Introduction / Matthew Hild and Keri Leigh Merritt -- Section 1. The early republic and the Old South -- Origins of the Charleston Mechanic Society: white labor activism and slave competition in Charleston, South Carolina in the early national era / Thomas Brown -- "Vagrant negroes": the...

Free labor -- From Reconstruction to Jim Crow, 1877-1895 -- Blacks and labor in the progressive era, 1900-1920 -- From progressivism to the New Deal, 1920-1935 -- The New Deal and World War -- The civil rights era, 1950-1965 -- The affirmative action dilemma, 1965-present