From the founding of New Amsterdam until today, working people have
helped create and re-create the City of New York through their
struggles. Starting with artisans and slaves in colonial New York and
ranging all the way to twenty-first-century gig-economy workers, this
book tells the story of New York's labor history anew.
City of Workers, City of Struggle brings together essays by leading
historians of New York and a wealth of illustrations, offering rich
descriptions of work, daily life, and political struggle. It recounts
how workers have developed formal and informal groups not only to
advance their own interests but also to pursue a vision of what the city
should be like and whom it should be for. The book goes beyond the
largely white, male wage workers in mainstream labor organizations who
have dominated the history of labor movements to look at enslaved
people, indentured servants, domestic workers, sex workers, day
laborers, and others who have had to fight not only their masters and
employers but also labor groups that often excluded them. Through their
stories--how they fought for inclusion or developed their own ways to
advance--it recenters labor history for contemporary struggles. City of
Workers, City of Struggle offers the definitive account of the
four-hundred-year history of efforts by New York workers to improve
their lives and their communities.
In association with the exhibition City of Workers, City of Struggle:
How Labor Movements Changed New York at the Museum of the City of New
York
