Workers of All Colors Unite: Race and the Origins of American Socialism

256 Pages·2023·6.131 MB·English

by  Lorenzo Costaguta

Workers of All Colors Unite
THE WORKING CLASS IN AMERICAN HISTORY
Editorial Advisors
James R. Barrett, Thavolia Glymph, Julie Greene, William P. Jones,
and Nelson Lichtenstein
A list of books in the series appears at the end of this book.

© 2023 by the Board of Trustees
of the University of Illinois
All rights reserved
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Costaguta, Lorenzo, author.
Title: Workers of all colors unite : race and the origins of
American socialism / Lorenzo Costaguta.
Description: Urbana : University of Illinois Press, [2023] |
Series: The working class in American history | Includes
bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2022034886 (print) | LCCN 2022034887
(ebook) | ISBN 9780252044922 (hardback ; alk. paper)
| ISBN 9780252087073 (paperback ; alk. paper) | ISBN
9780252054082 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Socialism—United States—History. |
Working class—United States—History. | Equality—
United States—History. | Race discrimination—United
States—History. | Multiculturalism—United States—
History.
Classification: LCC HX83 .C648 2023 (print) | LCC HX83
(ebook) | DDC 335.00973—dc23/eng/20220914
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034886
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2022034887
To my family, for their love, care, and patience

Contents
Acknowledgments ix
Introduction. A Racialized History of the Origins
of American Socialism 1
1 “Freedom for All”: German American Socialism
and Race before 1876 19
2 “Geographies of Peoples”: Ethnicity and Racial
Thinking in the Early SLP 51
3 Must They Go? American Socialism and the
Racialization of Chinese Immigrants, 1876–1890 73
4 “Regardless of Color”: The SLP and African
Americans, 1876–1890 97
5 Savage Capitalists, Civilized Indians:
The SLP and Native Americans, 1876–1890 129
6 The SLP in the 1890s: Americanization
and Socialist Evolutionism 147
Conclusion. The Past and the Future of Racial Socialism 169
Notes 177
Index 223

Acknowledgments
The Socialist Labor Party entered my life more than a decade ago, when
I was an MA student at the University of Turin in Italy, and I decided to
write a dissertation on its leader Daniel De Leon. At the end of my very first
research trip to the International Institute of Social History in Amsterdam,
I thanked my uncle—Francesco Puppo, a militant historian and long-term
member of the Italian Marxist-Leninist group Lotta Comunista—who had
come with me and offered supervision and guidance in the archive. His
response remained with me: “I am glad I joined you in what will be the first
of many trips in your career.” I thanked him without conviction, unper-
suaded by his optimism about my career perspective.
I write these acknowledgements with a deep sense of gratitude toward
the many who, like my uncle, have shown trust and faith in my capacity to
pursue a career as a professional historian and to bring this book project to
completion. I moved my first steps in the professional academic world (and
in the literature on U.S. labor and socialism) following the advice of Nando
Fasce. His staggering knowledge and intelligence gave me a model to aspire
to. Christopher Phelps and Robin Vandome, my Ph.D. advisors, taught me
the craft of the historian and gave me the confidence to pursue my own
ideas. Their steering was crucial to this project and beyond. Brian Kelly and
Bevan Sewell examined my thesis and provided me with more feedback
than I could ever hope for. James R. Barrett and Angela Zimmermann read
the entire manuscript and offered their comments on several versions of it.
They were piecemeal, meticulous, and always supportive. I could not have
hoped for better readers. My project set off with James Engelhardt at the
helm of the Working Class in American History series at the University of