All together different : Yiddish Socialists, garment workers, and the Labor roots of multiculturalism

Author/Creator:

Katz, Daniel, 1962-

Publication/Creation:

New York : New York University Press, 2011

Format:

Book

More Details

Additional/Related Title Information

Full Title:

All together different : Yiddish Socialists, garment workers, and the Labor roots of multiculturalism / Daniel Katz

Series Titles:

The Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History
Goldstein-Goren series in American Jewish history.

Subjects/Genre

Subjects:

International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union
Clothing trade--United States--History--20th century
Collective bargaining--Clothing industry--United States
Jewish labor unions--United States--History
Working class--Political activity--United States--History--20th century
Jews--Political activity--United States--History--20th century
Jews--Employment--United States--History--20th century
Multiculturalism--United States--History--20th century

Description/Summary

Table of Contents:

Harmoniously functioning nationalities: Yiddish socialism in Russia and the United States, 1892-1918 -- The revolutionary and gendered origins of garment workers' education, 1909-1918 -- Political factionalism and multicultural education, 1917-1927 -- Reconstructing a multicultural union, 1927-1933 -- All together different: social unionism and the multicultural front, 1933-1937 -- Politics and the precarious place of multiculturalism -- From Yiddish socialism to Jewish liberalism: the politics and social vision of pins and needles, 1937-1941 -- Cosmopolitan unionism and mutual culturalism in the World War II era.

Bibliography:

Includes bibliographical references and index.

Summary:

In the early 1930’s, the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) organized large numbers of Black and Hispanic workers through a broadly conceived program of education, culture, and community involvement. The ILGWU admitted these new members, the overwhelming majority of whom were women, into racially integrated local unions and created structures to celebrate ethnic differences. All Together Different revolves around this phenomenon of interracial union building and worker education during the Great Depression.Investigating why immigrant Jewish unionists in the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union (ILGWU) appealed to an international force of coworkers, Katz traces their ideology of a working-class based cultural pluralism, which Daniel Katz newly terms “mutual culturalism,” back to the revolutionary experiences of Russian Jewish women. These militant women and their male allies constructed an ethnic identity derived from Yiddish socialist tenets based on the principle of autonomous national cultures in the late nineteenth century Russian Empire. Built on original scholarship and bolstered by exhaustive research, All Together Different offers a fresh perspective on the nature of ethnic identity and working-class consciousness and contributes to current debates about the origins of multiculturalism.

Language:

English

Language Note:

English

Physical Type/Description:

1 online resource (313 p.)

General Note:

Description based upon print version of record.

Additional Identifiers

Catalog ID (MMSID):

9936950649502486

ISBN:

0-8147-6367-7

OCLC Number:

761094798

Other Identifiers:

doi: 10.18574/9780814763674