Reconceptualising the Factory as Plantation

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

Up From Exclusion: Black and White Workers, Race, and the State of Labor History Eric Arnesen (bio) Over a quarter century ago, historian Herbert Gutman complained with good reason about the “absence of detailed knowledge of the ‘local world’ inhabited by white and Negro workers” in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 1 The studies of black urban communities that were proliferating within African-American historiography had relegated black workers to the margins of community development led by black professionals and middle-class activists. Within labor history, an older tradition influenced by industrial relations scholarship emphasized institutional union structures and paid little attention to rank-and-file workers of any race. With the exception of a few studies, black workers remained largely outside the traditional narratives of labor history, entering the picture only as strikebreakers or as a “problem” that white labor had to confront. Writing in 1969, a year after Gutman, James Gross similarly complained that a quarter century’s scholarship on the subject merely “amounted to classifications of the racial practices of organized labor: laissez faire, equalitarian, discriminatory, or those unions excluding Negroes by constitutional provision or bylaws.” What was needed, Gross proposed, were explorations not of “attitudes toward the Negro workers . . . but the ideas and ideals of the Negro worker.” 2 In the ensuing decade, the first flowering of the new labor history revolutionized the study of the American working class, but through the early 1980s, its emphasis lay with skilled artisans, white industrial workers, and immigrant communities. With few exceptions, neither black workers nor race were the focus of attention, and the agenda proposed by Gutman and Gross remained unaddressed. 3 Since the late 1980s, labor historians themselves have grown increasingly critical of their field’s failure to address issues of race. Inspired in part by the writings of the former National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) labor secretary-turned-academic, Herbert Hill, they charge that labor history has a serious “race problem.” Over the years, Hill has offered the strongest academic criticism of the American labor movement’s racial practices and, recently, of the new labor history for its treatment of race and racism. Hill has repeatedly denounced white trade unions as racist [End Page 146] vehicles for excluding black, Asian, and other minority workers. At the same time, he charged labor historians with denying the centrality of race because of their blind devotion to Marxist social theory. 4 Hill’s charges have struck a deep chord. The new labor history, Noel Ignatiev similarly argues, has treated racism as “peripheral to the main line of working-class formation and struggle.” Historians’ search for “the famous ‘usable past’” has led them to “denial, and denial [has] led to apologetics.” 5 If the late 1960s complaints of Gutman and Gross accurately reflected a paucity of scholarship, the same cannot be said of the 1990s charges. The characterizations of labor history’s encounter with race by such writers as Hill, Ignatiev, and David Roediger are, to say the least, overdrawn. There is no denying that the first generation of new labor historians did not put white labor’s racial practices and beliefs or minority workers’ perspectives and strategies at the top of its research agenda. Today, however, these issues are central topics in their own right. Since the mid 1980s, labor historians have begun to engage issues of race in significant ways. The past decade has witnessed a veritable outpouring of new scholarship on trade union racial practices, black and other minority workers’ experiences and activism, and on white working-class racial identity. Far from being the academic backwater it was in the late 1960s, the study of race and labor has become an academic growth industry. “Scholarship on race in American labor history steadily grows in quantity and quality,” concluded Joe Trotter, Jr. and Alan Dawley in a recent special issue of Labor History devoted to race and class. “Every month seems to bring added understanding of the intersections of race and class, racial segmentation of the labor market, and the impact of race on culture and community.” 6 What is striking is not only that the scholarship on race and labor is...

In the wake of public debate about reforming social security, Democratic Party leaders, union leaders, and black leaders defend the current social security program because it is designed to provide disproportionately large monthly benefits to low-wage earners relative to their lifetime average monthly earnings. Despite the progressive benefit formula used by the program, an important question remains: Do black workers receive disproportionately larger benefits during their lifetimes in relation to their lifetime contributions, as well as disproportionately larger monthly benefits? This article presents findings from a study that shows that when the lifetime perspective is taken, black workers receive less money's worth in social security benefits than white workers. Implications for policies are discussed. Key words: benefits; black workers; contributions social security; white workers The United States is facing a dual agenda regarding social security. On the one hand, maintaining the program's financial solvency beyond year 2037 requires some form of structural reform as the Board of Trustees (2000) of the Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) Trust Funds warned. On the other hand, policymakers who are concerned about black and other minority group workers need to assess how the current system is working for them. If the system is working well for them, it should be maintained with minimal alterations. If it is not, it needs to be reformed more radically. Such a critical assessment of money's worth in social security benefits is needed because it is generally believed that the current program serves people of color well. In particular, liberal politicians and leaders of black communities tend to defend the current system on the basis of the benefit formula, which is slanted in favor of low-wage earners. Because black workers' earnings tend to be lower than those of white workers, this view is correct--but only partially. The missing variable is the shorter average life expectancy of black workers than white workers. If black workers receive social security benefits for fewer years than white workers, the apparent progressiveness in the benefit formula may be offset to a considerable degree. Indeed, an assessment of the social security benefits that black people are expected to receive during their lifetimes and of the relationship between their lifetime contributions and lifetime benefits is an important prerequisite to making an informed judgment about whether the social security system should be reformed and, if so, in what way. This article addresses the central question: Do black workers, who tend to earn lower wages than white workers, receive disproportionately larger benefits than white workers on the basis of lifetime benefits, as well as on the basis of monthly benefits? This question is critical because the life expectancy of black workers is shorter than that of white workers. Thus, the aim of our study, the findings of which are presented in this article, was to evaluate the degree of money's worth that black and white workers receive for their lifetime contributions. In particular, the study investigated the mean ratio of the present value of lifetime benefits to the present value of lifetime contributions of black and white workers. It also compared the mean ratio of monthly benefits to the average indexed monthly earnings of black and white workers. METHOD OF CALCULATING SOCIAL SECURITY BENEFITS All social security benefits are based on the primary insurance amount (PIA), which is derived in two steps. First, the worker's average indexed monthly earnings (AIME) are calculated by indexing the taxable earnings for each year from 1951 onward to the average wage level in the second year before age 62, disability, or death; summing indexed earnings (and unindexed earnings in the years after age 60); and dividing the sum by the number of months elapsed after 1950 (or age 21, if later) through age 61 (or the year before the year of disability or death). …

