Jones, William P. 1970- (William Powell Jones)

PERSONAL:

Born January 30, 1970. Education: Northwestern University, B.S., 1992; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, M.A., 1996, Ph.D., 2000.

ADDRESSES:

Office—University of Wisconsin—Milwaukee, P.O. Box 413, 2200 E. Kenwood Blvd., Milwaukee, WI 53201-0413. E-mail—wpjones@uwm.edu; wjones3@wisc.edu.

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. New Orleans Public School District, Carter G. Woodson Middle School, teacher, 1992-94; Southern Oral History Program, researcher, 1995-98; University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, teaching assistant, 1994-99, instructor, 1999; Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey, New Brunswick, assistant professor, 2000-02; University of Wisconsin— Milwaukee, assistant professor, 2002-05; University of Wisconsin—Madison, associate professor, 2005—. Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, New York, NY, scholar-in-residence.

MEMBER:

American Historical Association, Organization of American Historians, Association for the Study of African American Life and History, Southern Historical Association, Labor and Working-Class History Association (board of directors 2002-06), American Federation of Teachers.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Wentworth Illinois History Book Award, 2005, and H.L. Mitchell Award, Southern Historical Association, 2006, both for The Tribe of Black Ulysses. Fellowships include Smithsonian Graduate Student Fellowship, National Museum of American History, 1997; Ford Foundation Dissertation Fellowship for Minorities, 1999; Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, NEH/Newhouse Fellowship, 2005-06; and American Council of Learned Societies, Charles A. Ryskamp Research Fellowship, 2007-08.

WRITINGS:

The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2005.

Contributor to books, including W.E.B. Du Bois: An Encyclopedia, edited by Gerald Horne and Mary Young, Greenwood Publishing Group, 2001; The Black Worker: Race and Labor Activism since Emancipation, edited by Eric Arnesen, University if Illinois Press, 2005; Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-45, 2nd edition, edited by Joe William Trotter, Jr., University of Illinois Press, 2007. Contributor to periodicals, including the Nation, Wisconsin's Historical Review, Left History, International Labor and Working-Class History, Journal of American History, Journal of African American History, Alabama Review, Journal of Southern History, Southern Exposure, Florida Historical Quarterly, and Labor History. Also member of board of consulting editors, International Labor and Working-Class History, 2003—.

SIDELIGHTS:

William P. Jones is a historian of the twentieth-century United States with a primary interest in race, class, and work, including civil rights and economic justice. The author's first book, The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South, is a study of the largest group of black industrial workers in the South. Specifically, the book explores three southern companies: the Great Southern Lumber Company in Bogalusa, Louisiana; the W.T. Smith Lumber Company in Chapman, Alabama; and the Greene Brothers Lumber Company in Elizabethtown, North Carolina. These lumber companies represented the largest employers of African American men in the U.S. South outside of the agriculture industry. For his study, the author draws from oral history interviews, various manuscript sources, local newspapers, and government documents. He uses these to examine the economic, social, and labor variables within the lumber industry and the changing relationship of black men and women to industrial work in the three sawmill communities.

In his book, the author focuses on two major themes. First, Jones presents his case that industrial employment for African Americans in the South was not incompatible with the vagaries of Jim Crow South, which included racial segregation and political disenfranchisement. Second, he counters a local held tradition of southern sociological thought that views industrialization as have many negative affects on the southern African American communities and society, including a weakening of their social and cultural traditions that were rooted in agriculture. In fact, according to the author, industrialization and the jobs in the lumber mills strengthened black families and their sense of community. The author points out, for example, that many black sawmill workers initially were planning to save money so they could buy land and become independent farmers to support their families. The growing industry and relatively good wages, however, soon led most of them to abandon this idea. The author goes on to write about many aspects of these laborers' and their families' lives, from union organizations to everyday life, including leisure activities. He also examines wage differences between the races working in the sawmills and how the New Deal National Recovery Administration (NRA) program started by President Franklin Roosevelt was used by unscrupulous employers to discriminate against blacks.

The Tribe of Black Ulysses was called "a fine labor history of an important but often overlooked industry" by Environmental History reviewer Mary Ellen Wilson. Steven A. Reich, writing in the Journal of Southern History, noted: "Not only is it the best work to date on the southern lumber industry, but, given the centrality of African American lumber workers to the history of southern industrialization, Jones has much to teach those whose sense of southern labor history comes only from studies of cotton textiles, coal mines, or docks. It should be required reading for understanding working-class life in the Jim Crow South."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, April, 2006, Cindy Hahamovitch, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South, p. 491.

Business History Review, winter, 2005, Eric Arnesen, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 868.

Choice, February, 2006, K. Fones-Wolf, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 1072.

Environmental History, January, 2007, Mary Ellen Wilson, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses.

International Review of Social History, April, 2007, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 176.

Journal of American History, March, 2006, Ronald L. Lewis, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 1482.

Journal of Black Studies, November, 2006, Christopher K. Johnson, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 322.

Journal of Economic Literature, September, 2005, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 905.

Journal of Southern History, February, 2007, Steven A. Reich, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 211.

Labor History, November, 2006, Clive Webb, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses, p. 596.

ONLINE

Department of History University of Wisconsin-Madison Web site,http://history.wisc.edu/ (August 22, 2008), faculty profile of author.

H-Net: Humanities and Social Sciences Online,http://www.h-net.org/ (October, 2005), Robert Cassanello, review of The Tribe of Black Ulysses.

Nation,http://www.thenation.com/ (February 22, 2008), brief profile of author.

University of Illinois Press Web site,http://www.press.uillinois.edu/ (August 22, 2008), description of The Tribe of Black Ulysses.

University of Wisconsin,http://www.uwm.edu/ (February 22, 2008), faculty listing for author.