Black Workers Remember

by Honey, Michael K.

• ISBN13: 9780520232051
• ISBN10: 0520232054
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-03-01
• Publisher: Univ of California Pr

Summary

A compelling collection of oral histories of black working-class men and women from Memphis. Covering the 1930s to the 1980s, they tell of struggles to unionize and to combat racism on the shop floor and in society at large. They also reveal the origins of the civil rights movement in the activities of black workers, from the Depression onward.

Table of Contents

Synopsis and Acknowledgments	xiii
Preface: Black History as Labor History	xvii
Introduction: The Power of Remembering	1	(14)
Segregation, Racial Violence, and Black Workers	15	(28)
Fannie Henderson Witnesses Southern Lynch Law	20	(3)
William Glover Recounts His Frame-up by the Memphis Police	23	(6)
Longshore Leader Thomas Watkins Escapes Assassination	29	(14)
From Country to City: Jim Crow at Work	43	(43)
Hillie and Laura Pride Move to Memphis	49	(5)
Matthew Davis Describes Heavy Industrial Work	54	(5)
George Holloway Remembers the Crump Era	59	(13)
Clarence Coe Recalls the Pressures of White Supremacy	72	(14)
Making a Way Out of No Way: Black Women Factory Workers	86	(46)
Irene Branch Does Double Duty as a Domestic and Factory Worker	93	(6)
Evelyn Bates Reflects on Her Lifetime of Factory Work	99	(9)
Susie Wade Tells How She Built a Life around Work	108	(6)
Rebecca McKinley Remembers the Strike at Memphis Furniture Company	114	(18)
Interlude: Not What We Seem	123	(9)
Freedom Struggles at the Point of Production	132	(45)
Clarence Coe Fights for Equality	136	(14)
Lonnie Roland and other Black Workers Implement the Brown Decision on the Factory Floor	150	(4)
George Holloway's Struggle against White Worker Racism	154	(23)
Organizing and Surviving in the Cold War	177	(60)
Leroy Clark Follows the Pragmatic Road to Survival in the Jim Crow South	183	(11)
Leroy Boyd Battles White Supremacy in the Era of the Red Scare	194	(43)
Interlude: Arts of Resistance	213	(24)
Civil Rights Unionism	237	(49)
Leroy Boyd Tells How Black Workers Used the Movement for Civil Rights to Revive Local 19	241	(6)
Factory Worker Matthew Davis Becomes a Community Leader	247	(8)
Edward Lindsey Recalls Black Union Politics	255	(6)
Alzada and Leroy Clark Fight for Unionism and Civil Rights	261	(10)
Alzada Clark Organizes Black Women Workers in Mississippi	271	(15)
``I Am a Man'': Unionism and the Black Working Poor	286	(36)
Taylor Rogers Relives the Memphis Sanitation Strike	293	(9)
James Robinson Describes the Worst Job He Ever Had	302	(7)
Leroy Boyd and Clarence Coe Recall a Strike and the Death of Martin Luther King	309	(5)
William Lucy Reflects on the Strike's Meaning and Outcome	314	(8)
The Fate of the Black Working Class: The Global Economy, Racism, and Union Organizing	322	(47)
Confronting Deindustrialization	324	(11)
Ida Leachman Tells How Her Union Continues to Organize Low-Wage Workers	335	(21)
George Holloway and Clarence Coe Reflect on the Importance of Unions and the Struggle against Racism	356	(13)
Epilogue: Scars of Memory	369	(6)
References and Notes	375	(16)
Index	391