Peter J. Rachleff home: 651-774-8687
835 E. Sixth Street office: 651-696-6371
St. Paul, Minnesota 55106 e-mail: rachleff@macalester.edu
EDUCATION
University of Pittsburgh
Ph.D. in
American history (1981)
dissertation: "Black, White, and Gray: Race and Working-
Class
Activism in Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890"
advisor: David Montgomery
M.A. in
American history (1976)
Amherst College
B.A. in
sociology (1973)
Phi
Beta Kappa; Magna cum laude
TEACHING
AT MACALESTER
Chairperson, History Department (1997 – 2000)
Professor of History (1995 - )
Associate Professor of History (1987-1995)
Assistant Professor of History (1982-1987)
Macalester curriculum
The
History of the U.S. Working-Class
Women and
Work in U.S. History
The Study
of History
Immigration & Ethnicity in U.S. History
The
Formation of Industrial America, 1830-1890
American
Labor Radicalism
Slavery,
Emancipation & Reconstruction
African
Americans & the Transformation of the City, 1890-1945
Advanced
research seminars in Minnesota history
Introduction to African-American Studies
Introduction to Comparative North American Studies
The Great
Depression in U.S. History
Historians and Race
Racial
Formation in US History and Culture (with Leola Johnson)
Telling
Labor’s Story Through Music (with Robert Peterson)
FELLOWSHIPS
Dewitt Wallace Sabbatical Extension Fellowship,
Macalester (1996)
Minnesota Humanities Commission "Works in
Progress" (1995)
American Council of Learned Societies/Ford
Foundation (1988-89)
National Endowment for the Humanities Summer
Seminar, "Immigration
and
Ethnicity in 20th Century America," Immigration History
Research
Center, University of Minnesota (1983)
Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship, University of
Pittsburgh (1977-78)
Dwight Hitchcock Fellowship, Amherst College
(1974-75)
2.
ADDITIONAL
TEACHING
Hamline University, St. Paul, Minnesota
Masters
in Liberal Studies Program
"The Future of the Labor Movement" (1995)
"Immigration & Ethnicity in U.S. History" (1996)
"Labor and Theater in the 1930s" (1999)
Metropolitan State University, St. Paul
Community
Faculty member (1983 – 1996; 2001 - )
"History
of U.S. Economic Life"
"Labor & Technology"
"Workers and Their Unions"
"Unions and the American Economy"
Faculty-designed Independent Studies (1996 - 1997)
"Soldiers and Society: The American Civil War"
"The Great Depression in U.S. History"
Recipient, "Excellence in Teaching" Award (1993)
Labor Education Service, University of Minnesota
Adjunct
faculty member (1983-1986)
"American Labor History"
"Labor & Technology"
"Women's Labor History"
Center for Economic Education, University of St.
Thomas, St. Paul
Summer
Program in "Economics & Corporate Environment"(1989-1999)
World Press Institute, Macalester College
Adjunct
faculty member (1988 - )
Penn/USIA American Studies Summer Institute
"Interpreting American Culture" (1991 & 1992)
PROFESSIONAL
AFFILIATIONS
Organization of American Historians
Editorial Board, SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY,
1992-1995; 1998-2002
Editorial Board, LABOR HISTORY, 2001 – 2003
Editorial Board, LABOR, 2003 -
Editorial Board, SAFUNDI: THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH
AFRICAN AND
AMERICAN
COMPARATIVE STUDIES (www.safundi.org),
2001-
National Writers Union, Local 13, Twin Cities
(UAW)
United Association for Labor Education (UALE/CWA)
Labor and Working Class History
Association(LAWCHA),
Co-chairperson, Nominations Committee
Scholars, Artists, and Workers for Social Justice
3.
