Book Review of Knocking on Labor's Door: Union Organizing in the 1970s and the Roots of a New Economic Divide by Lane Windham

Abstract

Lane Windham’s Knocking on Labor’s Door is a fresh and compelling reinterpretation of the history of labor organizing during the pivotal 1970s. Non-white and female private sector workers in the 1970s, Windham argues, fought vigorously to form unions as part of their attempt to access a fuller range of social benefits. They were defeated as a result of political economic change and an increasingly robust anti-union apparatus. Windham’s deeply researched, beautifully written, and clearly argued book has knocked down the doors of labor historiography and set in its place a window into the rich history of labor activism, its connections to racial justice and feminist struggles, and the analytic vitality of social-movement history.