Black Labor History: A Brief Guide to the Recent Literature

Over the past generation, the field of African-American labor history has come into its own.    The following is a brief introduction to some of the more recent literature highlighting black workplace activism and trade unionism, the relationship between black workers and the labor movement, and the convergence of civil rights and labor struggles in the realms of employment. 

“For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865,” by Robert H. Zieger, University Press of Kentucky, 2007

Robert Zieger, a distinguished labor historian emeritus at the University of Florida, offers an excellent place to start exploring the history of race and labor in the United States. 

From the University Press of Kentucky website: “Work has always been central to the African American experience. Whether as slaves or freedmen, African Americans have struggled to gain economic opportunity. ‘For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865’ analyzes the position of African American workers in the U.S. economy and social order over the past century and a half. This comprehensive study focuses on black workers’ efforts to gain equal rights in the workplace and deals extensively with organized labor’s complex and tumultuous relationship with African Americans. Highlighting the problems and opportunities that have characterized efforts to build biracial unions and forge a strong labor−civil rights political coalition, it is an authoritative treatment on the subject of race and labor in modern America.”

“Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945,” by Beth Tompkins Bates, University of North Carolina Press, 2001

From the University of North Carolina website: “Between World War I and World War II, African Americans’ quest for civil rights took on a more aggressive character as a new group of black activists challenged the politics of civility traditionally embraced by old-guard leaders in favor of a more forceful protest strategy. Beth Tompkins Bates traces the rise of this new protest politics—which was grounded in making demands and backing them up with collective action—by focusing on the struggle of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) to form a union in Chicago, headquarters of the Pullman Company.

“Bates shows how the BSCP overcame initial opposition from most of Chicago’s black leaders by linking its union message with the broader social movement for racial equality. As members of BSCP protest networks mobilized the black community around the quest for manhood rights and economic freedom, they broke down resistance to organized labor even as they expanded the boundaries of citizenship to include equal economic opportunity. By the mid-1930s, BSCP protest networks gained platforms at the national level, fusing Brotherhood activities first with those of the National Negro Congress and later with the March on Washington Movement. Lessons learned during this era guided the next generation of activists, who carried the black freedom struggle forward after World War II.”

“The Black Worker: Race, Labor, and Civil Rights since Emancipation” by Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois Press, 2007

From the University of Illinois Press website: “A multidimensional reader that explores the African American worker’s experience since the Civil War.

“Long before the modern civil rights movement of the 1950s and 1960s made a frontal assault on the reigning segregationist order, African American workers had to struggle against both their employers and fellow white workers. Because their efforts to secure their workplace rights pitted them against the broader structures of racial oppression, their activism constituted nothing less than a form of civil rights struggle. Uniting the latest scholarship on race, labor, and civil rights, ‘The Black Worker’ aims to establish the richness of the African American working-class experience, and the indisputable role of black workers in shaping the politics and history of labor and race in the United States.

“To capture the complexity of African Americans’ experiences in the workplace, this reader examines workers engaged in a wide array of jobs, including sharecropping, coal mining, domestic service, longshoring, automobile manufacturing, tobacco processing, railroading, prostitution, lumbering, and municipal employment. The essays’ subjects include black migration, strikebreaking, black conservatism, gender, and the multiple forms of employment discrimination in the South and North. Other contributions deal explicitly with state policy and black workers during the transition from slavery to freedom, World Wars I and II, and the 1960s.

“The variety of challenges made by these workers, both quiet and overt, served as clear reminders to the supporters of white supremacy that, despite their best efforts through violence, fraud, and the law, as long as they insisted on racial inequality, the ‘race question’ would never be fully resolved.”

“Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers,” by Michael K. Honey, University of Illinois Press, 1993

From the University of Illinois Press website: “Widely praised when it was first published and now considered a classic by many, ‘Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights’ chronicles the southern industrial union movement from the Great Depression to the cold war, a history that created the context for the sanitation workers’ strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. to Memphis in April 1968. Michael K. Honey documents the dramatic labor battles and sometimes heroic activities of organizers and ordinary workers that helped to set the stage for segregation’s demise.”

“Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South,” by Robert Rodgers Korstad, University of North Carolina Press, 2007

From the University of North Carolina Press website: “Drawing on scores of interviews with black and white tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Robert Korstad brings to life the forgotten heroes of Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO. These workers confronted a system of racial capitalism that consigned African Americans to the basest jobs in the industry, perpetuated low wages for all southerners, and shored up white supremacy.

