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6 books match the query 'United Mine Workers of America'

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Carbon County, USA

Miners for Democracy in Utah and the West

Christian Wright

University of Utah Press, 2019

Although unions are by no means entirely gone or lacking in lobbying power, their membership in traditional industries is on the decline and their influence continues to diminish. Only a generation ago, large unions such as the United Mine Workers of America held greater political and economic capital and inspired millions beyond their immediate ranks. In this book, Christian Wright explores the complex history of the UMWA and coal mining in the West over a fifty-year period of the twentieth century, concentrating on the coal miners of Carbon and Emery counties in Utah. Wright emphasizes their experience during the 1970s, which saw the rise and passing of American workers’ most successful postwar effort to internally reform a major labor organization: the Miners for Democracy movement. As Wright details how and why Miners for Democracy and nonunion mining raced to control coal’s future, he also touches on the UMWA’s regional origins during and immediately after the New Deal, when cracks in union efficacy and benefit programs began to appear. Using sophisticated demography, Wright not only details how miners’ racial, gender, and generational identities shaped their changing relationships to mining and organized labor, he also illustrates the place of nonunion miners, antiunion employers, the unemployed, ethnic minorities, and women in transforming “Carbon County, USA.”

Drawing on a variety of primary sources, Wright provides evidence for organized labor’s continuing significance and value while effectively illuminating its mounting frustrations during a relatively recent chapter in the history of Utah and the United States.

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Communities of Ludlow

Collaborative Stewardship and the Ludlow Centennial Commemoration Commission

Fawn-Amber Montoya

University Press of Colorado, 2021

For more than one hundred years, people have come to the Ludlow Massacre Memorial site to remember the dead, to place themselves within a larger narrative of labor history, and to learn about what occurred there. Communities of Ludlow reveals the perseverance, memory, and work that has been done to enrich and share the narratives of the people of Ludlow and the experiences of those who commemorate it.

The history of the Ludlow Massacre encompasses the stories of immigrant groups, women, the working-class, and people of color as much as the story of that tragedy, and the continued relevance of these issues creates a need for remembrance and discussion of how to make the events of the Ludlow Massacre available to contemporary society. The book outlines recent efforts to remember and commemorate this important historical event, documenting the unique collaborations in public scholarship and outreach among the diverse group of people involved in marking the 100-year anniversary of the Ludlow Massacre. The chapters relate the tales of the stewards of the Ludlow Massacre—the various communities that rallied together to keep this history alive and show its relevance, including lineal descendants, members of the United Mine Workers of America, historians, archaeologists, scholars, artists, interpreters, authors, playwrights, and politicians. The book also offers tips, strategies, and cautionary tales for practicing engaged public scholarship.

The history of the Ludlow Massacre has been told as a tragedy of striking miners in the West that occurred during a turbulent time in US labor relations, but it is so much more than that. Communities of Ludlow explores the intersections of public scholarship, advocacy, and personal experience, weaving these perspectives together with models for practicing public scholarship to illustrate the power of creating spaces for sharing ideas and information in an environment that encourages creativity, open dialogue, public outreach, political action, and alternative narratives.

Contributors: Robert Butero, Robin Henry, Michael Jacobson, Elizabeth Jameson, Linda Linville, Matthew Maher, Yolanda Romero

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From Redstone to Ludlow

John Cleveland Osgood's Struggle against the United Mine Workers of America

F. Darrell Munsell

University Press of Colorado, 2009

The most comprehensive study of John Cleveland Osgood to date, From Redstone to Ludlow covers events from 1892, when Osgood and his associates organized the Colorado Fuel and Iron Company, to 1917, when Osgood signed a contract with the United Mine Workers of America, marking the end of his long history of battling the union. Called the Fuel King of the West, Osgood was the leading coal baron in the western mountain region and the most prominent spokesperson for the coal industry for over three decades. During this time, his anti-union policies made him the UMWA's most formidable foe in its effort to organize the Colorado coalfields.

From Redstone to Ludlow depicts the bipolarity of his approach to the threat of unionism. The "Redstone experiment," a model industrial village designed to improve the lives of workers through social programs, showed Osgood's efforts to attain his anti-union goals through compassion. Conversely, the Ludlow tent colony and the events that transpired there, marked by armed gunmen and machine guns paid for by Osgood, illustrate his willingness to resort to violence and intimidation for the same purpose. A leading participant in the transformation of the West, Osgood helped to shape the character of the Gilded Age. Today, the beautiful village of Redstone and a granite memorial at Ludlow are reminders of Osgood's complex role in the clash between labor and management during the most violent industrial struggle in American history.

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It is Union and Liberty

Alabama Coal Miners, 1898-1998

Edwin L. Brown

University of Alabama Press, 1999

One union, many voices—Alabama coal miners and the century-long fight for justice.

Much of Alabama's labor history is written in its coal fields. This book records the critical contribution that District 20 of the United Mine Workers of America played in the state's labor movement through its strong stands on such issues as child labor, public education, and inter-racial unions.

Standing at the cutting edge of social and political history, these essays cover five periods over a century of union activity: the emergence of a militant labor force during mining's formative years; the World War I era, when mine operators tried to divide black and white labor; the increasing role of the state in labor relations during the interwar years; rapid changes in the union between 1942 and 1975; and the 1977-79 strike, the largest in the United Mine Workers' history.

Through historic photographs and depictions of living and working conditions, contributors Edwin L. Brown, Colin J. Davis, Daniel Letwin, Brian M. Kelly, Peter Alexander, Glenn Feldman, and Robert H. Woodrum portray the world that miners, both black and white, made. In a state where racial segregation was the norm,even the earliest District 20 contract proposals demanded equal pay for equal work regardless of color. It Is Union and Liberty shows that the UMW in Alabama stands apart from perceptions of southern trade unionism as exclusionary and racially fragmented. It sheds light on an important segment of the state's labor history and is a testament to District 20 on its centennial celebration.

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John L. Lewis

A Biography

Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren Van Tine

University of Illinois Press, 1986

John L. Lewis (1880-1969), who ruled the United Mine Workers for four decades beginning in 1919, defied presidents, challenged Congress, and kept American political life in an uproar. Drawing upon previously untapped resources in the UMW archives and upon oral histories by major figures of the 1930s and 1940s, the authors have created a remarkable portrait of this 'self-made man' and his times.

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Which Side Are You On?

The Harlan County Coal Miners, 1931-39

John W. Hevener. Foreword by Robert Gipe

University of Illinois Press, 1978

Depression-era Harlan County, Kentucky, was the site of one of the most bitter and protracted labor disputes in American history. The decade-long conflict between miners and the coal operators who adamantly resisted unionization has been immortalized in folksong by Florence Reece and Aunt Molly Jackson, contemplated in prose by Theodore Dreiser and Sherwood Anderson, and long been obscured by popular myths and legends.

John W. Hevener separates the fact from the legend in his Weatherford Award-winning investigation of Harlan's civil strife, now available for the first time in paperback. In Which Side Are You On? Hevener attributes the violence–-including the deaths of thirteen union miners–-to more than just labor conflict, viewing Harlan's troubles as sectional economic conflict stemming from the county's rapid industrialization and social disorganization in the preceding decade.

Detailing the dimensions of unionization and the balance of power spawned by New Deal labor policy after government intervention, Which Side Are You On? is the definitive analysis of Harlan's bloody decade and a seminal contribution to American labor history.

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