The building where I work was once the Duke family’s largest tobacco warehouse. Completed in 1906, American Tobacco used the building to store tobacco harvested from area fields (a detailed description of the building’s architecture is available on Open Durham). The warehouse included space for the presses used to print cigarette packs.
Abandoned in the 1970s, the warehouse was eventually purchased by the university and beautifully renovated. Inside, original loblolly pine columns support high ceilings featuring original wood flooring.
Yet within the building, there is not a single mention of any of the thousands of people, Black and white, Jewish and Christian, young and old, who once worked there. Durham was built by tobacco and mill workers (most of the Dukes decamped to the New York area in the early 1900s). Yet there’s not a single place in the entire building—indeed in Durham (to my knowledge)—that tells the story of labor, of America’s working class.
That’s not unusual. J. Albert Mann’s exceptional book, Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States, is a feisty dive into the largely forgotten—or deliberately erased—history of labor and labor movements in the United States. Written for kids, Shift Happens has a sassy, irreverent point of view that kept me laughing, outraged, and profoundly grateful that Mann took on this project.
Her approach leaps from the first page. The opening chapter is titled “Is she really going to start with Marco Polo and Christopher Columbus?”
Yes, she does. As Mann explains, Marco Polo’s published tales about his adventures partly inspired Christopher Columbus. Columbus’s ships, bankrolled by the Spanish king and queen, initiated Europe’s conquest of the Americas. Compellingly, Mann places the Conquest within labor history and included the exploitation of indigenous communities to extract natural resources and the importation of enslaved Africans to work the land.
This hit hard in the Bahamas, where Columbus and his sailors first landed. “By 1548,” Mann writes, “after fifty-five years of violent enslavement and harsh labor, only about 500 [indigenous Bahamanians] survived. Welcome to the history of labor in the United States.”
The historic sweep of Shift Happens is impressive. Divided into short, punchy chapters, Mann goes through the Civil War, industrialization, mass immigration, the Depression, and multiple wars. At each page turn, there is exploitation, struggle, and hope. Efforts to unionize and obtain better working conditions are foiled, usually with violence. Yet again and again, labor fights back and wins major victories—the weekend, health care, health and safety—and keeps going.
Some work is fun. some, less so. But no matter what you’re doing, you deserve a job that treats you well and pays you fairly. J. Albert Mann
I grew up in Chicago and learned (superficially) about the Haymarket demonstration in 1886, which ended in bloodshed. After workers started a strike for better wages and working conditions, the bosses’ reaction led to a bombing and dozens of deaths. Though evidence implicating the strikers was thin to nil, the state prosecuted eight men and executed four.
Mann is unsparing in her summary of what happened and why. “The Haymarket eight were put on trial because they believed in worker rights, that capitalism and authority might not be all that great, and that violence was necessary as a means of defense. These were words, not bombs.”
Young readers will find the chapters on more recent history especially compelling. Much has been made of parallels between the current (massive) disparity of wealth and the Gilded Age of the late 1800s (not coincidentally, when the Dukes endowed the university where I teach).
Then, the top one percent of Americans captured about 18 to 20 percent of all pre-tax income, according to long-run estimates by Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez. That share fell sharply after the New Deal and World War II, reaching about 10 to 12 percent by the 1950s and 1960s. Since the 1980s, disparity has surged. By 2022, the top 1 percent now receive more pre-tax income than at the height of the Gilded Age.
With current White House policies, a Democratic Party unsure of its direction, broadening billionaire-backed censorship (see my post-interview comment), and the emergence of technologies like Artificial Intelligence, this may only worsen. Shift Happens is both timely and deeply sobering—and ends with a vital call to action.
Here’s my interview with J. Albert Mann.
What was the inspiration for writing Shift Happens: The History of Labor in the United States?
This book was inspired by my study of disability history and my own experience as a disabled person. It began with my discovery of Marta Russell’s essays, most of which can be found in Capitalism and Disability. Her writing radicalized me. She taught me that disability is an idea invented by capitalism, and that within this system, our value as humans is based on our ability to produce. Russell gave me a way to understand myself and my experiences throughout life.
