Richard Sharpless oral history interviews

Richard Edward Sharpless (1937- ) served as a professor of History at Lafayette College from 1970 to 2003. Sharpless received his bachelor of arts degree in English from Elizabethtown College in 1959. He earned a master's degree in history from Rutgers University in 1968 and a doctorate from Rutgers in 1975. He was a member of the U.S. Army 13th Special Group, XVIII Airborne Corps, STRIKE Command from 1961-1963. Prior to Lafayette, he was employed as an instructor at Seton Hall University. As a specialist in Latin American history and the process of industrialization in developing and developed countries, Sharpless has written extensively on the anthracite region of Pennsylvania as well as important political leaders and developments in Latin American and Caribbean history. Sharpless’ 1985 book, The Kingdom of Coal: Work, Enterprise, and Ethnic Communities in the Mine Fields, co-authored with Donald L. Miller, John Henry MacCracken Professor of History at Lafayette College, featured research on the anthracite coal areas of northeastern Pennsylvania. Subsequent research for a book project entitled Black Fridays: Visions and Voices, was an expansion of the Black Fridays: Faces from an American Dream traveling exhibit created in 1992 with photographer Martin J. Desht. Sharpless’ oral history interviews in this collection were conducted as part of that unpublished book project on the nature of unionized and manufacturing-based jobs in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania.