Left Anchor Podcast
January 13th, 2020
Today we’re bringing back Peter Cole to talk about the second edition of his book Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly. Fletcher was one of the most impressive labor organizers of the early 20th century — a guy who successfully organized the very diverse workforce of the Philadelphia docks into one of the keystone unions of the IWW. If you’ve heard of Fred Hampton, you should know about him. Enjoy!
Peter Cole is a professor of history at Western Illinois University in Macomb and a research associate in the Society, Work and Development Institute at the University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa. Cole is the author of the award-winning Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area and Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-Era Philadelphia. He coedited Wobblies of the World: A Global History of the IWW. He is the founder and codirector of the Chicago Race Riot of 1919 Commemoration Project.
