Discusses the history of the first mill in the United States to use machines to turn raw cotton into finished cloth, the women who worked in the mill, and how the innovations in the textile industry brought on the Industrial Revolution.

In the nineteenth-century mill towns of Preston, England; Lowell, Massachusetts; and Paisley, Scotland, there were specific demands for migrant and female labor, and potential employers provided the necessary respectable conditions in order to attract them. Using individual accounts, this innovative and comparative study examines the migrants' lives by addressing their reasons for migration, their relationship to their families, the roles they played in the cities to which they moved, and the dangers they met as a result of their youth, gender, and separation from family. Gordon details both the similarities and differences in the women's migration experiences, and somewhat surprisingly concludes that they became financially independent, rather than primarily contributors to a family economy.

A collection of essays and historical fiction presents different perspectives on the history of Lowell's female operatives in the 1840s.

In an innovative fusion of labor and environmental history, Making a Living examines work as a central part of Americans' evolving relationship with nature, revealing the unexpected connections between the fight for workers' rights and the rise of the modern environmental movement. Chad Montrie offers six case studies: textile "mill girls" in antebellum New England, plantation slaves and newly freed sharecroppers in the Mississippi Delta, homesteading women in the Kansas and Nebraska grasslands, native-born coal miners in southern Appalachia, autoworkers in Detroit, and Mexican and Mexican American farm workers in southern California. Montrie shows how increasingly organized and mechanized production drove a wedge between workers and nature--and how workers fought back. Workers' resistance not only addressed wages and conditions, he argues, but also planted the seeds of environmental reform and environmental justice activism. Workers played a critical role in raising popular consciousness, pioneering strategies for enacting environmental regulatory policy, and initiating militant local protest. Filled with poignant and illuminating vignettes, Making a Living provides new insights into the intersection of the labor movement and environmentalism in America.

Collected here is a brief history of America told through stories applauding the enduring spirit of dissent. To celebrate the millionth copy sold of his book, A People's History of the United States, Howard Zinn drew on the words of Americans—some famous, some little known—across the range of American history. These words were read by a remarkable cast at an event held at the 92nd Street Y in New York City that included James Earl Jones, Alice Walker, Kurt Vonnegut, Alfre Woodard, Marisa Tomei, Danny Glover, Harris Yulin, Andre Gregory, and others. From that celebration, this book was born. Here in their own words, and interwoven with commentary by Zinn, are Columbus on the Arawaks; Plough Jogger, a farmer and participant in Shays' Rebellion; Harriet Hanson, a Lowell mill worker; Frederick Douglass; Mark Twain; Mother Jones; Emma Goldman; Helen Keller; Eugene V. Debs; Langston Hughes; Genova Johnson Dollinger on a sit-down strike at General Motors in Flint, Michigan; an interrogation from a 1953 HUAC hearing; Fannie Lou Hamer, a sharecropper and member of the Freedom Democratic Party; Malcolm X; and James Lawrence Harrington, a Gulf War resister, among others.

Describes the working conditions experienced by women laborers in textile mills in Lowell, Massachusetts, with first-hand accounts, photographs, journal entries, and more.

A delightful look at how nineteenth-century American artists portrayed children and childhood

Publisher Description

A comprehensive history of the women’s suffrage movement in the United States, from 1776 to 1965 Most suffrage histories begin in 1848, when Elizabeth Cady Stanton first publicly demanded the right to vote at the Women’s Rights Convention in Seneca Falls, New York. And they end in 1920, when Tennessee became the 36th state to ratify the 19th Amendment, removing sexual barriers to the vote. And Yet They Persisted traces agitation for the vote over two centuries, from the revolutionary era to the civil rights era, excavating one of the greatest struggles for social change in this country and restoring African American women and other women of color to its telling. In this sweeping history, author Johanna Neuman demonstrates that American women defeated the male patriarchy only after they convinced men that it was in their interests to share political power. Reintegrating the long struggle for the women’s suffrage into the metanarrative of U.S. history, Dr. Neuman sheds new light on such questions as: Why it took so long to achieve equal voting rights for women How victories in state suffrage campaigns pressured Congress to act Why African American women had to fight again for their rights in 1965 How the struggle by eight generations of female activists finally succeeded And Yet They Persisted: How American Women Won the Right to Vote his is the ideal text for college courses in women’s studies and history covering the women’s suffrage movement, as well as courses on American History, Political History, Progressive Era reforms, or reform movements in general. Click here to read Johanna Neuman's two-part blog post about the hidden history of Women's Suffrage as we celebrate the centennial anniversary of the 19th Amendment.