Trending
YOUNGSTOWN -- Labor and the working class in U.S. history brought together professors from three Ohio universities for a panel discussion Friday at Youngstown State University.
The panel was sponsored by the Reader Endowment, YSU Center for Working Class Studies and Youngstown Solidarity Network.
The hourlong conversation, moderated by YSU history professor Amy Fluker, highlighted each speaker's specific background and unique experiences of how they came to understand what it means to be working class; and areas of research they focused on to examine working-class history in the United States.
Kenneth Bindas, a Kent State University professor, grew up on the West Side of Youngstown in a family entrenched in the steel mills. His research focuses on the Depression era and the 1960s, exploring how people redefined themselves, their government and society during an era of change.
Bindas said his exposure to the concept of class was developed during his time working on the assembly line at General Motors in Lordstown in 1977 as he saw the collapse of Youngstown -- creating what he described as a domino effect of the unions shifting from institutional power that worked for the rights of union members toward union heads focused on maintaining their power.
It didn't take long for Bindas to realize that a power structure was working to keep him silent.
Bindas said his working-class ideology developed further through punk rock music, specifically British punk rock, working-class identity, and developing that identity in the structure of society that maintains a division between management and workers.
He studied Karl Marx and Vladmir Lenin to understand what it meant to be working class and how it operated in the 1930s.
He later wrote a book about swing musicians.
"The musicians who played in these bands, whether they be Jewish or Catholic, or black or white, they all came from the same working-class backgrounds and it's that idea of class that unified them as musicians in their ability to make music," Bindas said.
Gregory S. Wilson, a University of Akron State professor, grew up in a family that didn't have college degrees. His father was a skilled technician, working in steel and power plants. His father's father immigrated from Scotland, the son of a working-class laborer from Glasgow.
Given that history, Wilson said he wasn't sure if he could connect his interest in working-class history to his family background, but growing up in the 1980s and heading into the 1990s, his interest was shaped by government and local politicians.
Wilson found himself as a graduate student pondering how America went from a country that seemed to agree on things to one that was divided.
Wilson said his earlier literary work primarily centered on early efforts by the federal government to deal with things like urban unemployment, poverty in Appalachia and deindustrialization in cities like Cleveland and Youngstown.
Over the last few years, Wilson said he has studied deindustrialization more closely -- working with researchers in Canada, the United States, Britain, France and Italy to examine commonalities and differences in different industries such as steel, coal, textiles, etc.
Their work culminates in trying to answer how right-wing nationalism has become increasingly popular, particularly examining areas like the election of Donald Trump and how Brexit came to be.
Stephanie Shaw is an Ohio State University professor whose research focuses on black working women and black Americans.
She's an award-winning author of numerous publications, including "What a Woman Ought to Be and Do: Black Professional Women Workers During the Jim Crow Era" and "W.E.B. Dubois and The Souls of Black Folk."
Shaw is working on a new book project tentatively titled "Grandmothers, Grandi women and old Aunts: Rethinking slave families and communities in the 19th century South."
In her findings, Shaw wanted to examine the root of how these young, mostly poor, and some middle-class, black women were shaped by the environment around them to understand how they were socialized to be interesting, complex and socially responsible women.
Many of these women worked in areas like teaching and social work.
"I paid attention to their families, how they were brought up, the schools they went to, you know, what did they learn in schools and the communities they grew up in? What patterns did they see?"
Everywhere they looked, Shaw said these black women were being prepared to be self-sufficient, but also to assume responsibility for the entire community.