Steve Fraser is one of the county’s leading historians of labor, class, and capitalism. His prolific scholarship on the labor movement, the New Deal, the role of finance, political protest, and class relations has had wide and lasting impact. As an editor and teacher, he fostered new generations of scholars of labor and political history. He also has been a prominent activist in support of civil rights, labor, and social justice.

Fraser’s magisterial biography Labor Will Rule: Sideny Hillman and The Rise of American Labor remains, over three decades after its publication, key to understanding the triumphs and limitations of the labor movement. In a deeply-researched narrative, Fraser recounts the creation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers (one of the predecessors of Workers United) and the extraordinary leadership of Sidney Hillman, a Lithuanian-born Jewish garment cutter who rose to the top of the labor movement and to be a key ally of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In his capacious study, Fraser shows how the Congress of Industrial Organizations built on ideas and approaches pioneered by Hillman and the Clothing Workers. Its victory during the New Deal reduced class conflict, at least for a while, by taming the power of industry and raising the living standards of workers. A collection co-edited by Fraser, The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, introduced the notion that the New Deal was more than just the Roosevelt administration, but rather constituted a new political economy that lasted for nearly a half century, an idea now widely accepted.

In subsequent books, Fraser explored the central role Wall Street played not just as a financial institution but also as a cultural force in American life; contrasted the roiling movements in opposition to capitalism in the nineteenth century to what he termed the more recent “Age of Acquiescence;” and the continuing centrality of class in U.S. society, in spite of persistent efforts to deny its very existence. Complimenting his scholarly work, Fraser has been a prolific author of articles aimed at the general public, addressing a remarkable range of historical and contemporary issues, almost all, in one way or another, grappling with the complexities of political change and the struggle for social justice.

Wearing many hats, Fraser served as an editor at leading publishers, were he nurtured scores of books on labor and politics. For many years, he edited New Labor Forum. He also taught American history at Columbia, Princeton, the University of Pennsylvania, and New York University.

Throughout his life, Steve Fraser has been a political activist, starting with his time in the South as a member of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC). He was a co-convenor of the 1996 National Teach-In with Labor at Columbia University, for which the Hillman Foundation gave an Officers’ Award for Public Service. He is a founding member of the recently-created DSA Academy for Socialist Education. As a historian, writer, editor, teacher, and political activist, he has worked to understand the history of labor and American life and to promote movements for a more just society.