Abstract

Although Jacob Abbott traveled the South in the nineteenth century, my experience in twenty-first-century Texas was eerily similar. Except instead of riding a horse, I drove a Honda Civic. And rather than stopping in for lunch at a plantation, as a union organizer I knocked on doors in suburban developments looking for leaders who could help unite their co-workers and fight the boss. But today, as in Abbott’s time, the workers kindly let a complete stranger into their home, where we would sit down on the couch, drink iced tea, and talk union.

pdf

Share