Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1981
"Organized Labor and the Black Worker ... documents a very long history of trade union and white working-class intransigence to Black working-class advancement alongside episodes of interracial class unity and the elusive promise of a radical future.... His book is filled with anecdotes of working-class racism undermining genuine workers’ power in favor of the paltry protections of white privilege―from the erection of occupational color bars by unions to the outbreaks of wildcat strikes against the hiring of black workers. But it is also peppered with episodes of anti-racism and interracial unity, from the Knights of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) to the Congress of Indu