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Black Folk: The Roots of the Black Working Class

byBlair LM Kelley

Blair L. M. Kelley traces the roots of the Black working class from slavery and emancipation through migration, industrialization, domestic labor, and organized resistance. Family stories and archival research recover railroad workers, laundresses, Pullman porters, tobacco laborers, and others whose work built communities as well as wealth for employers. The book challenges accounts that begin Black labor history with northern factories or treat workers only through formal unions. Kelley shows how dignity, kinship, mutual aid, protest, and everyday survival created a political tradition whose influence extends across modern American life.

Publisher

Liveright Publishing Corporation

Publication date

2023

Format

Print edition

Pages

—

ISBN

9781631496554