Karen Pastorello’s pathbreaking study is the first biography of Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the first scholarship to place this remarkable leader at the center of the founding of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America. Bridging the gap between progressive-era social feminists and labor feminists of the postwar era, Hillman worked to end race and class injustice and improve the quality of life for working women, even as she was overshadowed by her husband, union leader Sidney Hillman. Interweaving Hillman’s experiences as an Eastern European Jewish immigrant with a rich historical account of the founding and development of a key garment union, Pastorello reveals the prominent role of women labor activists both in the workplace and in the unions.

A Power among Them: Bessie Abramowitz Hillman and the Making of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (Working Class in American History)

Biographies & Memoirs

Pastorello, Karen

Community & Culture

University of Illinois Press

The Progressives: Activism and Reform in American Society, 1893 - 1917

The Progressives offers comprehensive coverage of the origins, evolution, and notable events that came to define the pivotal period of American history known as the Progressive Era. <ul>
<li>Offers a rich, in-depth analysis of who the progressives were and the process through which they identified and attacked social, economic, and political injustices</li> <li>Features an up-to-date synthesis of the literature of the field including comprehensive treatment of the role of women in the Progressive Movement</li> <li>Considers the movement’s enduring impact – and how its vision for a better society became transfixed in the American social consciousness and helped to create the modern welfare state</li> <li>Part of the well-respected American History series</li> <li>Integrates themes of class, race, ethnicity, and gender throughout, offering a concise and engaging account of a fascinating era in U.S. history that forever changed the relationship between a democratic government and its citizens</li> </ul>

History

Americas

Wiley/Blackwell

Women Will Vote celebrates the 2017 centenary of women’s right to full suffrage in New York State. Susan Goodier and Karen Pastorello highlight the activism of rural, urban, African American, Jewish, immigrant, and European American women, as well as male suffragists, both upstate and downstate, that led to the positive outcome of the 1917 referendum. Goodier and Pastorello argue that the popular nature of the women’s suffrage movement in New York State and the resounding success of the referendum at the polls relaunched suffrage as a national issue. If women had failed to gain the vote in New York, Goodier and Pastorello claim, there is good reason to believe that the passage and ratification of the Nineteenth Amendment would have been delayed. 
Women Will Vote makes clear how actions of New York’s patchwork of suffrage advocates heralded a gigantic political, social, and legal shift in the United States. Readers will discover that although these groups did not always collaborate, by working in their own ways toward the goal of enfranchising women they essentially formed a coalition. Together, they created a diverse social and political movement that did not rely solely on the motivating force of white elites and a leadership based in New York City. Goodier and Pastorello convincingly argue that the agitation and organization that led to New York women’s victory in 1917 changed the course of American history.

Women Will Vote: Winning Suffrage in New York State

Goodier, Susan

Three Hills

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Books by Pastorello, Karen