My ministry has included teaching labor history as an adjunct professor for over 15 years. Most of my students have been members of labor unions whose apprenticeship programs require a unit of labor history—a kind of catechesis for the labor movement. I have always included race analysis as part of their formation so that they have an alternative understanding of their class identity.
Also, it is personal. As the son of a CWA member, learning this history has been part of my spiritual journey. This is a very long post and quite frankly I doubt if most people will read it. But perhaps it might make a difference for a few like myself who was needing this information when I started my ministry years ago.
In a nutshell, historically, white workers have swung like a pendulum from broad progressive economic visions that encourage solidarity across racial differences to nativist and racist agendas, such as the current policies of President Trump. In the absence of a robust and progressive labor movement, white workers seek refuge in resentment politics.
[Side note: The United Methodist Churches is incapable of reaching them because their congregations are dominated by the cultural and economic perspective of the professional managerial strata that govern them. This is ironic because, unlike other mainline denominations, the United Methodist Church is geographically positioned to have an impact on white workers. However, many of those UMC congregations are traditionalists, whose pastors and opinion-shapers have shown little or no interest in supporting labor unions or a progressive economic agenda.]
Below are excerpts from my class lectures that you might find helpful. For more information, read From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend by Priscilla Murolo and A.B. Chitty or Who Built America (2 vols.) by the American Social History Project.
CREATION OF WHITE WORKING-CLASS IDENTITY
Racism as an ideology has a history. Racism among white working class Americans formed in a unique way. For more on this history I highly recommend David Roediger’s The Wages of Whiteness: Race and the Making of the American Working Class.
Prior to the Revolution, race was not the major factor in the self-identification of white workers. On the eve of the Revolution four out of every five white workers who had recently moved to the Colonies was an indentured servant. For example, the term “coon” originally did not have a racial connotation. It referred to any shady character. “Coon” developed its racist meaning as “whiteness” became a part of the self-identification of white workers.
As the institution of slavery expanded, the labor movement in the north used imagery related to slavery to explain their own oppression. Labor leaders used terms such as “white slavery” and “white nigger” to express their situation. The terminology was not an act of solidarity with black slaves but rather a way to call attention to their own suffering. Ultimately, the term “white slavery” fell out of usage among white workers because they did not want to be too closely identified with blacks who were stereotyped as lazy and easily manipulated by the rich. These were not the characteristics of the ideal American worker who sought to apply the values of democracy to the workplace.
The term “slavery of wages” or “wage slavery” was later used as an alternative. This phrase expressed workers’ contempt for the new hourly wage system that took away their control in the workplace and forced them to conform to a regimented system of time. It was only after the Emancipation Proclamation that black slaves were seen in a positive light by white laborers. Former slaves were portrayed as a the role model of liberation that white workers should follow in their struggles against employers.
African Americans, both slave and free, were held in contempt because of what they represented to white workers. In some cases, they represented the threat of cheaper labor (a theme that was repeated throughout the history of the labor movement of minorities being used to break strikes and replace white workers).
On a deeper level, a paradoxical pattern developed of white working class resentment and attraction to blacks. On the one hand, they were resented as being uneducated and easily manipulated by the rich to undermine the democratic ideals of white workers. African American festivities were seen as signs of laziness and immorality, the opposite values for success in the new capitalist economy. On the other hand, white workers were attracted to what they perceived as the freedom blacks had from the new hourly wage system. The wage labor system changed the way workers organized and viewed time, and this restriction on their lives created resentment toward slaves who were not governed by it.
This resentment/attraction pattern was expressed in riots and entertainment. White mobs would dress in black face and rampage black neighborhoods. For example, the Christmas riots of 1837-38 were brought on during a period of high unemployment in Northern cities. Black face was not used as a disguise but as a way to express displaced anger at the economic system. The minstrel shows also expressed resentment and fascination with African Americans, which began primarily as working class entertainment.
The one group of white workers who were most closely identified with African Americans was the Irish. Being Irish was seen as a separate racial category on census forms and they were labeled with stereotypes very similar to African Americans. At times they competed for the same work in the North. In the South, the Irish were sometimes used to do work that was considered too dangerous to risk the loss of property (i.e. death of a slave), such as constructing levees.
Examples of white and free black laborers forming alliances were rare. Some labor leaders were proslavery, such as Ely Moore who was the first president of the National Trade Union. He denounced abolition as a “blind, reckless, feverish fanaticism.”
However, there was a very significant minority of white labor unionists who were abolitionists. Former printer George Henry Evans and the New York Society for the Abolition of All Slaves advocated for emancipation and economic equality for all workers. Supported by craft workers and female textile workers, the Society said that it was not enough to emancipate slaves but there should also be land reform so that black and white workers would no longer be exploited. This position did not sit well with middle class abolitionists such as William Lloyd Garrison.
