Labor History News

Here you will find information on events (lectures, exhibits, conferences, movie showings, and the like), that focus on the history of workers and their movements in New York State.

If you have any items you would like us to list here, e-mail Patrizia Sione or call her at (607) 255-3183 with suggestions.

A Day in the Life of a Firefighter in the South Bronx.
Photographic exhibit documenting the work firefighters do on the job in the flames and smoke of burning buildings.
American Labor Museum in Haledon, NJ, September 1 through December 31.
For more information call the museum at 973-595-7953, or write to: Labormuseum@aiol.com.
Before Harlem: The Black Experience in New York City Before World War I, by Marcy Sacks, was recently published by The University of Pennsylvania Press.

The book examines the first period of sustained migration and immigration of black people into New York City. Racial prejudices and stereotypes caused black newcomers to experience hardships unlike the struggles of immigrant and other groups. Elite white reformers and police officers exacerbated the problems of poverty by provoking the break-up of families and turning a blind eye to the vice and crime that thrived in neighborhoods with high concentrations of black residents. Nevertheless, black people forged bonds of friendship and community within Manhattan's unwelcoming environment. The mixing of ethnically diverse people of African descent from the American South and the Caribbean fostered the emergence in the 1920s of Harlem as the cultural capital of black America.
Sister in the Brotherhood: Organizing for Equality by NYLHA Board member Jane LaTour is scheduled to be published by Macmillan in 2007.

Contact Patrizia Sione with comments and suggestions about this page