Blaming Martin Irons: Leadership and Popular Protest in the 1886 Southwest Strike

2009 ◽  
Vol 8 (1) ◽  
pp. 51-81
Author(s):  
Theresa A. Case
Keyword(s):  
Personal History ◽  
Knights Of Labor ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
Social Anxieties

The story of the Great Southwest strike, a textbook example of the upheavals of 1886, has long been told as an epic battle between railway millionaire Jay Gould, national Knights of Labor head Terence Powderly, and Martin Irons, with many historians and contemporaries casting strike leader Irons as the epitome of impatient, romantic, and even deluded labor activism. District Assembly 101's call to walk out on Gould's southwestern system of roads was, arguably, strategically ill-advised. It vastly overestimated the Knights' power in the wake of two victories against Gould in 1885 and certainly ignored the district's lack of funds, lax support among skilled trainmen, and the terms of an historic agreement between the national Knights and Gould. A closer look at Irons's life and leadership, however, reveals a more complicated explanation of the strike and takes into fuller account the experiences and perceptions of striking railroaders. This essay holds that events on the ground, combined with the heady context of the Great Upheaval, influenced Irons and his supporters' decisions to strike, to expand the effort, and to defend it with violence. The ensuing attacks on Irons stemmed partly from his unstable personal history but largely from the broader social anxieties that the conflict had exposed.

Migration and Popular Protest in the Arabian Peninsula and the Gulf in the 1950s and 1960s

2011 ◽  
Vol 79 (1) ◽  
pp. 28-47 ◽  
Author(s):  
John Chalcraft
Keyword(s):  
Arabian Peninsula ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Positive Contribution ◽  
Popular Protest ◽  
Labor Activism ◽  
History Of ◽  
Labor Protest ◽  
Negative Role ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Second World

AbstractThe conventional historiography on popular and labor protest in the Arabian peninsula and the Gulf since the Second World War tends to ascribe a negative role to migration. Migrants—dragooned into the service of expanding oil economies—are often depicted as undermining the cohesion and efficacy of indigenous labor activism and popular protest. This article adopts a different perspective. It revisits the most important twentieth-century wave of pan-Arab, secular, republican, and socialist protest in the region—that of the 1950s and 1960s—and highlights the positive contribution migrants made. They were not just quotients of labor power, but interpretive and political subjects. Palestinians, Yemenis, and others, along with return- and circular-migrants, exiles, and visitors, transmitted pan-Arab and Leftist ideas, helped build activist organizations, and participated in a variety of protests. I suggest that standard forms of endogenous socioeconomic determinism in the labor history of the region need rethinking.

Writing the Journey

2012 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 327-332
Author(s):  
Larry E. Russell
Keyword(s):  
Sexual Orientation ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Emotional Risk

This reflection on writing is set in motion by an analogy between the images of a researcher at his desk and a man freefalling into space. I ruminate through my story of discovering autoethnography and consider how I had to negotiate my personal history, reluctant body, and sexual orientation in order to fully participate in the healing pilgrimage I chose to study. My encounter with the intensity of the gesture of suffering in a crucifix taught me about the emotional risk of this kind of work. Later, I learned how to immerse myself in the scene as I rewrote the narrative until I could finally realize in my life the humility of listening to my experience.

Out of the Whirlwind Reconsidered

2020 ◽  
Vol 53 (2) ◽  
pp. 1-12
Author(s):  
Michael Berkowitz
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
The United States ◽  
Personal History ◽  
Historical Writing ◽  
Holocaust Literature ◽  
The Holocaust ◽  
History Of ◽  
Mutual Accountability ◽  
Union College

This article argues that Albert Friedlander’s edited book, Out of the Whirlwind (1968), should be recognised as pathbreaking. Among the first to articulate the idea of ‘Holocaust literature’, it established a body of texts and contextualised these as a way to integrate literature – as well as historical writing, music, art and poetry – as critical to an understanding of the Holocaust. This article also situates Out of the Whirlwind through the personal history of Friedlander and his wife Evelyn, who was a co-creator of the book, his colleagues from Hebrew Union College, and the illustrator, Jacob Landau. It explores the work’s connection to the expansive, humanistic development of progressive Judaism in the United States, Britain and continental Europe. It also underscores Friedlander’s study of Leo Baeck as a means to understand the importance of mutual accountability, not only between Jews, but in Jews’ engagement with the wider world.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document