...Ahmad A. Sikainga This essay examines the role of organized labor in Sudanese politics in the twentieth century. The essay focuses on the development of labor activism among the Sudanese railway workers who were concentrated in the town of Atbara, headquarters of the Sudan Railways...

... publications include Slaves into Workers: Emancipation and Labor in Colonial Sudan (Uni- versity of Texas Press, 1996) and City of Steel and Fire: A Social History of Atbara, Sudan’s Railway Town, 1906–1984 (Heinemann, 2002), and numer- ous coedited books, articles, and book chapters. ...

... during my school holidays, I left for Atbara to help contribute to the building of the Sudan Railways Workers’ Union in 1947. I stayed well over a year. This was indeed a dear time in my life, when the vitality of the Sudanese working class was revealed to me. I grasped their enormous strength...

... its elaborate pathways. Then we departed. All your friends and comrades, whether in Khartoum, Al-Jazeerah, Atbara, or wherever Sudanese people had congregated, are all doing well. The small number of socialists is now rapidly multiplying, both men and women. Hopes...