Oct 25, 2026

Troop Movements

Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II

Tejasvi Nagaraja

Hosted by Michael Stauch

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Summary

Tejasvi Nagaraja joins Michael Stauch to talk about Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II (U Pennsylvania Press, 2026). They discuss how the mobilization of soldiers and defense workers for World War II brought together disparate sectors of workers, all of whom were enmeshed in struggles over workers’ rights and civil rights in the wake of the Great Depression and New Deal. The entangled experiences of this anti-fascist mobilization of workers and soldiers forged alliances across race, class, and global concerns and catalyzed the national and international political movements and conflicts of the postwar period. Synthesizing diverse sources—from the US Army and UK Colonial Office archives to labor unions’ and civil rights organizations’ records—Nagaraja reconstructs this story of top-down and bottom-up movements from Pennsylvania to Panama, Georgia to Germany, Michigan to Manila in the World War II era.

Highlights include:

Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee’s participation in a “war worker front” during World War II that brought together “soldiers and solderers” in a multiracial movement from below;
How an accidental explosion at Port Chicago (an ammunition depot in the Bay Area) and the sailor mutiny that followed, may have set in motion the modern Civil Rights movement;
The often overlooked logistical role that the United States played in World War II by coordinating global supply chains;
How World War II both heightened racial tensions, at home and abroad, and served as an instance of race-making in which the nation’s racial identity transformed;
Discussion of an obscure anti-fascist article by a young Ronald Reagan.

Guest: Tejasvi Nagaraja is an Assistant Professor of History at Cornell University in the ILR School. His first book is Troop Movements: Labor, Race, and Global Freedom Struggles in America’s World War II (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2026). His writing has appeared in The Greater Second World War anthology, American Historical Review, and Labor: Studies in Working-Class History.

Host: Michael Stauch is an associate professor of history at the University of Toledo and the author of Wildcat of the Streets: Detroit in the Age of Community Policing, published by the University of Pennsylvania Press in 2025.