After flourishing in the late twentieth century, community labor history projects have languished in recent decades. 1 Perhaps not anticipating the new spark of labor mobilization of the past few years, labor historians and local museums and historical societies have missed opportunities to document the stories of ordinary workers and their unions and educate and inspire others through public exhibits and programs. Both public historians and their academic partners have faced new challenges in presenting stories about American workers. This is partly due to the neoliberal political economy, as editors Thomas Klubock and Paulo Fontes conclude in their introduction to a special issue of International Labor and Working-Class History on labor and public history, but also because of new priorities within museum and academic cultures. 2 Richard Anderson recently noted this disconnect between labor and labor historians and stated that making labor scholarship accessible is key to forming "a deep reservoir of inspiration and guidance" for current labor struggles, even as the demands of the academy require scholars to publish in more

An Interethnic Paradox: Chicago's Irish and Everyone Else

Remembering Herbert Gutman's <i>Work, Culture, and Society</i> Fifty Years On

The Ordeal of the Jungle: Race and the Chicago Federation of Labor, 1903–1922

While objective measures indicate that the risk of job loss is higher for black workers than for white workers, there is little research on how what workers’ expectations of job loss differ by race. This study looks at how secure black and white workers are feeling about their jobs and how their perceptions of job insecurity have been affected by time trends and regional unemployment rates. I find that perceptions of job security of black male workers, older black workers, and black high school graduates have deteriorated relative to their white counterparts during the period 1977–2012. Among those who attended college, white workers’ perceived job insecurity has increased. Black blue-collar workers’ and construction workers’ perceptions of job insecurity also have increased relative to their white counterparts. Moreover, perceptions of job insecurity among several black groups, such as high school dropouts and old workers, are more sensitive to regional unemployment rates than their white counterparts.

There and Back Again: A Commentary on Social Welfare Policy in the Wake of 2020

Gleanings of Freedom: Free and Slave Labor along the Mason-Dixon Line, 1790-1860. By Max Grivno. (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 201 1. Pp. 269. Cloth, $50.00.)Reviewed by Jeff Forre tMax Grivno's Gleanings of Freedom investigates rural Maryland's landowners and their struggles with the black and white agricultural laborers who worked their fields between 1790 and 1860. Placing the six northern Maryland counties of Washington, Frederick, Carroll, Baltimore, Harford, and Cecil under the microscope, Grivno offers a thoroughly researched, eloquently crafted, and fully integrated history of Maryland's agricultural workforce, a rural counterpart to Seth Rockman's urban focus in Scraping By: Wage Labor, Slavery, and Survival in Early Baltimore (Baltimore, 2009).The story Grivno relates is specific to its setting. Maryland boasted a diversified agricultural regime that emphasized the production of wheat rather than the cash crops customarily grown through the exploitation of slave labor. The state's slaveholdings were small. Moreover, Maryland slaveholders' grip on their chattel was always tenuous at best, given the state's location adjacent to Pennsylvania. For masters in northern Maryland, the nagging presence of neighboring Pennsylvania loomed large. Having passed a gradual emancipation law in 1780, the Keystone State beckoned enslaved laborers with the siren song of freedom. Masters along the Mason-Dixon Line were understandably nervous about the proximity of their chattel to liberty.Landowners in northern Maryland did not rely on slavery alone to meet the demand for labor; rather, they selected from a smorgasbord of workers - white and black, free and slave. Hostage to the seasonal rhythms of commercial wheat cultivation, property owners desired sufficient workforces for the intense labor at harvest without the burden of supporting extraneous personnel during relatively slack times of the agricultural cycle. To strike this sort of balance, they experimented with a dizzying array of labor arrangements, cobbling together workforces best suited to their needs. They mixed and matched the labor of free black and poor white wage workers, slaves, term slaves, and, until about 1820, indentured servants. The diversity of northern Maryland rural workforces, Grivno contends, blurred the conventional dichotomy between slave and free labor. Grivno urges his readers not to think of free and slave labor as antagonistic opposites but as running along a continuum of labor regimes. The workforce variations and flexibility exhibited by northern Maryland landowners, he argues, demonstrated the compatibility of free and slave labor.Economic upheaval shifted employer strategies after the Panic of 1819. The prolonged depression and pecuniary embarrassments that ensued forced landowners to downsize their workforces, often by either manumitting or selling their slaves. With slavery on the decline, a casualty of hard times, those with property relied increasingly on wage workers, and a gulf widened between free and unfree labor. Landowners' creative improvisation to secure manpower for the fields continued, but slaves factored less and less into the equation. Those bondpeople who survived the purge often proved more trouble than they were worth. …

