Fight like hell: the untold history of American labor

Prologue --

1. The trailblazers --

The Mill girls of Lowell, Massachusetts --

"The blood of souls in bondage" --

The freed Black washerwomen of Jackson, Mississippi --

A showdown in Atlanta --

2. The garment workers --

The fiery Jewish girls (Farbrente Yidishe Meydlekh) of New York City --

"Burning death before our eyes" --

Frances Perkins : labor activist turned architect of the New Deal --

"A turning point in my life" : Sue Lo Kee and the national dollar stores factory strike --

Viva la huelga : Rosa Flores and the San Antonio Farah strike --

3. The mill workers --

Innovation and bloodshed on the picket line --

Ola Delight Smith and the battle to organize the south --

Militancy in the southern mills : the 1934 textile strike --

4. The revolutionaries --

Lucy Parsons and the Haymarket eight --

Ben Fletcher and the rise of racial capitalism --

The United States of America vs. the Wobblies --

Dr. Marie Equi, Portland's "Queen of the Bolsheviks" --

The bloody responses to revolt --

5. The miners --

Women break open the mines of Appalachia --

Black labor and the Coal Creek War --

They called her Mother Jones --

The west diversifies the workforce --

Indigenous and Latino workers hold the line --

A half century later, back where we began --

The 2021 Warrior Met Coal strike --

6. The harvesters --

Hawai'i's masters and servants --

Sugar and blood --

Los Braceros, the Dust Bowl, and the great Mexican-American migration --

"Crusader in rubber boots and a big skirt" --

"Sí, se puede!" --

Nagi Daifullah and the largest farmworker strike in history --

"We want dignity and respect" --

7. The cleaners --

Waiting to work --

"The Bronx slave market" --

Building power in the power laundries --

Dorothy Lee Bolden and the world ahead --

"Ya basta!" ("Enough is enough") --

8. The freedom fighters --

"Shoot to kill any Negro who refuse[s] to surrender immediately" --

The Pullman Railway porters --

The Pullman maids' double bind --

"You're supposed to be scared when you come in here" --

"There was no one more able to pull it together than Bayard Rustin" --

9. The movers --

Brewing up trouble --

"No red-baiting, no race-baiting, no queen-baiting!" --

"We put the 'trans' back in transportation" --

Reagan declares war on labor --

Freedom to fly --

10. The metalworkers --

A midwestern revolution --

Building multiracial alliances in the Michigan auto industry --

Arab solidarity in Dearborn, Michigan --

Fighting sexual harassment on the assembly line --

Steel pride --

11. The disabled workers --

Circuses for bread --

"Handicapped workers must live, give us jobs" --

Section 504, a Civil Rights Act for the disabled --

"They know we're desperate for work" : taking on the subminimum wage --

12. The sex workers --

San Francisco's "Barbary Coast" --

"All I ask is for a living wage and I'll get out of it myself" --

Ah Toy and the Chinese immigrant workers' struggle --

Margo St. James's COYOTEs and the HIV/AIDS crisis --

The movement takes center stage --

Performers' rights and community care --

13. The prisoners --

The rise of prisoners' labor unions --

Women's prisons and rebellion --

The incarcerated workers organizing committee --

California's incarcerated firefighters --

Epilogue.