Not your average fraternal organization: the IBPOEW and labor activism, 1935–1950

Abstract

In writing about working-class activism, scholars frequently study labor organizations and workplaces from which African Americans have been mostly excluded. Consequently, the uniqueness of black labor activism is not captured and is often misinterpreted. This article posits that black fraternal organizations, specifically the Improved, Benevolent and Protective Order of Elks of the World (IBPOEW), offer an alternative site for studying black workers and their struggles for employment during the 1930s and 1940s. By analyzing the Elks participation in the continuous battle to gain work while resisting union exclusion, workplace segregation, unemployment and other labor issues central to the African American experience, this study concludes that black men and women often developed labor solidarity not in the workplace or labor unions but in a cross-class organization that participated in coalitions whose members’ ideologies ranged from Christianity to Communism. Cross-class alliances, male/female solidarity, racial unity, a willingness to join coalitions across ideologies and to engage in multiple forms of struggle, especially militant mass mobilization, distinguish Elk labor activism from that of other fraternal orders.