Litigating longshoremen in the Lone Star State: black dock workers and the struggle to maintain autonomy after the 1964 Civil Rights Act

IN MARCH 1875, A CHICAGO TRIBUNE CORRESPONDENT reported that a miners’ strike in Brazil, Indiana, continued with conditions worsening and the “breach between labor and capital widen[ing].” The year-long labor dispute found the striking miners “dogged and sullen” and was taking a dreadful toll on the men and their families. Many of the town's merchants initially supported the strike, but they increasingly feared violence would ensue as the striking miners became more vigilant and defiant. One merchant stated that he had witnessed other strikes, but none of them had “men so determined not to yield,” and he believed it would be necessary to bring in the military to prevent an outbreak of violence. The Tribune correspondent predicted that a “revolution in labor” was imminent because the desperate mine operators were willing to hire Black workers to take the place of the striking miners. The mine operators were “confident that, if negro labor [was] adopted unanimously, it [would] completely and effectively crush strikes, which [had] become so frequent and arrogant of late as to make any dependence on white labor impracticable.” African American workers, according to the correspondent, were more dependable than white laborers, and they would not become “turbulent at trifles, and for many other reasons that are apparent.” As a result, some midwestern mine operators had already arranged to fill their mines with Black workers, and “others will follow suit.”1The newspaper correspondent's prediction about a “revolution in labor” was accurate—during the height of labor unrest in the late 1870s, Northern industrialists sought measures to undercut the burgeoning labor movement by importing African American workers from the South into their predominantly European American worksites. Industrialists were encouraged by two overarching factors: first, Black workers from the South traditionally earned lower wages than their Northern counterparts and would therefore cost less; and more importantly, due to racist exclusionary measures, as well as the relatively small African American population in the North, semi-skilled and skilled worksites were dominated by European American workers. Industrialists correctly assumed that the racism of their workers would cause an exceedingly vitriolic reaction to the idea of Black workers replacing them. In addition to the typical labor conflict issues, racialized violence would invariably ensue. Industrialists then found justification to utilize draconian measures on the strikers—enforced by local militia or police—to ensure that the replacement workers would be allowed to work in relative safety, and to ensure that industrialists continued to make profits.2This racial dynamic became increasingly prevalent throughout the Midwest as rapid industrialization and massive population growth created whole new categories of workers. European American workers braced themselves for the possibility of a chaotic economic transformation by frantically jockeying for occupational viability within the racial hierarchy. In the environment of an increasingly racialized labor movement, Black and other non-white workers, with few exceptions, were forced to the bottom of the economic ladder.Among midwestern states, Illinois was particularly distinct due, in part, to the massive growth of Chicago as a central industrial hub for the region. In comparison to adjacent midwestern states, Illinois was also unique because of its relatively small African American population. By 1890, the African American population in Illinois was only 57,028 (1.5 percent of the state population); in 1900, 85,078 (1.8 percent of the state population). The dearth of a substantial Black population, coupled with a significant rise in anti-Black sentiment throughout the state, helped to create the perception that African American workers were unable to perform technologically advanced labor. Thus, Black Illinoisans of the late nineteenth century were often forced out or excluded from more desirable occupations and, subsequently, forced to the periphery of the labor movement.This article explores the labor activism of Black Illinoisans during the tumultuous late nineteenth century in the context of this relatively new phenomenon—that is, the racialization of labor. Of course, historians generally acknowledge this period as the Second Industrial Revolution in the United States. Yet for African Americans, the period also signified a time in which their racial “character” was under severe scrutiny—not only in labor, but also in virtually every aspect of Black American life. Notions of white racial superiority invariably circumscribed Black people as inferior outsiders—undeserving of a place within mainstream American life. Thus, to most European Americans, it made perfect sense within the twisted logical framework of white supremacy to categorize labor based upon race.In the context of heightened anti-Black sentiment, Black Illinoisans were faced with a difficult decision: should they remain with the larger labor movement that increasingly viewed them as “inferior” workers? While the European American working class famously fought for labor issues such as unionization, safer working conditions, and the eight-hour workday, Black Illinoisans during the nineteenth century also supported these issues. Yet Black workers were forced into a hybrid labor activism—an activism where they fought for their rights not only as workers but also as workers who were gradually excluded from higher-skilled occupations based upon their race. In addition to the racialized occupational environment, Black workers were also forced into a battle for their civil rights during the late nineteenth century as they fought against the inimical rise in white supremacy throughout the United States.The concept of racializing labor was not entirely novel to Northern industries. As historian Jacqueline Jones explained, white Northerners had always expressed their apprehension over emancipating Black people from slavery in moralistic terms. As early as the eighteenth century, they claimed that free Black laborers had shown a lack of restraint in public—displaying “racial” behavior