Honey, Michael K. (Michael Keith Honey)

PERSONAL:

Married Patti Krueger (a music professor). Education: Oakland University, B.A., 1969; Howard University, M.A., 1978; Northern Illinois University, Ph.D., 1988.

ADDRESSES:

Office—Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, University of Washington, Tacoma, 1900 Commerce St., Tacoma, WA 98402-3100. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Historian, educator, and writer. Oakland University Observer, Rochester, MI, editor, 1968-69; Southern Conference Educational Fund, Louisville, KY, field worker, 1969-70; National Committee against Repressive Legislation, Memphis, TN, southern director, 1970-76; Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, lecturer, 1980-81; National Archives, Washington, DC, consultant, 1981-87; University of Maryland, College Park, lecturer, 1984-86; Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, lecturer, 1987-88; University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA, visiting faculty member, 1988-89; University of Washington, Tacoma, faculty member, 1990—, appointed Fred T. and Dorothy G. Haley Endowed Professorship in the Humanities, Harry Bridges Endowed Chair of Labor Studies, 2000-04.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Freedom History Project, University of Maryland, 1981-82; Charles Thomson Prize, Organization of American Historians and the National Archives, 1986, for "The War within the Confederacy, White Unionists of North Carolina"; American Council of Learned Societies grant-in-aid, 1989; Junior External Fellow, Stanford Humanities Center, 1989-90; College Teacher Fellow, National Endowment for the Humanities, 1989-90; Herbert Gutman Prize, University of Illinois Press, 1993-94, for Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; James A. Rawley Prize, Organization of American Historians; Charles Sydnor Prize, Southern Historical Association; National Humanities Center research fellow, 1995-96; Murray Morgan Award, Tacoma Public Library, 2000-2001, for Black Workers Remember; Huntington Library research fellow, 2000; National Endowment for the Humanities faculty fellowship, 2004-05; Washington Writer's (Governor's) Award, Seattle Public Library; Lillian Smith Award, Southern Regional Council; H.L. Mitchell Award, Southern Historical Association.

WRITINGS:

(Author of introduction) Records of Impeachment, National Archives and Records Administration/ National Archives Trust Fund Board (Washington, DC), 1987.

Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers, University of Illinois Press (Urbana, IL), 1993.

(As Micheal Keith Honey) Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle, University of California Press (Berkeley, CA), 1999.

Going down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, Norton (New York, NY), 2007.

Manuscript reviewer for the University of North Carolina Press, University of Florida Press, University of Alabama Press, University of Washington Press, Palgrave Macmillan, Journal of Southern History, Journal of American History, and International Journal of Social History (Netherlands).

SIDELIGHTS:

Michael K. Honey is an historian who teaches African-American and U.S. history and labor studies. He also specializes in the life and work of Martin Luther King, Jr. In Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers, Honey explores and presents a case study that focuses on the organization of workers in Memphis, Tennessee. He begins by discussing a strike by both black and white dockworkers on the Mississippi River in 1939 which resulted in a victory in terms of wages and benefits but did little to promote black leadership in the unions and even led to violent recriminations against blacks. Racial issues and discrimination were used in the 1940s to try to break the unions. Honey then chronicles how the union movement became involved with the Civil Rights movement, concluding with the assassination of Martin Luther King in 1968.

"This is a well-researched and carefully written book," noted Clayton Brown in a review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights for the Mississippi Quarterly. "The documentation is overwhelmingly primary with a large amount of archival and manuscript material." Wendy Mataya, writing in the Labor Studies Journal, noted: "The black civil rights movement and the labor movement have always been closely connected, but rarely examined in such a thorough and thoughtful manner."

Honey once again looks at labor struggles and the Civil Rights movement in Going down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Cam-paign. This time, the author focuses on a 1968 sanitation workers strike in Memphis that lasted for more than two months. The author details how noted Civil Rights leader Martin Luther King, Jr., battled inner turmoil stemming from FBI harassment and his own growing friction with black militants. Nevertheless, King worked hard to inspire the striking workers into holding out for what would then become the highest-paying contract for sanitation workers anywhere in the South. As he tells the story, Honey profiles many of the leaders involved in the strike and the city politicians who opposed them.

"Honey's analysis of King's role is sharp and telling," wrote Charles R. Cross in the Seattle Times. San Francisco Chronicle contributor Rick Ayers noted: "Honey draws in clear detail all the complexities of working-class organizing: the legacy of slavery and the sharecropping system, the white unions that kept out African Americans, the violence of the Ku Klux Klan, local politicians and police." In the Washington Post, Kevin Boyle wrote: "Though Honey recounts these events [the assassination of King and the following riots that ended in forty-three deaths and approximately 2,000 arrests] in chilling detail, he refuses to cast the strike in tragic tones." A Publishers Weekly contributor commented that the author "vividly captures many dramatic moments, including marches and sermons."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Scholar, summer, 1993, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers; spring, 1995, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights.

Book World, January 14, 2007, "King's Last Mission. The Civil Rights Movement Was Changed Forever by a 1968 Showdown That Ended in Tragedy," p. 4.

Choice, November, 1993, H. Harris, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 502.

Journal of American Ethnic History, fall, 2001, Melvyn Dubofsky, review of Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle.

Journal of American History, September, 1994, Bruce Nelson, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 776.

Journal of Economic History, March, 1995, William A. Sundstrom, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 193.

Journal of Economic Literature, March, 1994, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 265.

Journal of Southern History, November, 1994, Peter Rachleff, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 836.

Labor History, fall, 1994, Peter B. Levy, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights.

Labor Studies Journal, spring, 1995, Wendy Mataya, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights.

Library Journal, June 1, 1993, Harry Frumerman, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 152; December 1, 2006, Karl Helicher, review of Going down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike: Martin Luther King's Last Campaign, p. 139.

Mississippi Quarterly, winter, 1995, Clayton Brown, review of Southern Labor History and Black Civil Rights.

Monthly Labor Review, January, 1994, B.J. Widick, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 73.

New York Review of Books, June 8, 1995, George M. Fredrickson, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 33.

Publishers Weekly, December 4, 2006, review of Going down Jericho Road, p. 48.

Reference & Research Book News, May, 2007, review of Going down Jericho Road.

San Francisco Chronicle, January 17, 2007, Rick Ayers, review of Going down Jericho Road.

Seattle Times, January 12, 2007, Charles R. Cross, review of Going down Jericho Road.

Urban History Review, March, 1995, Peter Rachleff, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 60.

Washington Post, January 14, 2007, Kevin Boyle, review of Going down Jericho Road, p. BW04.

Work and Occupations, February, 1995, Larry J. Griffin, review of Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, p. 85.

ONLINE

History News Network,http://hnn.us/ (March 21, 2007), Robin Lindley, "Michael Honey: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Memphis Strike," interview with author.

University of Washington Tacoma Web site,http://faculty.washington.edu/ (August 21, 2007), faculty profile of author.