Black Unionism in the Industrial South

Black Unionism in the Industrial South. By Ernest Obadele-Starks. College Station: Texas A & M University Press, 2000. xxii, 183 pp. $29.95. ISBN 0-89096-912-4.

In an influential survey of the "new" labor history and its attempt to confront the complexities of race, Eric Arnesen argued against the notion that "the organized labor movement was [ever] the property of whites alone" ("Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review 55 [Winter 1993]: 53-87). Rather, he suggested, "black workers, particularly in the South, developed a tradition of black labor activism that has yet to be made integral to either African-American or labor historiography" (p. 55). Ernest Obadele-Starks's new study of black workers organizing on Texas's Gulf Coast attests to the resourcefulness at the center of that activist tradition and demonstrates its salience for southern working-- class history in general.

Like their counterparts elsewhere in the South, black workers on the docks and railroads of the Gulf Coast-and later in the petroleum, machine-building, and shipbuilding industries-found themselves crushed between employers anxious to exploit them as a source of cheap labor and an official labor movement that was saturated with racism and often hostile to their struggles to improve wages and working conditions. The strength of Obadele-Starks's work is its delineation of the varied responses of black workers to their predicament. His survey of labor activism in the region's key industries raises important questions about the relative autonomy of all-black locals, which, he suggests, black workers often preferred over integrated (usually white-dominated) ones; about the complex relationship between black workers and middle-class race leaders; and about the overall significance of the CIO as a force for labor solidarity and workplace equality. Ultimately, however, the author's insistence on grouping varied, often directly competing, approaches to workplace organization under the unified banner of "black unionism" detracts from the book's usefulness and undercuts its potential contribution to the field.

The strengths of Black Unionism are considerable: Obadele-Starks has trawled deeply through an array of primary sources, including the papers of local race leaders directly involved with the labor question, and makes extensive use of interviews with veterans of the 1930s-era labor movement and a rich local black and labor press. The book's survey format highlights the creative mobilization of black workers in a range of very different circumstances: where they had secured a foothold along the docks, black longshoremen were able to hold out against white workers' attempts to limit their share of work (pp. 37-52); in the unfavorable conditions of the railroad industry, blacks were forced to organize outside of, and often in opposition to, racist white brotherhoods that excluded them from membership (pp. 53-67); in the tool industry, the rise of the CIO opened the door to interracial cooperation and the abolition of race-based wage and skill grades (pp. 82-100).

On several key issues, however, the author's attempt to project a cohesive "black unionist" tradition leads him astray. Most problematically, Obadele-Starks goes to great lengths to demonstrate the essential compatibility between black elites and the black working class. The author consistently downplays his own evidence that the black "community" was sharply divided against itself over its attitude to flawed, white-dominated unions. Individual leaders such as Carter Wesley responded to the rise of the CIO and its message of racial equality enthusiastically. Others, like longtime accommodationist C. W. Rice, continued to emphasize racial separatism and, although dismissing the egalitarian rhetoric emanating from the CIO, continued to advocate loyalty to the very white employers who oversaw workplace discrimination. Occasionally, the author acknowledges that black workers themselves often rejected Rice's proscriptions, but his attachment to both a static view of white racism on the one hand and to black racial solidarity on the other leads him to include both Rice and his followers, along with Wesley and his, as equal contributors to the black unionist tradition.

This confusion leads the author to obscure the very substantial differences between the management-controlled, racially exclusive company unions organized by Rice at Hughes Tool Company and its integrated CIO rival. Obadele-Starks is clearly on target when he writes that the choices made by black workers "were influenced by ... racial policies at [work], their relationship with white unionists, and the agitation [of] black elites," but he is on unsteady ground when he depicts the attachment of some black workers to company unions or even strikebreaking as evidence of their "versatility" (p. 82). These were more likely symptomatic of their vulnerability. Although in places critical of their strategy, Obadele-Starks repeatedly refers to Rice and his followers as "black unionists" (p. 99) and to the company union as an "independent union" (p. 95). In the end the author fails to draw clearly the conclusions evident in his own sources: the nonunion era during which racially separate company unions were dominant was characterized by harsh discrimination against blacks (p. 91); and the rise of the flawed but integrated CIO meant that "for the first time in the company's history, pay equities between the races were granted" (p. 96).

Black Unionism in the Industrial South explores issues that have been too long neglected by practitioners of the new labor history and that merit urgent attention. Its author has done a service to the field by uncovering a fascinating aspect of southern working-class history, one that should be of interest to students of Alabama's rich labor history. But ultimately the attempt to project cohesion and unity on black southerners sharply divided over the labor question falls short of convincing this reviewer.

BRIAN KELLY

Queen's University of Belfast, Northern Ireland

Copyright University of Alabama Press Oct 2002
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