No Right to an Honest Living, Jacqueline Jones
No Right to an Honest Living, Jacqueline Jones
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No Right to an Honest Living
The Struggles of Boston’s Black Workers in the Civil War Era

Author: Jacqueline Jones

Narrator: Leon Nixon

Unabridged: 17 hr 11 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 08/27/2024


Synopsis

WINNER OF THE PULITZER PRIZE IN HISTORY A “sensitive, immersive, and exhaustive” portrait of Black workers and white hypocrisy in nineteenth-century Boston, from “a gifted practitioner of labor history and urban history,” (Tiya Miles, National Book Award-winning author of All That She Carried). Impassioned antislavery rhetoric made antebellum Boston famous as the nation’s hub of radical abolitionism. In fact, the city was far from a beacon of equality. In No Right to an Honest Living, historian Jacqueline Jones reveals how Boston was the United States writ small—a place where the soaring rhetoric of egalitarianism was easy, but justice in the workplace was elusive. Before, during, and after the Civil War, white abolitionists and Republicans refused to secure equal employment opportunities for Black Bostonians, condemning most of them to poverty. Still, Jones finds, some Black entrepreneurs ingeniously created their own jobs and forged their own career paths.
 
Highlighting the everyday struggles of ordinary Black workers, this book shows how injustice in the workplace prevented Boston—and the United States—from securing true equality for all.

About Jacqueline Jones

Jacqueline Jones is the Ellen C. Temple Professor of Women’s History Emerita at the University of Texas at Austin and the past president of the American Historical Association. Winner of the Bancroft Prize for Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow and a recipient of the Pulitzer Prize in History, she lives in Concord, Massachusetts.

About Leon Nixon

Leon Nixon is a Los Angeles based voice actor who has narrated audiobook titles in a wide range of genres, including crime, mystery, science fiction, romance, and nonfiction. Classically trained as an actor and improviser, he can also be found performing on stage.


Reviews

Goodreads review by Lois on September 06, 2024

4.5 Stars Rounded Up This audiobook was made available for me to listen to and review by Jacqueline Jones, Dreamscape Media, and NetGalley. This was excellent, respectful, knowledgeable, well-sourced, and interesting. It mostly avoids focusing on the more harrowing aspects of slavery in the Antebellum......more

Goodreads review by Don on June 28, 2024

This close look at Boston pre-Civil War digs deep into the time period as seen through the eyes of the freed arriving slaves. Their struggles and many successes are uplifting accounts of human perseverance. Anyone who knows the geography of Boston will also appreciate learning of the West End of Bea......more

Goodreads review by Michael on May 16, 2024

I had been eyeing this book, but I thought I might wait until it came out in paperback. It just won the Pulitzer Prize for history. That was enough to convince me to check it out. This is a history of black workers in Boston from 1850 to 1875. During this period Blacks represented about 2% of Boston'......more

Goodreads review by William on September 08, 2024

Good history almost ruined with the flawed logic of the author. At one point Jones laments that so much care was given to Civil War wounded veterans because none of them were black. I think one ought to say that freed slaves AND the people who freed them with blood and valor and sacrifice should hav......more

Goodreads review by Sunny on October 12, 2024

I was sure I wouldn’t learn anything new as I have studied this part of America’s history extensively but I was wrong. This book is full of well researched and well paced and put together as some things happened at the same time, same day, same players in history crossing paths, ect. The narrative was......more


Quotes

“Superb...A brilliant exposé of hypocrisy in action, showing that anti-Black racism reigned on both sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.”