The Newberry Seminar in Labor History Co-sponsored by the History Departments of the University of Illinois at Chicago, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Northern Illinois University, Northwestern University, and the Labor and Working Class History Association Seminars are held on Fridays from 3:00–5:00 PM at the Newberry Library, 60 West Walton Street, Chicago, Illinois. Papers are pre-circulated. For a copy e-mail scholl@newberry.org. 2008-2009

Main Gate to Works, Pullman, in The Story of Pullman, 1893. Pullman 09/00/03, Box 2, Folder 110

October 10, 2008—Colleen Doody November 14, 2008— Dave Burns December 13, 2008—Thomas Sugrue Symposium January 9, 2009—Michael Kramer February 13, 2009— Sandra Mendiola García March 13, 2009— Erik Gellman April 17, 2009—Thomas Adams May 8, 2009—Caroline Waldron Merithew

October 10, 2008—“The Factions Guiding the CIO are Red and They Hope to Take the Blue and White Out of the Color of Our Flag”: Detroit Labor and Anticommunism
Colleen Doody, DePaul University
Commentators: Stephen Meyer, University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee, and Martha Biondi, Northwestern University

During the early Cold War, opposition to communism was not merely an outgrowth of the conflict between the United States and the Soviet Union. In this local study, I explore one of the crucial sources of domestic anticommunism in Detroit. I argue that much of the anticommunist discourse that occurred in Detroit after World War II was a debate over the power of labor and the expansion of the New Deal state. Despite the fact that Detroit was the most heavily unionized city in the nation, anti-CIO candidates won political office by linking labor to the Communist Party. In response to their defeats, labor leaders battled to determine the role labor would play in the postwar world.

November 14, 2008— Heretical Tendencies in the Kingdom of God: Radical Christian Intellectuals and the Ideological Boundaries of the Social Gospel
Dave Burns, Northern Illinois University
Commentators: Kathryn Oberdeck. University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and Kate Masur, Northwestern University

During the Progressive Era, the ideals and ideas linked to dominant conceptions of civilization, science and citizenship often blunted the brotherhood and solidarity religious figures in America sought to impart to the world in Jesus’ name. This paper examines the lives and works of Cyrenus Osborne Ward and George Herron, two contrarians who rejected the evolutionary outlook of the social gospel that divided the human race into superior and inferior peoples and created their own radical and humanistic variants of Christianity to reach out to the workers of the world. Focusing on how each man used a working-class Jesus as the center of their ethical universe, it places Ward and Herron within a broader intellectual movement that challenged the authority of preachers and theologians to define the boundaries of religion.

December 13, 2008—Saturday Symposium 11:00am–3:00pm Co-sponsored by The Historical Society
The North as a Civil Rights Battleground: Debating Thomas Sugrue’s Sweet Land of Liberty: The Forgotten Struggle for Civil Rights in the North featuring author Thomas Sugrue

Commentators:
Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago
Jane Dailey, University of Chicago
Adam Green, University of Chicago
John T. McGreevy, University of Notre Dame
Amanda Seligman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee

January 9, 2009— A Labor History of Hippies: The KMPX and Wild West Festival Strikes and Countercultural Workers in Late Sixties San Francisco
Michael J. Kramer, Northwestern University
Commentators: Paul Mishler, Indiana University at South Bend, and Ronald Cohen, Indiana University Northwest

February 13, 2009—Defending their Rights: Street Vendors and Conflict in Puebla, 1969 to 1977
Sandra C. Mendiola García, Rutgers University
Commentators: Chris Boyer, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Michael Gonzales, Northern Illinois University

March 13, 2009— In the Driver's Seat: Black Power Unionism and Chicago's Bus Drivers
Erik S. Gellman, Roosevelt University
Commentators: Jeffrey Helgeson, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Lionel Kimble, Chicago State University

April 17, 2009— Immigration Politics, Service Labor and the Problem of the Undocumented Worker in 1970s Los Angeles
Thomas Jessen Adams, University of Chicago
Commentators: Will Jones, University of Wisconsin at Madison, and Juan Mora-Torres, DePaul University

May 8, 2009—“Perplexities Enough”: The Bodies and Minds of Working Class Women
Caroline Waldron Merithew, University of Dayton
Commentators: Susan Levine, University of Illinois at Chicago, and James Schmidt, Northern Illinois University

We will pre-circulate papers to those planning to attend. If you cannot attend and want to read a paper, please contact the author directly. E-mail scholl@newberry.org,or call (312) 255-3524 to receive a copy of the paper. Papers are available for request two weeks prior to the seminar date. Please include your e-mail address in all correspondence.

Please do not request a paper unless you plan to attend the seminar

2007-2008

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