ABSTRACT
I once taught a course in American history to a class of United Auto Workers shop stewards. In terms of age and sex, and of religious, ethnic, and regional backgrounds, this group presented the most random sample of American workers I have ever encountered. A more contentious lot I never met; virtually every historical figure or topic I raised—Lincoln, F.D.R., John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, slavery, the New Deal, Vietnam, the “War on Poverty”—touched off a furious debate, with opinions crushed into venomous metaphors and delivered by voices accustomed to making themselves heard over assembly lines. Compared to these biweekly imbroglios, the class I taught at Jackson Penitentiary (technically the “Southern Michigan Correctional Facility”) seemed like a Quaker meeting.
