WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Today we discuss the work of the late Noel Ignatiev using the memoir that has just been published by Charles H. Kerr. It’s called Acceptable Men: Life in the Largest Steel Mill in the World. That steel mill is the Gary Works of US Steel which was indeed the largest steel mill in the world in 1972, the year that Ignatiev began working there. The title of the memoir comes from Ecclesiastes chapter 2, verse 7: “For gold is tried in the fire, and acceptable men in the furnace of adversity.” That same chapter advises us not to make haste in a time of trouble. And I recommend that when you read Acceptable Men, that you spend some time with it. It’s brief and straightforward yet its deeper intentions are subtly revealed when you return to it and read it a second or third time. In other words, read it not in haste in our times of trouble.
Noel Ignatiev, who died in November of 2019, worked for over twenty years in steel mills, farm equipment plants, and machine tool and electrical parts factories. He was a prominent member of the Sojourner Truth Organization, co-founder and co-editor of Race Traitor: Journal of the New Abolitionism and the managing editor of Hard Crackers: Chronicles of Everyday Life. He was perhaps best known as the author of How the Irish Became White (Routledge, 1995) – a book that has been called “path-breaking” and “essential.”
The show features two guests.
John Garvey is a Brooklyn native and lifelong New York City resident who was a leading activist in the Taxi Rank & File Coalition in the 1970s. He then worked as an educator in New York City jails and headed the Teacher Academy and Collaborative Programs at the City University of New York. He is an editor of Insurgent Notes. He worked with Ignatiev as an editor of both Race Traitor and Hard Crackers.
Michael Staudenmaier is an assistant professor of history at Manchester University in North Manchester, Indiana. He teaches and writes about Chicago’s Puerto Rican community, and the role of race, racism, and antiracism in United States history. He’s the author of Truth and Revolution: A History of the Sojourner Truth Organization, 1969–1986, published by AK Press.
RELATED
A Life Defined by Political Engagement: Noel Ignatiev, 1940–2019, by John Garvey
Introduction to the United States: An Autonomist Political History by Noel Ignatin (Ignatiev)
Sojourner Truth Organization
A Revolutionary Left
Hard Crackers
Race Traitor
Unmade in America: The Wages of Factory Work (Interchange with Dave Ranney)
There Are No Accidents: The Business of Blaming the Worker (Interchange with Jonathan Karmel)
MUSIC – Uncle Tupelo
“Graveyard Shift” (No Depression)
“Factory Belt” (No Depression)
“Grindstone” (March 16–20, 1992)
“Discarded” (Still Feel Gone)
“True to Life” (Still Feel Gone)
ID “Sandusky” (March 16–20, 1992)
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Kade Young
