Fight Like Hell
The Untold History of American Labor
1st Edition
Published on 26. April 2022
448 pages
978-1-9821-7107-0 (ISBN)
Description
Named a Best Book of the Year by The New Yorker and Esquire
This revelatory and inclusive book "unearths the stories of the people?farm laborers, domestic workers, factory employees?behind some of the labor movement's biggest successes" (The New York Times) from independent journalist and Teen Vogue labor columnist Kim Kelly.
Freed Black women organizing for protection in the Reconstruction-era South. Jewish immigrant garment workers braving deadly conditions for a sliver of independence. Asian American fieldworkers rejecting government-sanctioned indentured servitude across the Pacific. Incarcerated workers advocating for basic human rights and fair wages. The queer Black labor leader who helped orchestrate America's civil rights movement. These are only some of the heroes who propelled American labor's relentless push for fairness and equal protection under the law.
The names and faces of countless silenced, misrepresented, or forgotten leaders have been erased by time as a privileged few decide which stories get cut from the final copy: those of women, people of color, LGBTQIA people, disabled people, sex workers, prisoners, and the poor. In this definitive and assiduously researched "thought-provoking must-read" (Liz Shuler, AFL-CIO president), Teen Vogue columnist and independent labor reporter Kim Kelly excavates that untold history and shows how the rights the American worker has today?the forty-hour workweek, workplace-safety standards, restrictions on child labor, protection from harassment and discrimination on the job?were earned with literal blood, sweat, and tears.
Fight Like Hell comes at a time of economic reckoning in America. From Amazon's warehouses to Starbucks cafes, Appalachian coal mines to the sex workers of Portland's Stripper Strike, interest in organized labor is at a fever pitch not seen since the early 1960s. Inspirational, intersectional, and full of crucial lessons from the past, Fight Like Hell is "essential reading for anyone who believes that workers should control their fate" (Shane Burley, author of Why We Fight).
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09/2023
Atria Books
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Person
Kim Kelly is a labor reporter for In These Times magazine and has been a regular labor columnist for Teen Vogue since 2018. Her writing on labor, class, disability, and culture has appeared in The Nation, The Baffler, Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Washington Post, The New York Times, and many others. Kelly has also worked as a video correspondent for More Perfect Union, The Real News Network, and Means TV.Her first book, Fight Like Hell: The Untold History of American Labor, was published in 2022. A third-generation union member, she was born in the heart of the South Jersey Pine Barrens and currently lives in Philadelphia.
Content
- Intro
- Title Page
- Dedication
- Epigraph
- Foreword
- Prologue
- Chapter 1: The Trailblazers
- The Mill Girls of Lowell, Massachusetts
- "The Blood of Souls in Bondage"
- The Freed Black Washerwomen of Jackson, Mississippi
- A Showdown in Atlanta
- Chapter 2: The Garment Workers
- The Fiery Jewish Girls ('Farbrente Yidishe Meydlekh') of New York City
- "Burning Death Before Our Eyes"
- Frances Perkins: Labor Activist Turned Architect of the New Deal
- "A Turning Point in My Life": Sue Lo Kee and the National Dollar Stores Factory Strike
- 'Viva La Huelga:' Rosa Flores and the San Antonio Farah Strike
- Chapter 3: The Mill Workers
- Innovation and Bloodshed on the Picket Line
- Ola Delight Smith and the Battle to Organize the South
- Militancy in the Southern Mills: The 1934 Textile Strike
- Chapter 4: The Revolutionaries
- Lucy Parsons and the Haymarket Eight
- Ben Fletcher and the Rise of Racial Capitalism
- The United States of America vs. the Wobblies
- Dr. Marie Equi, Portland's "Queen of the Bolsheviks"
- The Bloody Responses to Revolt
- Chapter 5: The Miners
- Women Break Open the Mines of Appalachia
- Black Labor and the Coal Creek War
- They Called Her Mother Jones
- The West Diversifies the Workforce
- Indigenous and Latino Workers Hold the Line
- A Half Century Later, Back Where We Began
- The 2021 Warrior Met Coal Strike
- Chapter 6: The Harvesters
- Hawai'i's Masters and Servants
- Sugar and Blood
- 'Los Braceros', the Dust Bowl, and the Great Mexican-American Migration
- "Crusader in Rubber Boots and a Big Skirt"
- '"Si, Se Puede!"'
- Nagi Daifullah and the Largest Farmworker Strike in History
- "We Want Dignity and Respect"
- Chapter 7: The Cleaners
- Waiting to Work
- "The Bronx Slave Market"
- Building Power in the Power Laundries
- Dorothy Lee Bolden and the World Ahead
- '"Ya Basta!"' ("Enough Is Enough")
- Chapter 8: The Freedom Fighters
- "Shoot to Kill Any Negro Who Refuse[s] to Surrender Immediately"
- The Pullman Railway Porters
- The Pullman Maids' Double Bind
- "You're Supposed to Be Scared When You Come in Here"
- "There Was No One More Able to Pull It Together Than Bayard Rustin"
- Chapter 9: The Movers
- Brewing Up Trouble
- "No Red-Baiting, No Race-Baiting, No Queen-Baiting!"
- "We Put the 'Trans' Back in Transportation"
- Reagan Declares War on Labor
- Freedom to Fly
- Chapter 10: The Metalworkers
- A Midwestern Revolution
- Building Multiracial Alliances in the Michigan Auto Industry
- Arab Solidarity in Dearborn, Michigan
- Fighting Sexual Harassment on the Assembly Line
- Steel Pride
- Chapter 11: The Disabled Workers
- Circuses for Bread
- "Handicapped Workers Must Live, Give Us Jobs"
- Section 504, a Civil Rights Act for the Disabled
- "They Know We're Desperate for Work": Taking on the Subminimum Wage
- Chapter 12: The Sex Workers
- San Francisco's "Barbary Coast"
- "All I Ask Is for a Living Wage and I'll Get Out of It Myself"
- Ah Toy and the Chinese Immigrant Workers' Struggle
- Margo St. James's COYOTEs and the HIV/AIDS Crisis
- The Movement Takes Center Stage
- Performers' Rights and Community Care
- Chapter 13: The Prisoners
- The Rise of Prisoners' Labor Unions
- Women's Prisons and Rebellion
- The Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee
- California's Incarcerated Firefighters
- Epilogue
- Acknowledgments
- About the Author
- Endnotes
- Bibliography
- Index
- Copyright