WORK
IN PROGRESS
REFIGURING AND REPRESENTING RACE: THE BUFFALO HISTORICAL
MARIONETTES IN THE 1930S (collaboratively with
Beth Cleary)
LABOR AND POLITICS IN SOUTH AFRICA
PUBLICATIONS
“Call and Response: The Future of the Strike,”
symposium,
New
Labor Forum, 12:3 (Fall 2003)
“Is the Strike Dead?” New Labor Forum,
12:2 (Summer 2003)
“Lynching and Racial Violence,” Z Magazine,
15:12 (December 2002)
“Lynching Then and Now,” CounterPunch,
9:18-19 (Oct. 15, 2002)
“Making the Invisible Visible,” Introduction to
David Parker, BY
THESE
HANDS: PORTRAITS FROM THE FACTORY FLOOR (St. Paul:
Minnesota Historical Society Press, 2002)
“The Buffalo Historical Marionettes,” in
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF NEW
YORK
STATE (Syracuse: Syracuse University Press, 2002)
“Globalization and Union Democracy: A Comparison
of the Hormel
Strike
of 1985-86 (US) and the Volkswagen Strike of 2000 (SA)”
SAFUNDI:
THE JOURNAL OF SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN COMPARATIVE
STUDIES
(www.safundi.org), 7 (November 2001);
reprinted in
Andrew
Offenburger, ed., SAFUNDI: A SOUTH AFRICAN AND AMERICAN
COMPARATIVE READER. THE BEST OF SAFUNDI AND OTHER SELECTED
ARTICLES
(Safundi, 2002)
“Globalization and Union Democracy,” International
Socialist
Review, 19 (August – September 2001)
Syllabus for History 30: “Women and Work in U.S.
History,” in
Janet
Zandy, ed., WHAT WE HOLD IN COMMON: AN INTRODUCTION TO
WORKING
CLASS STUDIES (NY: The Feminist Press, 2001)
“The Current Crisis of the South African Labor
Movement,”
Labour/LeTravail
(Canada), 47 (Spring 2001)
“Introduction” to William Millikan, A UNION
AGAINST UNIONS: THE
MINNEAPOLIS CITIZENS ALLIANCE AND ITS FIGHT AGAINST ORGANIZED
LABOR,
1903-1947 (St.Paul: Minnesota Historical Society
Press,
2001)
"Richmond: Civic, Literary, and Mutual Aid
Associations" and
"Readjusters" in Nina Mjagkij, ed., ORGANIZING BLACK
AMERICA: AN ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AFRICAN
AMERICAN ASSOCIATIONS (New York:
Garland Press, 2001)
4.
“Why Participation? Lessons from the Past for the
Future,” Labor
Studies
Journal 25:4 (Winter 2001)
“On the Ground with the South African Labor
Movement,” Safundi:
The
Journal of South African and American Comparative Studies
(www.safundi.org), 3 (October 2000)
“Seeds of a Labor Insurgency,” in John Hinshaw
and Paul LeBlanc,
eds.,
U.S. LABOR IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY: STUDIES IN WORKING
CLASS
STRUGGLES AND INSURGENCY (Amherst, N.Y.: Humanity
Books,
2000)
“They Say Give Back, We Say Fight Back: The
Legacy of the Hormel
Strike,
Fifteen Years Later,” Dollars and Sense 231 (Sept/
Oct
2000)
ARupture or Continuity?@ contribution to symposium on Paul Buhle,
TAKING
CARE OF BUSINESS, in New Politics VII:4 (Winter 2000)
“Working,” Introductory essay to catalogue,
WORKING: PHOTOGRAPHS
OF
WORKING PEOPLE by STEPHEN M. DAHL (Minneapolis: pARTs
Gallery,
1999)
"Lessons from Labor History:
Organizing," in Ray M. Tillman and
Michael
S. Cummings, eds., THE TRANSFORMATION OF U.S. UNIONISM (Boulder, Colorado: Lynne
Reiner Publishers, 1999)
"The Failure of Minnesota
Farmer-Laborism," in Kevin Boyle, ed.,
ORGANIZED LABOR AND AMERICAN POLITICS (Albany: State University
of New
York, 1998)
"The Dynamics of Americanization: The
Croatian Fraternal Union in the
1930s," in Eric Arnesen, Julie Greene, and Bruce Laurie, eds., LABOR HISTORIES: CLASS, POLITICS,
AND THE WORKING-CLASS
EXPERIENCE (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1998)
"Unbroken Mirror: One Hundred Years of the
St.Paul Union Advocate"
(with
Barb Kucera), Labor's Heritage, 9:4 (Spring 1998)
"Cram Your Spam: Remembering the Hormel
Strike," and "The More
Things
Change: The AFL-CIO," in The Baffler, 9 (Spring 1997)
"Organizing 'Wall-to-Wall': The Independent
Union of All Workers,
1933-1937," in Shelton Stromquist and Marvin Bergman, eds.,
UNIONIZING THE JUNGLES: LABOR AND COMMUNITY IN THE 20th C
MEATPACKING INDUSTRY (Iowa City: U of Iowa Press, 1997)
"Organizing Wall-to-Wall: The Independent
Union of All Workers,
1933-1937," in Staughton Lynd, ed., "WE ARE ALL LEADERS: THE
ALTERNATIVE UNIONISM OF THE EARLY 1930S (Urbana: University
of
Illinois Press, 1996)
5.
"The Croatian Fraternal Union, Radicalism,
and the American Labor
Movement," in Matjaz Klemencic, ed., ETHNIC FRATERNALISM IN
IMMIGRANT COUNTRIES (Maribor, Slovenia: University of Maribor
Pedagoska fakulteta, 1996)
"Solid State," Minnesota Monthly,
30:2 (February 1996)
"Richmond," in Jack Salzman, David
Lionel Smith, and Cornel West,
eds.,
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF AFRICAN AMERICAN HISTORY AND CULTURE,
IV (NY:
Simon & Schuster MacMillan, 1996)
"The Quest for Rail Labor Unity," Canadian
Dimension, 29:4,
(August-September 1995)
"State of the Unions: Improving," Utne
Reader, Sept.- Oct. 1994
"Peering into the Crystal Ball: The Future
of the US Labour
Movement," Canadian Dimension, 28:4 (August-September 1994)
"The Future in the Present: The Work of
C.L.R. James," Monthly
Review, 45:10 (March 1994)
"A Page from History? Seeds of a Labor
Resurgency," The Nation,
258:7
(February 21, 1994)
HARD-PRESSED IN THE HEARTLAND: THE HORMEL STRIKE
AND THE FUTURE
OF THE LABOR MOVEMENT (Boston: South End
Press, 1993)
[nominated for a 1994 Minnesota Book Award]
"The Croatian Fraternal Union, Zajednicar,
and the Second
Generation, in DUE DOMOVINI/TWO HOMELANDS: MIGRATION
STUDIES
(Ljubljana: Centre of Scientific Research of the
Slovene
Academy of Sciences & Arts, 1993)
"The Rebirth of Minnesota's Labor
Movement," in Mel Hammarberg,
ed.,
INTERPRETING AMERICAN CULTURE: A REGIONAL APPROACH
(Glasgow, Scotland: Modern Studies Association, 1992)
"USA: 1991 Rail Strike," Echanges/Exchanges
(London & Paris),
68/69
(July - December 1991)
"Derailed -- But Not Defeated," Z
Magazine (July - August 1991)
"Art and Activism in the American Labor
Movement," Artpaper, 10:8
(April
1991)
"Multicultural History," in Helen Stub,
ed., BEYOND THE SUITCASE:
A
RESOURCE GUIDE FOR THE MULTICULTURAL TEACHING OF HISTORY
(Minneapolis: The Origins Program, 1990)
"American Labor in the 1980s," in Don Fritz
and David Roediger,
eds.,
WITHIN THE SHELL OF THE OLD: ESSAYS ON WORKERS' SELF-
ORGANIZATION (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr, 1990)
6.
