Civil rights unionism : tobacco workers and the struggle for democracy in the mid-twentieth-century South / Robert Rodgers Korstad.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Korstad, Robert Rodgers.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers Union of America--History--20th century.

Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers Union of America.

Tobacco workers--Labor unions--Southern States--History--20th century.

Tobacco workers.

Tobacco workers--Labor unions.

History.

Southern States.

Civil rights movements--Southern States--History--20th century.

Civil rights movements.

Local Subjects:

Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers Union of America--History--20th century.

Physical Description:

xii, 556 pages : illustrations, maps ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2003]

Summary:

Drawing on scores of interviews with black and white tobacco workers in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Robert Korstad brings to life the forgotten heroes of Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America-CIO. These workers confronted a system of racial capitalism that consigned African Americans to the basest jobs in the industry, perpetuated low wages for all southerners, and shored up white supremacy. Galvanized by the emergence of the CIO, African Americans took the lead in a campaign that saw a strong labor movement and the reenfranchisement of the southern poor as keys to reforming the South -- and a reformed South as central to the survival and expansion of the New Deal. In the window of opportunity opened by World War II, they blurred the boundaries between home and work as they linked civil rights and labor rights in a bid for justice at work and in the public sphere. But civil rights unionism foundered in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Its defeat undermined later efforts by civil rights activists to raise issues of economic equality to the moral high ground occupied by the fight against legalized segregation and, Korstad contends, constrains the prospects for justice and democracy today.

Contents:

1 Those Who Were Not Afraid 13

2 Industrial and Political Revolutions 41

3 Winston-Salem, North Carolina: Country Small Town Grown Big Town Rich

and Poor 61

4 R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company: A Moneymaking Place 93

5 Social Learning 120

6 Talking Union 142

7 A Dream Come True 167

8 Like Being Reconstructed 201

9 In Dreams Begin Responsibilities 225

10 There Was Nothing in the City That Didn't Concern the Tobacco Union 251

11 It Wasn't Just Wages We Wanted, but Freedom 276

12 Fighting the Fire 301

13 Jim Crow Must Go 334

14 If You Beat the White Man at One Trick, He Will Try Another 368

15 Trust the Bridge That Carried Us Over 393.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [421]-522) and index.

ISBN:

0807827819

0807854549

OCLC:

50906224