Another World Is Possible: A Comparative Perspective

This article examines the letter writing of black railroad workers to the United States Railroad Administration during World War I. Engaging with scholarship on the African American experience during the war years, the article considers the ways in which ordinary African Americans acted on the opportunities presented by the mobilization for challenging Jim Crow and seeking racial justice. The article disagrees with interpretations that see the war period as one of promise but ultimately failure and disappointment for advocates of racial justice. Rather, attention to the epistolary undertakings of black railroaders reveals how letter writing itself figured as a form of political action through which black workers sought to bend the state to their purposes. The content of black railwaymen’s letters demonstrates the importance of citizenship and the centrality of economic justice to civil rights activism. Moreover, these letters illustrate how letter writing could be empowering. Not only did black workers demand fair treatment at work but in the course of writing many of them also fashioned themselves as fully endowed citizens. In Jim Crow America, in a society and culture that publicly denied African Americans agency as well as basic rights and liberties, the capacity of letter writing to facilitate “selfnarration” against dominant exclusionary definitions of citizenship helped African Americans, in the words of historian Chad Williams, “resist white supremacy, affirm their citizenship, and assert their humanity.” Like many other black workers in the industrial North during the World War I years, Lott Calloway came from the South. Born in Stokes, North Carolina, in 1886, he joined a burgeoning stream of African Americans making their way to the nation’s industrial centers in the first decades of the twentieth century. He lived in the heart of the old African American neighborhood of Columbus, Ohio, just off Mt. Vernon Avenue, with his wife, Minnie, whom he had married in 1915, and their three young children, Clarence, Ruth, and Harry. When the census taker visited his home in 1920, the thirty-four year old Calloway must have felt a sense of satisfaction, if not manhood, pride, and citizenship, in setting out the details of his growing family and in the fact that over the previous decade

This thesis investigates the possibilities and forms of subaltern politics through an empirical study of Brazilian domestic workers’ mobilisations. Domestic work, often described as a legacy of slavery in Brazil, is characterised by the intersection of gender, race and class matrices of oppression, which makes domestic workers a subaltern group. As a result of their subaltern status and characterisation as ‘non-standard’ workers they are expected to be harder, or even impossible, to organise and represent. Yet, Brazilian domestic workers have been organising since 1936; they formed their own autonomous trade unions, and won partial recognition in 2015 when the Brazilian Congress approved a law extending basic labour rights to them. Thus, my thesis examines how this subaltern group has been able to organise, and argues that instead of considering subalternity as an impediment to collective action it should be understood as a potential resource for mobilisation. I have identified three paradoxes of subaltern politics. First, I show how the professional identity ‘domestic worker’ is both necessary for political recognition in the Brazilian corporatist state, but also rejected, as it re-inscribes domestic workers into the raced-gendered power relations they want to challenge. Furthermore, I find that while the intersecting nature of their oppression is what has constructed domestic workers as a subaltern group, it has also enabled the formation of broad-based alliances with women, black and workers’ movements, thereby turning subalternity into a resource for collective action. Finally, domestic workers have used their perceived vulnerability to force recognition from the Brazilian state, yet, this has led to a paternalistic mode of recognition and a certain demobilisation of the domestic workers’ local unions. As domestic workers gained partial recognition as workers, they were also forced into an industrial relations model that did little to respond to the complex and multi-sided forms of oppressions they face, posing new challenges to their modes of organising.

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.

Does racial wage discrimination increase during economic downturns? In this article, the author tests empirically the association between economic conditions and racial wage discrimination for black, Hispanic, and Asian workers. Using data from the Current Population Survey, the author finds that the wage gap between Hispanics and whites, and between Asians and whites, increases with the job-seeker rate and unemployment rate. However, the wage gap between black and white workers increases slightly with the unemployment rate and does not change at all with the job-seeker rate. The author advances the concept of “wage discrimination flexibility” to argue that racial wage discrimination against black workers is more rigid and resistant to changes in economic environments, whereas wage discrimination against Hispanics and Asians is more flexible and responsive to economic conditions. The author discusses the implications of these findings for theories of discrimination and for policies aiming to foster equal opportunities in the labor market.