– GNH Labor History Association (Administrator)
Professor David Montgomery passed away on Dec. 2, 2011 at the age of 84. He was a life member of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association and one of its earliest members and biggest boosters. We are shocked and saddened at the news of his leaving us. Truly, his like will not come again.
David began his career as a union organizer while working as a machinist in various shops in Minnesota and New York. He was fired from a number of jobs because of his activism and turned to academia, earning his master’s and doctoral degrees in history from the University of Minnesota. His dissertation, Beyond Equality: Labor and the Radical Republicans 1862-1872, was published as a book in 1967. Several other books followed, including the highly influential Workers’ Control in America and The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State and American Labor Activism. 1865-1925. In his writing and his teaching, he not only told the story of labor struggles, he painted vivid pictures of workers’ lives on the job.
David taught first at the University of Pittsburgh and then at Yale University, where he became Farnam Professor of History. At both universities, he earned teaching awards. He began at Yale in the late 1970’s and with his wife Martel, became part of the fabric of life at Yale and in the broader New Haven community. Known as a rigorous proponent of the “new labor history,” David remained an advocate for the struggles and aspirations of workers, supporting Yale’s clerical workers in their 1984 strike and the effort of the Graduate Employee Student Organization at Yale to achieve recognition as a graduate student workers union.
The Executive Board and staff of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association extend our deepest sympathy to David’s widow, Martel Montgomery, and to his sons and their families.
There will be a public memorial service for David Montgomery on Saturday, Jan. 28 at Battell Chapel, New Haven, from 1 to 2:30 p.m. with the Rev. Frederick J Streets officiating.
