About

James Gregory is a professor of History at the University of Washington and a former director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1983. His research and teaching focus on four main aspects of 20th century United States history: labor history, particularly the history of American radicalism; regionalism, with emphasis on the West and the South; race and civil rights history; and migration within the United States. Gregory is the author of notable works including 'American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California,' which received the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the OAH and the Annual Book Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the AHA, and 'The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America,' which won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize. His recent publications include an edited volume on the Seattle General Strike and an essay on American radicalism titled 'Remapping the American Left: A History of Radical Discontinuity.' Gregory's current work centers on American social movements and the political geography of radicalism, exemplified by the Mapping American Social Movements Project, which produces interactive maps and visualizations of various social movements that have influenced American life and politics during the 20th century. He is actively involved in digital and public history, directing projects such as the Civil Rights and Labor History Consortium, which includes initiatives like the Seattle Civil Rights and Labor History Project and the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project, the latter of which has identified over 80,000 properties marked by racist deed provisions and restrictive covenants, contributing to legislative efforts for redress. Gregory has received numerous awards for his scholarship and public engagement, including the John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice from the American Historical Association in 2024.

Research topics

• Political Science
• Law
• History
• Computer Science
• Sociology
• Psychology
• Art
• Art history
• Social psychology
• Political economy

Selected publications

• Execution, State and Society in England, 1660–1900

  The Journal of Legal History · 2025-09-02

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• When socialists win Democratic primaries: Will Zohran Mamdani be haunted by the Upton Sinclair effect?

  2025-07-29

  article1st authorCorresponding
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• Review: <i>Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend</i>, by Robert W. Cherny

  Pacific Historical Review · 2024

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Computer Science
  • History

  Book Review| February 01 2024 Review: Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend, by Robert W. Cherny Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend. By Robert W. Cherny. (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 2023. 504 pp.) James Gregory James Gregory University of Washington Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2024) 93 (1): 143–145. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2024.93.1.143 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn Email Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James Gregory; Review: Harry Bridges: Labor Radical, Labor Legend, by Robert W. Cherny. Pacific Historical Review 1 February 2024; 93 (1): 143–145. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2024.93.1.143 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search I usually don’t like biographies. But this one is special. Harry Bridges was one of the most influential labor leaders of the twentieth century. Founding president of the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU), which since 1934 has basically controlled west coast ports from San Diego to Alaska and Hawai‘i, he defied the Taft-Hartley Act and the Justice Department, demonstrating that left-wing unionism could survive the Cold War red scare. The union he led for thirty-two years remains today a model of militant, progressive unionism and continues to play an important role in the politics of west coast cities. Robert Cherny’s masterful book is more than a traditional biography. It is as much a history of the ILWU and of west coast labor radicalism as it is a story of one man. Cherny began the project in 1985 with the cooperation of Bridges and his family. Things later became complicated,... You do not currently have access to this content.

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• Neighbours, Distrust and the State: What the Poorer Working Class in Britain Felt about Government and Each Other, 1860s to 1930s, by Marc Brodie

  The English Historical Review · 2024-02-01

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  Journal Article Neighbours, Distrust and the State: What the Poorer Working Class in Britain Felt about Government and Each Other, 1860s to 1930s, by Marc Brodie Get access Neighbours, Distrust and the State: What the Poorer Working Class in Britain Felt about Government and Each Other, 1860s to 1930s, by Marc Brodie (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2022; pp. 213. £65). James Gregory James Gregory University of Plymouth, UK james.r.gregory@plymouth.ac.uk Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The English Historical Review, ceae034, https://doi.org/10.1093/ehr/ceae034 Published: 01 March 2024

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• Okies and the Politics of Plain-Folk Americanism

  University of California Press eBooks · 2023 · 1 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • History
  • Political Science
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• INTRODUCTION

  2023-09-01

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• A summer of protest, unemployment and presidential politics – welcome to 1932

  2020-07-01

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• Review: Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905–1924, by Heather Mayer

  Pacific Historical Review · 2020-01-01

  article1st authorCorresponding

  Book Review| July 03 2020 Review: Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905–1924, by Heather Mayer Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905–1924. By Heather Mayer. (Corvallis, Oregon State University Press, 2018. 204 pp.) James N. Gregory James N. Gregory University Of Washington Search for other works by this author on: This Site PubMed Google Scholar Pacific Historical Review (2020) 89 (3): 434–435. https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2020.89.3.434 Views Icon Views Article contents Figures & tables Video Audio Supplementary Data Peer Review Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Tools Icon Tools Get Permissions Cite Icon Cite Search Site Citation James N. Gregory; Review: Beyond the Rebel Girl: Women and the Industrial Workers of the World in the Pacific Northwest, 1905–1924, by Heather Mayer. Pacific Historical Review 3 July 2020; 89 (3): 434–435. doi: https://doi.org/10.1525/phr.2020.89.3.434 Download citation file: Ris (Zotero) Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All ContentPacific Historical Review Search This content is only available via PDF. © 2020 by the Pacific Coast Branch, American Historical Association2020 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.