that European American city dwellers found galling. Various groups of African American workers came under attack by the early nineteenth century for advertising for services in a supposedly unseemly fashion. For European American workers, their goal was to maintain their advantageous position in the workplace, and any other socio-political aspect in which there was the perception of losing ground within the racial hierarchy. Thus, European American workers developed new forms of self-definition that would establish a sharper distinction between “white” and “Black” labor.3One of the earliest and staunchest proponents for disrupting the burgeoning labor movement through racialization was co-owner of the Chicago, Wilmington, and Vermillion Coal Company (CW&V) Alanson Sweet. He quickly developed a reputation for slashing wages and firing workers when he forced workers at the Michigan Central Railroad Company to take a pay cut during a dispute in 1862. Workers that protested were fired and replaced with African American workers from the South.4 Sweet believed that the reaction of his predominantly white workforce would be intensified with the importation of an all-Black strikebreaking unit that would likely lead to violence. When violence inevitably ensued, Sweet and his co-owners were then able to utilize state-sponsored protection to ensure the protection of both his imported workers and his property.5As a co-owner of the CW&V in Braidwood, Illinois, during an economic depression, once again, Sweet reduced workers’ wages. Predictably, the unionized miners refused any pay cuts and went on strike. After some convincing, the CW&V co-owners acquiesced to Sweet's ideas on importing African American men to disrupt the conflict. “With the mines filled with colored men,” he assured his fellow owners and stockholders, “it is believed that the Company will not be burdened with the expense of another strike for many years.”6 The CW&V co-owners may have been willing to agree to Sweet's concept due to their past failures. In an 1874 labor dispute with their workers, both recently arriving European immigrants and white workers were recruited as strikebreakers. Instead of being a disruptive force, the replacement miners met with the striking Braidwood miners, became informed of the ongoing labor dispute, and were subsequently convinced to leave. Significantly, the workers left relatively peaceably within days of their arrival.7The nation was in the throes of a massive railroad strike starting in July 1877. Wage cuts, and generally poor conditions and treatment touched off a nationwide strike that shut down most of the nation's railroads. The Chicago Times observed that the arrival of African American workers, combined with the news of the national railroad strike created an “anxious mood” among the Braidwood miners, and “it would take but very little to cause an outbreak in this place.” When the African American workers arrived in Braidwood, there were no friendly meetings. Instead, the striking Braidwood miners gave them an ultimatum: leave town “peaceably or forcibly.” Fearing trouble, some of the miners left town.8 However, when Sweet and the CW&V ownership alerted Illinois governor Shelby Cullom of the intimidation tactics, the state militia was brought in to restore the Black miners to their jobs. The next day, 1,250 Illinois state militia were called into Braidwood to quell the conflict, and if the strikers resisted, “the troops [would] make short work of them.” The CW&V owners understood that an escalation in violence could possibly lead to such measures—and these measures would ensure that the African American workers would be protected and allowed to work in the mines.9Convinced that order could be maintained, and the African American miners would be allowed to remain in the mine shafts, the state militia left Braidwood several weeks later. Although relative peace did prevail after the departure of the state militia, the strike continued another four months. The Braidwood strike of 1877 was the longest strike in United States’ history (to that date) and took an enormous toll on the lives of the strikers and their families. With winter approaching in November 1877, the weary miners finally gave in and ended the strike. The owner's desire to destroy the miners’ union was successful, and the company refused to hire the union leaders as well. Feeling victimized by the CW&V owners, many miners complained bitterly about working alongside the African American strikebreakers who they believed had done “all they possibly could to assist capital to crush labor.”10 For the CW&V owners, the reaction of the Braidwood miners to the importation of African Americans into the mines was the crucial element in their victory. If white and immigrant miners did not react violently, the owners would not have brought in the state militia to see that their mines and their replacement workers were protected.Race relations remained strained in the Braidwood mines during the immediate years after the strike. Nevertheless, African American miners remained in Braidwood and continued to work in the mines. At least half of the seven hundred miners in Braidwood were African American; by 1880, there were 703 Black men and their families living in the surrounding area (compared to 242 in 1870). Institutions such as the Colored Odd Fellows lodge and the First Baptist Church were established in 1878 to support the town's African American community. Reverend T. C. Fleming, who was one of the strikebreakers during the 1877 strike, was the pastor of the church.11 Despite establishing themselves as viable workers in the mines, and decent citizens in Braidwood, the small African American population continued to experience difficulties in town and the workplace.While the African American miners at Braidwood established a reputation for being viable workers and willing union men, their white counterparts insisted on following national racist trends in the workplace. Moses Gordon, an African American miner among those imported from Virginia, observed: “[African Americans] could no more get work here until the year 1877 than they could fly. . . . [I]t was the miners themselves who would come out on strike before they would allow the negro to earn his daily bread.” White workers increasingly