This is a deeply researched book. How long did it take to write it? Did you have models of similar books that you admired?
It took about three focused years to write. However, I was already knee deep while writing two of my previous works of historical fiction—What Every Girl Should Know and The Degenerates—taking on the histories of women’s health and disability, respectively. The labor movement has had a large effect on both. The model for Shift Happens was Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States. Published in 1980, Zinn was the originator of writing history from the point of view of regular people. Jason Reynolds’ Stamped: Racism, Antiracism, and You, in which Reynolds retold Ibram X. Kendi’s Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America inspired me. I loved how Reynolds gave us Kendi’s ideas in simple and real language. We need more of this kind of writing.
You start the book in an interesting place: the conquest by Europeans of the Americas and how that was a labor issue at the core (including epic violence and enslavement to obtain cheap labor). Walk me through your thought process.
I started the book where capitalism begins to eclipse feudalism as the dominant economic system. Christopher Columbus’s sail to the Americas sits at the crux. He was bankrolled by royalty (rich folks of the day) to find a new trade route to the spice and silk markets so those royals might exploit it for their personal gain in what was the budding capitalist economy. Jamestown was a corporate venture financed by the Virginia Company. The pilgrims were also a corporate venture, financed by the Company of Merchant Adventurers. Labor’s fight against capitalism is the labor movement.
The 1619 Project famously recast the founding of the United States as the year Europeans brought the first enslaved Africans to the shores of North America. Your book is also bold in rewriting the American mythology of hard-working farmers into a more nuanced tale of corporate monopolies, desperate emigration, and the systematic seizure of land and resources from existing communities of indigenous people. Do your roots reflect this story in any way?
I have deep roots in the working class. I’m a worker and a union member. In our historical record, we most often take the point of view of governmental and economic leaders.
My book attempts to take on the point of view of people who work for a living. J. Albert Mann
I have seen my book dinged for not “giving both sides.” But this was never my goal. There are plenty of history books about industrialists, capitalists, and founding fathers (and I might add, most of them coming from a single point of view), however, there are very few written from a working-class point of view.
At a time when extremists are calling for book bans and a sanitized version of American history, what has been the reaction to Shift Happens?
The answer is sadly, crickets. Book bans more often focus on identity because these are easy “culture war” fodder—race, gender, religion, ethnicity. Labor transcends these, and for this reason is the topic that anyone screaming negatively about diversity is going to avoid at all costs. In fact, it’s actually the reason they’re screaming about identity—in order to NOT be talking about labor. Labor is class. And in the U.S., talking about class means talking about capitalism and the many ways it supports the upper class and the growth of inequality, while sucking the life out of the working class. So, no one is banning Shift Happens.
Currently, some of the worst examples of exploitation are repeating in real time: epic corruption, the influence of megacorporations and the rich to impose censorship and halt action on things like climate change, and the concentration of obscene wealth and vast power in the hands of a very few. Is the timing of the book fortuitous or something else?
When I began my research during the pandemic, I was hopeful that our country (and the world) was about to learn how important labor is. This didn’t happen. The celebration of essential workers was quickly drowned out by a political movement that has since taken over the country. It’s a movement that, as you say above, is turning back the clock on workers. My take is that the small rise in the labor movement we witnessed during the pandemic helped to bring about the pushback of this present presidential administration. Until the working class understands how strong capitalism’s grip on us is, we will allow it to strangle us.
I was born into a city profoundly shaped by labor and live in a city profoundly shaped by labor. Yet in neither place is labor prominently memorialized or celebrated. Why is that?
Any celebration of labor implies we value workers. Valuing workers means they are important and deserve a voice, fair wages, a safe workplace, and support when they can no longer work. If you have an economic system that is focused on profit, the value of labor needs to be suppressed to make it cheaper. You can’t suppress and value at the same time.
