"Workers on Arrival: Black Labor in the Making of America is the type of book that shapes an entire field of knowledge. It is the type of book that I wish every senior scholar would write: a book that only becomes possible to produce after a significant amount of time and effort in careful study, paying attention to the broad movements in the field and the thousands of nuances that it produces.”—Journal of Working-Class Studies
"Not just a welcome new synthesis of Black workers in urban America but an urgent history that seeks to overturn assumptions about who is part of the 'working class,' and indeed, who built America."—Journal of Social History
"Workers on Arrival in some ways functions both as a book on African American labor history and as a survey of much of black social and community history as well. . . . Trotter's sweeping overview serves as an entrée to the work of dozens of scholars who have transformed the field over the past half century."—Business History Review
"It is through this lens of racial capitalism, an intellectual framework that situates racism, patriarchy, and nationalism as the active ingredients forthe proper function of capitalism, that Workers on Arrival forces us to understand the making of the United States of America."—Ethnic and Racial Studies
"Few scholars have contributed more than Joe W. Trotter to Black labor history. His latest book,
Workers on Arrival, is not only a brilliant synthesis by a master social historian but it marks a conceptual breakthrough by placing the black working-class—enslaved and "free"—at the center of the development of racial capitalism. Black workers were more than victims of rapacious violence and segregation; they were producers of wealth, the source of surplus value, fighters for economic justice. And now, in our neoliberal era of flexible labor and capital mobility, the future of Black workers is open to question. As journalists and pundits genuflect on the plight of the "white working-class," this is the book we should be reading. Profound, inspiring, and sobering."—Robin D. G. Kelley, author of
Freedom Dreams: The Black Radical Imagination "Drawing upon a century of scholarship,
Workers on Arrival provides a compelling, comprehensive overview of black labor from slavery to the present. At the same time, the book restores African American workers—especially urban workers—to their central place in the history of the American economy and the broader history of world capitalism."—Jacqueline Jones, author of
American Work: Four Centuries of Black and White Labor, University of Texas at Austin
"There is no way to read
Workers On Arrival without seeing the forging of a nation long dependent on black labor—unfree and free. Joe Trotter does a masterful job of detailing the inextricable link among work, race, and nation."—Earl Lewis, coeditor of
To Make Our World Anew: A History of African Americans "A timely focus on the importance of black workers in the making of America.
Workers on Arrival establishes the foundational role of black labor in the US economy. There is no one better positioned than Joe Trotter, Jr. to tell a history of this scale."—Leslie M. Harris, author of
In the Shadow of Slavery "
Workers on Arrival makes a fantastic and well-timed contribution to labor and African American history and the history of American democracy. From slavery to the modern gig economy, black working-class men and women have transformed the raw materials of seed and soil, metal ore, wood, and coal, into food, buildings, and finished goods. It’s a great read and a stunning synthesis of the past four decades of scholarship in labor, African American, and political history."—Elizabeth Faue, author of
Rethinking the American Labor Movement