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BUILDING BRIDGES: THE CHALLENGE OF ORGANIZED LABOR IN COMMUNITIES OF COLOR

Robin D. G. Kelley

New York University robin.kelley@nyu.edu

What roles can labor unions play in transforming our inner cities and promo ting policies that

might improve the overall condition of working people of color? What happens when union organizers

extend their reach beyond the workplace to the needs of working-class communities? What has been the

historical role of unions in the larger struggles of people of color, particularly black workers? These are

crucial questions in an age when production has become less pivotal to working-class life. Increasingly,

we've witnessed the export of whole production processes as corporations moved outside the country in

order to take advantage of cheaper labor, relatively lower taxes, and a deregulated, frequently antiunion

environment. And the labor force itself has changed. The old images of the American workingclass as

white men residing in sooty industrial suburbs and smokestack districts are increasingly rare. The new

service-based economy has produced a working class increasingly concentrated in the healthcare

professions, educational institutions, office building maintenance, food processing, food services and

various retail establishments. 1 In the world of manufacturing, sweatshops are coming back, particularly in

the garment industry and electronics assembling plants, and homework is growing. These unions are also

more likely to be brown and female than they have been in the past. While white male membership dropped

from 55.8% in 1986 to 49.7% in 1995, women now make up 37 percent of organized labor's membership --

a higher percentage than at any time in the U.S. labor movement's history. Between 1976 and 1988, while

the nation's overall labor force grew by 26%, the percent of black workers rose by 38%, Asian-American

workers by 103%, and Latinos by 110%.3 (Indeed, the heavy concentration of native-born black people in

public sector jobs partly explains why African Americans have such a high unionization rate.)

My intention in writing this paper is not to predict the future or make grand claims about the

effectiveness or ineffectiveness of labor/community strategies. Instead, I want to offer an historical

accounting of the relationship between organized labor and urban communities of color. (Because of time

limitations and the limits of my own knowledge, most of my examples draw on the experiences of black

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workers, though I do discuss Latino and Asian-American workers when I am able.) An historical

perspective is important because relationships and social movements are best understood within their own

time and place; neither the labor movement, urban communities, nor the conditions in which they operate

are fixed, nor can they be easily turned into a general theory. Any lessons we might garner from the past

need to be examined within its own historical context and evaluated from the vantage point of our own time

and place. For example, despite many efforts on the part of labor historians to generalize about unions and

"race," all generalizations fail miserably. Representations of Black, Latino, and Asian workers run the

gamut from perennial strikebreakers to "target workers" disinterested in unions to the nation's most militant

trade unionists. Organized labor, on the other hand, has been portrayed as either incurably racist or the only

hope for real emancipation. Of course, the truth (and the literature itself) is far more complicated and all of

these generalizations suffer from a tendency to treat workers of color as passive victims manipulated by

either middle class leadership or white labor bureaucrats. To get a handle on the history of labor unions and

"racial discourse and policy" or the problems and prospects of labor/community strategies, we need to look

beyond the official union histories and take into account self-organization-community institutions that

might not look like unions but where working people have a voice and representation.

BEYOND THE WORKPLACE: THOUGHTS ON CULTURE AND COMMUNITY

While community might be the new buzz word among the current breed of "social movement"

union organizers , throughout the 19th and the first part of the 20th centuries, the strength of organized

labor resided in working-class communities. The workplace/community divide was not as clear cut as it is

today. During the late 19th century, for example, the militant strikes that erupted along the railroads in

1877, in the mines of the Rocky Mountains and the steel mills in the East and mid-West among black

washerwomen in the urban South, were essentially community struggles. It was never a simple matter of

labor unions versus employers. The success of these strikes often depended on the fact that the local police,

the families and even some of the merchants sided with the union, which meant that the employers had to

bring in state troops and the private Pinkerton agents. Employers were forced to turn to the state and hired

guns to suppress these strikes precisely because communities were mobilized. During the 1930s the success

of the sit-down strikes in Akron and Detroit and the struggles of Latina and Asian-Pacific cannery workers

in the West depended on community support; families and friends and sympathetic organizations brought

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food and blankets, joined picket lines and got the word out, pooled money together to help struggling

families survive the loss of a paycheck.5

The pivotal role of community support in labor struggles should not be surprising in light of the

fact that working people live most of their lives in their neighborhoods, in their homes, in transit, in the

public spaces of the city, in houses of worship, in bars, clubs, barbershops, hair salons, in various retail

outlets, not to mention, welfare offices, courtrooms, even jail cells. They create and maintain families, build

communities, engage in local and international politics, and construct a sense of fellowship that is

sometimes life sustaining. Indeed, the presumption on the part of trade unionists that they are "organizing

the unorganized"--a slogan which often applied directly to unskilled workers of color-ignores the fact that

these workers often came from highly organized communities. Grassroots institutions such as mutual

benefit associations, fraternal organizations, and religious groups not only helped families with basic

survival needs, but created and sustained bonds of fellowship, mutual support networks, and a collectivist

ethos that ultimately informed working-class political struggle. Fraternal and mutual benefit societies, in

particular, provided funds and other resources to members in need and to the poor generally, including

death benefits (mainly to cover burial costs) and assistance for families whose members became seriously

ill or lost their job.

The social links created through these organizations occasionally translated into community and

labor struggles. In Atlanta, for example, benevolent and secret societies among black women constituted

the organizational structures through which washerwomen waged a city-wide strike in 1881. Organized

under the auspices of the "Washing Society," a secret protective association that operated much like a

mutual benefit society, the strikers not only demonstrated incredible solidarity (in some cases prompting

other domestic workers in the city to demand higher wages) but raised money to pay fines and post bail

when strikers were arrested. In addition to relying on their own treasury, they received donations from

churches and fraternal orders with which many of the strikers were also affiliated. In West Virginia, where

black membership in fraternal orders reached nearly 33,000 in 1922, the black rank-and-file entered the

United Mine Workers with considerable organizational experience. The bonds of fellowship developed in

these fraternal orders played an important role in consolidating black union support, even if some of orders'

middle-class leadership opposed unionization.

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Black church members also helped build Southern labor unions, especially during the era of

industrial unionism in the 1930's and 1940's, when the Congress of Industrial Organization sought to

organize industries that employed large numbers of African-Americans. Unions such as the Food, Tobacco,

Agricultural, and Allied Workers (FTA), the Steel Workers Organizing Committee (SWOC), and the

International Union of Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers, often held meetings in black churches and actively

recruited sympathetic black ministers to their cause.8 And when black working people entered the house of

labor, they brought the spirit, culture, and rituals of the church with them. Southern CIO organizer Lucy

Randolph Mason had vivid memories of how black workers turned union gatherings into revival meetings:

“Those meetings were deeply religious. A colored member would pray and lead in singing and dismiss the

gathering with a blessing. In one group there was an elderly Negro who ‘lined out’ the Lord's prayer verse

by verse while others repeated the words after him. They were praying for mo re of the Kingdom of God on

earth.”9

Scholars, like trade union organizers, must always pay attention to culture, community

institutions, as well as the daily concerns and desires of working people. These issues have as much of an

impact on the workplace as on community organizing. One of the weaknesses of traditional “bread and

butter” unionism is that it defines so-called “bread and butter” issues too narrowly and imagines that the

universal desire of all workers is higher wages. For example, scholarship on black female tobacco workers

demonstrates the ways in which gender shapes workplace experiences and demands. First of all, work is

not only segmented by race but by gender. Not only were the dirty and difficult tasks of sorting, stemming,

and rehandling tobacco relegated to black women, but the spaces in which they worked were unbearably

hot dry, dark, and poorly ventilated. The coughing and wheezing, the tragically common cases of workers

succumbing to tuberculosis, the endless speculation as to the cause of miscarriages among co-workers,

were constant reminders that these black women risked their lives for a paycheck. And if that was not

enough, foremen treated them as perpetual motion machines as well as sexual objects. Thus, in addition to

race, gender bonds were reinforced by the common experience of sexual harrassment. Recalled one

Reynolds worker, "I've seen [foremen] just walk up and pat women on their fannies and they'd better not

say anything." Women, unlike their male co-workers, had to devise a whole range of strategies to resist or

mitigate the daily physical and verbal abuse of their bodies.10 Yet, in the eyes of most male union leaders,

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these sorts of battles were private affairs that had no place among "important" collective bargaining issues.

Unfortunately, most labor historians have accepted this view, unable to see resistance to sexual harassment

as a primary struggle to transform everyday conditions at the workplace." Out of the common social space

and experience of racism and sexual exploitation, black female tobacco workers constructed "networks of

solidarity." They referred to each other as "sisters," shared the same neighborhoods and institutions,

attended the same churches, and displayed a deep sense of community by collecting money for co-workers

during sickness and death and by celebrating each other's birthdays. These "networks of solidarity" were

indispensable for organizing tobacco plants in Winston-Salem and elsewhere. 12

In rethinking workplace struggles and women's work cultures, we must be careful not to

overemphasize the distinct character of home and work. We can learn a lot about the limitations of

"separate spheres" and the interdependence of home and work from Chicana feminist historians such as

Vicki Ruiz, Clementina Duron, Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Patricia Zavella. Resisting the arbitrary

division between the "domestic sphere" and the workplace, they discuss how family, community, and

housing shaped the workplace and vice versa is critical for understanding the roots of Mexican-American

labor militancy as well as its silences. That a community was even in place, and that home life, housing,

and the quality of living were even issues in agricultural workers' struggles, powerfully challenge the

commonly accepted idea that Mexican-American workers before WWII were “birds of passage.”13 Recent

studies of paid homework remind us that working women's homes were often extensions of the factory (and

in today's environment we will probably see a further expansion of homework). For African-American

women, in particular, as some scholars have shown, the decision to do piece work or take in laundry grew

out of a struggle for greater control over the labor process, a conscious effort to avoid workplace

environments that were regarded as degrading or dangerous. Indeed, for many women homework was a

way to avoid the indignities of household service, for as the experience of black tobacco workers suggest,

much workplace resistance centered around issues of dignity, respect, and autonomy. Sexual harrassment

was part of the job. "It was always attempts made on black women from white men," one domestic worker

remembers. "Sometimes he had a knack for patting you on the back, not on your back but on your behind,

and telling you that you was a nice-looking black gal and this type of thing. And I resented that." 14

Finally, as Eileen Boris points out, homework also catered to "the patriarchal desires of men to care for

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their women even when they barely could meet economic needs of their families or from women's own

desires to care for their children under circumstances that demanded that they contribute to the family

economy." 15

LABOR AND THE "WHITE" PROBLEM

While black, Latino and Asian American working people devised workplace and community

strategies to protect themselves and their families, before the rise of the Congress of Industrial

Organizations in 1935, very few could be found in labor unions. Part of their reluctance to support trade

unions had to do with organized labor's rather mixed record on racial equality. That organized labor has a

history of hostility toward workers of color--particularly black workers--should not be surprising: after all,

the American labor movement was born in an economy built in part on plantation slavery. As the work of

W.E.B. DuBois, Dave Roediger, Alexander Saxton, Ted Allen, Noel Ignatiev, George Lipsitz,

Ruth Frankenberg, Matthew Frye Jacobson, Michael Goldfield, Eric Lott, David Wellman and others

demonstrate, the presence of African slaves, especially in the Age of Revolution, meant that freedom and

free labor would become inextricably tied to being white and male. It also enabled the new American

(white) working class to displace anxieties within the white population onto black people. This scholarship

is especially important, for it maps the history of how European workers came to see themselves as white

and the political and cultural manifestations of an (antebellum) white working-class racial identity. As a

consequence, "whiteness" became both a source of solidarity holding together many different immigrants

and settlers and a powerful fetter to an effective working-class challenge to capitalism. 16 In the South

during Reconstruction, a misguided white majority sided with the wrong class and rejected the black

workers and sharecroppers who proposed a democratic South with massive land redistribution. Despite the

fact that the black freedom struggle, in alliance with the radical wing of the Republican Party, enfranchised

poor whites who didn't have the right to vote before the 15th Amendment, the vast majority of exploited

white labor still chose color over class. In California, according to Alexander Saxton, it was precisely anti-

Chinese sentiment that galvanized the multi-ethnic "white" working class and forged a dynamic union

movement on the West Coast during the late 19th century. 17 Likewise, as Neil Foley points out in his

recent book The White Scourge, during the early 20th century Mexicans found limited acceptance in the

world of whiteness partly because their radical activities were bound up with the Mexican Revolution. At

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the same time, poor whites claims on "whiteness" were amazingly tenuous: white tenants came to be

regarded as less than-civilized and thus one step away from being a racialized Other. The only way to

secure white privilege was by undermining the economic and political status of Mexican and black farmers

and workers, which obviously had a detriment on rural organizing efforts. 18

The failure to build a strong multiracial labor movement, in other words, had more to do with

white racism than reluctance or distrust on the part of workers of color. Ironically, one could argue that the

(white) labor movement in this period was partly forged because of racism, which in the long run

substantially weakened the movement while providing a basis for solidarity. Throughout this period we

witness tremendous nativism and anti-immigration sentiment rooted in white workers' fears of competition

from Chinese immigrants for jobs. Labor organizations, including the American Federation of Labor under

Samuel Gompers' leadership, actively lobbied for extending the Chinese Exclusion Act, originally passed in

1882, when it came up for congressional renewal in 1892.19 In general, however, sentiment for

immigration restriction was at least as widespread among employers as in labor unions in these years.

Though industrialists sought a cheap and steady labor supply, their desires were more than counterbalanced

by their belief that immigrants were a source of labor strife, violence, and radicalism.

In the face of racism, nativism, and an increase in lynching and various terrorist activities directed

at African Americans, Chinese, and Mexican workers in the Southwest, opportunities for interracial labor

organizing were few and far between. Workers of color tended to participate in race and ethnic based

institutions, often turning to self-help strategies to survive and build community. While most labor unions

limited their membership to whites only, there were a few exceptions. The Knights of Labor, founded in

1869, vowed not to discriminate on the basis of race (though they did exclude Chinese workers). At its

height in 1886, it claimed nearly one million members, of which 60,000 were black. Black members of the

Knights, particularly in the South, focused more of their energies on community building and economic

independence than on improving workplace conditions. For example, they took the lead in establishing

cooperative stores and cooperative cotton gins, and some chapters of the Knights (particularly in

Richmond) organized massive resistance to segregation and disfranchisement. 20

The American Federation of Labor, founded in 1881 under the leadership of Samuel Gompers,

initially planned to organize industrial workers. Knowing that any serious effort to organize unskilled and

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semi-skilled labor depended on bringing in black and immigrant workers, the AFL initially refused to

charter discriminatory locals. However, by 1893 the AFL backtracked on the "race" question, choosing to

charter racist locals and focus its energies on skilled craft unions which tended to be primarily if not

exclusively white. Indeed, the AFL’s brand of "bread and butter" unionism not only discriminated against

black workers but narrowed its field of vision to workplace concerns to the detriment of community

struggles. The AFL’s tolerance for whites-only locals and segregated unions further pushed black, Latino,

and Asian workers out of the house of labor and into the role as strike breakers and “scabs”.21 This

position (one many workers of color resisted) contributed to the increased scapegoating of black and brown

laborers, who were often represented in the mainstream labor press as inherently anti-labor. Meanwhile, the

Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), founded in 1905, was not buying the idea that unskilled, non-

white workers were unorganizable. On the contrary, they emerged out of the radical Western Federation of

Miners, whose members included Native American and Mexican mine workers, to challenge the

increasingly conservative leadership of Samuel L. Gompers and the AFL. The "Wobblies," as they were

called, sought to organize the lowly worker of every kind and location, into a movement which set out to

build a new, egalitarian society within the shell of the old one. Despite the attraction the Wobblies held for

African-Americans and immigrants, the IWW had little luck organizing African Americans, and when

they succeeded their efforts were concentrated in Southern agriculture, primarily the lumb er and sugar cane

industry, and along the docks of Philadelphia.22 The IWW affiliated Marine Transport Workers Union was

a predominantly black union led by one of the most talented African-American labor leaders of the 20th

century, Benjamin Fletcher. Although 5,000 members of the 8,700 member union were black, it is

significant that the bulk of his white support came from Jewish and Polish workers. Nevertheless, by 1923

Fletcher's experience with racist white workers overwhelmed his enthusiasm for "One Big Union." Even

his own beloved Wobblies never paid special attention to the specific situation of African-Americans and

they sought, too simply, to rise above the racism and ethnocentricity of the working class and its capitalist

masters. To solve the class question, they argued, was to solve the race question. They also failed to

recognize that the most downtrodden European immigrants had opportunities, over generations if not in

their own lives, to become "white"-opportunities neither African-Americans, Asians, and in some cases,

Latinos did not enjoy. Anti-Semitism certainly didn't die, but assimilated Jews, Italians and Slavs had a

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much better chance than assimilated Negroes. Indeed, over a decade before DuBois published his magnum

opus, Black Reconstruction Fletcher clearly understood the tragedy of white identity politics: “Organized

labor, for the most part be it radical or conservative, thinks and acts, in the terms of the White Race.”23