“Galvanized by the emergence of the CIO, African Americans took the lead in a campaign that saw a strong labor movement and the reenfranchisement of the southern poor as keys to reforming the South—and a reformed South as central to the survival and expansion of the New Deal. In the window of opportunity opened by World War II, they blurred the boundaries between home and work as they linked civil rights and labor rights in a bid for justice at work and in the public sphere.

“But civil rights unionism foundered in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Its defeat undermined later efforts by civil rights activists to raise issues of economic equality to the moral high ground occupied by the fight against legalized segregation and, Korstad contends, constrains the prospects for justice and democracy today.”

“Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign,” by Michael K. Honey, W.W. Norton, 2007

From the W. W. Norton website: “The definitive history of the epic struggle for economic justice that became Martin Luther King Jr.’s last crusade. Memphis in 1968 was ruled by a paternalistic ‘plantation mentality’ embodied in its good-old-boy mayor, Henry Loeb. Wretched conditions, abusive white supervisors, poor education, and low wages locked most black workers into poverty. Then two sanitation workers were chewed up like garbage in the back of a faulty truck, igniting a public employee strike that brought to a boil long-simmering issues of racial injustice. With novelistic drama and rich scholarly detail, Michael Honey brings to life the magnetic characters who clashed on the Memphis battlefield: stalwart black workers; fiery black ministers; volatile, young, black-power advocates; idealistic organizers and tough-talking unionists; the first black members of the Memphis city council; the white upper crust who sought to prevent change or conflagration; and, finally, the magisterial Martin Luther King Jr., undertaking a Poor People’s Campaign at the crossroads of his life, vilified as a subversive, hounded by the FBI, and seeing in the working poor of Memphis his hopes for a better America.”

“To ‘Joy My Freedom: Southern Black Women’s Lives and Labors after the Civil War,” by Tera W. Hunter, Harvard University Press, 1998

From the Harvard University Press website: “As the Civil War drew to a close, newly emancipated black women workers made their way to Atlanta—the economic hub of the newly emerging urban and industrial south—in order to build an independent and free life on the rubble of their enslaved past. In an original and dramatic work of scholarship, Tera Hunter traces their lives in the postbellum era and reveals the centrality of their labors to the African-American struggle for freedom and justice. Household laborers and washerwomen were constrained by their employers’ domestic worlds but constructed their own world of work, play, negotiation, resistance, and community organization.

“Hunter follows African-American working women from their newfound optimism and hope at the end of the Civil War to their struggles as free domestic laborers in the homes of their former masters. We witness their drive as they build neighborhoods and networks and their energy as they enjoy leisure hours in dance halls and clubs. We learn of their militance and the way they resisted efforts to keep them economically depressed and medically victimized. Finally, we understand the despair and defeat provoked by Jim Crow laws and segregation and how they spurred large numbers of black laboring women to migrate north.

“Hunter weaves a rich and diverse tapestry of the culture and experience of black women workers in the post-Civil War south. Through anecdote and data, analysis and interpretation, she manages to penetrate African-American life and labor and to reveal the centrality of women at the inception—and at the heart—of the new south.”

“Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-21,” by Brian Kelly, University of Illinois Press, 2001

From the University of Illinois Press website: “Focusing on the coalfields of Birmingham, Alabama, Brian Kelly presents new evidence of the role white elites played in fomenting racial discord at the bottom of southern society. In this lucid and supremely readable study, Brian Kelly challenges the prevailing notion that white workers were the main source of resistance to racial equality in the Jim Crow South.

“Kelly explores the forces that brought the black and white miners of Birmingham, Alabama, together during the hard-fought strikes of 1908 and 1920. He examines the systematic efforts by the region’s powerful industrialists to foment racial divisions as a means of splitting the workforce, preventing unionization, and holding wages to the lowest levels in the country. He also details the role played by Birmingham’s small but influential black middle class, whose espousal of industrial accommodation outraged black miners and revealed significant tensions within the African-American community.”

“The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners, 1878–1921,” by Daniel L. Letwin, The University of North Carolina Press, 1998

From the University of North Carolina Press website: “This study explores a tradition of interracial unionism that persisted in the coal fields of Alabama from the dawn of the New South through the turbulent era of World War I. Daniel Letwin focuses on the forces that prompted black and white miners to collaborate in the labor movement even as racial segregation divided them in nearly every other aspect of their lives.

