David Montgomery to present Hamner Lecture

David Montgomery to present Hamner Lecture, “American Workers’ Civil War"

The unprecedented upheaval of the Civil War era will be re-examined from the point of view of black and white workers when Dr. David Montgomery, one of America’s leading labor and social historians, visits Western Michigan University to deliver the annual H. Nicholas Hamner Lecture.

Titled “American Workers’ Civil War,” Dr. Montgomery’s presentation will show how the period’s “bloodshed and profound social changes” led both former slaves and some white wage earners to believe that “radical reconstruction of American society was possible.” He will offer examples of conflict across the color line but also examine how “black and white working people developed common objectives in opposition to the `gospel of wealth’ that swept America in the wake of civil strife.” The presentation is from 7 to 8:30 p.m., 23 March, Wednesday, in Room 1005 Fetzer Center and is free and open to the public. A reception will follow.

According to Marion Gray, Professor and Chair of the History Department, Dr. Montgomery’s lecture is “an opportunity to make visible the discipline of history within the campus and community by having this distinguished scholar address a theme of broad interest.” The event is made possible by an endowment from WMU Professor of History Emeritus H. Nicholas Hamner.

David Montgomery is Farnam Professor of History Emeritus at Yale University and Past-President of the Organization of American Historians. Renowned for his scholarship on race and labor, he also has deep roots in the American labor movement as a worker and union activist. He worked for ten years as a machinist in New York and the Twin Cities, and was an active member of three unions during those years.

Dr. Montgomery is the author of many books and articles dealing with the history and current prospects of working people in the United States, and for many years edited the journal International Labor and Working-Class History. His best known books are The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925 (Pulitzer Prize finalist nomination 1988), Citizen Worker: The Experience of Workers in the United States with Democracy and the Free Market during the Nineteenth Century (1993), Workers’ Control in America: Studies in the History of Work, Technology, and Labor Struggles (1979), and Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans, 1862-1872 (1967). His latest book, Black Workers’ Struggle for Equality in Birmingham, written in collaboration with Dr. Horace Huntley of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, is based on oral histories and explores how African American workers used different kinds of unions in their quest for equality and dignity on the job and in the community.

Montgomery earned a Ph.D. in History at the University of Minnesota in 1962, and since that time spent fourteen years teaching at the University of Pittsburgh and two years in England helping E. P. Thompson establish the Centre for the Study of Social History at the University of Warwick, and he has held visiting teaching positions at Oxford University and in Canada, Brazil, and the Netherlands. At Yale he taught courses about the history of working people in the United States, Civil War and Reconstruction, and immigration.

For more information, view the flyer.

Directions to the Fetzer Center,

Dr. Montgomery will also host a brown bag lunch, titled "History Beyond the Academy," Thursday, March 24, 12:30, on the 10th floor of Sprau Tower.

For more information on the Brown Bag Lunch, view the flyer.