Books by Cedric de Leon

Award winning book, Freedom Train, on Black politics and interracial labor

Freedom Train: Black Politics and the Story of Interracial Labor Solidarity

Most accounts of interracial solidarity focus on white union activists. In Freedom Train, Cedric de Leon, a former organizer and elected leader in the U.S. labor movement, argues that we can't comprehend the history of workers' triumphs in the United States without investigating the role of Black liberation. This book shows that, from the early twentieth century to the years immediately following the March on Washington and beyond, independent Black labor organizations have pushed the white labor movement toward a fierce and effective interracial solidarity.

Drawing on the minutes, correspondence, and speeches of Black labor activists and organizations from 1917 to 1968, de Leon reveals that Black people have been the most ardent and consistent proponents of racial inclusion, leadership representation, and programs linking economic and racial justice. He also demonstrates how conflict and consensus among Black labor groups fueled the fight for solidarity, as different factions split and consolidated to form successive and sometimes competing Black labor organizations. Freedom Train centers the contributions of Black people to the multiracial unions we have today and demonstrates that internal conflict can be a source of strategic innovation and social movement success.

UC Press
UC Press
Bookshop
Bookshop
Amazon
Amazon
An award icon for the recognition and awards that the Freedom Train book has won

Awards & Recognition

Winner, 2026 American Book Award

Finalist, 2026 Barrington Moore Book Award

Winner, 2025 Leo Panitch Book Prize

  • “A work of original, convincing, and positively gripping scholarship. A novel analysis of the conditions that advanced the cause of interracial labor solidarity, placing Black activists and the Black community at the center of the story.”

    —Kim Voss, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley

  • “Freedom Train provides critical context for the current task of mapping a path to multiracial democracy in the United States.”

    —Erica Smiley, Executive Director, Jobs with Justice

  • “As Black elites rise to higher positions of mainstream electoral power, Freedom Train provides lessons in how to ensure that they are accountable to the Black working class.”

    —Steven Pitts, cofounder of the National Black Worker Center

  • “de Leon does what few historians have in centering the Black worker as a player both in the politics of the Black Freedom Movement and in organized labor.”

    —Bill Fletcher Jr., activist, coauthor of Solidarity Divided

  • “Instead of overlooking tensions between different segments of Black labor...de Leon focuses on internal tensions, suggesting that debates between centrist and more leftist activists helped strengthen what would become a much larger movement, pushing the labor movement to become more inclusive.”

    —Gay Seidman, Professor of Sociology, Univ of Wisconsin Madison

  • “Cedric de Leon names, centers, and gives a platform to Black labor and laborers so often erased in traditional storytelling of big labor unity.”

    —Tamara Lee, Assoc. Professor of Labor Studies, Rutgers University

  • Cedric de leon's book Crisis, on US politics

    Crisis! When Political Parties Lose the Consent to Rule

    A comparison of the coming of the U.S. Civil War and the election of Donald Trump.

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  • Cedric de Leon's book Building Blocs

    Building Blocs: How Parties Organize Society

    An edited volume on the ways in which political parties organize and disorganize society in their struggle for power.

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  • Cedric de Leon's book Origins of Right to Work

    The Origins of Right to Work

    Tracing today's anti-union laws to nineteenth-century Chicago.

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  • Sociology book on reconstructing party politics

    Party & Society: Reconstructing a Sociology of Democratic Party Politics

    A guide through the vast literature on political parties in sociology, political science, and economics.

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