The Fight Against Shutdowns

In the late 1970s and early 1980s, steel mill closures in Youngstown and the surrounding Mahoning Valley put approximately 50,000 people out of work. The most infamous of the shutdowns occurred on September 19, 1977, when Youngstown Sheet & Tube shuttered Campbell Works, eliminating roughly 5,000 jobs—an event remembered in Ohio as “Black Monday.”

Historian and labor attorney Staughton Lynd was an on-the-ground participant in Youngstown’s struggles during this period, and his book The Fight Against Shutdowns is now back in print to help commemorate Black Monday’s fiftieth anniversary. A study not just of what happened, but of how communities imagined alternate futures, The Fight Against Shutdowns remains essential reading for anyone concerned about the Rust Belt. Kent State’s new edition includes a foreword by Vince Guerrieri and an afterword by Alice Lynd.