drew the color line in the workplace and the major labor unions in the late nineteenth century. Significantly, Gordon also noted that CW&V owners fired African American workers that joined unions. Thus, the racialization of labor worked as a two-pronged attack against Black workers during the industrial era: As discriminatory policies against non-white citizens in the United States became the norm, and therefore accepted by the dominant racial group, employers increasingly utilized African Americans as strikebreakers in order to disrupt unionization. African American workers were either shunned from major labor unions by white union members who refused to allow them to join, or, as in the case in Braidwood, African American workers were threatened with termination. On the other hand, white workers—embracing the full social Darwinism of the late nineteenth century—and thus, completely accepting their collective place at the top of the racial hierarchy in American society—readily rejected African American workers from the most desirable occupations. As white workers wielded more bargaining power in the last decade of the nineteenth century, they insisted on the racialization of both the workplace and their labor unions. Gordon remarked on how this racist process in Braidwood would affect the working class: “Every nationality on the face of the globe can come here and go to work wherever there is work to be had, except for the colored man, and in nine cases out of ten the miners are to blame for it. A house divided against itself cannot stand. If the laboring class fights capital for their rights, they have enough to do without fighting against six millions [sic] of people that have got to earn their bread by the sweat of their brow.”12Strikebreaking served as an occupational and economic weapon against the racialization of labor for men like Moses Gordon. As labor historian Eric Arnesen explained, strikebreaking was a viable form of working-class activism for African Americans as they sought to strengthen their economic position during the labor upheaval of post-Reconstruction America. The most important coal mining towns in Illinois followed the practice of racial exclusion. Strikebreaking not only allowed African American workers to gain entry into desirable industrial positions, but it also represented chances for low paid Southern African Americans to earn higher wages. Their decisions to become strikebreakers were often informed choices, rationalized by a complex and changing worldview that balanced their experiences as industrial workers, farmers, and African Americans. Indeed, these Black men were neither willing tools nor ignorant serfs—rather, they were poor and ambitious men who were often recruited by coal company agents, sometimes under false pretenses. During the nineteenth century, African Americans were never the only workers used as strikebreakers in Illinois or any other Northern state. Moreover, they were never the most used strikebreakers during the height of labor turbulence of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. However, African Americans were usually the most visible strikebreakers because of American racism, and therefore, they were almost always the easiest targets for white working-class rage during the tumultuous labor disputes of this era.13As the Chicago Tribune correspondent predicted, other industrialists throughout the region adopted racialization as a weapon to squelch unionization among the working class. For example, in 1880, approximately one hundred African Americans were hired to replace striking coal miners in Rapids City, near Rock Island, Illinois. Tragedy struck immediately—one of the African American strikebreakers was shot and killed by a striking miner. That same year in Springfield, Illinois, mine owners resisted demands made by union officials and proceeded to import African American miners from Richmond, Virginia. The predominantly European American workforce was ordered to remove their tools from the mines and evacuate company houses. If any violence ensued, the mine operators, their property, and the African American workers, were all protected by local police officials. These drastic actions led to the demise of the union.14 In the summer of 1886, a strike for higher wages occurred in Vermillion County at Grape Creek. In this case, there was a small African American presence in the mines—yet they refused to strike with their European American coworkers. The African American miners belonged to the biracial Knights of Labor (KOL) union and refused to participate because it was “a white man's fight.” The Grape Creek operators brought in African American men from Tennessee and Kentucky under police protection. The conflict dragged out and defeated the strikers, as the mine operators brought in five to fifteen new African American workers each day.15 This pattern of racialization continued throughout Illinois during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. According to data compiled by economic historian Warren Whatley, Illinois industrialists utilized Black strikebreakers more than any state during this period. However, while Black strikebreaking increased substantially during this period—especially in high-profile conflicts—they remained a relatively small percentage of the nation's strikebreaking force.16While Northern industrialists continued to recruit Black workers from the South during the late nineteenth century, they virtually ignored Northern Black workers. This omission was particularly glaring in Illinois and other midwestern states due to the dearth of African Americans living in the region. Approximately 90 percent of the African American population remained in the South, and it was simply easier to find and recruit Black labor in the South. Another more compelling reason had to do with the collective attitudes of African Americans living in the North. While Southern Black workers were cajoled relatively easily due to precarious economic condition or general lack of knowledge of a particular labor conflict in the North, Northern African Americans simply had more exposure to Northern labor strife. Although the Black population of Illinois was quite small, they gained a reputation as ferocious labor agitators during the late nineteenth century. Like