Victoria C. Hattam

Victoria C. Hattam, associate professor and chair of the department of political science at the New School for Social Research, studied the emergence and growth of racism within organized labor in the late nineteenth century. Hattam focused on the American Federation of Labor's profound shift from biracial union organizing in the postbellum era to the adoption of its policies of racial exclusion by the turn of the century. Her work examined the institutional mechanisms and cultural processes through which the AFL constructed its racist ideology, interpreted parallel changes in working class culture and identity, and looked at broader issues of how racial hierarchies are sustained in American culture.