Alonzo Ward is an assistant professor of history and African American Studies at Eastern Illinois University. His research interests include Black American labor in the Midwest; and race and ethnicity. He has authored several articles, including his most recent work, which appears in the Journal of the Illinois State Historical Society, “ A Revolution in Labor: African Americans and Hybrid Labor Activism in Illinois during the Early Jim Crow Era.” Dr. Ward is also currently working on a manuscript which analyzes Black workers in Illinois in conjunction with the broader U.S. labor movement. He is particularly interested in the labor activism and strategies employed by Black Illinoisans to circumvent racialization within labor during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.