their European American working-class counterparts, they also battled for workers’ rights. To be sure, African American workers in Illinois were occasionally used as strikebreakers during the late nineteenth century—there would be a collective shift in their attitude toward the labor movement by the turn of the twentieth century as white working-class racism became more pronounced. Yet prior to the full implementation of white supremacist ideas about allegedly inferior and superior workers based upon race, Black Illinoisans were not only a part of the labor movement, in some cases they were at the vanguard of the movement.During the summer of 1877, while the Braidwood mine operators were importing African American workers into their labor fracas, more than 150 Black longshoremen from Illinois disputed recent wage cuts against the Mississippi Valley Transportation Company (MVTC). Like their Braidwood counterparts, they too were inspired by the “Great Railroad Strike” and organized their own all-Black union. In solidarity with the national movement, the workers arranged a general strike against all Illinois, employers due to the recent wage When the owners were of the strike, they hired strikebreakers. The next the striking longshoremen on the and their and that they leave the When they refused to the longshoremen them by a of in their The longshoremen then after the to ensure that none of the strikebreakers would only a few but it created quite a throughout The observed that the longshoremen may well have been within their rights to strike for higher but they no to prevent from working who willing . . . to work for the The noted that by the strikebreakers off the the Black longshoremen were a for which they be a significant in how the African American workers were in When African American workers for their rights, they were often as or workers. In Black labor activism was often viewed as chaotic and While strikebreaking was generally in white working-class when Black workers fought to their economic the they should be a that [would] last them for all time to the Braidwood which and supported striking miners during their African American workers were viewed with throughout and as workers throughout Illinois sought the same measures in unionization as other workers prior to the full of racialization in labor. As early as 1877, the Knights of Labor (KOL) established as many as seven in Illinois that African American men and into their For many Black workers, the was more than a labor the of leaders and as a than any other union in their the were able to the for African American After the national railroad strike in 1877, labor leaders recruited Black workers to the to racist to workers. goal of the labor leaders was also to the of Black workers during an 1878 African Americans the supported the and the city and with the white Chicago continued to into one of the nation's industrial the of the city was for African Americans. The battle for skilled labor in a environment, was often a losing for African American for from the South. African American men often to racist racist white and workers with the of racist to Black men out of viable As a result, Black workers in Chicago were left with occupational and often found themselves to with national of the racialization of labor was in Chicago by the last of the nineteenth century. By 1890, African Americans were as the to be laborers, workers, or to the During that decade they represented only percent of the population percent of all in the occupational for Black of or no higher than railroad or were also tools for the of such as or who were who or the of and dwellers more and the to their To ideas of racial and economic the their to an One noted that African American men of slavery . . . and became a of to the of the African American men, as a Chicago were the they are by and to were not always to ideas of racial if it in wages. A could a sense of and the of the of the South, which could lead to a was a relatively novel idea in the nineteenth Yet any that these men would allow these to into their in labor issues of the would be an Black in were the of hybrid labor activism of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Black over pay In 1875, they out of throughout the during and in some of At the out because their new to He informed the all-Black that they would be to at the an before their and they would no be allowed to left over by practice that allowed workers to their out in during the and workers of all and were toward labor unionization in the Yet European American workers to follow nationwide discriminatory in labor unions by Black workers from union Black often with their own of labor activism that all-Black unions or biracial unions. For example, after the of the five Black from the in Chicago, were to their of the that were to citizens of every and and were informed that it was against the to of their in the The the men a in the where the and their while on The by the left for another where they were and served without in Chicago were to find a labor union that would their in fighting for their labor and civil rights. The them with the of unionization that they In 1886, created the Colored local and more than four hundred Black and during a The Chicago Times the the Knights had on the Black the union the colored and gave the with This represented the entry of African Americans into organized labor in Chicago and was followed within two years by a Black the which organized after from the of the Black in Chicago little time in their reputation as labor In two hundred African American joined nine hundred white in of the of and in wages. The biracial an of substantial for The owners to a through the workers by importing African American replacement workers to replace the white The between the workers was and the Black were enough to the strikebreakers to A year during another Black labor conditions, and they also the to become more about their rights and the labor was not one African American predicted, by would for their working-class men and in Illinois for more biracial union during the late nineteenth century. an African American of the that more Black workers to the union to themselves as a within the labor than a within the the for laboring men and was an of wages. have been

