Fall 2024 Katz Distinguished Lecture

James N. Gregory is a professor of History and former Harry Bridges Chair of Labor Studies and former president of the Labor and Working-Class Studies Association (LAWCHA). He is author or editor of four books and many articles. American Exodus: The Dust Bowl Migration and Okie Culture in California (1989) won the Ray Allen Billington Prize from the Organization of American Histories and the Annual Book Award from the Pacific Coast Branch of the American Historical Association. The Southern Diaspora: How the Great Migrations of Black and White Southerners Transformed America (2005) won the Philip Taft Labor History Book Prize. Recent publications focus on social movements and the political geography of American radicalism including the centennial edition of The Seattle General Strike (2019), authored by Robert L. Friedheim with an introduction, photo essay, and afterword by James N. Gregory.

Other recent work involves digital public history. The Civil Rights & Labor History Consortium brings together 14 online projects with more than 1,200 separate pages - featuring articles, video oral histories, maps, and thousands of photos and documents. The Consortium has been widely used by scholars, news media, and in classrooms at many levels. It has recorded more than 15 million page views and includes the award-winning Seattle Civil Rights & Labor History Project, the Mapping American Social Movements Project, and the America’s Great Migrations Project. The newest enterprise is the Racial Restrictive Covenants Project which has documented more than 50,000 properties in hundreds of neighborhoods in Washington State that were legally restricted on the basis of race and sometimes religion. The research helped inspire a pioneering new reparations law that soon will provide compensation to victims of racist housing discrimination in Washington state.