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During the 1880s, the Knights of Labor united most workers regardless of craft or trade. They also organized African American workers and women. This essay uncovers how the Knights maintained unity by analyzing speeches given at their annual conventions from 1885-1890. Leaders defined male Knights as chivalric, self-sacrificing, and battle-tested. After identifying the elements of the rhetoric of knighthood, I then explain how the rhetoric offered only ironic inclusion to white women and excluded Chinese and Eastern European immigrants. This argument builds rhetorical scholarship on inclusion and exclusion in social movements by theorizing its partial and ironic modes.

In this essay, I analyze anti-Chinese rhetoric produced by the Knights of Labor to explore how labor functions as a performance of citizenship. I argue that Knights deployed citizenship as a embodiable topos, using the physicality of labor as a channel to claim inclusion in the national polity despite their marginalized class status.

Book Review| December 01 2015 Women and Rhetoric between the Wars Women and Rhetoric between the Wars. Edited by Ann George, M. Elizabeth Weiser, and Janet Zepernick. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2013; pp. xiii + 302. $40.00 paper. Jennifer Keohane Jennifer Keohane University of Wisconsin, Madison Search for other works by this author on: This Site Google Rhetoric and Public Affairs (2015) 18 (4): 775–778. https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.4.0775 Cite Icon Cite Share Icon Share Facebook Twitter LinkedIn MailTo Permissions Search Site Citation Jennifer Keohane; Women and Rhetoric between the Wars. Rhetoric and Public Affairs 1 December 2015; 18 (4): 775–778. doi: https://doi.org/10.14321/rhetpublaffa.18.4.0775 Download citation file: Zotero Reference Manager EasyBib Bookends Mendeley Papers EndNote RefWorks BibTex toolbar search Search Dropdown Menu toolbar search search input Search input auto suggest filter your search All Scholarly Publishing CollectiveMichigan State University PressRhetoric and Public Affairs Search Advanced Search The text of this article is only available as a PDF. © 2015 Michigan State University Board of Trustees. All rights reserved.2015 Article PDF first page preview Close Modal You do not currently have access to this content.