Previous articleNext article No Access“THE LION OF ZION”: LEON H. SULLIVAN AND THE PURSUIT OF SOCIAL AND ECONOMIC JUSTICE: INTRODUCTIONV. P. FranklinV. P. Franklin Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by The Journal of African American History Volume 96, Number 1Winter 2011 A journal of the Association for the Study of African American Life and History Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.5323/jafriamerhist.96.1.0039 Views: 22Total views on this site Copyright 2011 ASALHPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.

An Interethnic Paradox: Chicago's Irish and Everyone Else

Silencing Dissent: How Biased Civil Rights Policies Stifle Dialogue on Israel

In the Trenches of World War I-Era TexasLetters from Black Railroaders to the United States Railroad Administration Theresa A. Case (bio) Click for larger view View full resolution Members of the Colored Trainmen of America, a union based in Houston, Texas; Kingsville, Texas; and DeQuincy, Louisiana. The organization got its start with the letter-writing campaigns of the World War I-era. RG R 0003-004, Colored Trainmen of America Collection, Houston Public Library, African American Library at the Gregory School. [End Page 270] In the National Archives in College Park, Maryland, inside fraying, bent folders, each bound by a pushpin, sit hundreds of World War I-era letters from Black railroad workers. The missives sit in the files of a long-forgotten federal agency, the United States Railroad Administration (USRA), which, during the "Great War," managed the nation's railroads. The letters convey the aspirations and frustrations of Black railroaders from across the country. More than 120 of the letters were written by people from the Lone Star State. The main catalyst for this flood of mail was the USRA's call for substantial wage increases, back pay, and equal pay for equal work. As their peers did nationally, the 128 Black petitioners in Texas pressed the government to enforce its own mandates. Many sought an outcome that was extraordinary in its boldness: to realize the democratic and egalitarian promise of the war in one of the most rigidly segregated and discriminatory industries in the nation. The remnants of their labors allow a reconstruction of World War I-era Texas civil rights and labor struggles heretofore hidden from view. Previous scholars have studied Black railroad workers' communications to the USRA and contributed an understanding of the roots, context, and consequences of their efforts. Historians Joe Trotter and Liesl Miller Orenic contend that the letters' authors sought to "transform policies" of the federal government "into a vehicle for the improvement of their own [End Page 271] position in the railroad industry." Paul Michel Taillon cast the letters as an "empowering" form of "political action" that held up the ideal of equal citizenship and challenged the government to fulfill its true role as an impartial arbiter and guarantor of justice. Other historians, chiefly Eric Arnesen and Joseph Kelly, have drawn on the USRA collection as part of broader regional and national studies. Scholars have yet to piece together a story around the correspondence from World War I-era Texas and determine what they reveal about Black workers in that specific time and place.1 Historians of early twentieth-century Texas Black working-class history have mined a plethora of sources, including oral histories, government and company documents, legal and union records, newspaper reports, and the papers of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP).2 The petitions to the USRA open yet another portal into this past. They are unique in that they relate, in immediate, raw form, the desires and strategies of Black working-class actors who lived more than a century ago. Few other direct sources exist on Black railroaders.3 The letters are also notable in that the names of professionals and business and community leaders are largely absent from mention. The railroad porters, brakemen, porter-brakemen, and shop workers who authored or signed these communications seem to have acted and thought independently of the broader community leadership. For the most part, they did not [End Page 272] organize under the mantel of the NAACP, which in 1919 boasted almost eight thousand Texas members.4 Such an example of working-class selforganization goes against the grain of the historiography, which tends to highlight cross-class cooperation or the activism of the Black middle class.5 The letters show that a mass of Black railroaders coordinated along racial lines among fellow local railroad workers or attached themselves to regional or national organizations of this nature. Their very signatures are testimony to the collective nature of their endeavors; numerous letters list multiple claimants or record the name of an individual that the others had chosen to sign on their behalf. While some authors appealed carefully to White paternalism, a...

President Truman’s Justice Department and the Fight for Racial Justice in the Supreme Court IAN B. FAGELSON Introduction 2017 marked the seventieth anniversary ofan important landmark in the history ofthe Supreme Court. Although the Court’s deci­ sions in the Brown cases1 that destroyed the legal foundations of state-sanctioned racial discrimination were handed down during Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Presidency, much of the groundwork was laid on President Harry S. Truman’s watch. Faced with an unhelpful Congress, Truman’s contributions to civil rights were effectively confined to the bully pulpit (as witness, his speech to the NAACP at the Lincoln Memorial)2 and executive actions (such as establishing the President’s Committee on Civil Rights and endorsing its recommendations;3 desegregat­ ing the federal government4 and the mili­ tary).5 Even before he pledged support for civil rights at the Lincoln Memorial in June 1947, he engaged with Attorney General Tom C. Clark on how to combat the rise in Southern white terrorism and committed his Justice Department to tackling lynching.6 Moreover, on December 5, 1947, the Justice Department broke with tradition by interven­ ing7 for the first time in a case between private litigants where no concrete federal interest such as the interpretation of a U.S. statute was involved.8 At issue was the enforceabil­ ity of racially restrictive housing covenants. Between 1947 and 1952, Truman’s Justice Department participated five times, via written briefs and oral arguments, in private lawsuits urging the outlawing of segregation. The cases concerned housing,9 transporta­ tion,10 public accommodations,11 higher education,12 and, most controversially, ele­ mentary and high schools in Brown itself. In each case, the Supreme Court ruled unani­ mously in favor of the position argued by the 70 JOURNAL OF SUPREME COURT HISTORY Justice Department. However, there is little direct evidence of Truman’s personal in­ volvement in the Department’s actions. Whether the Department’s actions were true instances of Truman administration policy, rather than the work of liberal civil service lawyers in which the top level of the administration merely acquiesced, has been the subject of debate, as has the question of what considerations drove the interven­ tions. This article demonstrates that the story is more complicated than many scholars have suggested. After a brief literature survey and a description of the unique status of the Solicitor General, a study of each case in its historical context reveals that the level of engagement of the President and cabinet-level officials and the considerations that motivated them were not uniform throughout the period. None­ theless, the Department’s interventions must be regarded as acts of administration policy for which the President deserves considerable credit. Literature Survey Some scholars write on the basis of unstated assumptions as to whether the Justice Department acted at Truman’s behest.13 Michael Gardner, without citing hard evidence, asserts that Truman personally caused the Justice Department to act.14 According to Richard Dalfiume, Truman “allowed” the Justice Department to inter­ vene.15 William Berman claims, without citing evidence, that Truman did not autho­ rise, or even know about, several of the briefs.16 However, again without citing evidence, he also asserts that Truman person­ ally authorised the Department’s first inter­ vention in 1947.17 Barton Bernstein views the briefs as primarily the work of Justice Department lawyers in which the administra­ tion acquiesced and says that it is unclear whether Truman was “an enthusiastic supporter or a reluctant endorser of placing the Federal government on the side of civil rights in these cases.”18 In Cold War Civil Rights: Race and the Image of American Democracy,19 Mary Dudziak devotes an extended endnote to the question, concluding that the briefs should be viewed as an important part of Truman’s civil rights program and as “consciously adopted Truman administration policy.”20 The question of the extent (if any) of Truman’s personal involvement with the interventions is intertwined with controversy over Truman’s motivation for supporting civil rights. At one extreme, Richard Dalfiume and Michael Gardner see Truman’s commitment to civil rights as driven primar­ ily by moral convictions.21 At the other extreme, William...

