Letters to the Essex County Penitentiary
David Selden and the Fracturing of America
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9080243 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Jon Shelton (0000-0001-6290-8717, Oxford University Press (United Kingdom), corresponding author) |
| Year | 2014 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 135-155 |
| Publication date | 2014-09-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of Social History (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0022-4529 • E-ISSN: 1527-1897 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/jsh/shu037 |
| OpenAlex | W2104848963 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 1 |
| References cited | 10 |
This article examines the political and cultural debate over public sector strikes in the United States in the 1960s and 1970s through a close reading of letters sent to the President of the American Federation of Teachers, who had been imprisoned for violating an anti-strike injunction in 1970. These letters help us to understand the relationship between the public sector labor movement, fears of cultural and moral degeneration, and the decline of New Deal liberalism. The article argues that Selden, figuring prominently in a series of advertisements sponsored by the AFT, served as an empty vessel for many other national debates. First, the letters show how public discussions over the crises brought on by teacher strikes fractured the American political center from the ground up as much as—as some historians have argued—from the top-down. Second, responses to Selden’s imprisonment show how ideas about the legitimacy of unions changed during the tumultuous course of the late 1960s. Third, the often illegal action of striking by teachers led many to write to Selden that the United States was failing morally, and in a larger sense, culturally. Finally, the many advertisements defaced by newspaper readers and re-encoded with very different messages highlights a space in America’s “right turn” that has been under-examined in the historiography—the space in which the individual interacted with the mass media. Taken together, these letters provide a historical window into the moment in which the origins of a new politics and culture emerged in the United States.
Historiography · Legitimacy · Media studies · Newspaper · Political science · Politics · Sociology · American Political and Social Dynamics · History · Law · Political theory and Gramsci · Race, History, and American Society
| Unique citing works | 1 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,11 |
| Citation span | 2017 - 2017 (1) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |