No right to an honest living : the struggles of Boston's Black workers in the Civil War era / Jacqueline Jones.
| Author/creator | Jones, Jacqueline, 1948- author. |
| Format | Book |
| Edition | First edition. |
| Publication | New York, NY : Basic Books, Hachette Book Group, 2023. |
| Copyright Date | ©2023 |
| Description | viii, 532 pages : illustrations, maps, portraits ; 25 cm |
| Subjects |
| Portion of title | Struggles of Boston's black workers in the Civil War era |
| Contents | Introduction : "Words are easy" -- Prelude : The Edloe sixty-six -- Part I : 1850-1860 -- The fugitive economy -- Underground commons -- The world of the streets -- Boston in the shadow of slavery -- Women in service -- Making a living in unsettled times -- Part II : 1861-1865 -- The politics of wartime work and charitable assistance -- Boston diaspora I -- "A higher standard of courage" -- Hardship on the Homefront -- "False and exaggerated ideas of freedom" -- Part III : 1865-1875 -- Their suffering housekeepers -- Boston diaspora II -- White men demanding their own rights, but refusing to concede to others theirs -- Persistent industry -- "Safely doing injustice" to Black Bostonians. |
| Abstract | "Impassioned antislavery activists, writers, and orators made antebellum Boston famous as the nation's hub of radical abolitionism. For its Black workers, however, Boston was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, Bancroft Prize-winning historian Jacqueline Jones offers a searing portrait of Black labor and white hypocrisy in nineteenth-century Boston. The city, she reveals, was the United States writ small: A place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists, Republicans, and city officials refused to press for equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, Black residents ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths. Whether as day laborers and domestics or as physicians and lawyers, they persisted in the face of monumental obstacles to make better lives for themselves and their families. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, No Right to an Honest Living vividly shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston -- and the United States -- from securing true equality for all." -- Jacket flap. |
| Bibliography note | Includes bibliographical references (pages 449-501) and index. |
| Genre/form | History. |
| LCCN | 2022031966 |
| ISBN | 9781541619791 hardcover |
| ISBN | 154161979X hardcover |
| ISBN | electronic book |
| Standard identifier# | 40031606663 |
Availability
| Library | Location | Call Number | Status | Item Actions |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Joyner | General Stacks | F73.44 .J66 2023 | ✔ Available | Place Hold |