In 1969, activist Thomas N. Todd, one of the lawyers handling the Justice Department’s faculty desegregation efforts against Chicago, resigned. Although Todd had the opportunity to bring the first criminal case (United States v. Gorman) against a Chicago policeman for denying an individual’s civil rights while in the US Attorney’s Office in Chicago, Todd indicated that he was interested in working on larger issues than what the Justice Department was currently pur-suing.1 He believed that the Justice Department should also focus on student desegregation, inequitable school funding, poor facilities at black schools, and the bias certification process for teachers and prin-cipals. Similarly, Leon Panetta, Nixon’s first Office of Civil Rights (OCR) director, was forced to resign in 1970. Panetta began his polit-ical career as an assistant to California senator Thomas H. Kuchel in 1966 and assistant to HEW secretary Robert Finch in 1969 before being tapped to briefly head OCR in 1970.2 The Washington Daily News featured a front-page headline “Nixon Seeks to Fire HEWS Rights Chief for Liberal Views.”3 Though Republican, Panetta was viewed as a liberal for his “tough stand on school desegregation.”4 Panetta’s response was, “I had just been fired from a $30,000-a-year Government job for taking that job too seriously.”5 The resignations of both Todd and Panetta highlighted Nixon’s calculated response to civil rights. Nixon favored a restrained approach to desegregation and those moving too quickly or wanting more civil rights and desegregation efforts were at odds with his administration.

This essay reviews the impact of President Ronald Reagan’s policies on civil rights enforcement in the 1980s, as he tried to turn back the clock on civil rights. Reagan devastated the civil rights enforcement agencies, as he pandered to the white nationalists who helped him win election. But Reagan’s attempts ultimately failed, and leave behind an important lesson for President Donald Trump. Reagan’s appointments to and policies at the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the Department of Justice’s Civil Rights Division, and the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP) seriously damaged civil rights enforcement. But employment discrimination law has survived and continues to be an often-effective tool against racism, misogyny, homophobia, religious hatred, and other forms of discrimination. Title VII cases (and claims under parallel statutes) continue to be a major part of the caseload in federal courts. Why? Because the Civil Rights Act is largely enforced by private civil rights groups and lawyers in private practice who bring cases before independent judges pursuant to a private right of action. Did a progressive Congress have the foresight to recognize that a private right of action would protect the victims of discrimination from future administrations hostile to civil rights, and thus include it in the statute as a check against enforcement agencies captured by civil rights opponents? Hardly. Rather, moderate and conservative Senate Republicans, resigned to the fact that an employment discrimination law was inevitable, and fearful of a powerful federal agency that would restrict business autonomy in the manner of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), substituted a private right of action for agency adjudication in an attempt to sabotage the effectiveness of Title VII. In 1964, the adoption of a private right of action was widely seen as a great loss for civil rights advocates, turning Title VII from an enforceable law to an ineffectual call for voluntary compliance with anti-discrimination policies. Almost no one foresaw the development of a private bar of plaintiffs’ employment discrimination lawyers. Those who tried to sabotage the enforcement of civil rights through a private right of action should be turning in their graves, having inadvertently given civil rights advocates a powerful tool to resist assaults on civil rights.

