Lecture: "To Promote the General Welfare: The Legacy of the Jewish Labor Movement"
Dr. Jacquelyn Southern, Visiting Posen Lecturer in the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies and an alumnus of UMass Amherst, presents a lecture entitled “To Promote the General Welfare: The Legacy of the Jewish Labor Movement.”
The Jewish labor movement often is discussed only in relation to Jewish workers, communities, and unions, but it also had far-reaching effects on the larger industrial union movement. In particular, structures and practices of the Jewish garment unions—with their multiple departments for social action (research, legislation, education, and so forth), their political work for the common good, and even their issues—became paradigmatic for pacesetter unions in heavy industry, especially the United Auto Workers. Their impact proved formative during the key early years of industrial union organizing, and was shaped by a nexus of shared action and leadership under CIO direction, shared Socialist affiliations, and direct mentoring. A good example of such impact can be found in industrial unions’ pioneering work on environmental issues in the postwar years.
Jacquelyn Southern is a geographer with research interests in labor, environmentalism, and geographies of race. She has taught at Hunter and York Colleges, and has worked in the labor and environmental movements. Professor Southern is also former managing editor of Rethinking Marxism. She has her Ph.D. in geography (Clark University), M.S. in labor studies (UMass), and A.B. in sociology (Bryn Mawr College).
This is the fifth in a series of Posen Lectures this semester at UMass, sponsored by the Posen Foundation in Jewish Secularism and the Department of Judaic and Near Eastern Studies.
This lecture is free, open to the Five College Community, and wheelchair accessible. For more information, email judaic@judnea.umass.edu or call 413-545-2550.