History & Power of Labor
Class | Available
October 18, 2025
What does the history of the U.S. look like when viewed from the point of view of those who built the country? The class reviews working-class and labor history since the Civil War, but focuses (with films) on some key labor struggles such as the 1894 Pullman Strike; organizing in the mine and textile industries; the growth of trade unionism; the rise of the CIO and the autoworker sit-down strikes; the impact of McCarthyism on the labor movement; and the expansion of public sector unionization (1968 Memphis Sanitation Strike and the 1970 Postal Workers Strike).
Augustus Wood
Augustus Wood is a scholar of political economy and gentrification, labor, and social movements in late 20th and early 21st Century African American urban history. Dr. Wood has authored articles that appear in the Labor Studies Journal. He is the editor of the special edition of Labor Studies Journal on Black Workers and COVID. He is a contributor on Routledge’s forthcoming Encyclopedia of Antiracism. He is the former two-term president of the Graduate Employees Organization Local 6300 at the University of Illinois. He hosts the Radio Free Labor program on 90.1 FM WEFT Champaign Radio and the Podcast “Off the Shelf” with the Humanities Research Institute.