The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s

The Southern Key is a book that examines the labor agitation and unionization efforts in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. It argues that the failure to organize the South during this period contributed to the exploitation of race and right-wing demagoguery, declining unionization, growing economic inequality, and an inability to confront and dismantle white supremacy.

Format: Paperback / softback
Length: 432 pages
Publication date: 27 September 2022
Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc

The golden key to understanding the last 75 years of American political development, as argued by the eminent labor relations scholar Michael Goldfield, lies in the contests between labor and capital in the American South during the 1930s and 1940s. Labor agitation and unionization efforts in the South during the New Deal era were extensive and bitterly fought, spanning across all of the major industries of the region. In his book, "The Southern Key," Goldfield charts the rise of labor activism in each of these industries and then examines how and why labor organizers struggled so mightily in the region. Drawing from meticulous and unprecedented archival material and detailed data on four core industries—textiles, timber, coal mining, and steel—he argues that much of what is important in American politics and society today was largely shaped by the successes and failures of the labor movements of the 1930s and 1940s.

Most notably, Goldfield shows how the broad-based failure to organize the South during this period made it what it is today. He contends that this early defeat for labor unions not only contributed to the exploitation of race and right-wing demagoguery in the South but also led to a decline in unionization, growing economic inequality, and an inability to confront and dismantle white supremacy throughout the US.

A sweeping account of Southern political economy in the New Deal era, "The Southern Key" challenges the established historiography to tell a tale of race, radicalism, and betrayal that will reshape our understanding of why America developed so differently from other advanced industrial nations over the course of the last century.

Weight: 595g
Dimension: 236 x 154 x 24 (mm)
ISBN-13: 9780197629987