Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981 is historian Philip Foner's classic, radical history of Black workers' contribution to the American labor movement. Here, we present an excerpt from scholar Robin D. G. Kelley's foreword to the Haymarket edition.
"...the train of developments that connects changes in social conditions to a changed consciousness is not simple. People, including ordinary people, harbor somewhere in their memories the building blocks of different and contradictory interpretations of what it is that is happening to them, of who should be blamed, and what can be done about it..."