Epilogue

While the book is primarily concerned with the 1920s and 1930s and the road to the New Deal and the CIO, a short epilogue ties up some loose ends about the later years of the union and the community of Kensington. It discusses the expulsion of the hosiery workers from the CIO, the decline of industry and parts of Kensington, the decline of the union under the Taft Hartley Act and McCarthyism, and the continued activism of some former hosiery workers, labor feminists, and other community residents.

Storming the Bastille

This chapter demonstrates how the hosiery union's important but heretofore forgotten efforts played a key role in the founding of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) and important labor legislation, major New Deal programs like public housing, and labor feminism. These achievements are bracketed by two major strike waves--under the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA) in 1933 when they negotiated the Reading Formula, and under the Wagner Act in 1937 when the Apex strike led to the Supreme Court decision in support of labor, Apex v. Leader. Using the hosiery union as a microcosm of national trends, it also suggests reasons some top CIO officials gravitated toward a top-down structure, increasingly in the orbit of the Democratic Party, while another group struggled to maintain a democratic, bottom-up organizational structure--and what this meant for women and social justice unionism.

The Firebrands of the Union

This chapter focuses on the women of the union in the 1920s. It examines their increasing struggle for equality as women and workers, and for a share in the decision making of the organization as they became labor feminists and some of the most loyal and militant supporters of the union. These developments are situated within the context of the "Modern Woman" and developments in popular culture and the media that promoted women as having achieved equality and often in heroic terms, after the near martyrdom of the Suffragette heroines.

From Jazz Babies to Youth Militants

This chapter examines the Jazz Age youth culture: the backlash and disillusionment following World War I, the rebellious modern women and men, new sexual freedom, Prohibition, jazz music and dance. It describes the Kensington neighborhood's youth culture. It then examines how the union transformed its rebellious youth into idealistic and socially conscious "youth militants."

A Community of Labor

This chapter is an introduction to the community, culture, and class relations of Greater Kensington. It delineates its history, the development of industries and institutions, the different people who migrated to the area, and the interactions among them. The chapter serves to situate the hosiery industry within the textile industry, and the hosiery union within the larger community and within the context of its long, transnational labor relations. It discusses the origins of the union within the Knights of Labor.

Martyrs and Working-Class Heroes in the Great Depression

This chapter describes how hosiery workers went on the offensive against big business and government during the early years of the Great Depression while trying to aid those suffering the most. Hosiery workers joined with other unions and progressive organizations to form the Unemployed Leagues to stop the evictions of unemployed people, to assist with food and health care, and even birth control. In the course of a strike in 1930, the union lost its first martyr, Carl Mackley, and the ensuing memorial for this hero, attended by over 35,000 angry workers and residents of Kensington, raised the level of conflict for the remainder of the 1930s.

The Evolution of a Fighting Union

This chapter discusses the early hosiery union and the major strikes of 1919 and 1921 that served to bring two factions of the union together into a united organization within the American Federation of Labor. It looks at the product, the industry expansion, the establishment of a "fighting" treasury and examples of the union's efforts to support the broader labor movement. The chapter also introduces some important union leaders and the organizing campaigns in the South and Midwest, as part of the "follow the shops" movement.

Introduction

The introduction is a general overview of the book. Beginning with the important founding of the Knights of Labor in Kensington, it seeks to counter some of the prevalent stereotypes of the community. It then goes on to elucidate some of the historical constructs that the book both explores and challenges, and lays out the book's theoretical framework based in class relations.