Content:

Join us as we welcome Tejasvi Nagaraja and Gabriel Winant to the store for an conversation about Nagaraja's book Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America's World War II, the story of how the mass mobilization for World War II catalyzed the national and international political movements and conflicts of the postwar period.

In the popular imagination, World War II is perceived as the last great moment of national consensus, when the United States was united around the collective purpose of battling a clear enemy whose aim was global dominance. The government led an unprecedented mobilization, building an international military force through which the country soon became the preeminent world power. In the context of this mobilization, the military brought together disparate sectors of workers, all of whom were enmeshed in struggles over workers’ rights and civil rights in the wake of the Great Depression and New Deal.

In Troop Movements, Tejasvi Nagaraja explains how this mobilization for world war—involving soldiers and defense workers—provided an opportunity for entangled experiences and alliances across race, class, and global concerns. In the process, this anti-fascist mobilization and the reactions to it catalyzed the national and international political movements and conflicts of the postwar period. Many of these diverse war workers, Nagaraja contends, led a “greatest generation” of labor, Black freedom, and anti-imperial social struggles, which linked racial and economic and international issues. Their struggles took place from Pennsylvania to Panama, Georgia to Germany, Michigan to Manila.