As Labor Day approaches, people are looking forward to a three-day weekend and the end of summer " but fewer and fewer people understand the day's historical significance. A national holiday since 1894, Labor Day was initiated by the union movement to celebrate the American worker " and to highlight the size and political power of the unions themselves.
North Carolina State University associate professor Dr. David Zonderman is a recognized labor historian who can tell the story of Labor Day and the labor movement in the United States. Zonderman has worked on numerous projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the U.S. Department of Education, and has been published in the American Historical Review, Journal of American History, Reviews in American History, and Labor History.
Zonderman's upcoming book, "Uneasy Allies," focuses on labor reform organizations in nineteenth-century Boston. His first book, "Aspirations and Anxieties: New England Workers and the Mechanized Factory System, 1815-1850," was published by Oxford University Press in 1992.
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