Bleeding Green, White, and Red: The Relationship Between Separation and Assimilation, Trends in Italian American Political Radicalism, 1927-1969

This thesis explores the experiences of Italian American political radicals from 1927 to 1969, a time when Italians moved from the shadows and into the mainstream of American society. Through an analysis of the lives and actions of Italian American political radicals, I argue that these individuals included in this study utilized their sense if Italian heritage to varying extents in shaping the character of their radicalism. This thesis focuses on historical contexts that shaped their political radicalism. The individuals addressed actively engaged in political movements, participated in the labor force, ran for public office, and fought to protect their rights as citizens. During the 1920s and 1930s, these Italian American political radicals were mainly political refugees from Italy and predominantly worked as political organizers. By the 1940s and 1950 these political radicals were professional politicians and intellectuals. Finally, in the 1960s, intellectuals and student radicals of Italian American dissent come to the forefront of Italian American political radicalism. The paper also demonstrates that Italian American political dissent during the mid-twentieth century was not a threat to American society. Rather, during the period under consideration, Italian American political radicals aimed to both preserve and transform numerous aspects of American society that are considered to be fundamental and are widely accepted in the modern day. This thesis relies on a variety of sources ranging from oral history interviews from the Oral History of the American Left at Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives in New York, NY, dialog from the Congressional Record, personal manuscript collections, and historical newspaper articles

Playing for Power: The European Worker Sport Movement and the Seeds of the American Labour Sports Movement, 1919-1940

In the late 1930s until the early 1950s, a large Labor Sports movement existed in the United States, especially in unions under the leadership of Socialists or Communists. I argue that it is impossible to understand the Labor Sports movement outside of this wider global context, because Labor Sports in the United States were directly linked to Worker Sport via both individuals and organizations. Indeed, Americans with knowledge of Worker Sport sought to establish similar institutions in the United States, even though the results were ultimately quite different. Labor Sports was inspired by Worker Sport, and so to understand the American Labor Sports, I will start with the European Worker Sport. American left-wing sports organizing prior to the rise of the CIO largely sought to create the American wing of Worker Sport, albeit with limited success.&nbsp

Unions and Labor Archives

Unions and Labor Archives identifies the overlapping roles and the development of good and trusting relationships with unions that is vital to building strong labor collections. While the needs of both the unions and the repository are many, one of the most significant is demonstrating that the proper care of union records will provide a historical memory of union actions that can not only preserve the evidence of past decisions, but inform present and future efforts as well. This article provides practical suggestions, as well as how several important repositories and unions have worked together to document working class culture and experiences

The History Books Tell It? Collective Bargaining in Higher Education in the 1940s

This article presents a history of unionization and collective bargaining in higher education during and just after World War II, decades before the establishment of statutory frameworks for labor representation. It examines the collective bargaining program adopted by the University of Illinois in 1945, along with contracts negotiated at other institutions, which demonstrated support for employee self-organization. It will also presents counter-examples of institutions using the courts and congressional investigators to defeat unionization efforts. . Lastly, the article will examine the role of United Public Workers of America (UPWA) and its predecessor unions in organizing and negotiating on behalf of faculty, teachers, instructors and staff on campus. The first known collective agreements applicable to faculty, teachers and instructors were negotiated by those unions before UPWA was destroyed during the domestic Cold War

The History Books Tell It? Collective Bargaining in Higher Education in the 1940s

This article presents a history of unionization and collective bargaining in higher education during and just after World War II, decades before the establishment of statutory frameworks for labor representation. It examines the collective bargaining program adopted by the University of Illinois in 1945, along with contracts negotiated at other institutions, which demonstrated support for employee self-organization. It will also presents counter-examples of institutions using the courts and congressional investigators to defeat unionization efforts. . Lastly, the article will examine the role of United Public Workers of America (UPWA) and its predecessor unions in organizing and negotiating on behalf of faculty, teachers, instructors and staff on campus. The first known collective agreements applicable to faculty, teachers and instructors were negotiated by those unions before UPWA was destroyed during the domestic Cold War

Appendix E: References

References and photo credits (Appendix E) to The ILR School at Fifty, a collection of reflections on the first fifty years of the School of Industrial and Labor Relations at Cornell University

The leadership of American communism, 1924–1929: sketches for a prosopographical portrait

A prosopographical study of all members of the Central Committee of the Workers Party of America from 1924 to 1929