Race, Class and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-21

Reviews / Votes

"Written in highly accessible prose, the book is highly recommended for undergraduate readers as well as scholars... This meticulously researched book recounts the struggle of white and black coal miners to build the interracial United Mine Workers of America in the violent and racially repressive Alabama of the early 20th century. Through the poignant tale of miners' failed efforts to build a durable union during this period, the book also offers a compelling intervention into recent historical debates concerning race, class, and the nature of biracial unionism during the Jim Crow era." -- Choice ADVANCE PRAISE "This excellent book convincingly connects labor disputes in the Alabama coalfields of the early twentieth century with the legacy of plantation slavery in the Old South." -- W. David Lewis, author of Sloss Furnaces and the Rise of the Birmingham District: An Industrial Epic "Brian Kelly has cut through the tangle of controversy involving Alabama's black and white coal miners. By returning the agency of employers to the analysis of race relations, Kelly has produced a sophisticated and compelling account of race, class, and power that students of all periods of U.S. history need to read." -- Judith Stein, author of Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism "A meticulously researched, engaging, and convincing study. Brian Kelly's vivid reconstructions of life in the Alabama coalfields and explorations of black working-class activism and the salience of class divisions in the black community are major contributions to African-American and labor history. His persuasive argument on the decisive role of white coal operators in shaping race and labor relations stands as a challenge to labor historians who have oddly neglected the role of capital in their studies on race and labor." -- Eric Arnesen, author of Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality