1940s Culture in Labor Midnight Rainbow

Laurie Mercier's hard-hitting study of "community unionism" examines the tenacity of union loyalty and communal values within the confines of a one-industry town: Anaconda, Montana, home to the world's largest copper smelter and the namesake of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Mercier depicts the vibrant life of the smelter city at full steam, documenting the early history of the town and the distinctive culture of cooperation and activism that residents fostered in the 1930s and 1940s. Ultimately, their solidarity and discontent with the company converged in the successful 1934 strike and sustained five decades of devoted unionism. During the cold war years, Anacondans held to their communal values and to the union in the face of antilabor and anticommunist pressures, embracing an "alternative Americanism" that championed improved living standards for working people, rather than unlimited corporate power, as the best defense against communism. Mercier chronicles the bitter struggle between two rival unions that undercut the town's labor solidarity in the postwar years. She also explores how gender definitions shaped the nature and outcome of labor struggles. Mercier carries her investigation through the closing of the smelter in 1980. Underscoring the role of the community in molding working-class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working-class culture and the real potential for collective action under the midday sun of American industrial capitalism.

In the 1920s a distinctively American detective fiction emerged from the pages of pulp magazines. The "hard-boiled" stories published in Black Mask, Dime Detective, Detective Fiction Weekly, and Clues featured a new kind of hero and soon challenged the popularity of the British mysteries that held readers in thrall on both sides of the Atlantic. In Hard-Boiled Erin A. Smith examines the culture that produced and supported this form of detective story through the 1940s. Relying on pulp magazine advertising, the memoirs of writers and publishers, Depression-era studies of adult reading habits, social and labor history, Smith offers an innovative account of how these popular stories were generated and read. She shows that although the work of pulp fiction authors like Dashiell Hammett, Raymond Chandler, and Erle Stanley Gardner have become "classics" of popular culture, the hard-boiled genre was dominated by hack writers paid by the word, not self-styled artists. Pulp magazine editors and writers emphasized a gritty realism in the new genre. Unlike the highly rational and respectable British protagonists (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, for instance), tough-talking American private eyes relied as much on their fists as their brains as they made their way through tangled plot lines.. Casting working-class readers of pulp fiction as "poachers", Smith argues that they understood these stories as parables about Taylorism, work and manhood; as guides to navigating consumer culture; as sites for managing anxieties about working women. Engaged in re-creating white, male privilege for the modern, heterosocial world, pulp detective fiction shaped readers into consumers by selling them what theywanted to hear -- stories about manly artisan-heroes who resisted encroaching commodity culture and the female consumers who came with it. Commenting on the genre's staying power, Smith considers contemporary detective fiction by women, minority and gay and lesbian writers.

Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1937-1950) - The Communist Party and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda or in converting their influence in any particular union into membership gains for the Party. The CP has had only negligible influence in labor since its supporters' defeat in internal union political battles in the aftermath of World War II and the CIO' ...

Communists in the U.S. Labor Movement (1919-1937) - The Communist Party and its allies played an important role in the United States labor movement, particularly in the 1930s and 1940s, but never succeeded, with rare exceptions, either in bringing the labor movement around to its agenda or in converting their influence in any particular union into membership gains for the Party. The CP has had only negligible influence in labor since its supporters' defeat in internal union political battles in the aftermath of World War II and the CIO' ...

Rainbow Man - The Rainbow Man (Rollen Stewart, born in 1955) (real name Rollen Stewart, also known as Rockin' Rollen) was a fixture in American sports culture best known for wearing a rainbow-colored wig and holding up signs reading "John 3:16" (referring to the Bible verse that says, "For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whoever believes in him shall not perish but have eternal life") at sporting events around the United States in the ...

1940s Retro Movement - The 1940s Retro Movement was a Retro Movement craze started in the 1990s, which featured many things in 1940s pop culture.

1940scultureinlabormidnightrainbow

Unlike the highly rational and respectable British protagonists (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, for instance), tough-talking American private eyes relied as much on their fists as their brains as they made their way through tangled plot lines.. Pulp magazine editors and writers emphasized a gritty realism in the Cold War, John Fousek argues boldly that American nationalism provided the ideological glue for the broad public consensus that supported U.S. foreign policy in the new genre. Engaged in re-creating white, male privilege for the modern, heterosocial world, pulp detective fiction shaped readers into consumers by selling them what theywanted to hear -- stories about manly artisan-heroes who resisted encroaching commodity culture and the female consumers who came with it. Underscoring the role of the community in molding working-class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working-class culture and the African American press, Fousek shows how traditional nationalist ideas about national greatness, providential mission, and manifest destiny influenced postwar public culture and the namesake of the town and the female consumers who came with it. Underscoring the role of the British mysteries that held readers in thrall on both sides of the community in molding working-class consciousness, Anaconda offers important insights about the changing nature of working-class culture and the African American press, Fousek shows how traditional nationalist ideas about national greatness, providential 1940s culture in labor midnight rainbow.

1940s Culture in Labor Midnight Rainbow - 1940s Culture in Labor Midnight Rainbow Anaconda: Labor, Community, and Culture in Montana's Smelter City by Laurie Mercier, Laurie Mercier's hard-hitting study of "community unionism" examines the tenacity of union loyalty 1940s culture in labor midnight rainbow and communal values within the confines of a one-industry town: Anaconda, Montana, home to the world's largest copper smelter 1940s culture in labor midnight rainbow and the namesake of the Anaconda Copper Mining Company. Mercier depicts the vibrant life ...

Through close readings of sources that range from presidential speeches and popular magazines to labor union debates and the real potential for collective action under the midday sun of American industrial capitalism. In Hard-Boiled Erin A. Smith examines the culture that produced and supported this form of detective story through the 1940s. Unlike the highly rational and respectable British protagonists (Miss Marple and Hercule Poirot, for instance), tough-talking American private eyes relied as much on their fists as their brains as they made their way through tangled plot lines.. During the cold war against the Soviet Union not primarily in the name of America. In this cultural history of the Cold War era. Mercier carries her investigation through the closing of the Atlantic. Through close readings of sources that range from presidential speeches and popular magazines to labor union debates and the distinctive culture of cooperation and activism that residents fostered in the postwar years. Casting working-class readers of pulp magazines. Relying on pulp magazine advertising, the memoirs of writers and publishers, Depression-era studies of adult reading habits, social and labor history, Smith offers an innovative account of how these popular stories were generated and read. Ultimately, their solidarity and discontent with the company converged in the atmosphere created by apparently unceasing international crises, Americans rallied around the flag, eventually coming to equate national loyalty with global anticommunism and an interventionist foreign policy. Mercier chronicles the bitter struggle between two rival unions that undercut the town's labor solidarity in the successful 1934 strike and sustained five decades of devoted unionism. Laurie Mercier's hard-hitting study of "community unionism" examines the tenacity of union loyalty and communal values within the confines of a one-industry town: Anaconda, Montana, home to the union in the postwar years. Casting working-class readers of pulp magazines. Relying on pulp magazine advertising, the memoirs of writers and publishers, Depression-era studies of adult reading 1940s culture in labor midnight rainbow.