Black workers, then, were also compelled to think in terms of "the race," but that did not mean

supporting the status quo. Not did defending "the race" necessarily mean excluding others or organizing

exclusively around black causes, for as Benjamin Fletcher and many others like him demonstrated, building

interracial movements to protect working-class interests is a way of defending black people from racism

and class exploitation. Moreover, the concern about protecting black interests reflected the dialectic of

work and community. While scholars have established in no uncertain terms the degree to which

occupations and, in some cases, work spaces were segregated by race,24 only recently has scholarship

begun to move beyond staid discussions of labor market segmentation and racial (and more recently,

gender) inequality to an analysis of what these distinctions at work and home mean for black (not to

mention, Latino, Asian-American, Native American) working-class politics and for collective action. 25

All-black trade unions, like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, constitute the most obvious

examples of labor organizing in defense of "the race." The BSCP, under the leadership of A. Philip

Randolph, had a presence on the railways as well as in black communities. BSCP organizers like Randolph,

Milton P. Webster, E.D. Nixon, to name a few, emerged as black community leaders well beyond their

union activities. Members of the union earned a level of respect within black communities that enabled

them to claim middle class status and respectability. And the formation of a strong and active women's

auxiliary meant that the political and social activities of the Brotherhood would extend far

beyond the workplace. Melinda Chatuvert's important new book, Marching Together: Women of the

Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters portrays a community-oriented union that not only maintained a

powerful political presence in the black world but served as a platform for African American women's

struggles for equality and democracy for themselves and their communities. Moreover, she demonstrates

that the success of the union depended on community support, and that was obtained primarily through the

organizing work of women. On the other hand, the BSCP was never an exclusionary organization. They

were formed as a result of the Jim Crow policies of both the employers (who only hired black workers as

sleeping car porters) and the railway unions. In fact, Randolph, a leading Socialist and magazine editor

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when he took over as head of the BSCP, spent a good deal of his life lobbying the AFL to recognize the

union. 26

A lesser known and more local example of independent black trade unionism can be found in Earl

Lewis's In Their Own Interests: Race, Class and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk. During World War I,

the all-black Transport Workers Association of Norfolk began organizing African-American waterfront

workers irrespective of skill. Soon thereafter, its leaders turned their attention to the ambitious task of

organizing all black workers, most notably cigar stemmers, oyster shuckers, and domestics. The TWA's

Wobbly sensibility and racial politics combined to create One Big Negro Union. What is important about

the Norfolk story is the startling success of the TWA's efforts, particularly among workers that had been

dismissed as unorganizable. Lewis is not satisfied with simplistic explanations like the power of

charismatic leadership or the primacy of race over class to account for the mass support for the TWA;

rather, he makes it quite clear that the labor process, work spaces, intra-class power relations, communities

and neighborhoods--indeed, class struggle itself--are all racialized. The result, therefore, is a "racialized"

class consciousness shaped by the social locations of work and home. Lewis writes,

In the world in which these workers lived nearly everyone was black, except for a supervisor or

employer. Even white workers who may have shared a similar class position enjoyed a superior

social position because of their race. Thus, although it appears that some black workers manifested

a semblance of worker consciousness, that consciousness was so imbedded in the perspective of

race that neither blacks nor whites saw themselves as equal partners in the same labor movement.

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This concept of a "racialized class consciousness" need not be limited to unions like the TWA. It

also shaped black workers' relations with interracial trade unions. Contrary to popular belief, black workers

did not always resist segregated union locals; in some instances African-American workers preferred

segregated locals --as long as they maintained control over their own finances and played a leading role in

the larger decision-making process. To cite one example, black members of the Brotherhood of Timber

Workers in Louisiana, an IWW affiliate, found the idea of separate locals quite acceptable. However, at its

1912 convention black delegates complained that they could not "suppress a feeling of taxation without

representation" since their dues were in the control of whites, and demanded a coloured executive board,

elected by black union members and designed to work in harmony with its white counterpart.’ “ 28

THE PROMISE OF INDUSTRIAL UNIONISM

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Invariably, Jim Crow locals were primarily products of white racism, not black demands for self-

determination. With the formation of the Congress of Industrial Organization in 1935, however, it appeared

that the days of segregated trade unionism were numbered. An outgrowth of the Committee of Industrial

Organizations within the AF of L, it was spurred on by the National Labor Relations Act (Wagner Act)

which allowed workers to vote for unions (against company unions), made closed shops legal, and

outlawed many unfair practices by employers. Because the CIO was conceived of as a conglomeration of

industrial unions and its leader, John L. Lewis, hired a fairly large number of labor militants who had a

history in left-wing movements, it vigilantly opposed Jim Crow locals and segregationist policies--at least

on the national level. Besides, an industrial union could not afford to ignore workers of color: in the steel

industry alone there were 85,000 black workers across the country. The CIO made a tremendous

contribution to the unionization of African Americans: The number of organized black workers increased

from 150,000 in 1935 to 1.25 million by the end of World War Il. The CIO quickly developed ties with

black communities beyond their immediate dues paying members. Their willingness to fight for black civil

and voting rights earned the CIO support from black leadership, and the CIO itself (like the Communist

Party) produced a new generation of black leaders that pushed traditional black reform organizations to a

more working-class orientation. 29

Although it would be a stretch to characterize the CIO of the 1930s as a “community”

organization, it did have a visible presence in black communities, especially in the urban South. CIO locals

held meetings in black churches and lodges and local leaders organized voter registration campaigns and

established workshops to inform union members of their legal and constitutional rights. In Winston-Salem,

North Carolina, for example, Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers was largely

responsible for electing that city's first black councilman in 1947, the Reverend Kenneth Williams. 30 But

FTA was not entirely representative of the CIO as a whole. In fact, FTA was one of the "left-led" unions;

its primary organizers were Communists or radicals close to the Communist Party. Other left-led unions,

such as the International Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union, contributed directly to the political

strength of communities of color. In the Southwest, Mine Mill defended the rights of Mexican mine

workers and led one of the most successful strikes of the postwar period--the infamous "Salt of the Earth"

strike, about which blacklisted director Herbert Biberman made his classic film of the same title. The New

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Mexico miners succeeded precisely because of the union's strong ties with the community. Entire families

picketted and the battle lines seemed to be drawn everywhere, especially in the company-owned homes and

neighborhoods. In Bessemer, Alabama, the most prominent civil rights activist was Mine Mill organizer

Asbury Howard. Howard not only served as president of the Progressive Voters League and vice-president

of the Bessemer NAACP, but he was active in the Progressive Party and even supported the Communist-

led Civil Rights Congress during the early 1950s.31

The CIO's overall record was a bit more mixed. Initially the CIO did very little to challenge

discriminatory hiring practices or the unspoken occupational ceilings placed on black workers, and in the

South especially, CIO bureaucrats were reluctant to put African Americans forward in leadership positions

(again, the left-led unions were exceptional in this regard). And like other union efforts in the past, the CIO

did not venture into occupational areas where African Americans were over-represented, i.e., domestic

service and agriculture. (It did inherit some agricultural unions such as the Southern Tenant Farmers Union

and the Share Croppers Union, but it limited its membership to wage laborers only and invested very few

resources into these unions. Hence the CIO rural efforts never got off the ground.) Furthermore, during

World War II the CIO agreed to a no-strike pledge that paralyzed some of the labor battles that had not

been resolved with the first campaigns of the late 1930s. And in the midst of the Cold War, as Congress

passed a slate of anti-labor legislation, the CIO expelled all eleven left-led unions--the unions with the best

record on anti-racism. and defending the civil and legal rights of workers of color. The expulsions

weakened the labor movement substantially--CIO membership dropped from 5.2 million during war to 3.7

million in 1950 after the purges. (Local 22 of FTA in Winston Salem faced a wide-scale anticommunist

attack and was contested in a National Labor Relations Board Election in 1949 by a new, conservative CIO

union. They lost by only 60 votes, but it did destroy Local 22's bargaining agreement and insured that R.J.

Reynolds workers would remain unorganized. The local continued to exist, however, and its leader--

Miranda Smith--was appointed Southern Regional Director of FTA, making her the highest ranking black

woman on the labor movement up to that point) . 32

The CIO also abandoned its massive Southern campaign, better known as Operation Dixie. Had

Operation Dixie succeeded, according to Michael Goldfield, it would have changed the entire character of

Southern politics. A strong labor alliance would have overthrown the Dixiecrats, registered black voters in

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greater numbers, and improved the condition of most workers. The failure of Operation Dixie rendered the

Southern labor movement weak and divided, leaving the doors open for white supremacist rule throughout

the South, including the labor movement. In fact, its possible that a strong, progressive Southern labor

movement would have altered the nature of the Civil Rights movement whose Southern character was

largely black middle- and working-class.33

Despite the witch hunt atmosphere and the CIO's back pedaling on civil rights (which seemed

more evident after it merged with the AFL in 1956), black labor leaders were nevertheless able to form the

National Negro Labor Council in 1951. The purpose of the NNLC was to pressure organized labor and

employers to respond to the needs of black workers. It sought to improve working conditions and

desegregate jobs that had been historically "whites only." More significantly, the NNLC produced a body

of leaders who would go on to play critical roles on black politics, particularly at the local level. Its director

Ernest Thompson emerged as a major political figure in East Orange, New Jersey; William R. Hood of

Local 600 UAW was highly respected in the black communities of Detroit as was the Council's executive

secretary, Coleman Young. Young, of course, went on to occupy the mayor's office for almost two decades.

