The 1920s Jazz Age is remembered for flappers and speakeasies, not for the success of a declining labor movement. A more complex story was unfolding among the young women and men in the hosiery mills of Kensington, the working-class heart of Philadelphia. Their product was silk stockings, the iconic fashion item of the flapper culture then sweeping America and the world. Although the young people who flooded into this booming industry were avid participants in Jazz Age culture, they also embraced a surprising, rights-based labor movement, headed by the socialist-led American Federation of Full-Fashioned Hosiery Workers (AFFFHW).

In this first history of this remarkable union, Sharon McConnell-Sidorick reveals how activists ingeniously fused youth culture and radical politics to build a subculture that included dances and parties as well as picket lines and sit-down strikes, while forging a vision for social change. In documenting AFFFHW members and the Kensington community, McConnell-Sidorick shows how labor federations like the Congress of Industrial Organizations and government programs like the New Deal did not spring from the heads of union leaders or policy experts but were instead nurtured by grassroots social movements across America.

Author: Sharon McConnell-Sidorick
Binding Type: Paperback
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Published: 04/17/2017
Pages: 294
Weight: 1.01lbs
Size: 9.21h x 6.14w x 0.67d
ISBN: 9781469632957


Review Citation(s):
Choice 08/01/2017

About the Author
McConnell-Sidorick, Sharon: - Sharon McConnell-Sidorick is an independent scholar and lives in the Philadelphia area.