Finalist, 2026 Leticia Woods Brown Book Prize - Association of Black Women Historians The story of one of the most influential labor leaders of the twentieth century reveals powerful lessons that still resonateAt the dawn of the twentieth century, Black girls and women faced a harsh career landscape. Domestic labor and sharecropping—which were the least regulated and lowest paying occupations for women in the US economy—were the few available ways for Black women a...

Winner of the 2020 Sarah A. Whaley Book Prize from the National Women's Studies AssociationPutting Their Hands on Race offers an important labor history of 19th and early 20th century Irish immigrant and US southern Black migrant domestic workers. Drawing on a range of archival sources, this intersectional study explores how these women were significant to the racial labor and citizenship politics of their time. Their migrations to northeastern cities chal...