RACE RELATIONS IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT IN THE GILDED AGE
During this era, organized labor reflected the racism in society, but at certain points challenged it as labor unions sought to gain legal and cultural legitimacy. It must be remembered that during this period labor unions were illegal or had tenuous legal standing. Labor unions fostered, ignored or challenged racism as part of a strategy of survival and a tactic to consolidate economic power.
KNIGHTS OF LABOR PRACTICES: The K of L had great appeal to black workers throughout the South and in the North. It was usually the only local organization where blacks and whites were equal members. Places such as Richmond, Indiana and Charleston, South Carolina had interracial K of L locals and activities. Black locals were also created in the South, and because of the threat of lynching they used others names such as “Washington Lodge” or “Franklin Lodge.” The estimated black membership in 1886 was 60,000 with over 400 black locals and it peaked at around 95,000 members. This was the first time black workers had been brought into the labor movement.
K of L leader Terrence Powderly‘s opinion on accommodated Southern white members. The philosophy and leadership were controlled by Terence Powderly for most of the Knight’s existence and his authoritarian and inconsistent leadership contributed to its downfall. Elected Grand Master Workman in 1879, Powderly created an inner circle of leaders that often ignored both the will of the rank and file as well as the signs of the times.
The fateful year was 1886. One year after the successful Gould railroad strike, the K of L went out on strike. A local official of the Order who led them, Martin Irons, was a socialist. In the middle of the strike, Powderly undercut Iron’s authority by announcing that Gould had agreed to arbitration when he had not. The strike was broke and the Knights lost. That same year, Chicago Packinghouse workers went on strike for an 8-hour day. Powderly ordered them to return to work when the strike was on the verge of succeeding. The rank and filed defied Powderly’s order but it was too late.
That year’s convention was held in Richmond, Virginia and during the convention Powderly and the General Executive Board convinced the delegates to oust the cigar workers, of which Samuel Gompers was a leader. This was the highpoint of tension between the trade unionists and the anti-trade unionists (who controlled the General Executive Board). That same convention was also marked by a visual sign of racial equality (see below).
AFL PRACTICES: AFL President Samuel Gompers saw segregation as an “internal affair” for the South. There was no official racial barrier to membership in the Federation (Member trade unions, however, barred membership in some cases). But because the Federation was based on craft unionism and because the majority of blacks were unskilled laborers, the Federation was never able to effectively organize black workers.
Gompers and the AFL pushed national unions to remove racial standards for membership. When the National Association of Machinists refused to remove their “white only” membership requirement, the AFL sponsored the creation of the International Machinists Union in 1891.
EXAMPLES OF RACIAL UNITY IN THE LABOR MOVEMENT
There were moments of worker solidarity in the Gilded Age that transcended the racial barrier. Here are three examples:
1886 Knights of Labor, Richmond Convention—Months before the convention the powerful New York District 49 had traveled to Richmond to make hotel accommodations. One of their officers, Frank J. Ferrell, was African American and the hotel, which was owned by a former Confederate colonel, refused to accept their reservations. The day of the convention District 49 pitched tents as an act of protest and later stayed in the homes of black families and attended a black Catholic church. They convinced the delegates to pass a resolution on racial equality and concluded the convention with a parade of 3,000 workers, both black and white, marching through the streets of Richmond. It was said that the entire black community showed up but the mayor refused to attend the picnic that followed. Southern white newspapers lambasted the event but the black press enthusiastically encouraged its readers to join the Order.
St. Louis Strike of 1892—The Marine Firemen, who were African Americans, went out on strike when they demanded union scale wages. The white longshoremen soon followed them. Thousands of black and white striking workers marched through the streets carrying banners that read, “Equal Rights for All!” Two days later they won the wage increases, but not union recognition. As a result of this victory, Gompers ordered the AFL to initiate a month long organizing drive of black workers up and down the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers. He had newspaper clippings of the strike sent to all the locals in the South.
General Strike in New Orleans, 1892—The teamsters, scalesmen, and packers (known as the Triple Alliance) demanded a 10-hour day, overtime pay and a union shop. The teamsters were predominately black. When the companies said that they would settle with the white scalesmen and packers, the white workers refused to break ranks with the black workers. The local labor council launched a citywide strike that included 49 unions and 25,000 workers. The newspapers ran highly racists articles and forced the governor to send in the state militia. But because the strike was peaceful, the militia was removed. The unions, under the leadership of a five man executive committee that included two black leaders, won a shorter workday and overtime pay.
RACE RELATIONS AND NATIVISM IN THE TWENTIES
The Ku Klux Klan was reinvented in the 1920s. There have been three phases in the history of the Klan and the second phase developed during this period (The first phase was immediately following the Civil War and ended in 1870, and the third phase was emerged during the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s). It began on Thanksgiving Day, 1916 at Stone Mountain, Georgia when Nathan Bedford Forest II (grandson of the Confederate leader and founder of the first Klan) administered an oath to 34 white men. They called themselves the “Knights of Mary Phagan.” Phagan was a white factory worker who had been murdered in Atlanta and a Jewish industrialist had been wrongly convicted of the crime. They were inspired by the movie “Birth of a Nation.”
The Klan gained control of a number of Midwestern states and cities, especially Indiana where it controlled the governor’s office and General Assembly from 1922 to 1926. When the Grand Dragon, David C. Stephenson, was convicted of the rape and suicide/murder of his 18-year-old female assistant the Klan quickly lost steam.
The Klan was recreated on a strong anti-Catholic, anti-Jewish, and anti-foreigner agenda. It touted conservative morals, such as prohibition and used the rhetoric of “100% Americanism.” Many Protestant churches were deeply involved in the Klan. Revivalists such as the founder of the Pillar of Fire Church and Billy Sunday received financial support and encouragement from the Klan.
The appeal of the Klan in the Midwest replaced progressive movements among white workers. Prior to 1920, the Socialist Party had made gains in local politics and represented the needs of working class communities. After the Red Scare and the absence of progressive alternatives, white workers gravitated into the Klan.
ORGANIZED LABOR AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
The legacy of racism kept the AFL-CIO from fully embracing the Civil Rights Movement. George Meany, president of the AFL-CIO, was reticent to take on the issue of segregation within the labor movement and slow in challenging racism in society.
For years, A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters had pushed the Federation members to abolish racial discrimination from their constitutions. He founded and chaired the Negro American Labor Council as a caucus within organized labor, and by the early 1960s had convinced all but one union in the Federation to abolish their segregation clauses. But it came with a fight on the AFL-CIO’s Executive Council, of which Randolph was a member. When Randolph sent a memorandum in October 1961 to the Executive Council demanding that the unions desegregate in six months, Meany had the Executive Council censure him.
In December a symbolic turning point occurred at the Fourth Constitutional Convention in Bal Harbour, Florida. Randolph was successful in getting Martin Luther King, Jr. on the agenda to deliver a major speech. King admired Randolph and used him as a senior advisor. The speech was important to King and the Southern Christian Leadership Council (SCLC) because it represented one of the first successful attempts to expand the movement beyond the black community. It came in the midst of a libel suit in Alabama against SCLC, which if they had lost would have been a major blow against free speech.
King used the theme of common defense in his appeal to the AFL-CIO. The speech was written, in part, by Stanley Levison, a labor radical and close advisor to King. Levison raised suspicions with the FBI because of his past involvement with communist trade unionists. The speech was a great success. As King concluded, the delegates rose to their feet with cheers and many of the black delegates were visibly moved to tears.
In the speech, King declared:
“The duality of interests of labor and Negroes makes any crisis which lacerates you a crisis from which we bleed. As we stand on the threshold of the second half of the 20th century, a crisis confronts us both. Those who in the second half of the nineteenth century could not tolerate organized labor have had a rebirth of power and seek to regain the despotism of that era while retaining the wealth and privileges of the 20th century. I am convinced that we shall overcome because the arc of the universe is long but it bends toward justice….When that day comes, the fears of insecurity and the doubts clouding our future will be transformed into radiant confidence, into glowing excitement to reach creative goals and into an abiding moral balance where the brotherhood of man will be undergirded by a secure and expanding prosperity for all.”
The speech echoed what he had written a few years earlier in his first book Stride Toward Freedom:
“Strong ties must be made between those whites and Negroes who have problems in common. White and Negro workers have mutual aspirations for a fairer share of the products of industries and farms. Both seek job security, old-age security, health and welfare protection. The organized labor movement, which has contributed so much to the economic security and well-being of millions, must concentrate its powerful forces on bringing economic emancipation to white and Negro by organizing them together in social equality.”
King envisioned a grand alliance between poor whites and blacks. This was the theme of the 1963 march on Washington where he gave his famous “I have a dream” speech. The title of the event was “The March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.” In addition to desegregation, the list of demands included an increase in the minimum wage and the creation of a Federal public works program. The march concluded with a meeting between the leaders of the march and JFK. Included in that delegation was UAW President Walter Reuther. Despite Reuther’s involvement, Meany and the AFL-CIO refused to endorse the march.
Reuther had been a liberal but cautious supporter of the Civil Rights Movement. He acted as a bridge between the Democratic Party and the movement’s leadership. During the 1964 Democratic Convention when the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party (MFDP) demanded to be seated, Reuther pushed hard for MFDP to accept Johnson’s watered-down compromise. Still, the UAW contributed tens of thousands of dollars to finance bail for civil rights protesters and to support SCLC.
Other unions also gave financial and moral support. The Teamsters contributed regularly to SCLC. At one point, the FBI tried to use a fund raiser meeting between King and Jimmy Hoffa as a smear tactic against the movement. The United Packinghouse Workers were even more deeply involved. Three representatives helped found SCLC. In Chicago, their black executive, Charles Hayes, was a leader in organizing of black tenants. A strike by a newly formed local of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) brought King to Memphis in 1968 where he was shot. The movement was embodied in Local 1199’s hospital workers’ strike in Charleston, South Carolina in 1969.
Notes on a New Methodism 