eventually accepting a position at Yale. Montgomery taught courses about the history of working people in the United States, the Civil War and Reconstruction, and immigration. In 1988, his book The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925, was published to wide acclaim. Noam Chomsky, the renowned professor of linguistics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and political activist, called the book one of the definitive works on the American labor struggle. The book was a Pulitzer Prize finalist nominee. Following the example of British historian E. P. Thompson, Montgomery encouraged a generation of labor historians to re-examine the core subject matter of labor history, thus defining the new labor history, which examines working-class culture, rather than simply their organizations. He was also influential through his editorship of the journal International Labor and Working-Class History. In 2001, Montgomery published a book in collaboration with Professor Horace Huntley of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute. The book, Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham, uses oral histories to interpret and explore the involvement of African American workers in various unions and the organized labor movement for civil rights. During the 1990s, Montgomery wrote and spoke about academic freedom, calling for wider availability of information for research and in favor of a larger scope of academic freedom. He claimed that over the presidential administrations of George W. Bush and Bill Clinton, access to government documents had been sharply reduced and that this has resulted in less academic freedom. Additionally, Montgomery criticized the Patriot Act and its provisions for surveillance of academics and librarians, arguing they impede academic freedom. He also served as president of the Organization of American Historians (OAH) from 1999 to 2000. Death and legacy David Montgomery died on December 2, 2011. He is survived by his wife, Martel, and two sons, New York attorney Claude Montgomery and economist Edward B. Montgomery. An obituary for Montgomery appeared on December 5, 2011, in the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. In the spring of 2012 the Executive Board of the Organization of American Historians approved a new book award in the field of labor and working class history to be named after David Montgomery. Fundraising was begun to build a $50,000 endowment for the prize, after which time the David Montgomery award is to be presented annually by the OAH in conjunction with the Labor and Working-Class History