Rank and File
Personal Histories by Working-Class Organizers
Description
In this long-out-of-print oral history classic, Alice and Staughton Lynd chronicle the stories of more than two dozen working-class organizers who occupied factories, held sit-down strikes, walked out, picketed, and found other bold and innovative ways to fight for workers’ rights.
Rank and File brings the militancy of these firebrand organizers to life whether it was in founding unions, challenging sexism and racism, safety violations, and management intimidation, or working for broader social changes.
Author Bios
Alice Lynd was a draft counselor and trainer of draft counselors during the Vietnam War. In 1968, she published We Won’t Go: Personal Accounts of War Objectors. She later became first a paralegal and then a lawyer. After retirement from practicing labor law in the wake of plant shutdowns, she became an advocate for prisoners sentenced to death and/or held for years in solitary confinement at Ohio’s supermaximum security prison.
Staughton Lynd (1929-2022) received a BA from Harvard, an MA and PhD from Columbia, and a JD from the University of Chicago. He taught American history at Spelman College in Atlanta, where one of his students was the future Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Alice Walker, and at Yale University. Staughton served as director of Freedom Schools in the Mississippi Summer Project of 1964, and wrote or edited numerous books.
More Info
Publication date: January 31, 2012
