The Harvard Trade Union Program presents the annual James Green Memorial Forum, “No Right to an Honest Living,” with historian Jacqueline Jones. In her book, Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small: a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunity for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.
On-Campus Event
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm January 30, 2025
James Green Memorial Forum on Labor History: “No Right to an Honest Living: The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era” with Jacqueline Jones
5:30 pm - 7:00 pm January 30, 2025