James N. Gregory is a professor of history and former Harry Bridges Endowed Chair of Labor Studies at the University of Washington. His work focuses on labor, civil rights, radicalism, migration, and also public history. He directs the Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, a set of online multimedia public history projects. His books include The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (2005), won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Award. His American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989) also won two major book prizes. More recently he edited The Seattle General Strike Centennial Edition by Robert L. Friedheim. Introduction, photo essay, and afterword by James N. Gregory (2018). He is currently writing a book about the history of radicalism on the West Coast and directing the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project - Washington State.
The Seattle General Strike earned headlines across the nation, and across oceans. In an extraordinary act of solidarity, members of more than one hundred unions had voted to stop work in support of shipyard workers who had already been on strike for two weeks. This talk explores the event and its legacies. The General Strike led off the great strike wave of 1919 and has served later generations of labor radicals as an inspiration. It also anchors the political reputation of the Pacific Northwest as a region friendly to radicalism.