Böcker av Joe William Trotter

"A timely, consequential work from one of our greatest historians, Building the Black City is a reparative justice and urban historical tour de force."--Marcus Anthony Hunter, author of Radical Reparations: Healing the Soul of a Nation "In this masterful new study, preeminent historian Joe William Trotter, Jr., provides an unflinching look at how Black people built and navigated urban spaces from the colonial period to the present. While acknowledging the devastating toll that slavery, segregation, and mass incarceration have wrought in Black communities, Trotter boldly insists that our nation can never eradicate racism and implement restorative justice until we look beyond suffering--until we fully appreciate the strength, creativity, and determination of a people who unceasingly sought to make a place for themselves in the United States. In this expansive study, Trotter powerfully reminds us that Black people built cities not only to create home, community, and a sense of permanence, but also to fight against white supremacy itself."--Leslie M. Alexander, author of African or American? Black Identity and Political Activism in New York City, 1784-1861 "Trotter offers a capacious view of the building of the Black city from the colonial era to the present, emphasizing the creativity, resilience, and resourcefulness of its residents. He explores regional variations related to the struggles for equal citizenship, property ownership, public education, and vibrant religious and cultural institutions. A superb addition to US urban history."--Jacqueline Jones, author of No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston's Black Workers in the Civil War Era

This collection brings together nearly three decades of research on the African American experience, class, and race relations in the Appalachian coal industry. It shows how, with deep roots in the antebellum era of chattel slavery, West Virginia's Black working class gradually picked up steam during the emancipation years following the Civil War and dramatically expanded during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.From there, African American Workers and the Appalachian Coal Industry highlights the decline of the region's Black industrial proletariat under the impact of rapid technological, social, and political changes following World War II. It underscores how all miners suffered unemployment and outmigration from the region as global transformations took their toll on the coal industry, but emphasizes the disproportionately painful impact of declining bituminous coal production on African American workers, their families, and their communities. Joe Trotter not only reiterates the contributions of proletarianization to our knowledge of US labor and working-class history but also draws attention to the gender limits of studies of Black life that focus on class formation, while calling for new transnational perspectives on the subject. Equally important, this volume illuminates the intellectual journey of a noted labor historian with deep family roots in the southern Appalachian coalfields.

Surveying issues including housing, healthcare, and occupational mobility, Trotter underscores how the ULP - often in concert with the Urban League's national headquarters - bridged social divisions to improve the lives of black citizens of every class.

"Few scholars have contributed more than Joe W. Trotter to Black labor history. His latest book, Workers on Arrival, is not only a brilliant synthesis by a master social historian but it marks a conceptual breakthrough by placing the black working-class--enslaved and "free"--at the center of the development of racial capitalism. Black workers were more than victims of rapacious violence and segregation; they were producers of wealth, the source of surplus value, fighters for economic justice. And now, in our neoliberal era of flexible labor and capital mobility, the future of Black workers is open to question. As journalists and pundits genuflect on the plight of the "white working-class," this is the book we should be reading. Profound, inspiring, and sobering."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Drawing upon a century of scholarship, Workers on Arrival provides a compelling, comprehensive overview of black labor from slavery to the present. At the same time, the book restores African American workers--especially urban workers--to their central place in the history of the American economy and the broader history of world capitalism."--Jacqueline Jones, author of American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor, University of Texas at Austin "There is no way to read Workers On Arrival without seeing the forging of a nation long dependent on black labor--unfree and free. Joe Trotter does a masterful job of detailing the inextricable link among work, race, and nation."--Earl Lewis, coeditor of To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans "A timely focus on the importance of black workers in the making of America. Workers on Arrival establishes the foundational role of black labor in the US economy. There is no one better positioned than Joe Trotter, Jr. to tell a history of this scale."--Leslie M. Harris, author of In the Shadow of Slavery "Workers on Arrival makes a fantastic and well-timed contribution to labor and African American history and the history of American democracy. From slavery to the modern gig economy, black working-class men and women have transformed the raw materials of seed and soil, metal ore, wood, and coal, into food, buildings, and finished goods. It's a great read and a stunning synthesis of the past four decades of scholarship in labor, African American, and political history."--Elizabeth Faue, author of Rethinking the American Labor Movement

Yet despite these pressures, African Americans were able to create vibrant new communities as former agricultural workers transformed themselves into a new urban working class.