There's Always Work at the Post Office - by Philip F Rubio (Paperback)

About the Book

There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality

Book Synopsis

This book brings to life the important but neglected story of African American postal workers and the critical role they played in the U.S. labor and black freedom movements. Historian Philip Rubio, a former postal worker, integrates civil rights, labor, and left movement histories that too often are written as if they happened separately. Centered on New York City and Washington, D.C., the book chronicles a struggle of national significance through its examination of the post office, a workplace with facilities and unions serving every city and town in the United States.

Black postal workers -- often college-educated military veterans -- fought their way into postal positions and unions and became a critical force for social change. They combined black labor protest and civic traditions to construct a civil rights unionism at the post office. They were a major factor in the 1970 nationwide postal wildcat strike, which resulted in full collective bargaining rights for the major postal unions under the newly established U.S. Postal Service in 1971. In making the fight for equality primary, African American postal workers were influential in shaping today's post office and postal unions.

Review Quotes

"A major contribution. . . . While There's Always Work at the Post Office rests on the extensive and careful archival work that earned Rubio a Ph.D. at Duke University, it also incorporates the stories and voices of black workers that an activist history must include." -- XCP: Cross Cultural Poetics

"An excellent book covering the struggle of African Americans to find value as citizens through their work, and in the larger society. . . . An engaging piece." -- Oral History Review

"An impressive study. . . . This excellent book documents what postal work meant for many Americans. . . . Highly recommended."--CHOICE

"Rubio has crafted a scholarly and accessible exploration of a largely overlooked and extremely important history." -- Journal of Southern History

"Rubio reveals the outlines of a crucial, if overlooked, tradition in black labor and civil rights activism." -- Journal of American History

"Rubio's analysis of racial politics and workplace rights in the USPS, one of the largest employers in the United States, deserves a prominent place in a growing historiography on public sector workers . . . . [His] book mines new and necessary areas of study and points to the instrumental role black public workers played in the American labor and civil rights movements." -- American Historical Review

"Scholarly, richly detailed and heavily sourced. The timing of the book is especially propitious, given that the USPS is struggling to survive and African Americans make up so large a part of its workforce." -- Free Press

"Singlehandedly rescue[s] an important part of African American history. . . . A substantial achievement." -- Greensboro News & Record

About the Author

Philip F. Rubio is associate professor of history at North Carolina A&T State University in Greensboro and author of the award-winning A History of Affirmative Action, 1619-2000.