Trouble in Paradise: Labor Radicalism, Civil Rights, and the Politics of Anticommunism in Florida, 1940-1960

FAIN: FT-53509-05

Alex Lichtenstein
Rice University (Houston, TX 77005-1827)

A Summer Stipend will allow me to move towards completion of my book on Labor Radicalism, Civil Rights, and Anticommunism in Florida. The book examines the links between civil rights and industrial unionism in Florida during the 1940s. The study will consider the Cold War demise of this alliance, and the defeat of liberal Democratic Senator Claude Pepper in the infamous “Red Pepper” campaign of 1950. Pepper’s loss to an opponent able to associate him with communism, civil rights, and unions marked the end of an alternative trajectory for post-New Deal southern politics. As a case study, Trouble in Paradise will add an important chapter to the current reappraisal of the hidden links between the labor and civil rights movements.