The NNLC was also unusual for the large number of women in its ranks; approximately one-third of its

members were women during the early 1950s and some, like Octavia Hawkins of the Amalgamated

Clothing Workers and Vickie Garvin of the United Office and Professional Workers of America

(UOPWA)-CIO, rose to leadership positions both within the NNLC and in black community organizations

in general. Garvin, who served as executive secretary of the NNLC's New York chapter, is an excellent

example of the kind of progressive community leaders the labor movement produced. Raised in a black

working class family in New York, Garvin spent her summers working in the garment industry to

supplement her family's income. As early as High School, she became active in Black protest politics,

supporting efforts by Adam Clayton Powell, Jr. to obtain better paying jobs for African Americans in

Harlem and creating Black history clubs dedicated to building library resources. After earning her B.A. in

political science from Hunter College and M.A. in Economics from Smith College, she spent the war years

working for the National War Labor Board and continued on as an organizer for the and national research

director and co-chair of the Fair Employment Practices Committee. During the postwar purges of the Left

in the CIO, Garvin was a strong voice of protest and a sharp critic of the CIO's failure to organize in the

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South. In the 1950s Garvin established close ties to Malcolm X, helped him arrange part of his tour of

Africa in 1959, and eventually joined other black expatriates in Ghana (and later relocated to China for

several years).

I describe Garvin's life and work at length precisely to illustrate the point that black activists rarely

made sharp distinctions between labor organizing and community work. This is why when the House Un-

American Activities Committee and the Subversive Activities Control Board finally succeeded in

destroying the NNLC, these black activists continued to thrive politically because they established a strong

base in black community institutions. No matter what we might think of the AFL-CIO's record in the realm

of civil rights and anti-racism, black (and I presume Latino and Asian-American) labor leaders persisted in

fighting on several fronts at once; they not only held prominent positions in civil rights organizations but,

in many instances, pioneered workplace and community struggles that has contributed to improving the

lives of all workers, irrespective of race.

RETHINKING LABOR/COMMUNITY STRATEGIES: FROM REVOLUTIONARY UNIONISM

TO SOCIAL UNIONISM

In the final section of this paper, I want to briefly examine a few more contemporary case studies

that might illuminate the problems and prospects of community-based unionism for working people of

color. One of the most important and still under-studied urban labor movement is the Dodge Revolutionary

Union Movement (DRUM), which spawned the League of Revolutionary Black Workers. The roots of

DRUM are in Detroit's black activist community as well as on the shop floors of the auto industry. Several

leading figures in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit, most notably Luke Tripp,

General Baker, Charles (Mao) Johnson and, John Watson had been Wayne State University student

activists identified with radical black nationalist and civil rights organizations. Watson, for example, had

worked with a number of organizations, including the Freedom Now Party (an all-Black political party that

endorsed socialist Clifton DeBerry for president in 1964), SNCC, and the Negro Action Committee. Upon

his return from Cuba, General Baker moved even deeper into Detroit's labor and left circles, taking a job as

a production worker at the Chrysler Dodge Main plant and taking classes on Marx's Capital with Marty

15

Glaberman, a veteran radical of the Johnson-Forest tendency (a breakaway from the Socialist Workers

Party led by C.L.R. James and Raya Dunayevskaya that included James Boggs and Grace Lee Boggs).34

The Inner City Voice (IVJ), which Watson began editing after the Detroit riots in 1967, was conceived as a

revolutionary publication that could build links between Black radicals, particularly students and labor

activists, with the broader Black community.

Having studied the works of Lenin, and to a lesser degree Stalin and Mao, the militants who

started ICV regarded the newspaper as "the focus of a permanent organization [that] could provide a bridge

between the peaks of activity." And they tried to live up to this injunction: in 1968 Baker organized a

discussion group consisting largely of Dodge Main workers at the ICV's office. Not long afterward--the day

after May Day, 1968, to be exact-4,000 workers at the Dodge Main plant walked out in a wildcat strike, the

first in that factory in fourteen years and the first organized and led entirely by Black workers. From there

this core of radical workers around Baker and the ICV group gave birth to DRUM--the Dodge

Revolutionary Union Movement.

DRUM's specific demands--safer workplaces, lower production demands, an end to racist hiring

practices--echoed past grievances. DRUM's leaders understood these isolated shop floor conflicts as aspects

of the larger fight against capitalism. Of course they wanted to win better working conditions and wages for

Black workers, but their ultimate goal was freedom for all workers. Their analysis of the role of racism,

which they saw as coming both from the company and fellow workers, also influenced their organizational

strategy. DRUM members knew that racism limited the ability of workers to unite, and that white workers

were hurt by this as well as Black workers. But they also argued that white workers benefited from racism

in the form of higher wages, cleaner and safer jobs and greater union representation.

DRUM not only had links to Detroit's black community, but it had particularly strong ties to Black

student radicals at Wayne State University, some of whom actually worked in the plants. During the

wildcats at the Dodge Main and Eldon Avenue plants, students walked the picket line after court

injunctions prevented the striking workers from coming near the plant gates. DRUM supporters also took

over the South End, the daily student newspaper at Wayne, and John Watson became its editor during the

1968-69 school year. It became a tool for drawing students into DRUM and for communicating with the

Black working class in Detroit. Most copies were distributed not on campus but free at plant gates and in

16

parking lots. Claiming on its masthead to be "The Voice of Revolution" the South End became Detroit's

Black daily paper at a moment when serving the Black community was understood by many people as

compatible with being the voice of revolution."

The League makes an interesting case study for our purposes precisely because its members were

divided over whether to adopt a workplace or community-based strategy. One outgrowth of their

community-based approach was the Black Economic Development Conference (BEDC) in the Spring of

1969, led largely by former SNCC activist James Forman. Out of BEDC came Forman's proposal for a

Black Manifesto, which demanded, among other things, $500,000,000 in reparations from white churches

to be used to purchase land in the South, fund Black publishing companies, a research skills center, and

Black Southern university, and a National Black Labor Strike fund. The work in BEDC led the League

leadership, of which Forman was now a part, away from its local emphasis. Their efforts led to the

founding of the Black Workers Congress in 1970. The BWC was conceived more or less as a coalition of

Black radical labor activists, and it attracted a number of Marxist and left nationalist movements.

Eventually the BWC under Forman became a Marxist-Leninist organization calling for workers' control

over the economy and the state to be brought about through cooperatives, united front groups,

neighborhood centers, student organizations, and ultimately a revolutionary party.

While Forman made various revolutionary pronouncements, the League's local base began to

disintegrate. Several League activists, including Chuck Wooten and General Baker, had been fired and all

of the DRUMs were barely functional by 1972. The General Policy Statement of the League, which based

everything on the need for vibrant "DRUM type" organizations seemed to have fallen by the wayside. In

short, the League essentially abandoned its shop floor emphasis for a revolutionary style politics that

seemed increasingly alienated from Detroit's black community. The strength of the DRUM movement was

its ability to keep both in play, to build links between students, workers on the shop floor, and the black

working class communities where most students and workers lived. Reflecting on the collapse of the

League, Ken Cockrel observed, "We had to develop a concept of what to do when workers are fired for

doing organizational activity, and you are not in a position to feed them, and you are not in a position to

force management to take them back, and you are not in a position to relate concretely to any of their needs

17

[I]f you make no response you are in a position of having led workers out of the plant on the basis of an

anti-racist, anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist line and having the man respond and you can't do anything."

