Alex Lichtenstein, associate professor of history at Rice University who has written extensively about race relations in the labor movement, will discuss “Wages, Productivity, and the African Working Class: The 1973 Durban Strikes and the Crisis of South African Capitalism” on Thursday, November 2, at 6:30 p.m. at New York University’s Tamiment Library, 10th floor of the NYU Bobst Library, 70 Washington Square South. It is the second session of three in the Tamiment Seminar series. The event is free and open to the public; for further information, call 212.998.2428.

Lichtenstein is the author of Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South. His current research examines the interplay of the civil rights and labor movements during the 1940s as well as the history of black and “mixed” trade unions in South Africa under apartheid.

A pre-circulated paper on the topic on the topic of the seminar is available; individuals planning to attend this event may receive the paper by contacting Michael Nash at michael.nash@nyu.edu.


The Tamiment Library/Wagner Labor Archives at NYU is a unique center for scholarly research on the history and culture of American activism and labor. Tamiment’s many collections document the history of anarchist, communist, labor, radical, feminist, and socialist movements in the U.S. from the Civil War to the present.

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