Reviewed by: Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials: The First Modern Civil Rights Convictions by James P. Turner Brendon T. Jett Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials: The First Modern Civil Rights Convictions. By James P. Turner. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2018. Pp. xviii, 110. Paper, $19.95, ISBN 978-0-472-05374-2; cloth, $65.00, ISBN 978-0-472-07374-0.) On March 25, 1965, Collie Leroy Wilkins, William Orville Eaton, and Eugene Thomas, all Ku Klux Klan members, killed Viola Liuzzo, a white mother of five from Detroit, Michigan, as she drove back from the Selma to Montgomery march on Route 80 in Lowndes County, Alabama. Unfortunately for the killers, one of their compatriots, Gary Thomas Rowe, was an FBI informant, and he relayed the events of that evening to agents. Local law enforcement and FBI agents corroborated Rowe's story with forensic evidence and the eyewitness account of Leroy Moton, who was in Liuzzo's car on the night of the shooting. James P. Turner, a former federal prosecutor for the Department of Justice, recounts the subsequent state and federal trials in Selma [End Page 504] and the Liuzzo Murder Trials: The First Modern Civil Rights Convictions. Turner assisted the prosecution in all three trials that resulted from the shooting. As such, the "book describes the story of the klan murder of Viola Liuzzo" largely from Turner's perspective, with references to newspaper reports and court documents (p. xv). The prosecution of Wilkins, Eaton, and Thomas is important because it represented the first modern convictions of Ku Klux Klan members by a southern jury in the United States. Prior to the federal case, the state of Alabama had tried the three men for murder in two separate cases; the first ended in a hung jury, and the second ended in an outright acquittal of the defendants. The failure of the state prosecutions led the U.S. Department of Justice to try the defendants for conspiracy to deny Liuzzo of her civil rights. For several reasons, which Turner discusses in detail, the federal case proved successful, resulting in convictions, and the judge sentenced the three men to the maximum penalty of ten years in federal prison. This book provides an excellent account of events, yet some of the broader implications of the case seem overstated—namely, Turner's contention that the Liuzzo case "heralded the birth of a brand-new tradition of equal justice under the law" (p. 96). Over the last several years, scholars and activists have demonstrated how the explicit and implicit racial bias of police, prosecutors, legislators, judges, and juries has contributed to a gross overrepresentation of African Americans in penitentiaries across the country. While the Liuzzo case set a precedent for federal intervention in civil rights cases, it does not seem that the Liuzzo case ushered in an era of criminal justice free of racial bias and discrimination. Selma and the Liuzzo Murder Trials is an extremely accessible book that will surely be of interest to academics and nonacademics alike. The gripping details of events and conversations, and Turner's explanations of legal processes, read much like a John Grisham novel, complete with protagonists, antagonists, narrative twists that expose the problems of the American criminal justice system, and a conclusion that demonstrates how, at times, that flawed system can work properly. For anyone interested in the U.S. criminal justice system and the civil rights movement, this short book is worth the read. Brendon T. Jett Rollins College Copyright © 2019 Southern Historical Association

Policy Statement on the Incarceration of Undocumented Migrant Families: Society for Community Research and Action Division 27 of the American Psychological Association.

HOW THE SUPREME COURT DISTORTED TEXT, IGNORED HISTORY, AND GASLIGHTED THE BOLD PROMISE OF THE CIVIL RIGHTS ACT OF 1866 A <i>Comcast</i> Case Study

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, labour, and civil rights, 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 labour and 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 upon racial inequality, the race question would never be fully resolved.

Improving Health Equity for Women Involved in the Criminal Legal System.

Environmental JusticeVol. 13, No. 3 RoundtableRoundtable on the Pandemics of Racism, Environmental Injustice, and COVID-19 in AmericaModerator: Sacoby M. Wilson, Participants: Robert Bullard, Jacqui Patterson, and Stephen B. ThomasModerator: Sacoby M. WilsonAddress correspondence to: Sacoby M. Wilson, 4200 Valley Drive, 2234D School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA E-mail Address: [email protected]Dr. Sacoby M. Wilson is an associate professor and director of Community Engagement, Environmental Justice and Health (CEEJH), Maryland Institute for Applied Environmental Health, School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA. Search for more papers by this author, Participants: Robert BullardRobert Bullard is a distinguished professor of Department of Urban Planning and Environmental Policy, Texas Southern University, Houston, Texas, USA.Search for more papers by this author, Jacqui PattersonMs. Jacqui Patterson is senior director, Environmental and Climate Justice Program, NAACP, Baltimore, Maryland, USA.Search for more papers by this author, and Stephen B. ThomasDr. Stephen B. Thomas is a professor, Health Policy & Management; director, Maryland Center for Health Equity; School of Public Health, University of Maryland, College Park, Maryland, USA.Search for more papers by this authorPublished Online:16 Jun 2020https://doi.org/10.1089/env.2020.0019AboutSectionsView articleView Full TextPDF/EPUB Permissions & CitationsPermissionsDownload CitationsTrack CitationsAdd to favorites Back To Publication ShareShare onFacebookXLinked InRedditEmail View articleFiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsCited byLearning on Health Fairness and Environmental Justice via Interactive VisualizationCommunity Perspectives and Environmental Justice in California's San Joaquin Valley Humberto Flores-Landeros, Chantelise Pells, Miriam S. Campos-Martinez, Angel Santiago Fernandez-Bou, Jose Pablo Ortiz-Partida, and Josué Medellín-Azuara12 December 2022 | Environmental Justice, Vol. 15, No. 6Identifying environmental factors that influence immune response to SARS-CoV-2: Systematic evidence map protocolEnvironment International, Vol. 164Beyond fairness: the Covid-19 pandemic as an expression of environmental injustice20 March 2022 | Distinktion: Journal of Social Theory, Vol. 6Selecting Data Analytic and Modeling Methods to Support Air Pollution and Environmental Justice Investigations: A Critical Review and Guidance Framework8 February 2022 | Environmental Science & Technology, Vol. 56, No. 5The Social and Economic Implications of Environmental Justice for the Elderly: A Case for Social Work Interventions in the Caribbean10 July 2022The Analysis of Urban Park Catchment Areas - Perspectives from Quality Service of Hangang Park -31 December 2021 | Journal of the Korean Institute of Landscape Architecture, Vol. 49, No. 6Building Adaptive Capacity Through Civic Environmental Stewardship: Responding to COVID-19 Alongside Compounding and Concurrent Crises11 November 2021 | Frontiers in Sustainable Cities, Vol. 3COVID-19: Evidenced Health Disparity5 August 2021 | Encyclopedia, Vol. 1, No. 3Pandemic disruptions in energy and the environmentElem Sci Anth, Vol. 8, No. 1At the Edge of Resilience: Making Sense of COVID-19 from the Perspective of Environmental HistoryJournal for the History of Environment and Society, Vol. 5 Volume 13Issue 3Jun 2020 InformationCopyright 2020, Mary Ann Liebert, Inc., publishersTo cite this article:Moderator: Sacoby M. Wilson, Participants: Robert Bullard, Jacqui Patterson, and Stephen B. Thomas.Roundtable on the Pandemics of Racism, Environmental Injustice, and COVID-19 in America.Environmental Justice.Jun 2020.56-64.http://doi.org/10.1089/env.2020.0019Published in Volume: 13 Issue 3: June 16, 2020Online Ahead of Print:June 5, 2020PDF download

