| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.3 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Timothy P. Lynch. Strike Songs of the Depression. (American Made Music Series.) Jackson: University Press of Mississippi. 2001. Pp. xi, 170. $38.00.

Trying to understand the motivations and actions of the working class during the Depression era is a complex yet rewarding endeavor. To paint an accurate portrait of the people who labored among what is generally called the working class involves many types of analyses: who they were, what defined them, what strategies they employed, how they viewed success or failure, what institutional agencies assisted or prevented their legitimation? Timothy P. Lynch uses the workers' own songs—ones constructed during the moment of crisis—as a means to understand some of these questions. As primary source documents, the songs examined define the moment of conflict and outline the goals, fears, and frustrations of the American working class during the crisis years of the Great Depression. 1

Lynch uses the songs generated from strikes at Gastonia, Harlan County, and Flint. While they represent three different industries (textile, coal, and automobile) and different times (1929, 1931, 1936–1937), they are united by the central role song played in the struggle. In the Gastonia, North Carolina, textile strike, many of the songs came from women like Ella May, who saw theirs as a dual struggle between breadwinner and caregiver. Songs like "Mill Mother's Lament" and "The Big Fat Boss and the Workers" reflected the difficulties of leaving children behind to labor for wages that made raising them nearly impossible. May's songs and those by others suggested that only through collective action could the exploitation of the worker end. She was killed and the strike lost. . . .

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