Showing results by author "Jacqueline Jones" in All Categories

Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small—a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

From a prize-winning historian, a new portrait of an extraordinary activist and the turbulent age in which she lived Goddess of Anarchy recounts the formidable life of the militant writer, orator, and agitator Lucy Parsons. Born to an enslaved woman in Virginia in 1851 and raised in Texas-where...

In 1656, a planter in colonial Maryland tortured and killed one of his slaves, an Angolan man named Antonio who refused to work the fields. Over three centuries later, a Detroit labor organizer named Simon Owens watched as strikebreakers wielding bats and lead pipes beat his fellow autoworkers for protesting their inhumane working conditions. Antonio and Owens had nothing in common but the color of their skin and the economic injustices they battled - yet the former is what defines them in America’s consciousness.

The Underground Railroad was the passage to freedom for many slaves, but it was rife with dangers. There were dedicated conductors and safe houses, but also arduous nights in the mountains and days in threatening towns. For those who made it to Midnight (the code name given to Detroit), the Detroit River became a River Jordan and Canada became their land of Canaan - the Promised Land where they could live freely in black settlements under the protection of British law.

Hundreds of people are currently under the lock and key of the Australian government for simply trying to come to Australia by boat. Their captivity is designed to scare others fleeing war, violence, and persecution out of seeking refuge on Australia’s shores. They’ve become political pawns in the game of Australian border policy. These vulnerable men, women, and children are left in limbo, never arriving, yet unable to return home.

After being adopted at the age of 7, I grew up on a very large farm complete with a 9—acre lake. One day while exploring, I came upon a baby raccoon in the drainpipe that ran from the lake. Not seeing the mama raccoon, I picked him up and brought him home with me. He turned out to be a very good pet and every time I went out to his pen I would take him cookies. He would reach right in my pocket and take those cookies, run to his water bowl, wash them off and eat them right up. I had many pets and animals that I took care of. I still miss those simple days.

Ernie has had three grand passions in his long life: his dear wife Phyllis, a vintage Norton Dominator motorcycle, and his mini-me son, Stephen. Now, as dementia overwhelms Ernie and takes away everything he can remember about the everyday, memories of those far away times remain crystalline and cherished. His granddaughter Nina, seventeen, is equally at odds with the everyday. Excluded from college for her lack of concentration, it seems a job in her mother’s green grocers is the best life can ever offer.