SUGGS, George G(raham), Jr. 1929-

PERSONAL:

Born October 17, 1929, in Bladenboro, NC; son of George Graham and Carrie Melissa (Edwards) Suggs; married Helen Virginia Kindall (a teacher), May 15, 1954; children: George Owen, Ellen Suzanne Suggs Mortimer, Regina Beth Suggs McKay, Lorrie Melissa Suggs Edwards. Ethnicity: "Caucasian." Education: Attended Wake Forest College (now University), 1947-49; University of Colorado—Boulder, B.A., 1955, M.A., 1957, Ph.D., 1964; also attended Northwestern University, 1959-60, and Brown University, 1980-81. Politics: Democrat. Religion: Methodist. Hobbies and other interests: Reading, travel, fishing.

ADDRESSES:

Home—2537 Tulip Lane, Cape Girardeau, MO 63701. E-mail—[email protected].

CAREER:

Worked as a high school history teacher in Whiteville and Charlotte, NC, 1949-61; Southeast Missouri State University, Cape Girardeau, assistant professor, 1964-67, associate professor, 1967-69, professor of history, 1969-95, professor emeritus, 1995—. Military service: U.S. Air Force, 1951-53.

MEMBER:

American Association of University Professors, Organization of American Historians, National Education Association, Missouri State Teachers Association.

AWARDS, HONORS:

Fellow of John Hay Whitney Foundation, 1959-60, and National Endowment for the Humanities, 1980-81; "best book" award, Missouri Conference on History, 1986, for Union Busting in the Tri-State: The Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri Metal Workers' Strike of 1935; "best article" award, State Historical Society of Missouri, 1993, for "Child Labor in the Tiff Mines of Washington County, Missouri."

WRITINGS:

Colorado's War on Militant Unionism: James H. Peabody and the Western Federation of Miners, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 1972, reprinted, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1991.

(Editor) Perspectives on the American Revolution: A Bicentennial Contribution, Southern Illinois University Press (Carbondale, IL), 1977.

Union Busting in the Tri-State: The Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri Metal Workers' Strike of 1935, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1986.

Water Mills of the Missouri Ozarks, illustrated by Jake Wells, University of Oklahoma Press (Norman, OK), 1990.

"My World Is Gone:" Memories of Life in a Southern Cotton Mill Town, Wayne State University Press (Detroit, MI), 2002.

(Interviewer and editor) Rush Hudson Limbaugh and His Times: Reflections on a Life Well Lived, Southeast Missouri State University Press (Cape Girardeau, MO), 2003.

Contributor of articles and reviews to journals, including Missouri Historical Review, Labor History, Western Historical Quarterly, Journal of the West, Colorado, and Missouri Life.

WORK IN PROGRESS:

Two novels, Shady Grove and Talking to the Dead and Other Tales.

SIDELIGHTS:

George G. Suggs, Jr., told CA: "I have always had an interest in writing, an interest that was enhanced by undergraduate and graduate courses at Wake Forest University and the University of Colorado—Boulder. At the latter institution, graduate study in history consisted principally of research seminars that required written papers. There necessity joined interest as a motivator. Furthermore, the graduate faculty (for example, Robert Athearn and Hal Bridges) then strongly encouraged students to publish, pointing out that it was the principal means of advancement into an institution of one's choice and also necessary if one wished to become a professional historian. Most of my fellow graduate students in history at the University of Colorado learned that lesson well.

"Having come from a working-class background, my professional interests naturally turned toward labor history, a relatively new field at the time. While in graduate school, in seminar papers and dissertation I explored the emergence of the Western Federation of Miners and its labor troubles in Colorado's mining camps during the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, studies that culminated in a book in 1972. Later, my research focused on the labor troubles during the mid-1930s between the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers Union and mining companies in the tri-state region of Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri, an area that for a while produced much of the world's lead and zinc. This resulted in another book published in 1986. More recently, my interests shifted to the textile workers of the 1930s and 1940s who lived and labored in the small southern town where I grew up. Consequently, I published another book concerning life among these workers in 2002. I suppose it was because my father worked in the mills that this became the principal inspiration for my publications in labor history."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

American Historical Review, December, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State: The Oklahoma, Kansas, and Missouri Metal Workers' Strike of 1935, p. 1296.

Business History Review, winter, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 633.

Choice, March, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 1142.

Historian, November, 1989, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 133.

History: Reviews of New Books, January, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 71.

Journal of American History, June, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 214.

Journal of Economic History, September, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 846.

Journal of Southern History, February, 1988, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 134.

Southwest Review, spring, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 272.

University Press Book News, March, 1991, review of Water Mills of the Missouri Ozarks, p. 47.

Western Historical Quarterly, October, 1987, review of Union Busting in the Tri-State, p. 466.