Perhaps the greatest tragedy for the League was the failure of white workers to support the RUMs. Of

course, had the UAW used its resources to support League demands rather than lining up with the auto

companies to isolate and destroy them, the outcome would have probably been different. Certainly the sea-

change in the current national leadership of the AFL-CIO as well as the changing face of labor has created

an environment in which many of DRUM's core demands would fit well with organized labor's current

agenda. The 1995 victory of John Sweeney (president), Richard Trumka (secretary/treasurer), and Linda

Chavez-Thompson (executive vice-president)--the triumvirate that defeated the established old guard of

Tom Donahue, heir apparent to Lane Kirkland and George Meany--reflected a new mood in the labor

movement that recognizes the critical importance of women and workers of color as well as the need for

community based strategies. 36

Yet, as dramatic as these changes in national leadership might appear, they reflect several decades

of rank-and-file efforts on the part of workers of color to re-orient unions toward issues of social justice,

racism, sexism, and cultural difference within their ranks-decades I barely touched on throughout this

paper. Indeed, one of the most significant labor-based social justice movements emerged out of the Service

Employees International Union (SEIU), the union headed by John J. Sweeney before he took over the

leadership of the AFL-CIO. Launched in 1985, "Justice for Janitors" sought to build a mass movement to

promote union recognition and to address the needs of a workforce made up primarily of people of color,

mainly immigrants. As Sweeney explained, "The strategy of Justice for Janitors was to build a mass

movement. . . . The campaigns addressed the special needs of an immigrant workforce, largely from Latin

America. In many cities, the janitors' cause became a civil rights mo vement--and a cultural crusade.”37

From its inception, Justice for Janitors has been deeply committed to antiracism and mass

mobilization through community-based organizing and civil disobedience. Heirs of the sit-down strikers of

the 1930s and the Civil Rights movement of the 1950s and '60s, they have waged militant, highly visible

campaigns in major cities throughout the country.38 In Los Angeles, for example, Justice for Janitors is

largely responsible for the dramatic increase in unionized custodial emp loyees, particularly among workers

18

contracted out by big firms to clean high-rise buildings. The percentage of janitors belonging to unions rose

from 10% of the workforce in 1987 to 90% in 1995.39

Justice for Janitors succeeded precisely because it was able to establish links to community

leaders, to forge an alliance with black and Latino organizations, churches, and progressive activists from

all over the city. They built a powerful mass movement that went beyond the downtown luxury office

buildings and the SEIU Local 399 headquarters into the streets and boardrooms. Their challenge is all the

more remarkable when we consider the fact that Proposition 187, a California initiative denying basic

rights to immigrants, had only recently been passed. After all, the SOU in Los Angeles was primarily a

union of immigrant workers.40

In Washington D.C., Justice for Janitors led the struggle of Local 82 of the SEIU in their fight

against U.S. Service Industries--a private janitorial company that used non-union labor to clean downtown

office buildings. But because they conceived of themselves as a social movement, they did not stop with

the protection of union jobs. In March of 1995, Justice for Janitors organized several demonstrations in the

district that led to over 200 arrests. Blocking traffic and engaging in other forms of civil disobedience, the

protesters demanded an end to tax breaks to real estate developers as well as cut backs in social programs

for the poor. As union spokesperson Manny Pastreich put it, "This isn't just about 5,000 janitors; it's about

issues that concern all D.C. residents--what's happening to their schools, their streets, their neighborhoods."

In the end, their challenge to the city and to USSI paid off. In December of 1995, the National

Labor Relations Board concluded that USSI had "a history of pervasive illegal conduct by threatening,

interrogating, and firing employees they deemed unacceptable, especially those committed to union

organizing. African American workers, in particular, had suffered most from the wave of firings, in part

because USSI, like other employers, believed immigrant workers were more malleable and less committed

to unionization because of their tenuous status as residents.42 The NLRB's decision against USSI,

therefore, was a substantial victory for Local 82 of the SEIU. It meant that USSI could no longer

discriminate against the union and it generated at least a modicum of recognition for Justice for Janitors.

In a highly decentralized, runaway shop environment like that which exists in the garment industry,

community-based organizing is often the only way to reach the majority of workers. In Los Angeles, where

Latino and Asian-American garment workers are spread across many small plants and shops, organizing

19

shop by shop would prove costly and time consuming. The Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile

Employees (UNITE) adopted a community-based strategy that has been quite successful. In the

predominantly Latino community near MacArthur Party (downtown Los Angeles), UNITE runs a "justice

center" that provides language and citizenship classes, as well as a support network to help workers resolve

workplace disputes. By maintaining a major presence in these neighborhoods, providing services and

working with neighborhood groups, organizers not only helped build the union but gain a better

understanding of the community, its culture, and its leadership base.43

Finally, in Greensboro, North Carolina, UNITE's ability to build a strong base in the black

comunity ensured the success of its three-year struggle against K-Mart, which finally ended in victory

during the summer of 1996. Essentially, UNITE Local 2603 launched a campaign to win a union contract

and protest racial inequities in wages: K-Mart workers at the nearly all-black facility were making a mere

$4.60. In addition to filing a complaint with the EEOC, UNITE enlisted all the key local black community

leaders and were able to get over 10,000 signatures on a petition to K-Mart's chairman demanding an end to

discrimination. As a result of intensive workplace and community-based organizing, K-Mart signed a

contract with the union that included, among other things, "a grievance procedure protecting workers

against unjust discipline and terminations, seniority rights in job bidding, a limit to the number of

temporaries, two additional holidays" and wage increases of 50 cents and hour for the first year and 75

cents for the subsequent years thereafter. 44

The main force behind the boycott, besides the union, was a coalition of Greensboro black

ministers called "The Pulpit Forum" led by the Reverend William Wright. In addition to building

communication networks through their congregations and speaking openly on behalf of the K-Mart

workers, The Pulpit Forum organized mass civil disobedience campaigns in which several ministers were

arrested. Wright, like his fellow workers in The Pulpit Forum, understood the campaign in terms of the

Civil Rights movement--he characterized it as a crusade for justice with far reaching implications. "Kmart

does not realize," he pointed out, "that what starts in Greensboro has a way of reaching the conscience of

our nation." Pulpit Forum leader Rev. Nelson Johnson shared Williams' view and went further, recognizing

UNITE's struggle as the beginnings of a movement that could dismantle corporate power over the working

class. A veteran activist with a long radical history in North Carolina, Johnson began in the Civil Rights

20

movement and quickly moved to the left, becoming one of the founders of the African Liberation Support

Committee in 1972 and subsequently a leader of the Workers Viewpoint Organization (later called the

Communist Workers Party). In fact, sixteen years before UNITE celebrated its victory over K-Mart,

Johnson almost died on the same Greensboro streets when Klansmen and Nazis opened fire on a WVO-led

anti-Klan demonstration. 45

Rather than simply appeal to black workers as "workers," UNITE appealed to the whole black

community and tapped a deep tradition of resistance to racism and injustice. Mobilizing the entire black

community was the key to their victory. Indeed, two years before the final contract with K-Mart, the

Greensboro City Council passed a resolution requiring that all future employers moving into the city limits

pay a minimum starting salary of $12.50 per hour before receiving any city tax incentives. It was a bold

move, to be sure. Yet it represents a glimmer of what could happen when an entire community takes a stand

against the rapaciousness of multinational corporations and racial inequality.46

SOME CONCLUSIONS

As more and more plants downsize or shut down altogether, traditional workplace activism (in some

instances at least) has begun to lose its efficacy. Of course, union organizing is still crucial, but for the

majority of non-union workers--many of whom must work part-time or don't have jobs--alternative

strategies are needed. Developing new approaches to working-class activism, particularly as it relates to

urban communities of color, is especially important since conservative social policies have begun to

effectively erode what's left of civil society, government safety nets, and essential public services to the

urban poor and working class. Moreover, immigration and the transformation of work from manufacturing

to service, from decent paying full-time jobs to low wage part-time and temporary jobs, has led to a

dramatic shift in the character and complexion of the working class.

What are the implications for community-based labor organizing? On the one hand, as firms leave

core urban communities employment, when it is available, tends to be outside of working-class

neighborhoods. The ties that have bound together employers and employees within single communities

have been severed (though they've always been rather tenuous), leaving many inner city communities

without viable economies and in need to decent mass transportation. On the surface, then, it might appear

21

that workplace organizing should not be coupled with community organizing just given the growing

distance between these two spaces. Yet, the historical evidence suggests the opposite. First, working people

of color, whether they are immigrants or native-born, have always linked community struggles with labor

organizing, and the labor movement has long tapped into community-based organizations to build its own

membership. In most cases, organizing campaigns succeeded precisely because they were able to secure

massive community support. Today, with corporations more mobile than ever and the workforce more

flexible than ever, workplace strategies alone will fail dismally. Communities not only serve as bases of

support for workers but they also constitute consumer and citizens who might collectively challenge

corporate power through boycotts and corporate responsibility campaigns (e.g.., the Greensboro K-Mart

strike).

Second, when promoting "community" strategies we need to be careful not to treat community as

a synonym for locality. Besides the obvious fact that working-class communities live and struggle in a

global economy and they need to be aware of how events across both oceans actually affect their lives, the

very communities in which they live have never been entirely "local." For immigrant workers, in particular,

their communities might be rooted beyond the boundaries of the United States. Workers from China, Japan,

the Caribbean, Mexico, Ireland, etc., are often still bound up with the politics of their home country. Peter

Kwong's Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950, for example, demonstrates how impossible

it is to make sense of Chinese working-class politics in New York City without reference to the Chinese

Revolution. Likewise, as several scholars point out Mexican-American labor struggles in the Southwest are

incomprehensible without understanding the Mexican Revolution. One particularly noteworthy collection

of essays edited by Camille Guerin-Gonzales and Carl Strikwerda, The Politics of Immigrant Workers:

Labor Activism and Migration in the World Economy since 1830, brings together an array of scholars

across disciplines and fields to study the international movement of workers. The essays demonstrate,

among other things, that labor/community activism needs to be understood in an international context.

