Meatpackers

Rick Halpern, Roger Horowitz

ISBN 10: 158367005X / ISBN 13: 9781583670057

Published by Monthly Review Press,U.S., US, 1999

About this Item

Meatpackers provides an important window into race and racism in the American workplace. In their own words, male and female packinghouse workers in the Midwest-mostly African-American-talk of their experiences on the shop floor and picket lines. They tell of their fight between the 1930s and 1960s for economic advancement and racial equality. In cities like Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Fort Worth, and Waterloo, Iowa, meatpackers built a union that would defend their interests as workers-and their civil rights.

Seller Inventory # LU-9781583670057

Bibliographic Details

• Title: Meatpackers
• Publisher: Monthly Review Press,U.S., US
• Publication Date: 1999
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 158367005X
• ISBN 13: 9781583670057
• Binding: Paperback
• Condition: New
• Weight: 273 grams

About this title

Synopsis

"Here is a piece of history not found in conventional textbooks. If ever there were a book our young needed, it is Meatpackers-it reveals an epoch in which trade unions fought and won whatever rights working people possess today. With these rights constantly imperiled, this book is mandatory reading."
--Studs Terkel
"The stories are dramatically and richly told, and they offer insights no scholarly study can quite adequately provide."
--Peter Rachleff, Journal of American History
Available for the first time in paperback, Meatpackers provides an important window into race and racism in the American workplace. In their own words, male and female packinghouse workers in the Midwest-mostly African-American-talk of their experiences on the shop floor and picket lines. They tell of their fight between the 1930s and 1960s for economic advancement and racial equality. In cities like Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Fort Worth, and Waterloo, Iowa, meatpackers built a union that would defend their interests as workers-and fight for their civil rights.

About the Authors

Rick Halpern teaches at University College London and is the author of Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54 (1997).

Roger Horowitz is associate director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, and author of “Negro and White, Unite and Fight!” A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90 (1997).