Davis, Colin J. 1954-

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Davis, Colin J. 1954-

PERSONAL:

Born 1954. Education: State University of New York at Binghamton, Ph.D.

ADDRESSES:

CAREER:

Writer, educator. University of Alabama at Birmingham (UAB), assistant professor, 1991-97, associate professor, 1997-2002; professor of history, 2002—.

AWARDS, HONORS:

UAB Alumni/Ellen Greg Ingalls Teaching Award, 1997; National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship, 1999.

WRITINGS:

Power at Odds: The 1922 National Railroad Shopmen's Strike, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1997.

(Editor, with Edwin L. Brown) It Is Union and Liberty: Alabama Coal Miners and the UMW, University of Alabama Press (Tuscaloosa, AL), 1999.

(Editor, with Sam Davies and others) Dock Workers: International Explorations in Comparative Labour History, 1790-1970, Ashgate Publishing (Aldershot, Hampshire, England), 2000.

Waterfront Revolts: New York and London Dockworkers, 1946-61, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 2003.

Contributor of articles to journals, including Labour History Review, Catholic Historical Review, and the London Journal, and to books, including Waterfront Workers: New Perspectives on Race and Class, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1998; and Racializing Class, Classifying Race: Labour and Difference in the United States, Britain, and Africa, Macmillan (London, England), 1999.

SIDELIGHTS:

A professor specializing in late nineteenth- and twentieth-century U.S. labor and social history, Colin J. Davis is also the author or editor of several books describing and analyzing strikes in the railroad, mining, and shipping industries. His 1997 title, Power at Odds: The 1922 National Railroad Shopmen's Strike, investigates one of the largest industrial actions ever to take place in the United States, the railroad shopmen's strike, which involved over four hundred thousand workers. "The story of this strike is not simple, and Davis provides an account that does justice to its complexity," wrote Shelton Stromquist in the Business History Review. Having made progress on wages and benefits during the course of World War I and the wartime nationalization of the industry, these shop workers, as opposed to operators of the machinery, lost ground once the rails returned to private control. The private owners also embarked on a campaign to eradicate the unions that had organized the shop workers. Thus these workers decided to strike in protest, beginning on July 21, 1922. Ultimately, though, the strike ended in a defeat that rocked organized labor in the United States.

Reviewers found much to like in Davis's study. Stromquist noted: "This study provides a carefully detailed account of the strike and its aftermath. Davis examines the course of strike action and government intervention at both national and local levels." The same reviewer went on to comment, "Davis effectively analyzes the fracture lines within each of the contending interests," and further noted that the author "has written a valuable account of an important strike." Similarly, Robert Bussel, writing in the Industrial and Labor Relations Review, concluded that Power at Odds was an "important study," and that "Davis skillfully documents the changing relationships among labor, capital, and the state that foreshadowed the course of industrial relations during the 1920s." James R. Barrett, writing in Labor History, felt that "Davis is particularly strong on the role of federal policy." This vacillated from the war years under President Woodrow Wilson, when the Railway Labor Act helped establish fair wage and working conditions, to the postwar years of the "red scare," when President Warren G. Harding strongly backed the private corporations against striking workers. Journal of Social History contributor Walter Licht praised particularly Davis's "impressive research in government archives, [which] provides an extraordinary look into the inner workings of the Harding administration." Further praise came from Railway Age contributor Gus Welty, who concluded, "Colin Davis has done an exhaustive job of covering this brief period in rail labor history, and it's an interesting read."

In his 2003 Waterfront Revolts: New York and London Dockworkers, 1946-61, Davis continues his study of industrial action or strikes, this time turning to shipping in both the United States and England after World War II. As William Kenefick noted in the Journal of British Studies, during the decade following the war, dockworkers on both sides of the Atlantic "entered into an extended period of militant industrial action that brought them into direct conflict with employers, trade union leadership, and government." Kenefick praised Davis's "innovative comparative study of two leading waterfront occupational communities," noting that "Davis seeks to expand our understanding of political choice by employing a comparative framework to study two analogous work forces albeit in different national and cultural contexts during the emerging cold war period." Peter Turnbull, writing in Labour/Le Travail, also found the book worthwhile, observing, "Davis offers a more refined analysis of time (1946-61) and place (the great city ports of New York and London) than many earlier accounts, using the comparative method to identify the structural and cultural forces that lay behind the emergence of rank-and-file dockworker movements." Turnbull further commented, "The end result is a compelling account."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Business History Review, spring, 1999, Shelton Stromquist, review of Power at Odds: The 1922National Railroad Shopmen's Strike, p. 124.

Industrial and Labor Relations Review, April, 1998, Robert Bussel, review of Power at Odds, p. 543.

Journal of British Studies, July, 2005, William Kenefick, review of Waterfront Revolts: New York and London Dockworkers, 1946-61, p. 629.

Journal of Social History, winter, 1999, Walter Licht, review of Power at Odds, p. 478.

Journal of Southern History, November, 2001, Eric Arnesen, review of It Is Union and Liberty: Alabama Coal Miners and the UMW, p. 894.

Labor History, August, 1999, James R. Barrett, review of Power at Odds, p. 402.

Labor Studies Journal, summer, 1999, Marcus Widenor, review of Power at Odds, p. 97.

Labour/Le Travail, fall, 1998, Nolan Reilly, review of Power at Odds, p. 275; spring, 2005, Peter Turnbull, review of Waterfront Revolts, p. 276.

Railway Age, August, 1997, Gus Welty, review of Power at Odds, p. 71.

Trains Magazine, January, 1998, George H. Drury, review of Power at Odds, p. 80.