![]() ![]() I ended up initially trying to write a book about criminal syndicalism, but in short order I figured out that neither I nor the typical reader was as much interested in a history of laws as they might be interested in a history of people. I then published a couple law review articles on the subject, put it aside for a great number of years, and only came back to the topic when, in the wake of publishing The Last Great Strike, I tried to figure out something else I wanted to do.Īhmed White At the time I didn’t know very much about doing historical research or even very much about the IWW, but I got interested in the plight of migratory harvest workers, featured in the book, and kind of worked my way towards doing some archival research on them. Tom Mackaman: I want to start with the typical interview first question: How is it that you came to the subject of the IWW? And relatedly, how is it that a law professor becomes a labor historian? I’m thinking here, as well, of your previous book, another fine effort, The Last Great Strike.Īhmed White: I started on this project 20 or so years ago-at least that’s when I did my first bit of work on it. The IWW was founded in 1905 in Chicago with the aim of organizing all workers, no matter their skill, occupation, national origin, race, or sex, into “One Big Union.” Capitalism would be sunk when workers finally took into their own hands “the economic power, the means of life… the control of the machinery of production and distribution, without regard to capitalist masters,” as the union’s president, “Big Bill” Haywood, put it. ![]() He is the author of a recent book on the repression of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), Under the Iron Heel The Wobblies and the Capitalist War on Radical Workers. Ahmed White is professor of law at the University of Colorado. ![]()
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