Union by Law: Filipino American Labor Activists, Rights Radicalism, and Racial Capitalism

Starting in the early 1900s, many thousands of native Filipinos were conscripted as laborers in American West Coast agricultural fields and Alaska salmon canneries. There, they found themselves confined to exploitative low—wage jobs in racially segregated workplaces as well as subjected to vigilante violence and other forms of ethnic persecution. In time, though, Filipino workers formed political organizations and affiliated with labor unions to represent their interests and to advance thei...