Anniversaries always seem to be a good occasion to reevaluate the past and also to consider new beginnings. Over the last eight years conferences have been held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the New Deal and the CIO. More... more
Anniversaries always seem to be a good occasion to reevaluate the past and also to consider new beginnings. Over the last eight years conferences have been held to commemorate the fiftieth anniversary of the New Deal and the CIO. More recendy, the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission celebrated the one hundredth anniversary of the United Mine Workers of America by holding a con ference at the Eckley Miners' Village at which the papers published in this volume concerning the history of the anthracite coal miners of northeastern Pennsylvania were originally presented. Paradoxically, all these anniversary celebrations occurred during hard times for the events and institutions which they honored. That reality reminds me of the piece which the historian David Brody wrote for Dissent on the occasion of the Golden Anniversary of the CIO, an essay in which Brody compared the CIO to the Knights of Labor and asked whether or not the CIO would be remembered in his tory more for it...
