Teaching Fields:

Appalachia; U.S. Social/Labor History

Research Fields:

Social history of industrialization; comparative coalfields; Appalachian region; British immigration to the U.S.

Books:

Transforming the Appalachian Countryside: Railroads, Deforestation, and Social Change, 1880-1920. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

The Black Coal Miner in America: Race, Class, and Community Conflict, 1780-1980. Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 1987.

The Black Worker: From Colonial Times to the Present.  Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1989. One volume abridgement, and an 8 volume series of the same title (1978-1984). Co-edited with Philip S. Foner.

Coal, Iron, and Slaves: Industrial Slavery in Maryland and Virginia, 1715-1865. Westport: Greenwood Press, 1979.

Current Research Project:

A history of Welsh coal miners in the United States.