Editor's Introduction

Editor’s Introduction Leon Fink The Haymarket story continues to be revisited in a myriad of new ways by authors in our journal.1 In Sam Mitrani’s insightful piece on the Chicago police prior to Haymarket, the 1886 tragedy does not open the author’s narrative—it closes it. Extending Richard Schneirov’s penetrating exploration of the city’s Gilded Age labor politics, Mitrani zeroes in on Mayor Carter Harrison’s critical police department reforms. The mayor, it seems, precariously balanced an appeal to ethnic working- class and trade union votes with a commitment to social order as defined by business elites such as the Citizens’ Association. To please the latter, he professionalized the force, cracking down on a previously inept structure rife with corruption and inter- nal lack of discipline. In the process, however, he created a tool that he himself could no longer moderate at a crucial moment, especially against the backdrop of extreme personal as well as political polarity between senior police administrators and the Chicago anarchists. Implicitly, Mitrani’s essay raises a serious new question about the 1. For example, Timothy Messer-Kruse, James Eckert, Jeffrey G. Dunn, and Pannee Mukdeeprom Burkel, “The Haymarket Bomb,” Labor 2, no. 2 (2005): 39 – 53; James Green, “Globalization of a Memory,” Labor 2, no. 4 (2005): 11–25; Lara Kelland, “Putting Haymarket to Rest,” Labor 2, no. 24 (2005): 31–39; and Bryan D. Palmer, “Haymarket and the Forensics of Forgetting,” Labor 3, no. 1 (2006): 25–37. Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas, Volume 6, Issue 2 DOI 10.1215/15476715-2008-048 © 2009 by Labor and Working-Class History Association 1 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article-pdf/6/2/1/304787/LABOR6.2c_editor.2.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 2 6:2 LABOR Chicago anarchists’ legacy: Did their confrontational tactics aid and abet the worst elements in the police force? In a thematically related essay, “Premature Anti-Communists?,” Kenyon Zimmer attempts to rescue the latter-day history of anarchism from the taint of both McCarthyism and irrelevance. Retracing with great care (including the Yiddish and Italian-language press) the anarchist infatuation and then deep disillusionment with the Soviet Union, Zimmer examines the difficulties the anarchists faced in staking out an anti-Communist position without forfeiting their overall radical perspectives. Ultimately left outside the emerging Cold War dichotomy of Stalinist “Left” versus anti-Stalinist “Right,” the anarchists rejected what they called the “suicidal theory of the lesser Evil.” This move, argues Zimmer, “was in itself suicidal, but it was also ethically uncompromising.” Meanwhile, thanks to Eric Arnesen’s assiduous husbandry, we are also treated to another engaging Up for Debate exchange. The subject for discussion here is histo- rian Melvin Patrick Ely’s award-winning book Israel on the Appomattox: A Southern Experiment in Black Freedom from the 1790s through the Civil War (2004). Bringing uncommonly thick description to bear on a corner of southwestern Virginia, Ely literally reconstructs a world of free blacks along with neighboring whites and slaves. There is much to appreciate and surprise us here, but, as a distinguished panel of commentators also makes clear, a fair amount to quarrel over. The themes of argu- ment are at once broad and narrowly specific: they concern both the details that Ely presents and the larger sociopolitical context into which he places those details. In the end, the exchange over the text provokes one of the livelier discussions of southern antebellum history that we have seen in years. Rather than try to summarize the con- Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article-pdf/6/2/1/304787/LABOR6.2c_editor.2.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Fink / Editor’s Introduction 3 tributors’ positions, however, we invite you to please dig in and consider the original angles that historians Michael Perman, Jane Dailey, Corey Capers, Amy Dru Stanley, Julie Saville, and James Schmidt adopt by way of critique, and then enjoy Professor Ely’s elegant response. The new books under review testify to the extended range of chronology, geography, and theme within Labor’s current compass. A few new works touch on venerable topics such as the nexus of craft, manhood, and industrialization of the early nineteenth century, lack of a labor party in the United States, intra-union Cold War politics, and the economic side of the civil rights struggle. Others reflect the overlap between immigration and labor history—including treatments of Ukrainians in Canada and Jewish socialists in New York as well as recent-day subjects such as the “transborder” lives of indigenous Oaxacans and the immigrant rights’ fight. There are even works, such as Timothy Gilfoyle’s A Pickpocket’s Tale, that fit no obvi- ous historiographic rubric and are all the more enticing for that very reason. Finally, readers will note one further transition within our editorial team. James Green, who has served us so wisely and imaginatively as Contemporary Affairs editor, has decided to take a breather. In his place, we are pleased to welcome Jennifer Luff. Jennifer is a visiting assistant professor at University of California, Irvine, and has an impressive background both as a scholar and as a union activist. Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article-pdf/6/2/1/304787/LABOR6.2c_editor.2.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021 Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/labor/article-pdf/6/2/1/304787/LABOR6.2c_editor.2.pdf by guest on 01 October 2021.

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