Jane Berger, Moravian University, Receives 2022 David Montgomery Award from the Organization of American Historians  

OAH

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE April 6, 2022
Contact: Elisabeth Marsh
Office: 812.855.9864 | E-mail: emarsh@oah.org

BLOOMINGTON, IN—The Organization of American Historians (OAH) today announced that Jane Berger, Moravian University, is the recipient of the OAH’s 2022 David Montgomery Award, which is given annually with co-sponsorship by the Labor and Working-Class History Association (LAWCHA) for the best book on a topic in American labor and working-class history. The Award was announced during the OAH’s 2022 Conference on American History.

Berger’s book, A New Working Class: The Legacies of Public-Sector Employment in the Civil Rights Movement (University of Pennsylvania Press), chronicles the struggles of Baltimore’s lowest-paid municipal workers to remake their city into a haven of Black working-class strength in the 1960s and 1970s. 

Berger

Jane Berger tells the inspiring—and timely—story of African American women and men working in the public sector who used their unions to challenge racism and efforts by elites to destroy the last vestiges of the New Deal and the War on Poverty. A New Working Class dramatically expands our understanding of the importance of social movements and civil rights unionism as counterweights to neoliberalism and austerity politics. Berger explains how government and business leaders’ promotion of privatization, mass incarceration, and enhanced police budgets fueled racial and wealth inequalities that gave rise decades later to Black Lives Matter.

For the full list of OAH 2022 award and prize recipients, please visit the OAH website.

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Founded in 1907, the Organization of American Historians (OAH) is the largest professional organization dedicated to the teaching and study of United States history. The mission of the organization is to promote excellence in the scholarship, teaching, and presentation of American history, and to encourage wide discussion of historical questions and the equitable treatment of all practitioners of history. The OAH represents more than 6,000 historians working in the United States and abroad. Members include college and university professors, precollegiate teachers, archivists, museum curators, public historians, students, and a variety of scholars employed in government and the private sector.

The OAH is located in Bloomington, Indiana, and is an external agency of Indiana University. Visit us at www.oah.org.

 

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