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
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
“Boomer Jones": Vintage labor radio show (LHT podcast extra)
We Do The Work; Working History
A travel guide to labor landmarks
“The Flintstones” and class struggle; The Ford Hunger March
Remembering Gene Debs; Waging Peace
No longer newsworthy?
Confederate monuments and the Knights of Labor
Strike!
“Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work”: the Housewives League of Detroit
2020 Great Labor Arts Exchange contest winners!
Why America’s most radical union shut down ports on Juneteenth
SCOTUS bans LGBTQ workplace discrimination; Queer history of the UAW
Painters join Black Lives Matter protests; the history of black police in America; Race and Rebellion
Labor supports DC Black Lives Matter protests; “Debs In Canton” preview; Revisiting The Battle of Homestead; Voices of exiled Iranian workers
The Minneapolis general strike; “Mongrel Firebugs and Men of Property”
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