Labor Historian Highlights Workers Who Built Panama Canal
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University of Maryland labor historian Julie Greene will hold a book reading July 15 at the AFL-CIO in Washington, D.C., for The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal. To RSVP, click here.
“One of the greatest engineering feats in history.” That’s how The New York Times has described the Panama Canal.
“It was our technology, our science and our leadership that had carried the day,” the Times said.
When it brought together the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, cut in half the shipping distance between New York and San Francisco, and made vast Asian markets suddenly accessible to businesses along the East Coast, the Panama Canal was considered a crown jewel of the American economic empire.
Since it started operating in 1914, the Panama Canal has been the subject of enough books to fill a small library. But until now, a key part of the story has been missing—the workers who built the canal. In The Canal Builders: Making America’s Empire at the Panama Canal, labor historian Julie Greene tells the story of these workers with great skill.
