AHA Session 209
Labor and Working-Class History Association 9
Labor and Working-Class History Association 9
Sunday, January 5, 2025: 10:30 AM-12:00 PM
Gramercy West (New York Hilton, Second Floor)
Chair:
Crystal M. Moten, Obama Presidential Center
Papers:
Session Abstract
This panel explores Black economic uplift and community building in the United States and the Caribbean during the mid-twentieth century. The panel brings together diverse perspectives, highlighting four distinct group’s strategies for improving the status of their community. Examining issues such as age, gender, and immigration, the panel shines a light on how African Americans, Jamaicans, and diasporic West Indians in the United States contended with the constraints of racial and economic oppression. Kendra Boyd examines Black Women’s leadership and strategies for organizing cooperative grocery stores among low-income members of their communities in the context of the Great Society’s War on Poverty. By investigating various interactions between Black-owned cooperative businesses, consumers in the community, and agents of the state, she provides new insight into how Black people have understood and navigated the economy in their search for economic and racial liberation. Dara Walker pushes us to consider age as a category of analysis, particularly looking at the ways Black senior citizens organized to counter poverty and housing access in post-World War II urban spaces. Her analysis of groups such as the National Caucus on the Black Aged and the Gray Panthers will provide insight into how older Black Americans navigated social transformations like deindustrialization and the dismantling of the social safety net. Marlene Gaynair’s work illustrates the significance of grassroots movements and immigration reform activism in Black Americans’ quest to gain full economic citizenship in the United States. The New York-based Jamaican Progressive League played a crucial role in the passage of the 1965 Immigration and Nationality Act, which would aid in addressing barriers to migration and naturalization that had profound economic impacts on NYC’s diverse Black community. Finally, Alexandria Miller investigates Black women’s efforts for full inclusion in Jamaica’s political music revolution and access to wealth-building opportunities in the reggae music industry. Through analyzing the gendered experiences of various female artists, Miller highlights Jamaican women’s challenges in music as reflective of systemic barriers to Black women’s development in the postcolonial Caribbean. Collectively, the panel demonstrates how Black activists and organizers critiqued the welfare state, immigration restrictions, and narrow visions of post-colonial identity and belonging in the 1960s and 1970s. Major themes that run through the panel include citizenship, the Black urban experience, and women and gender.
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