“Letwin examines a series of labor campaigns—conducted under the banners of the Greenback-Labor party, the Knights of Labor, and, most extensively, the United Mine Workers—whose interracial character came into growing conflict with the southern racial order. This tension gives rise to the book’s central question: to what extent could the unifying potential of class withstand the divisive pressure of race? Arguing that interracial unionism in the New South was much more complex and ambiguous than is generally recognized, Letwin offers a story of both promise and failure, as a movement crossing the color line alternately transcended and succumbed to the gathering hegemony of Jim Crow.”

“Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality,” by Eric Arnesen, Harvard University Press, 2001

From Harvard University Press website: “From the time the first tracks were laid in the early nineteenth century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America’s historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution—the story of African Americans on the railroad.

“African Americans have been a part of the railroad from its inception, but today they are largely remembered as Pullman porters and track layers. The real history is far richer, a tale of endless struggle, perseverance, and partial victory. In a sweeping narrative, Arnesen re-creates the heroic efforts by black locomotive firemen, brakemen, porters, dining car waiters, and redcaps to fight a pervasive system of racism and job discrimination fostered by their employers, white co-workers, and the unions that legally represented them even while barring them from membership. Decades before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, black railroaders forged their own brand of civil rights activism, organizing their own associations, challenging white trade unions, and pursuing legal redress through state and federal courts. In recapturing black railroaders’ voices, aspirations, and challenges, Arnesen helps to recast the history of black protest and American labor in the twentieth century.”

“Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy, and the Decline of Liberalism,” by Judith Stein, University of North Carolina Press, 1998

From the University of North Carolina Press website: “The history of modern liberalism has been hotly debated in contemporary politics and the academy. Here, Judith Stein uses the steel industry—long considered fundamental to the U.S. economy—to examine liberal policies and priorities after World War II. In a provocative revision of postwar American history, she argues that it was the primacy of foreign commitments and the outdated economic policies of the state, more than the nation’s racial conflicts, that transformed American liberalism from the powerful progressivism of the New Deal to the feeble policies of the 1990s.

“Stein skillfully integrates a number of narratives usually treated in isolation—labor, civil rights, politics, business, and foreign policy—while underscoring the state’s focus on the steel industry and its workers. By showing how those who intervened in the industry treated such economic issues as free trade and the globalization of steel production in isolation from the social issues of the day—most notably civil rights and the implementation of affirmative action—Stein advances a larger argument about postwar liberalism. Liberal attempts to address social inequalities without reference to the fundamental and changing workings of the economy, she says, have led to the foundering of the New Deal state.”

“Railroads in the African American Experience: A Photographic Journey,” by Theodore Kornweibel Jr., The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010

From The Johns Hopkins University Press website: Top of Form

 “This captivating book takes readers on an illustrated tour of the black railroad experience from slavery to Amtrak. With almost 200 images—many never before published—Theodore Kornweibel Jr. examines the significant contributions of African Americans to the building, maintenance, operation, and profitability of the American railway system.

“The history of American railroads, Kornweibel makes clear, cannot be separated from African American history. For over a century, railroading provided the most important industrial occupation for blacks. Brakemen, firemen, porters, chefs, mechanics, laborers—African American men and women have been essential to the daily operation and success of American railroads. The connections between railroads and African Americans extend well beyond employment. Civil rights protests beginning in the late 19th century challenged railroad segregation and job discrimination; the major waves of black migration to the North depended almost entirely on railroads; and railroad themes and imagery penetrated deep into black art, literature, drama, folklore, and music.

“Kornweibel’s visual presentation of this rich history brings to life the hundreds of thousands of blacks who toiled for decades on America’s great rail systems. Each chapter of text focuses on a different occupation or railroading experience, some peculiar to blacks. Together, the evocative images and the complementary essays supply a comprehensive and powerful survey of the social, cultural, political, and economic influence of African Americans on railroads and of railroads on the black community.

“Few today recall the importance of blacks to the American railroad industry, even though most black families have railroading ancestors. These stories of hardship and heroism, exploitation and endurance, anger and artistry illuminate a rich heritage and fascinating chapter in American history.”