BUILDING THE UNION, 1890-1990: BRANCH NO.28,
NATIONAL ASSOCIATION
OF
LETTER CARRIERS (St. Paul: NALC Branch 28, 1990)
"Supporting the Hormel Strikers," in
Jeremy Brecher and Tim
Costello, eds., BUILDING BRIDGES: LABOR-COMMUNITY COALITIONS
(NY:
Monthly Review Press, 1990)
"Council Communism"; "The
Croatian-American Left"; "Industrial
Unionism" essays in Dan Georgakas and Paul Buhle, eds.,
ENCYCLOPEDIA OF THE AMERICAN LEFT (NY: Garland, 1990)
"'Members in Good Standing': Richmond's
Community of Former
Slaves,
1865-1873," Virginia Cavalcade, 39:3 (Winter 1990)
and 39:4
(Spring 1990)
"American Labor in the 1980s," Workers'
Democracy, #33 (October - December
1989)
"Turning Points in the Labor Movement: Three
Key Conflicts," in
Clifford
Clark, ed., A CENTURY OF CHANGE: THE STATE AND ITS
PEOPLE
SINCE 1900 (St. Paul: Minnesota Historical Society
Press,
1989)
"Class, Ethnicity, and the New Deal: The
Croatian Fraternal Union
in the
1930s," in Peter Kivisto, ed., THE ETHNIC ENIGMA: THE
SALIENCE
OF ETHNICITY FOR EUROPEAN-ORIGIN GROUPS
(Philadelphia: The Balch Institute, 1989)
BLACK LABOR IN RICHMOND, 1865-1890 (Urbana:
University of Illinois
Press,
1989 [paperback])
"Black Richmond and the Knights of
Labor," in Jerry Lembcke, ed.,
RACE,
CLASS, AND URBAN CHANGE (Greenwich, Conn.: JAI Press,
1989)
"Two Decades of the 'New' Labor
History," American Quarterly,
41:1
(March 1989)
"Welcome to Austin, Poland," Zeta,
2:1 (January 1989)
"Hard Times for Hormel: Meatpackers Lead
U.S. Labor," Canadian
Dimension,
20:6 (November 1986)
"Keeping Minneapolis an Open Shop Town: The
Citizens Alliance in
the
1930s," [with Lois Quam], Minnesota History (Oct. 1986)
"The Hormel Strike: Turning Point for the
Rank-and-File Labor
Movement," Socialist Review (September 1986)
"Women in the Labor Market and the Labor
Movement," [with Tom
O'Connell],
in Sirkka Sinkkonen and Annelli Milen, eds.,
TOWARDS
EQUALITY (Kuopio, Finland: University of Kuopio,
1986)
7.
BLACK LABOR IN THE SOUTH: RICHMOND, VIRGINIA,
1865-1890)
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984)
"Machine Technology and Workplace Control:
The U.S. Post Office,"
in Frank
Fischer and Carmen Sirianni, eds., CRITICAL STUDIES
IN
ORGANIZATION AND BUREAUCRACY (Philadelphia: Temple
University Press, 1984)
MOVING THE MAIL (Morgantown, West Virginia: Work
Environment
Project,
1981)
MARXISM AND COUNCIL COMMUNISM (Brooklyn:
Revisionist Press, 1976)
ROOT AND BRANCH: THE RISE OF THE WORKERS'
MOVEMENT [co-editor],
edited
by "Root and Branch" (Greenwich, Conn.: Fawcett,1975)
"Soviets and Factory Committees in the
Russian Revolution, in ROOT AND
BRANCH: THE RISE OF THE WORKERS’ MOVEMENT (ibid.)
PUBLIC
PRESENTATIONS
“From the Bread Box to the Ballot Box,” a series
of presentations
to
locals of the Minnesota Association of Professional
Employees (MAPE), January – February 2004
“Immigrant Workers Lead the Way,” South Central
Federation of
Labor,
Madison, Wisconsin, “Labor History With a Bite” series,
April
21, 2003
“History of Labor in Ramsey County,” at “From
Frontier to Future:
150
Years of Ramsey County History,” Ramsey County Historical
Society
1999 Lecture Series, October 5, 1999
“William Mahoney and Farmer-Laborism in St.
