Hiring the Black Worker

by Minchin, Timothy J.

• ISBN13: 9780807847718
• ISBN10: 0807847712
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 1999-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of North Carolina Pr

Summary

In the 1960s and 1970s, the textile industry's workforce underwent a dramatic transformation, as African Americans entered the South's largest industry in growing numbers. Only 3.3 percent of textile workers were black in 1960; by 1978, this number had risen to 25 percent. Using previously untapped legal records and oral history interviews, Timothy Minchin crafts a compelling account of the integration of the mills. Minchin argues that the role of a labor shortage in spurring black hiring has been overemphasized, pointing instead to the federal government's influence in pressing the textile industry to integrate. He also highlights the critical part played by African American activists. Encouraged by passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, black workers filed antidiscrimination lawsuits against nearly all of the major textile companies. Still, Minchin notes, even after the integration of the mills, African American workers encountered considerable resistance: black women faced continued hiring discrimination, while black men found themselves shunted into low-paying jobs with little hope of promotion.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction	1	(6)
There Were No Blacks Running the Machines: Black Employment in the Southern Textile Industry before 1964	7	(36)
The Government Brought About the Real Change: Causes of the Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1964--1980	43	(24)
For Quite Obvious Reasons, We Do Not Want to Fill These Mills Up with Negroes: The Attitudes of Textile Executives to Black Employment	67	(32)
I Felt Myself as a Pioneer: The Experiences of the First Black Production Workers	99	(28)
The Only Ones That Got a Promotion Was a White Man: The Discriminatory Treatment of Black Men in the Textile Industry, 1964--1980	127	(34)
Getting Out of the White Man's Kitchen: African American Women and the Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry	161	(44)
Community Activism and Litigation: The Role of Civil Rights Organizations in the Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry	205	(28)
A Mixed Blessing: The Role of Labor Unions in the Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry	233	(32)
Epilogue	265	(8)
Notes	273	(46)
Bibliography	319	(12)
Index	331