Waves of Opposition

by Fones-wolf, Elizabeth

• ISBN13: 9780252073649
• ISBN10: 0252073649
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-10-13
• Publisher: Univ of Illinois Pr

Summary

In Waves of Opposition, Elizabeth Fones-Wolf describes and analyzes the battles over the powerful new medium of radio, which helped spark the massive upsurge of organized labor during the Depression. She demonstrates its importance as a weapon in an ideological war between labor and business, where corporations used radio to sing the praises of individualism and consumerism, while unions emphasized equal rights, industrial democracy, and social justice. Organized chronologically, the work explores the advent of local labor radio stations such as WCFL and WEVD, labor's anti_censorship campaigns, and unionist experiments with early FM broadcasting. Through extensive use of business and union archives, as well as broadcasting industry records, Fones_Wolf demonstrates how radio became a key component of organized labor's efforts to contest businesses' domination of political discourse throughout the thirties, forties, and fifties. Waves of Opposition concludes by claiming that labor's virtual disappearance from American media today helps explain in part why unions have become so marginalized and offers important historical lessons to those seeking to revitalize organized labor.

Author Biography

Elizabeth Fones-Wolf is a professor of history at West Virginia University, and the author of the award-winning Selling Free Enterprise: The Business Assault on Labor and Liberalism, 1945-1960.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction	1	(12)
PART 1: LABOR AND BUSINESS BROADCASTING IN THE THIRTIES
Putting Class on the Air: Initial Forays into Labor and Business Broadcasting	13	(25)
Labor Radio: A Catalyst for Social Change in Depression-Era America	38	(25)
Codes of Silence: Censoring Labor on the Airwaves	63	(26)
PART 2: BROADCASTING REFORM
``The Air Belongs to the People'': Breaking the NAB Code	89	(36)
Protecting Listeners' Rights: Radio Reform, 1945--48	125	(40)
PART 3: POSTWAR BROADCASTING
Competing Voices: Business and Labor in Local Postwar Broadcasting	165	(37)
Union Voices in a ``Wilderness of Conservatism''	202	(33)
Epilogue	235	(10)
Notes	245	(50)
Primary Sources Consulted	295	(6)
Index	301