Peter Cole

Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University in Macomb and a research associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute (SWOP) at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is the author of the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area (University of Illinois Press, 2018) and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia (University of Illinois Press, 2007). He co-edited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW (Pluto Press, 2017) and edited Ben Fletcher: The Life & Times of a Black Wobbly (Charles H. Kerr Press, 2007). The second edition of Ben Fletcher, including a Foreword by Robin D.G. Kelley, was published by PM Press in 2021. He has written many scholarly articles and book chapters, but also published dozens of non-academic essays in the Washington Post, TIME, Chicago Tribune, Miami Herald, San Francisco Chronicle, Mail & Guardian (Johannesburg), History News Network, Africa Is A Country, Jacobin, In These Times, and more. He tweets from @ProfPeterCole