Jarod Roll Libri

What does democracy look like? And when should we cause trouble to pursue it? Troublemakers fuses photography and history to demonstrate how racial and economic inequality gave rise to a decades-long struggle for justice in one American city. In dialogue with 275 of Art Shay's photographs, Erik S. Gellman takes a new look at major developments in postwar US history: the Second Great Migration, "white flight," and neighborhood and street conflicts, as well as shifting party politics and the growth of the carceral state. The result is a visual and written history that complicates - and even upends - the morality tales and popular memory of postwar freedom struggles. Shay himself was a "troublemaker," seeking to unsettle society by illuminating truths that many middle-class, white, media, political, and businesspeople pretended did not exist. Shay served as a navigator in the US Army Air Forces during World War II, then took a position as a writer for Life Magazine. But soon after his 1948 move to Chicago, he decided to become a freelance photographer. Shay wandered the city photographing whatever caught his eye - and much did. His lens captured everything from private moments of rebellion to era-defining public movements, as he sought to understand the creative and destructive energies that propelled freedom struggles in the Windy City. Shay illuminated the pain and ecstasy that sprung up from the streets of Chicago, while Gellman reveals their collective impact on the urban fabric and on our national narrative. This collaboration offers a fresh and timely look at how social conflict can shape a city - and may even inspire us to make trouble today

Focusing on the historical context of white working-class conservatism, this book uncovers its roots from the Civil War to World War II, challenging the notion that such sentiments emerged solely after the 1960s. Through an in-depth examination of metal miners in the Tri-State district of Kansas, Missouri, and Oklahoma, it reveals the reasons behind their persistent opposition to labor unions and government reforms aimed at improving health and safety, even during the transformative New Deal era.

Documents an alternative tradition of American protest by linking working- class political movements to grassroots religious revivals. This book reveals how ordinary rural citizens in the south used the resources and their shared faith to defend their agrarian livelihoods amid the political and economic upheaval of the first half of 20th century.

How two southern ministers preached and practiced a vision of a more democratic America