What are the main messages you want young readers to draw from Shift Happens?
Democracy is not capitalism and capitalism is not democracy. Democracy is a system of government that gives us a say in our government (voting), and therefore, a say in our lives. Capitalism is an economic system where private ownership of the means of production is used for the pursuit of profit. Capitalism creates an owning class and a class (labor) that works for it. I think the two are often confused. I’d like young people to understand the difference, to understand that our country could exist without one, but not the other…and to know which one that is.
Is there hope in Shift Happens?
Absolutely! The hope is that by knowing and understanding our history, and thereby each other, we build a more equitable democracy.
This is a challenging time to be a writer – and a young person. I sense a hopelessness and exhaustion among many young people. What is your message to them about creating positive change?
Look to history! What young people will find is that fighting for change creates change! It’s true that it doesn’t always happen in the very moment of our fight (although it can), and true that having your values trampled is scary (because people do get hurt), and also true that there are moments in history where it feels as though no goodness or hope exists (but they most definitely do exist).
History teaches us that fighting for our values has always been tough, yet at the same time has always been worth it because people are worth it. J. Albert Mann
Standing up costs something…it’s how you know you’re actually standing up. Think Harriet Tubman, John Brown, Chief Joseph, Harvey Milk, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., and four hundred years of others. Are you tired? Me too. But I’ll keep standing up for you and you keep standing up for me. In the labor movement, we call this solidarity.
You also write fiction. What’s the main difference for you between the two when you are drafting a project?
Voice. My fiction is written in the voice of my characters. And yes, I made them up, but they are not me. Writing nonfiction is me. It’s my voice. So, whether I’m drafting or revising, I hear myself when I write. There are no barriers. And that makes it much scarier.
Tell me more about your work as a disability activist.
I was born with a physical disability. I knew I had a different body than most people, but I didn’t see it as anything other than something to hide. I had no disability references or community. For this reason, I felt very alone. Shame was a predominant emotion during my coming-of-age years. This all changed when I found disability community and learned I wasn’t alone. First, I celebrated. Then I learned. Next, I fought. And now, I rally. My work as a disability activist is to bring all working people—across the wide spectrum of bodies and minds—together to create change that includes dignity, equity, justice, education, homes, food, and jobs for all of us.
Always…an open and honest discussion of history is our best path to a better world. J. Albert Mann
What’s next for you?
My next work is a history of the public library in the United States for middle-grade readers (8 to 10-year-olds). My love for the public library is driving the project, but my respect for history will triumph in attempting to tell the most truthful story I can. The public library is one of the most important institutions in our country’s democratic project. It must survive if our democracy is to survive because it embodies the fight for intellectual freedom. But it is not without its faults. And the public library would be the first institution to embrace a book which points out it faults.
Thanks to Jen for her excellent book! Please support Shift Happens by sharing this interview, recommending Shift Happens, purchasing the book, and checking it out of your public library.
Book Bans
MAGA’s authoritarian project is spreading fear, promoting censorhip, and, as insidious, self-censorship. As former Obama staffer Dan Pfeiffer recently wrote on The Message Box, the way to fight back is to understand this, point it out publicly, and read and invest in other media.
“The corporate media is largely a lost cause. We need to support progressive political media (Crooked Media, The Bulwark, Zeteo), independent investigative outlets (ProPublica, Popular Information, Dropsite News), and creators like myself.”
The Right is trying to sue critics into silence; the best response is louder, better, independent voices. Dan Pfeiffer
I support ProPublica, Crooked Media, The Bulwark, The Atlantic, and other progressive and fact-based reporting. Please support your sources of news!
Breathe
The news—and our world—is overwhelming. Please find ways to disconnect from the onslaught, if only for a morning, and take time to breathe. As J. Albert Mann tells us, we have a lot of work to do. But that work doesn’t finish in a day.
To paraphrase Stephen Colbert, I have never loved my country and the world more desperately. Take the time to love and seek justice wherever you are.
Thanks for reading!