America’s Forgotten Holiday : : May Day and Nationalism, 1867-1960 / / Donna T. Haverty-Stacke.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter New York University Press Backlist eBook-Package 2000-2013
• VerfasserIn: Haverty-Stacke, Donna T.,
• Place / Publishing House: New York, NY : : New York University Press, , [2008]; ©2008
• Year of Publication: 2008
• Language: English
• Series: American History and Culture ; 2
• Physical Description: 1 online resource

Though now a largely forgotten holiday in the United States, May Day was founded here in 1886 by an energized labor movement as a part of its struggle for the eight-hour day. In ensuing years, May Day took on new meaning, and by the early 1900s had become an annual rallying point for anarchists, socialists, and communists around the world. Yet American workers and radicals also used May Day to advance alternative definitions of what it meant to be an American and what America should be as a nation.Mining contemporary newspapers, party and union records, oral histories, photographs, and rare film footage, America’s Forgotten Holiday explains how May Days celebrants, through their colorful parades and mass meetings, both contributed to the construction of their own radical American identities and publicized alternative social and political models for the nation.This fascinating story of May Day in America reveals how many contours of American nationalism developed in dialogue with political radicals and workers, and uncovers the cultural history of those who considered themselves both patriotic and dissenting Americans.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Acknowledgments -- Introduction -- 1. Out of America’s Urban, Industrial Cauldron The Origins of May Day as Event and Icon, 1867–1890 -- 2. Revolutionary Dreams and Practical Action May Day and Labor Day, 1890–1903 -- 3. Working-Class Resistance and Accommodation May Day and Labor Day, 1903–1916 -- 4. Defining Americanism in the Shadow of Reaction May Day and the Cultural Politics of Urban Celebrations, 1917–1935 -- 5. May Day’s Heyday The Promises and Perils of the Depression Era and the Popular Front, 1929–1939 -- 6. World War II and Public Redefinitions of Americanism 1941–1945 -- 7. May Day Becomes America’s Forgotten Holiday 1946–1960 -- Conclusion -- Notes -- Index -- About the Author