback

by Steven J. Rosswurm (Author)

In 1949 and 1950, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) expelled many left-wing unions, representing 750,000 workers, because they were supposedly Communist-dominated. This collection of previously unpublished essays explores the history of those eleven left-led unions. Some essays consider specific aspects of several unions--the Longshoremen, the United Electricians (UE), the Fur Workers, and the Food and Tobacco Workers--while others take up the impact of the federal government's and the Catholic church's anticommunism upon the unions as a whole.

This collection also addresses central domestic issues of twentieth-century America: race and government policy in the shaping of trade unionism; the impact of anticommunism and the cold war on race relations and working conditions; and the short- and long-range impact of the expulsions upon the labor movement. With groundbreaking essays that also concern the post-World War II period, Southern workers and workers in non-basic industries, this book will appeal to students of radicalism, race relations, anticommunism, and labor history.

Author Biography

Steve Rosswurm is an associate professor of history at Lake Forest College and the author of Arms, Country, and Class: The Philadelphia Militia and the "Lower Sort" During the American Revolution (Rutgers University Press).