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• A History of America in Ten Strikes by Erik Loomis

  Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas · 2020-08-24

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  The title says it all, if one reads it carefully. This is not really a book about strikes but instead a history of the United States centered on political economy and class struggle. In ten chapters, Erik Loomis moves generation by generation from the 1820s to the present, anchoring each in the story of a famous strike. It is a clever and effective narrative strategy, and the result is a book that offers a compelling introduction to American labor and working-class history and might serve well in undergraduate classes. It is even more appropriate for labor educators and unions looking for a concise way to explore the vital and exciting history of labor struggles.That seems to be what Loomis has in mind. “We cannot fight against pro-capitalist mythology in American society if we do not know our shared history of class struggle” (5), he explains, following with a prescription: “This book argues for two interlocking necessities for workers to succeed in the past, present, and future. First, workers have to organize collectively to fight employers” (5). The second proposition is perhaps more controversial. Workers must use the ballot box, win elections, and secure governmental support, or at least neutrality. “There is simply no evidence from American history that unions can succeed if the government and employers combine to crush them” (7).Loomis weaves this thesis, subtly, into a narrative that spans almost two centuries, beginning with the development of American manufacturing capitalism in the first half of the nineteenth century and centering Lowell Mill girls’ strikes of the 1830s and 1840s. He discusses the general strike of self-emancipated African Americans during the Civil War, in which he emphasizes how mass action in the right context can have enormous consequences. In a chapter on the Gilded Age and the eight-hour movement, Loomis demonstrates the violent capacity of capital to suppress workers and resist reform. Then, he turns to the twentieth century, with two famous Progressive Era confrontations involving coal miners and textile workers. Here, he begins to explore the importance of politics and government, arguing that the combination of worker militance and progressive office holders “transformed the conversation about worker rights. American society became a little fairer” (91).In a book that records mostly defeats, the New Deal arrives like a burst of sunshine carrying both a message of hope and his argument about strategy. “Anyone trying to organize a movement today should take three lessons from the workers of the 1930s. . . . First, a small group of people can accomplish amazing things. Second, you never know when a small movement will become a mass movement.” Third, you need to elect “allies to office” (113). The chapter then ranges widely through the politics of the 1930s, while featuring the 1937 Flint sit-down strike that brought General Motors to the bargaining table. The remaining chapters record the collapsing potential of unions in the decades since the start of the Cold War. While, like the entire book, they are based on secondary sources, these chapters feature confrontations that are less well known than those in the early chapters. He tells the story of the 1946 Oakland general strike, using that struggle to show how labor’s internal divisions weakened the movement even before the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act. The Lordstown GM strike of 1972 becomes the setting for discussions of the Black Freedom and New Left uprisings, while the air traffic controller’s defeat in 1981 provides a focus for the Reagan era. There is a whiff of optimism in his final chapter, which uses the Los Angeles Justice for Janitors campaign of the 1990s to explore the activism of immigrant workers and the rise of the Service Employees International Union.This ambitious, fast-moving narrative works because of Loomis’s talent as a writer. Each chapter surveys the changing context of capitalism and worker’s lives and struggles while paying attention to race, sometimes gender, and the reshaping of government and politics. But the pace imposes costs. Although each chapter is named for a strike, few of the confrontations are described in much detail, typically earning only three to five pages in the middle of a chapter. Readers who open the book expecting rich accounts of any of the ten strikes will be disappointed. I thought initially that this book was intended to replace Jeremy Brecher’s Strike! (1972). It shares much with that 1972 classic: its readability, its intense focus on collective action by ordinary workers, and its belief that labor history is cumulative, that the struggles and defeats of one generation become building blocks for the next and that continuing that effort should one day lead history in the right direction. Brecher’s book, however, is more clearly about strikes. Brecher explores them in detail and analytically, but Loomis does not. What is a strike? How is it distinguished from other forms of protest? What kinds of strikes have political implications, or historical implications? Loomis clarifies none of this.Brecher and Loomis differ, too, in their understanding of politics and the state. Writing from a New Left perspective, Brecher emphasized the coercive dimensions of a state subservient to corporate capitalism, arguing that mass insurgency is the answer to worker exploitation, while the Wagner Act and the liberal New Deal/Great Society regimes undermined workers’ power by channeling it into bureaucratic collective bargaining. Decades later, that argument seems incomplete, and I am drawn toward Loomis’s assertion that winning elections is critical. But I wish he had explained and justified that claim. This is a valuable book for those who are looking for a quick and passionate introduction to the history of workers and struggles for justice. It would be more valuable if Loomis had added a more analytical conclusion and made the effort to define terms, explain the dynamics and potentials of strikes, and justify his arguments.

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• Remapping the American Left

  Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas · 2020 · 4 citations

  1st authorCorresponding
  • Political Science
  • Sociology
  • Political economy

  Is the Left reemerging as a political force? If we are indeed seeing a new phase of American radicalism, it would not be the first time. Based on insights from the online Mapping American Social Movements Project, this essay reframes the history of American radicalism by paying close attention to the singular fact that for the last century the Left has consisted solely of shifting constellations of social movements without the anchoring presence of a competitive left-wing electoral party. As a result, the American Left has been uniquely unstable. Its organizations come and go, flourishing for a time then withering, only to be replaced at some later point by a new Left based in different organizations, often with different demography, geography, and ideological agendas. This article maps five distinct left constellations over the past century and explores the question of how American radicalism has repeatedly reconstituted itself absent the supportive institutional apparatus of an electoral party.

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Frequent coauthors

• Albert G. Bodine

  2 shared

• Bill C. Malone

  1 shared

• Gloria Ricci Lothrop

  1 shared

• Jon C. Teaford

  1 shared

• Anthony Harkins

  1 shared

• Gerald D. Nash

  1 shared

• Christopher Tomlins

  1 shared

• Erasmo Gamboa

  1 shared

Awards & honors

• John Lewis Award for History and Social Justice (2024)
• Barclay Simpson Prize for Scholarship in Public (2015)
• Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer,…
• James D. Clowes Award for the Advancement of Learning Commun…
• Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize (2006)