No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggle of Boston's Black Workers

Black in Boston and Beyond

In this episode Dr. Hettie V. Williams interviews Dr. Jacqueline Jones about her Pulitzer Prize winning book No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggle of Boston’s Black Workers (Basic Books, 2023). Williams is the current director of the William Monroe Trotter Institute for the Study of Black Culture at UMass Boston and Jones is Professor Emerita; Ellen C. Temple Chair in Women’s History and Mastin Gentry White Professor of Southern History at the University of Texas, Austin. Jones is also the author of several award-winning books including Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work and the Family from Slavery to the Present (Basic Books, 1985). Labor of Love won the Bancroft Prize in 1986. She is also the winner of enumerable other awards including a MacArthur Fellowship (1999-2004) and served as president of the American Historical Association (AHA). This episode focuses on her book No Right to an Honest Living and the quest for equity waged by African Americans in nineteenth century Boston. In this book, she highlights the struggle for Black equality waged by everyday Black workers before, during and after the American Civil War. Jones argues that though Boston has long been seen as a cradle of liberty Black workers were kept from enjoying full equality particularly in the arena of work.

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