moving account of a key figure in American history contributes greatly to our understanding of the past. It also informs our vision of the servant leader needed to guide the 1990s --Marian Wright Edelman, President, Children's Defense Fund First-rate intellectual and political history, this study explores the relations between the practical objectives of SNCC and its moral and cultural goals. --Irwin Unger, Author of These United States and Postwar America Moses emerges from these pages as that rare modern hero, the man whose life enacts his principles, the rebel who steadfastly refuses to be victim or executioner and who mistrusts even his own leadership out of commitment to cultivating the strength, self-reliance, and solidarity of those with and for whom he is working. Eric Burner's engrossing account of Robert Moses's legendary career brings alive the everyday realities of the Civil Rights Movement, especially the gruelling campaign for voter registration and political organization in Mississippi. --Elizabeth Fox-Genovese, Eleonore Raoul Professor of the Humanities, Emory University, author of Within the Plantation Household: Black and White Women of the Old South Next to Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X, Bob Moses was arguably one of the most influential and respected leaders of the civil rights movement. Quiet and intensely private, Moses quickly became legendary as a man whose conduct exemplified leadership by example. He once resigned as head of the Council of Federated Organizations because my position there was too strong, too central. Despite his centrality to the most important social movement in modern American history, Moses' life and the philosophy on which it is based have only been given cursory treatment and have never been the subject of a book-length biography. Biography is, by its very nature, a complicated act of recovery, even more so when the life under scrutiny deliberately avoids such attention. Eric Burner therefore sets out here not to reveal the secret Bob Moses, but to examine his moral philosophy and his political and ideological evolution, to provide a picture of the public person. In essence, his book provides a primer on a figure who spoke by silence and led through example. Moses spent almost three years in Mississippi trying to awaken the state's black citizens to their moral and legal rights before the fateful summer of 1964 would thrust him and the Freedom Summer movement into the national spotlight. We follow him through the civil rights years -- his intensive, fearless tradition of community organizing, his involvements with SNCC and the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party, and his negotiations with the Department of Justice --as Burner chronicles both Moses' political activity and his intellectual development, revealing the strong influence of French philosopher Albert Camus on his life and work. Moses' life is marked by the conflict between morality and politics, between purity and pragmatism, which ultimately left him disillusioned with a traditional Left that could talk only of coalitions and leaders from the top. Pursued by the Vietnam draft board for a war which he opposed, Moses fled to Canada in 1966 before departing for Africa in 1969 to spend the next decade teaching in Tanzania. Returning in 1977 under President Carter's amnesty program, he was awarded a five-year MacArthur genius grant in 1982 to establish and develop an innovative program to teach math to Boston's inner-city youth called the Algebra Project. The success of the program, which Moses has referred to as our version of Civil Rights 1992, has landed him on the cover of The New York Times Magazineemphasizing the new, central dimension that math and computer literacy lends to the pursuit of equal rights. And Gently He Shall Lead Them is the story of a remarkable man, an elusive hero of the civil rights movement whose flight from adulation has only served to increase his reputation as an intellectual and moral leader, a man whom nobody ever sees, but whose work is always in evidence. From his role as one of the architects of the civil rights movement thirty years ago to his ongoing work with inner city children, Robert Moses remains one of America's most courageous, energetic, and influential leaders. Wary of the cults of celebrity he saw surrounding Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X and fueled by a philosophy that shunned leadership, Moses has always labored behind the scenes. This first biography, a primer in the life of a unique American, sheds significant light on the intellectual and philosophical worldview of a man who is rarely seen but whose work is always in evidence.