EMTs, nurses, bus drivers, and supermarket clerks; they're all what are now known as essential workers. But by about June of this year, a lot of people were starting to argue that barbers provided an essential service that they had lived too long without.
Quincy Mills, Professor of History at the University of Maryland in College Park, talks about black barbers, the evolution of their trade, and its political meaning as a skilled form of labor.
Plus: poet Martin Espada reads his poem "Castles for the Laborers and Ballgames on the Radio," written for his friend, historian Howard Zinn.
This week’s Labor History in 2: The Amistad.
Produced by Chris Garlock; edited by Patrick Dixon. To contribute a labor history item, email laborhistorytoday@gmail.com
Labor History Today is produced by the Metro Washington Council’s Union City Radio and the Kalmanovitz Initiative for Labor and the Working Poor at Georgetown University. We're a proud founding member of the Labor Radio Podcast Network, more than 60 shows focusing on working people’s issues and concerns. #LaborRadioPod
The People, No
Stand! The new hit labor musical
The Vancouver Island Coal Strike; Skyscraper Labor
Cutting along the Color Line
Cordwainers strike of 1805
The AFL-CIO turns 65
Paul Robeson and the 1948 Library of Congress cafeteria workers’ strike
America’s last general strike
Monopoly and Class Struggle: The games we play
Uprising of the 20,000
A journey down the Working River
Blue Wave? Labor and the Democratic Coalition in the Southwest
Organizing through the Divide
O Canada, organize!
One Day More
The Package King
Roediger on "The Sinking Middle Class"; Feurer on Mother Jones' legacy
“Despotism on Demand”
Escape on the Pearl; Black Labor Week
Labor Day: no picnic in a pandemic
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