They caution against easy generalizations about globalization and insist that we always consider the world

economy, the state, the structure and nature of work itself, the self-activity of immigrant and native workers

through labor and political organizations, and working-class culture and commu nity. The authors contribute

to expanding our definition of "community" beyond the local precisely because they are interested in

22

finding the sources of immigrant working-class opposition. The search for the bases of immigrant labor

politics led social his torian Herbert Gutman to suggest that "cultural baggage" from the homeland shaped

immigrant workers' resistance in the U.S.--an idea further elaborated by John Laslett in an essay

introducing his notion of "overlapping diasporas" as a way to understand working-class "ethnic" politics.47

Third, in an economic environment in which urban communities of color suffer from the highest

rates of unemployment, unions must consider organizing the jobless. This is hardly a new strategy--

Socialist and Communists developed unemployed councils and related organizations during the 1930s.

Unfortunately, occupation-oriented organizations like labor unions are not designed to accommodate either

the jobless or people in different lines of work. Community-based organizations are. Often community-

based organizations are the only venue through which to inform people of workplace actions, conflicts,

with employers, possible strikes.

Finally, no matter how logical the work/community divide might appear to scholars or even

organizers, that is not how life is lived. Working class communities, whether they are working or not, deal

with many issues at once--transportation, housing, public education, health care, safety, etc.; and some

struggle everyday with racism, sexism, and homophobia. Although this is merely an untested hypothesis, I

think its safe to presume that unions that recognize workers as whole people whose community and family

ties are essential are also the most successful in building and maintaining an activist membership.

23

NOTES

1: "Women Taking to Role in Unions," Boston Globe July 20, 1996. On unions and the restructuring of

universities and hospitals, see Cary Nelson, ed., We Will Teach for Food ( 1997); Toni Gilpin, et. al., On

strike for Respect The Clerical and Technical Workers' Strike at Yale University, 1984-85 (Urbana:

University of Illinois Press, 1995, reprint from 1987 booklet); Joel Denker, Unions and Universities : The

Rise of the New Labor Leader (Montclair, N.J. : Allanheld, Osmun, 1981); Karen Sacks, Caring by the

Hour : Women. Work. and Organizing at Duke Medical Center (Urbana : University of Illinois Press,

1988); Leon Fink and Brian Greenberg, Upheaval in the Quiet Zone: a History of Hospital Workers' Union-

Local 1199 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Susan Reverby, Ordered to Care: The Dilemma of

American Nursing- 1850-1945 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987); Barbara Melosh, "The

Physicians Hand" : Work Culture and Conflict in American Nursing (Philadelphia: Temple University

Press, 1982); Darlene Clark Hine, Black Women in White: Racial Conflict and Cooperation in the Nursing

Profession. 1890-1950 (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1989).

2: Peabody, Alvin, Black Women Win Brighter Futures With Unions., Washington Informer 06-22-1995;

"Labor Appeals to Minorities, Women in Turnaround Bid," Christian Science Monitor , Oct. 25, 1995.

"Trunika Says Revival of Labor Movement Hinges on Diversity," Boston Globe January 23, 1996.

3 Defreitas, Gregory, Unionization among racial and ethnic minorities.., Vol. 46, Industrial & Labor

Relations Review, 01-01-1993, pp 284

4 There are several terrific books and articles on the new social movement unionism and community

strategies. For a sampling, see Jeremy Brecher and Tim Costello, eds., Building Bridges: The Emerging

Grassroots Coalition of Labor and Community (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1990); Paul Johnston,

Success While Others Fail: Social Movement Unionism and the Public Workplace (Ithaca, N.Y. : ILR

Press, 1994).

24

5 My argument about the centrality of community for the labor movement is further developed in my

book, Race Rebels: Culture, Politics- and the Black Working Class (New York: Free Press, 1994). There is

so much labor history available that explores these strikes as well as the particular role communities have

played in their success or failure. For an introduction, see Herbert Gutman, "Work, Culture, and Society

in Industrializing America," in Work, Culture. and Society in Industrializing America: Essays in American

Working-Class and Social History (1976), 3 -78; Jeremy Brecher, Strike! (Boston: South End Press, 1997,

2nd Ed.), 13-114; Tera Hunter, "To ‘Joy My Freedom": Women Workers Odyssey of Hope and

Struggle in the Post-Civil War Urban South (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Jacquelyn

Dowd Hall, et. al., Like a Family: The Making of a Southern Mill World (1987); Michael Frisch and

Daniel J. Walkowitz, eds., Working-Class America: Essays on Labor, Community, and American Society

(1983); Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women, Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California

Food Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (1987); Dana Frank, Purchasing Power: Consumer Organizing.

Gender. And The Seattle Labor Movement, 1919-1929 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994);

Earl Lewis, In Their Own Interests: Race, Class, and Power in Twentieth Century Norfolk (Berkeley and

Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1991); Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil

Rights Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana, Ill.: University of Illinois Press, 1993); Joe William

Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia- 1915-1932 (Urbana, Ill.: University of

Illinois Press, 1990); Joe Trotter, Jr. Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat, 1915-

1945 (1985); and a more recent example is the struggle to keep the Van Nuys GM plant open during the

1980s. See Eric Mann, Taking On General Motors: A Case Study Of The Campaign To Keep GM Van

Nuys Open (Los Angeles, Calif.: Center for Labor Research and Education, Institute of Industrial

Relations, University of California, Los Angeles, 1987).

6 There are many examples. See Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom, Kelley, Race Rebels chapter 2; Trotter,

Coal, Class, and Color, 199-205; George Sanchez, Becoming, Mexican American; Peter Kwong,

Chinatown. New York; Elsa Barkley Brown, "Womanist Consciousness: Maggie Lena Walker and the

Independent Order of St. Luke," Signs 14, no. 3 (1989), 175; Elsa Barkley Brown, "Uncle Ned's Children:

Richmond, Virginia's Black Community, 1890-1930," (Ph.D. diss., Kent State University, 1994); Robert

25

Korstad, "Daybreak of Freedom": Tobacco Workers and the CIO, Winston-Salem, North Carolina, 1943

1950," (Ph.D. diss., University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1987); Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in

the South Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890 (Philadelphia, 1984), 109-115; Bruce Ergood, "The Female

Protection and the Sun Light: Two Contemporary Negro Mutual Aid Societies," Florida Historical

Quarterly 50, no. I (July, 1971),25-38; Lewis, In Their Own Interests; Evelyn Brooks Higginbotham,

Righteous Discontent: The Women's Movement in the Black Baptist Church. 1880-1920 (Cambridge,

Mass., 1993);

7 . Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom, Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color 199-205.

8 . Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the Early

Civil Rights Movement," Journal of American History, 75 (December 1988), 786-811; Korstad, "Daybreak

of Freedom"; Michael Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights Kelley, Hammer and Hoe.

9. Lucy Randolph Mason, To Win These Rights: A Personal Story of the CIO in the South (New Yoxk,

1952), 108; also quoted in Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights 136; see also, Kelley, Hammer

and Hoe: Alabama Communists During the Great Depression (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North

Carolina Press, 1990); Brenda McCallum, "Songs of Work and Songs of Worship: Sanctifying Black

Unionism in the Southern City of Steel," New York Folklore 14 (no. 1 and 2, 1988), 19-20, 23, 27.

10. Korstad, "Daybreak of Freedom," 90-91, quote pg. 94; Janiewski, Sisterhood Denied 97-109 passim.;

Janiewski, "Sisters Under Their Skins," 27-28; Janiewski, "Seeking a New Day," 166; Beverly W. Jones,

"Race, Sex, and Class: Black Female Tobacco Workers in Durham, North Carolina, 1920-1940, and the

Development of Female Consciousness," Feminist Studies, 10 (Fall 1984), 443450; Jones, Labor of Love,

Labor of Sorrow, 137-38.

11. Three exceptions are Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women. Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization and

the California Food Processing Industry. 1930-1950 (Albuquerque, 1987); Mary Bularzik, "Sexual

26

Harassment at the Workplace: Historical Notes," in Workers' Struggles, Past and Present, ed. James Green,

117-35; Elsa Barkley Brown, "'What Has Happened Here': The Politics of Difference in Women's History

and Fen-dnist Politics," Feminist Studies 18 (Summer 1992), 302-307.

