Black Folk

Increasingly when we think of the working class we envision angry white supremacists chomping at the bit to run out and vote for Donald Trump. We tend to forget workers of color. Blair LM Kelley seeks to rectify this omission with her Black Folk: The Roots of The Black Working Class.
Kelley brings an unusual perspective to her work. She is not only a distinguished professor and writer, but a proud descendent of working class Blacks. She intersperses broader scholarship with intimate portraits of individual washerwomen, Pullman porters, and postal workers.
These workers faced a daunting battle to earn a living. Although they were technically free following the Civil War, whites made sure their actual lives stayed as much the same as before the war as possible. Black sharecroppers toiled for whites on the same lands they had worked as slaves. Laws were crafted that allowed the arrest and imprisonment of "vagrant" (not working for whites) Blacks and their forced, unpaid labor on white owned farms and businesses. They were barred from almost all jobs with decent pay and working conditions. "Uppity" Blacks who didn't "know their place" faced extreme racial violence.
But the Blacks persisted against incredible odds and made generation to generation progress. Eventually some had jobs that enabled them to own homes and educate their children.
This book is a for sure eye opener. I had no idea how radical washerwomen were. By working in their own homes as businesswomen instead of in the houses and intrusive supervision of individual white families they were more able to set prices and working hours, tend to their own households and children, work collectively, engage in social activism, and protect themselves from rape.
This insightful and thought provoking book is a valuable for public and college and university libraries.
On a purrrsonal note, we're in the middle of the last UMaine blood drive of the academic year. Of course I've been running the canteen. So far, so good: good numbers, happy donors, no fainters. This time we have special shirts designed for UMaine. I'm wearing one as I post this.
A great big shout out goes out to the donors, my fellow volunteers, and the awesome Red Cross nurses.