Today In Labor History April 8, 1911: 128 convict miners, mostly African-Americans jailed for minor offenses, were killed by a massive explosion at the Banner coalmine near Birmingham, Alabama. While the Triangle Shirtwaist fire, which occurred just two weeks earlier, elicited massive public attention and support for the plight of immigrant women working in sweatshop conditions, the Banner explosion garnered almost no public sympathy, probably due to racism and the fact that they were prisoners.
🗣 The call for papers for the workshop "The gains of their sorrow: Slavery, the slave trade, and the rise of capitalism in the other South" will close on 31 January.
The aim of the meeting is to open a debate on bridges connecting research focused on the Middle Passage and the one focused on mines, plantations, urban jobs, etc.