12. Jones, "Race, Sex, and Class," 449; Korstad, "Daybreak of Freedom."

13. Vicki Ruiz, Cannery Women- Cannery Lives: Mexican Women, Unionization, and the California Food

Processing Industry, 1930-1950 (Albuquerque, 1987); Duron, Clcmentina. "Mexican Women and Labor

Conflict in Los Angeles: The ILGWU Dressmakers' Strike of 1933," Aztlan 15 (Spring 1989): 145-162;

Camille Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican Workers and American Dreams ; Patricia Zavella, Women's Work and

Chicano Families: Cannery Workers of the Santa Clara Valley (Ithaca, 1987).

14. Kuhn, et. at., Living Atlanta, 115; see also Hunter, To 'Joy my Freedom

15. Quote from Eileen Boris, "Black Women and Paid Labor in the Home: Industrial Homework in

Chicago in the 1920's," in Homework: Historical and Contemporary Perspectives on Paid Labor at Home,

eds. Eileen Boris and Cynthia R. Daniels (Urbana and Chicago, 1989), 47; Hunter, "Household Workers in

the Making," 151-186. See also Eileen Boris, Home to Work-Motherhood and the Politics of Industrial

Homework in the United States (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994).

16. W.E.B. DuBois, Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black

Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy, 1860-1880 (New York: Harcourt, Brace, 1935);

Theodore W. Allen, The Invention of the White Race: Volume One: Racist Oppression and Social

Control (New York and London: Verso, 1994); Theodore W. Allen, Can White Workers (Radicals) Be

Radicalized? (Ann Arbor, MI: Radical Education Project, 1968 (pamphlet); Roediger, The Wages of

Whiteness and Toward the Abolition of Whiteness: Essays on Race, Politics, and Working Class History

(London and New York: Verso, 1994); Alexander Saxton, The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class

Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth Century America (London and New York: Verso, 1990); Noel

27

Ignatiev, How the Irish Became White (New York and London: Routledge, 1995); George Lipsitz, The

Possessive Investment in Whiteness (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998); Eric Lott, Love and

Theft: Blackface Minstrelsy and the American Working Class (New York: Oxford University Press, 1993);

Matthew Frye Jacobson, Whiteness of a Different Color: European Immigrants and the Alchemy of Race

(Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1998); David Wellman, Portraits of White Racism (New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1993, 2nd ed.); Michael Go ldfield, The Color of Politics; and see also, Alan

Draper, Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement in the South- 1954-1968

(Ithaca: Cornell University,Press, 1994). Of course, white workers were never uniformly racist and there

are enough stories of interracial working-class solidarity to fill volumes. But we also must recognize the

price these men and women had to pay: white workers willing to commit "race suicide" often faced the

worst of state repression, ostracism, and sometimes criticism from within their own ranks. It's not an

accident, for example, that the most militantly anti-racist unions emerging out of the CIO campaigns of the

1930s and 40s were the main targets of McCarthyite witch hunts.

17. Alexander Saxton, The Indispensable Enemy Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California

(Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 197 1); see also Herbert Hill, "Anti-Oriental

Agitation and the Rise of Working-Class Racism," Society (January/February, 1973).

18 Neil Foley, The White Scourge: Mexicans, Blacks and Poor Whites in the Cotton Culture of Central

Texas (Los Angeles and Berkeley: University of California Press, 1997)

19 To further reinforce my larger point it should be noted that at the height of anti-Chinese sentiment

within the labor movement the only leader in the Knights of Labor to oppose the legislation and support

organizing the Chinese was a black man named James Ferrell. Philip Foner, Organized Labor and the Black

Worker, 1619-1981 (New York: International Publishers, 1981), 47.

20 William Harris, The Harder We Run 26; Schwcninger, "James Rapier and the Negro Labor Movement";

Abernathy, "The Knights of Labor in Alabama"; Ward and Rogers, Labor Revolt in Alabama 24-28;

28

Marshall, Labor in the South 21-22; Taft, Organizing Dixie 15-16; Foner, Organized Labor and the Black

Worker 49; Kann "The Knights of Labor"; Lewis, Black Coal Miners, 40-41; McLaurin, The Knights of

Labor in the South chapter 3, 136-38, 145-47; Fink, Workingmen's Democracy; Painter, Standing at

Armageddon esp. 44-50.

21 examples of racism in the AFL can be found in Philip Foner and Ronald Lewis (eds.), The Black

Worker- A Documentary History from Colonial Times to the Present, vol. 5 (Philadelphia, 1980), 124;

Sterling D, Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New

York, 1931), 53-104; Philip Foner, American Socialism and Black Americans (Westport, 1977), 102, 133,

262, 307-309, 342; Philip Foner, History of the Labor Movement in the United States vol. 3 (New York,

1964), 369-370, 381-383; Philip Foner, Organized Labor and the Black Worker, Ray Marshall, The Negro

and Organized Labor (New York, 1965),135-141; Ray Marshall, The Negro Worker (New York, 1967),

17-23; Marc Karson and Ronald Radosh, "The American Federation of Labor and the Negro Worker,

18941949," in The Negro and the American Labor Movement edited by Julius Jacobson, (New York,

1968); Bernard Mandel, "Samuel Gompers and the Negro Worker, 1886-1914," Journal of Negro History

40 (January, 1955), 34-60. Of course, there were exceptions such as the United Mine Workers of America

which maintained at least a limited conmitment to racial justice, in part because African Americans made

up a good proportion of the mining labor force.

22 On blacks and the IWW, Selig Perlman and Philip Taft, History of Labor in the United States (New

York, 1935), 247; Bernard A. Cook, "Covington Hall and Radical Rural Unionization in Louisiana,"

Louisiana History 18, no. 2 (1977), 230, 235; Melvyn Dubofsky, We Shall Be All: A History of the IWW

(New York, 1969), 8-9, 210, 213-16; James F. Fickle, "Race, Class, and Radicalism: The Wobblies in the

Southern Lumber Industry, 1900-1916," in At the Point of Production: The Local History of the IWW

(Westport, 1981), 98-109; Merl E. Reed, "Lumberjacks and Longshoremen: The IWW in Louisiana," Labor

Histoly 13, no. I (Winter, 1972), 44-58; James R. Green, "The Brotherhood of Timber Workers, 1910-

1913: A Radical Response to Industrial Capitalism in the Southern U.S.A.," Past and Present 60 (August,

1973), 161-200; Philip Foner, "The IWW and the Black Worker," Journal of Negro History 55 (January,

29

1970), 45-64; Myland R. Brown, "The IWW and the Negro Worker," (Ed.D., Ball State University, 1968);

and portions of Sterling Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor

Movement (New York, 193 1), esp. 329-335.

23. Quote from Benjamin Fletcher, "The Negro and Organized Labor," The Messenger 5, no. 7 (July 1923),

760; see also Irwin Marcus, "Benjamin Fletcher Black Labor Leader," Negro History Bulletin 35 (October

1972), 131-40; Benjamin Fletcher, "Philadelphia Waterfront Unionism," The Messenger (June 1923),

74041.

24. One could go back as far as Charles Wesley, Negro Labor in the United States, 1850-1925 (New York,

1927); Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo Greene, The Negro Wage Earner (New York, 1930); Sterling D.

Spero and Abram L. Harris, The Black Worker: The Negro and the Labor Movement (New York, 193 1)

for rich descriptions of racially segregated work. Two of the most sophisticated recent studies that examine

the racialized dimension of industrial work and work spaces are Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers; Trotter,

Coal, Class, and Color esp. 65-88, 102-11, 106.

25. Feminist scholarship on the South, as well as some recent community histories, have begun to examine

how the racialized and gendered social spaces in which people work, in addition to the world beyond work,

which was also divided by race and--at times-sex, shaped the character of everyday resistance, collective

action, and dornination. See especially, Hunter, "Household Workers in the Making"; Janiewski, Sisterhood

Denied ; Janiewski, "Sisters Under Their Skins," 13-35; Janiewski, "Seeking'a New Day and a New Way':

Black Women and Unions in the Southern Tobacco Industry," in "To Toil the Livelong Day` American

Women at Work, 1780-1980, ed. Carol Groneman and Mary Beth Norton (Ithaca, 1987), 161-78; Korstad,

"Daybreak of Freedom"; Julia Kirk Blackwelder, "Women in the Workforce: Atlanta, New Orleans, and

San Antonio, 1930-1940," Journal of Urban History, 4 (May 1978), 331-58; see also Nina Gregg, "Women

Telling Stories About Reality: Subjectivity, the Generation of Meaning, and the Organizing of a Union at

Yale," (PILD. diss., McGill University, 199 1).

30

26. William H. Harris, Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of

Sleeping Car Porters, 1925-1937 (Urbana : University of Illinois Press, 1977); Paula F. Pfeffer, A. Philip

Randolph, Pioneer Of The Civil Rights Movement (Baton Rouge : Louisiana State University Press, 1990);

Melinda Chateauvert, Marching Together & Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (Urbana :

University of Illinois Press, 1998).

