Box 25

“The essays of Box 25 offer the interiority of male laborers with their own memories and experiences. . . . Essays provide insight into the lives of those British West Indians who continued to live in Panama after 1914, working in the canal zone, especially their relationships with their loved ones and with white American officials; this is Greene’s contribution to the historiography.”—Pacific Historical Review

“Working with, against, and in the recesses of the data, Greene draws upon her expertise in social and labor history to create a deft, careful, and compassionate delineation of this unique subset of profiles. . . . Box 25 is fine-grained, illuminating, and eminently readable. I could see this book assigned to a range of students, from first-year undergraduates to advanced doctoral candidates, and it would also appeal to a general audience.”—Journal of Transnational American Studies

“A remarkable work of archival and narrative excavation that brings to the surface the layered lives of Caribbean laborers who built the Panama Canal. This book is not only an intervention in the history of labor and empire, but also a sharp reflection on how archives are formed, silenced, and reanimated.”—H-Sci-Med-Tech

“Box 25 offers useful insight for anyone wanting to better understand how archivists are actors in the creation of history through their collecting choices and how they impact the way history is told.”—American Archivist

“Greene’s concise monograph provides an authoritative introduction to the role of Afro-Caribbeans in the Panama Canal’s construction, synthesizing recent scholarship in a beautifully written text.”—The Americas

“The reader comes away from the book with a deep appreciation of the significance of the Panama Canal in the twentieth century. It becomes impossible to ignore the world historical importance of the canal and the nameless immigrant laborers who built it.”—Labor

“Box 25 offers a master class on how to bring back voices from the past to reshape our understanding and provoke new insights. Julie Greene digs deep into the seemingly mundane and long-buried archive to excavate hidden treasure, just as its subjects dug down mountains to create the Panama Canal. It was thrilling to feel these workers and their world come alive again.”—Olive Senior, author of Dying to Better Themselves: West Indians and the Building of the Panama Canal

“Without pretension or jargon, Greene shows us how making good use of the documents in Box 25 required understanding geopolitical power, government personnel records, archival theory, life narratives, and community-engaged public history. A bravura performance, wrapped into an unputdownable read.”—Lara Putnam, author of Radical Moves: Caribbean Migrants and the Politics of Race in the Jazz Age

“At once, Julie Greene skillfully shows us the virtues and limitations of one peculiar archival source and the magic of making connections through both our research craft and the histories we write.”—Jorge L. Giovannetti-Torres, author of Black British Migrants in Cuba: Race, Labor, and Empire in the Twentieth-Century Caribbean, 1898– 1948

“An extremely powerful text that reframes key touchpoints in the history of the Panama Canal by centering the perspectives of West Indian workers.”—Joan Flores-Villalobos, author of The Silver Women: How Black Women’s Labor Made the Panama Canal