“Race, Labor, and Civil Rights: Griggs versus Duke Power and the Struggle for Equal Employment Opportunity,” by Robert Samuel Smith, Louisiana State University Press, 2008

From the Louisiana State University Press website: “In 1966, thirteen black employees of the Duke Power Company’s Dan River Plant in Draper, North Carolina, filed a lawsuit against the company challenging its requirement of a high school diploma or a passing grade on an intelligence test for internal transfer or promotion. In the groundbreaking decision Griggs v. Duke Power (1971), the United States Supreme Court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs, finding such employment practices violated Title 7 of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 when they disparately affected minorities. In doing so, the court delivered a significant anti-employment discrimination verdict. Legal scholars rank Griggs v. Duke Power on par with Brown v. Board of Education (1954) in terms of its impact on eradicating race discrimination from American institutions. In ‘Race, Labor, and Civil Rights,’ Robert Samuel Smith offers the first full-length historical examination of this important case and its connection to civil rights activism during the second half of the 1960s.

“Smith explores all aspects of Griggs, highlighting the sustained energy of the grassroots civil rights community and the critical importance of courtroom activism. Smith shows that after years of nonviolent, direct action protests, African Americans remained vigilant in the 1960s, heading back to the courts to reinvigorate the civil rights acts in an effort to remove the lingering institutional bias left from decades of overt racism. He asserts that alongside the more boisterous expressions of black radicalism of the late sixties, foot soldiers and local leaders of the civil rights community--many of whom were working-class black southerners--mustered ongoing legal efforts to mold Title 7 into meaningful law. Smith also highlights the persistent judicial activism of the NAACP-Legal Defense and Education Fund and the ascension of the second generation of civil rights attorneys.

“By exploring the virtually untold story of Griggs v. Duke Power, Smith’s enlightening study connects the case and the campaign for equal employment opportunity to the broader civil rights movement and reveals the civil rights community’s continued spirit of legal activism well into the 1970s.” 

“Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago’s Packinghouses, 1904-54,” by Rick Halpern, University of Illinois Press, 1997

“This detailed study of the relationship between race relations and unionization in Chicago’s meatpacking industry draws on traditional primary and secondary materials and on an extensive set of interviews conducted in the mid-1980s that explore subjective dimensions of the workers’ experience.”
 

“The Tribe of Black Ulysses: African American Lumber Workers in the Jim Crow South,” by William P. Jones, University of Illinois Press, 2005

From the University of Illinois Press website: “An innovative new study of the largest group of black industrial workers in the South. The lumber industry employed more African American men than any southern economic sector outside agriculture, yet those workers have been almost completely ignored by scholars. Drawing on a substantial number of oral history interviews as well as on manuscript sources, local newspapers, and government documents, ‘The Tribe of Black Ulysses’ explores black men and women’s changing relationship to industrial work in three sawmill communities (Elizabethtown, North Carolina; Chapman, Alabama; and Bogalusa, Louisiana). By restoring black lumber workers to the history of southern industrialization, William P. Jones reveals that industrial employment was not incompatible—as previous historians have assumed—with the racial segregation and political disfranchisement that defined African American life in the Jim Crow South. At the same time, he complicates an older tradition of southern sociology that viewed industrialization as socially disruptive and morally corrupting to African American social and cultural traditions rooted in agriculture.”

“No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of Deportable Labor,” by Cindy Hahamovitch, Princeton University Press, 2011

From the Princeton University Press website: “From South Africa in the nineteenth century to Hong Kong today, nations around the world, including the United States, have turned to guestworker programs to manage migration. These temporary labor recruitment systems represented a state-brokered compromise between employers who wanted foreign workers and those who feared rising numbers of immigrants. Unlike immigrants, guestworkers couldn’t settle, bring their families, or become citizens, and they had few rights. Indeed, instead of creating a manageable form of migration, guestworker programs created an especially vulnerable class of labor.

“Based on a vast array of sources from U.S., Jamaican, and English archives, as well as interviews, ‘No Man’s Land’ tells the history of the American ‘H2’ program, the world’s second oldest guestworker program. Since World War II, the H2 program has brought hundreds of thousands of mostly Jamaican men to the United States to do some of the nation’s dirtiest and most dangerous farmwork for some of its biggest and most powerful agricultural corporations, companies that had the power to import and deport workers from abroad. Jamaican guestworkers occupied a no man’s land between nations, protected neither by their home government nor by the United States. The workers complained, went on strike, and sued their employers in class action lawsuits, but their protests had little impact because they could be repatriated and replaced in a matter of hours.

“‘No Man’s Land’ puts Jamaican guestworkers’ experiences in the context of the global history of this fast-growing and perilous form of labor migration.”