Feeling in the Light

Labor Pains ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 99-136
Author(s):  
Christin Marie Taylor

Much of Eudora Welty’s writing during the Popular Front era shows a writer with an eye turned toward black workers and their centrality in southern American life, from the ordinary everyday to major political events. Welty’s use of fear and desire reconfigures discourses about black workers, including myths of rape in the midst of Popular Front anti-lynching efforts. With the case of Scottsboro and others whispering in the background, her interrelated vignettes and short fiction engage the failures of the New Deal to address the painful occurrences of lynching and labor oppression experienced by African Americans. The Golden Apples (1949) and other short stories offer a sense of racial terror, fear, and desire —feelings that not only challenged perceptions of blackness but also questioned the role of white feminine agency.

Author(s):  
Colleen Doody

This chapter demonstrates how anti-Communism became a means to debate the proper role of government on the issue of race rights. Liberals and their leftist allies supported the wartime New Deal's vision of an expanded role for government in both fair housing and fair employment for African Americans. They embraced the inclusive, democratic nationalism of the New Deal. Opponents of this view argued that racial advances would come at the expense of white workers and homeowners. These groups supported a far more limited conception of the New Deal, one that shied away from racial equality while providing federal support for white homeownership. They often equated racial egalitarianism with Socialism and Communism.


Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers

This chapter argues that change in the U.S. labor movement from American Federation of Labor (AFL) craft unionism to Committee for Industrial Organization (CIO) industrial unionism largely lay behind Jersey City’s opposition to the CIO in 1937, not just Mayor Hague’s supposed antilabor inclinations. Hague aligned with AFL unions, but Depression and New Deal labor laws weakened them, while boosting CIO industrial unionism and its appeal to suffering Jersey manufacturing workers, including women and African Americans. Moreover, the CIO’s class-conscious culture of “working-class Americanism” clashed with Hague’s ethnicity-based rhetoric of “Patriotic Americanism.” Meanwhile, interwar anticommunism intensified Jersey City’s opposition to CIO organizers, who themselves drew on Popular Front rhetoric of antifascism to oppose “dictatorial” regimes like Hague’s. This polarization complicated Jersey City’s reception of the CIO.


2019 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 60-76
Author(s):  
Christopher M. Hartt ◽  
Albert J. Mills ◽  
Jean Helms Mills

Purpose This paper aims to study the role of non-corporeal Actant theory in historical research through a case study of the trajectory of the New Deal as one of the foremost institutions in the USA since its inception in the early 1930s. Design/methodology/approach The authors follow the trajectory of the New Deal through a focus on Vice President Henry A. Wallace. Drawing on ANTi-History, the authors view history as a powerful discourse for organizing understandings of the past and non-corporeal Actants as a key influence on making sense of (past) events. Findings The authors conclude that non-corporeal Actants influence the shaping of management and organization studies that serve paradoxically to obfuscate history and its relationship to the past. Research limitations/implications The authors drew on a series of published studies of Henry Wallace and archival material in the Roosevelt Library, but the study would benefit from an in-depth analysis of the Wallace archives. Practical implications The authors reveal the influences of non-corporeal Actants as a method for dealing with the past. The authors do this through the use of ANTi-History as a method of historical analysis. Social implications The past is an important source of understanding of the present and future; this innovative approach increases the potential to understand. Originality/value Decisions are often black boxes. Non-Corporeal Actants are a new tool with which to see the underlying inputs of choice.


1986 ◽  
Vol 16 (3) ◽  
pp. 287-309 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theodore J. Eismeier ◽  
Philip H. Pollock

The current American debate about the relationship between business and government represents the most significant reopening of that issue since the New Deal. The debate is in part about government's role in the economy, but the issue of business's role in politics is being joined as well, joined in fact on several fronts. There are, of course, the polemics of corporations and their critics, in which business is cast alternately as victim and villain. The issue also divides more serious students of American politics and has fostered a wealth of theorizing about the role of the state. Finally, the issue of business influence pervades discussions about campaign finance.


2010 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christina Beatty ◽  
Mike Foden ◽  
Paul Lawless ◽  
Ian Wilson

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document