Paul,” Friends of the
St. Paul
Public Library, May 18, 1999
"Americans at Work," Independent
Humanities Scholars Network and
Minnesota Historical Society, November 9, 1995
"The Future of Rail Labor," Wisconsin
Labor History Society, 14th
Annual
Conference, LaCrosse, May 1995
"The Independent Union of All Workers,"
Wisconsin Labor History
Society,
12th Annual Conference, Madison, April 1993
"The 1894 Great Northern Railway Strike,"
Ramsey County Historical
Society,
St. Paul, April 1992
"Work and Race," Ramsey County
Historical Society "Have Lunch with
a Historian" Series, March 1992
8.
"The Labor Movement Today," six part
series on Minnesota Public
Radio,
January 1992
"Portrait," KTCA Public Television,
September 1990
Appearances on "Almanac";
"Face-to-Face"; "Newsnight Minnesota"
(KTCA);
"Moore on Sunday" (WCCO TV); MPR, KFAI, WCCO Radio
CONFERENCE PAPERS & INVITED LECTURES
“(Re)Figuring and (Re)Presenting Race: The
Buffalo Historical
Martionettes,” with Beth Cleary, International Humanities
Conference, Honolulu, January 2004
“Is the Strike Dead?” North American Labor
History Conference,
Detroit,
October 2003
“Labor’s Response to Corporate Terrorism,”
(keynote) Pacific
Northwest Labor History Association Conference, Seattle,
May 2003
“Transnational Perspectives on Race and Labor
Radicalism,” Social
Science
History Association (commentator), St. Louis, Oct.2002
“Creating and Oppositional Working-Class
Identity: Radio, Theater,
and
Dance in Depression Era America,” North American Labor
History
Conference (commentator), Detroit, October 2002
“Anti-Lynching Movements: The 1930s to the Modern
Civil Rights
Movement,” (chair and commentator), “Lynching and Racial
Violence: Histories and Legacies” Conference, Emory University
and the
Martin Luther King, Jr., Center, Atlanta, October 2002
“Farmers and Workers,” Northern Great Plains
History Conference,
(commentator), Minneapolis, October 2002
“Representing and Refiguring Race: The Jubilee
Singers of the
Buffalo
Historical Marionettes,” (with Beth Cleary), “Au-dela
Du New
Deal: New Perspectives on the U.S. in the 1930s”
Conference at University of Paris no.VII, June 2002
“Representing Race: The Buffalo Historical
Marionettes of the
Federal
Theatre Project,” (with Beth Cleary), “The Legacy of
The New
Deal” Conference, Chicago, May 2002
“Academics as Activists and Activists as
Academics,” Social
Science
History Conference, Chicago, November 2001
“Immigration, Race, and Labor History,” North
American Labor
Conference (chair and comment), Detroit, October 2001
9.
“Globalization and Union Democracy: A Comparison
of the Hormel
Strike
of 1985-86 (USA) and the Volkswagen Strike of 2000-
2001
(South Africa),” South African Sociological Association
Annual
Congress, July 1-4, 2001: “Globalisation, Inequality,
And
Identity,” University of South Africa, Pretoria
“Whiteness: Its Place in the Historiography of
Race and Class in
the
United States,” presented to “The Burden of Race:
Whiteness and Blackness in Modern South Africa,” Wits History
Workshop
and Wits Institute for Economic and Social Research,
July
5-8, 2001, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg
“Oral History and Labor History: New Prospects,”
Oral History
Association of Minnesota, Minneapolis, March 2001
“Radical Black Puppeteers,” Historical
Perspectives Lecture
Series,
University of Wisconsin-Green Bay, March 2001
“Representing Race: The Buffalo Historical
Marionettes in the
1930s,”
with Beth Cleary, Center for Working-Class Studies
Lecture
Series, Youngstown State University, November 2000
“The Current Crisis of the South African Labor
Movement,” North
American
Labor History Conference, Detroit, October 2000
“The Performance of Race in the 1930s: The
Buffalo Historical
Marionettes,” for workshop “Staging the Cultural Front,”
North
American Labor History Conference, Detroit, Oct.1999
“Radicals on the Prairie” (commentator), Northern
Great Plains
History
Conference, St. Cloud, Minnesota, October 1999
"Refiguring Race: Race, Ethnicity, and Class
in the Buffalo
Historical Marionettes," University of Minnesota Faculty
Seminar
in Race and Ethnicity, December 1998
"Response" to Saskia Sassen, "The
State in Economic
Globalization," International Roundtable, Macalester College, November 1998
"Empire, Race, and Working-Class
Mobilization," North American
Labor
History Conference, Detroit, October 1998 (plenary
session)
"Social Provision and Social Thought in the
Great Depression,"
North American
Labor History Conference, Detroit, October 1998 (chair and commentator)
"Solidarity Unionism after Union
Recognition," Conference on
Solidarity Unionism, Youngstown, Ohio, June 1998 (chair)
"What's Happening in the Labor
Movement," Conference on Rank-and-
File Unionism, City University of New York, December 1997
10.