27. Lewis, In Their Own Interests, 47-58, quote from p. 58; see also McCallurn, "Songs of Work, Songs of

Worship," 14;

28. Green, "The Brotherhood of Timber Workers," 185. On the preference of black workers for segregated

locals, see Bruce Nelson, "Class and Race in the Crescent City: The ILWU, from San Francisco to New

Orleans," in The CIO's Left-led Unions ed. Steven Rosswurm (New Brunswick, N.J., 1992), 19-45.

29. see Beth Bates, "Old Guard Versus New Crowd: Black Workers Challenge Agenda of the NAACP, 193

5-194 1," American Historical Review 102, no. 2 (April 1997),

30. Robert Korstad and Nelson Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost: Labor, Radicals, and the

Early Civil Rights Movement," Journal of American History, 75 (December 1988), 786-811; Korstad,

"Daybreak of Freedom"; Michael Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights; Kelley, Hammer and

Hoe.

31. Lipsitz, A Rainbow at Midnight pp. ; Kelley, Hammer and Hoe, epilogue; Horace Huntley, "The Rise

and Fall of Mine Mill in Alabama: The Status Quo Against Interracial Unionism, 1933-1949," Journal of

the Birmingham Historical Society 6, no. I (January 1979), 7-13, and "Iron Ore Miners and Mine Mill in

Alabama, 1933-1952," (Ph.D. diss., University of Piusburgh, 1976), 110-69; Vernon H. Jensen, Nonferrous

Metals Industry Unionism. 1932-1952: The Story of Leadership Controversy (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell

University Press, 1954), 233-38; Hosea Hudson, "Struggle Against Philip Murray's Racist Policies in

Birmingham," Political Affairs 53, no. 9 (September 1974), 55-57. Indeed, Howard's willingness to work,

31

with the Civil Rights Congress generated discord between national NAACP leadership and the Bessemer

branch. In fact Executive Secretary Walter White was so fearful of Howard's activities and Nfine Mill's,

supposed Communist links that in 1953 he dispatched NAACP Labor Relations Assistant Herbert Hill to

investigate the Bessemer branch’s role in the fight between the USWA and Mine Mill. On the left-led

unions commitment to racial equality and community organizing, see Maurice Zeithn [NEED

CITATION];. Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics (New York: The New Press, 1997), 145, 193 -98,

283-287; Michael. Goldfield, "Race and the CIO: The Possibilities for Racial Egalitarianism During the

1930s and 1940s," International Labor and Working Class History 44 (Fall 1993), 1-32; Steven Rosswurm,

ed., The CIO's Left-led Unions (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1992); Donald Critchlow,

"Communist Unions and Racism: A Comparative Study of the Responses of the United Electrical Radio

and Machine Workers and the National Maritime Union to the Black Question During World War II,"

Labor History 17, no. 2 (Spring 1976).

32. The story of the expulsion of the left-led unions has been told in numerous places. See for example,

Lipsitz,- A Rainbow at Midnight ; Rosswurm, ed., The CIO's Left-led Unions [CITATIONS]; Korstad and

Lichtenstein, "Opportunities Found and Lost," ;

The most devastating piece of legislation passed in this period was the Taft-Harfley Act (1947). It outlawed

closed shops-, restricted workers right to strike; outlawed secondary boycotts (by unions); outlawed

sympathy strikes; even made union officials vulnerable to fines and imprisonment if they did not oppose

wildcat strikes; restricted freedom of speech; required loyalty oaths; prevented unions from contributing to

political campaigns, and a whole lot more.

33. Michael Goldfield, The Color of Politics, 240-261; Goldfield, Race, Class, and the Nature of American

Politics The Failure of the CIO's Operation Dixie (forthcoming, unpublished manuscript); Barbara

Griffiths, The Crisis of American Labor- Operation Dixie and the Defeat of the CIO (Philadelphia: Temple

University Press, 1988).

32

34. My discussion of DRUM and the League of Revolutionary Black Workers is based on some primary

sources and the following secondary sources: John C. Leggett, Class, Race, and Labor Working-class

Consciousness in Detroit (New York, Oxford University Press, 1968); James A. Geschwender, Class,

Race, and Worker Insurgency: The League of Revolutionary Black Workers (Cambridge and New York:

Cambridge University Press, 1977); Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit, I Do Mind Dying: A

Study In Urban Revolution (New York: St. Martins Press, 1975); James Forman, The Making of Black

Revolutionaries (Washington, D.C.: Open Hand Publishers, 1985).

35 . Not surprisingly, university administrators, under pressure from the UAW, industry leaders, and

elected officials, tried to shut down the South End. They eventually succeeded after a year, the coup de

grace being South End's support for the Palestinian guerrilla group Fateh.

36 "Labor Appeals to Minorities, Women in Turnaround Bid," Christian Science Monitor, Oct. 25, 1995;

Laura McClure, "AFL-CIO: A New Era?" Labor Notes 201 (December 1995), 10; "Trumka Says Revival

of Labor Movement Hinges on Diversity," Boston Globe January 23, 1996; see also, John J. Sweeney,

America Needs a Raise: Fighting for Economic Security and Social Justice, (New York: Houghton Mifflin,

1996); see also chapter 5 of Robin D. G. Kelley, Yo' Mama's DisFunktional!: Fighting the Culture Wars in

Urban America (Boston: Beacon Press, 1997)

37. [On Justice for Janitors and SElU history, see John J. Sweeney, . America Needs a Raise: Fighting for

Economic Security and Social Justice (New York: Houghton Mifflin, 1996), 26-27, 128-13 1; Sharolyn A.

Rosier,"Justice for Janitors campaign expands," AFL-CIO News (January 5, 1996)

38. Stephen Lerner, "Reviving Unions: A Call for Direct Action,". Boston Review (1996), get cite.

39. Sharolyn A. Rosier, "Justice for Janitors campaign expands," AFL-CIO News (January 5, 1996);

"FastGrowing Union Hits Obstacles in L.A.," L.A. Times, Sept. 18, 1995.

33

40. Ibid.

41. Janitors Union Expands Its Campaign," Wash. Post March 23, 1995; Sharolyn A. Rosier, "Justice for

Janitors campaign expands," AFL-CIO News (January 5, 1996)

42. Sharolyn A. Rosier, "Justice for Janitors campaign expands," AFL-CIO News (January 5, 1996)

43. Stuart Silverstein, "Going to Work on L.A. In Its Many Low-Paid Laborers, Unions See Big Potential

for Organizing” Los Angeles Times February 22, 1996.

44. K-Mart Workers Declare Victory," Justice Speaks 14, no. I (September 1996), 5.

45 . "K-Mart Workers Declare Victory," Justice Speaks 14, no. I (September 1996), 1, 5; Williams quoted

in "'Tis the Season to Pay Equal Wages," UNITE! 1, no. 4 (December 1995), 10; On Nelson Johnson, see

Elizabeth Wheaton, Codename Greenkil: The 1979 Greensboro Killings (Athens and London: Univ.

Georgia Press, 1987); "The Revolutionary Communist League (MLM) and the League of Revolutionary

Struggle (M-L) Unite!" Forward: Journal of Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought 3 (January, 1980),

80-81

46. "K-Mart Workers Declare Victory," Justice Speaks 14, no. I (September 1996), 5.

47. See Peter Kwong, Chinatown, New York: Labor and Politics, 1930-1950 (New York: Monthly Review

Press, 1979); and see, among others, Ronald Takaki's, Strangers From a Different Shore: A History of

Asian-Americans. On Mexican-American workers and "home" country politics, one could go back to

pioneering texts such as Rudolph Acuna's Occupied America ; John Hart, Anarchism and the Mexican

Working Class. 1860-1931 (Austin, 1978); or Juan Gomez-Quinones essay "First Step: Chicano Labor

Cordlict and Organizing, 1900-1920," Aztlan 3 [19721). For more recent examples, see George Sanchez,

Becoming Mexican-American (Oxford University Press, 1993); Camille Guerin-Gonzales, Mexican

34

Workers and American Dreams (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1995); Emma Perez, "'Through

Her Love and Sweetness': Women, Revolution, and Reform in Yucatan, 1910-1918," (Ph-D. diss., UCLA,

1988); Douglas Monroy, "Anarquismo y Comunismo: Mexican Radicalism and the Communist Party in

Los Angeles during the 1930's," Labor History 24 (Winter 1983): 34-59; Mario T. Garcia, Mexican-

Americans: Leadership, Ideology, and Identity, 1930-1960 (New Haven, 1989); David Montejano, Anglos

and Mexicans in the Making of Texas, 1836-1986 (Austin, 1987); and see Emilio Zamora's essay on

Chicano Socialists in Texas (can!t remember the citation off the top of my head).