"The Politics of Public Space: Crafting
Community in the Urban
North,
1895-1930," North American Labor History Conference,
Detroit,
October 1997 (chair and comment)
"New Directions in Labor History,"
North American Labor History
Conference, Detroit, October 1997 (Plenary Session)
"The Knights of Labor Use of Drama" for
panel "The Labor Movement
and Its
Use of Theater in the 19th and 20th Centuries,"
Pedagogy/Theater of the Oppressed Conference, University of
Nebraska-Omaha, April 1996
"Race and the Labor Movement, 1890s-1930s,"
Organization of
American
Historians Conference, San Francisco, April 1997
(chair)
"African-American Working Lives and Reason:
Recollecting Race,
Class
and Resistance, from Detroit to the Delta," North
American
Labor History Conference, Wayne State University,
Detroit,
October 1996 (chair)
"Detroit Remembers: Roundtable on Recent
Scholarship on the
Detroit
Working Class" (moderator), North American Labor
History
Conference, Detroit, October 1996
"Community as Construct in Working Class
History: A Round Table,"
North
American Labor History Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit, October
1995
"The Social Bases of Working-Class Identity,"
North American Labor
History
Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit, October
1995
(chair and comment)
"Floyd Olson: Radical or Racketeer? The
Failure of Minnesota
Farmer-Laborism," Sixth Annual Symposium of the George Meany
Memorial
Archives,"Labor and Politcs,” November 1994
"Labor and the Law: Historical
Perspectives," Annual Conference of
Teamsters for a Democratic Union, Chicago, October 1994
"Ethnicity and Nationalism: Italian
Immigrants and the
Recomposition of the U.S. Working-Class," North American
Labor
History Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit,
October
1994 (chair & commentator)
"Recent Labor Actions," Northern Great
Plains History Conference,
St.
Paul, October 1994 (commentator)
"The Croatian Fraternal Union, Radicalism,
and the American Labor
Movement," Conference on "Development and Significance of the
Fraternal Organizations among Immigrants in North and South
America
and Europe," University of Maribor, Slovenia, May 1994
11.
"Black, White and Gray: The Knights of Labor
and Race," Southern
Labor
Studies Conference, Birmingham, Alabama, October 1993
"Labor History and Labor Activism,"
plenary panel, North American
Labor
History Conference, Wayne State University, Detroit,
October
1993
"Federal Government Forces Railroad Workers
from the Track," North
American
Labor History Conference, Detroit, October 1993
"The Future of the Labor Movement,"
"Under the Workman's Cap: The
Work and
Teaching of David Montgomery," conference of David
Montgomery's former grad students, Pittsburgh, June 1993
"Creating Free Social Space: The St. Paul
Labor Speakers Club,"
Session on "Labor Historians Work with the Labor Movement,"
North
American Labor History Conference, Detroit, Oct. 1992
"Rail Labor, the Government, and Union
Militancy," National
Conference
of the Association for Union Democracy, "After
the
Teamsters Victory: The Next Steps for Union Democracy,"
Chicago, June 1992
"Homeland Politics and Croatian
Workers," panel on "Immigrant
Workers and Homeland Politics: The 1920s and 1930s," Social
Science History Association, New Orleans, November 1991
"Race, Occupational Segregation, and the
State in the U.S."
Social
Science History Association, New Orleans,
November 1991 (chair)
"Retail is No Small Detail: Male
Packinghouse Workers Reach Out