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Opportunities Found and Lost :

Labor, Radicals, and the Early

Civi l Rights Movement

RobertKorstad and Nelson Lichtenstein

Mosthistorianswouldagree hat the moderncivil rightsmovementdid not beginwiththeSupremeCourt's ecisionnBrown .BoardofEducation.Yetalltoo oftenthe movement's istoryhas beenwrittenas if eventsbeforethe mid-1950s on-stituteda kindofprehistory,mportant nly nsofar sthey aid thelegalandpolit-icalfoundation or the spectaculardvanceshat came ater.Thosewere he "for-gottenyears f theNegroRevolution,"roteonehistorian;heywere he"seedimeof racialandlegalmetamorphosis,"ccordingo another.But sucha periodizationprofoundlyunderestimateshe tempo and misjudges he socialdynamicof thefreedomstruggle.1

Thecivilrightserabegan,dramaticallynddecisively,n the early1940swhenthe social structure f blackAmerica ook on an increasinglyrban,proletariancharacter.A predominantlyouthernruraland small townpopulationwas soontransformednto one of themosturbanof allmajorethnicgroups.More han twomillionblacksmigratedo northern ndwesternndustrial reasduring he 1940s,while anothermillionmoved romfarm o citywithinthe South.Northernblackvotersdoubledtheirnumbersbetween1940and 1948,andin the elevenstatesof

theOld Southblack egistrationmore hanquadrupled,eaching verone millionby 1952.Likewise,membershipn the NationalAssociation orthe Advancement

RobertKorstad s a historianwith the School of Public Health at the Universityof North Carolina, Chapel Hill.Nelson Lichtensteinis associateprofessorof history at the Catholic University of America. The authors wish tothank EileenBoris,WilliamChafe, CharlesEagles, SaraEvans, acquelynHall, Alice Kessler-Harris, tevenLawson,SusanLevine,LeslieRowland,HarvardSitkoff, David Thelen, Seth Wigderson, and severalreaders or the Journalof American History for their helpful comments.

1 RichardM.Dalfiume, "The ForgottenYears' f the NegroRevolution,"JournalofAmericanHistory, 55 (June1968), 90-106; StevenLawson,"TheSecond Front at Home: WorldWar II and BlackAmericans,"paperdeliveredat the SixthSoviet-AmericanHistoriansColloquium, Sept. 24-26, 1986, Washington(in Nelson Lichtenstein's os-session). This view has recentlybeen reinforced by the television documentary "Eyeson the Prize,"which beginsabruptlyin 1954.Juan Williams, Eyes on the Prize: America's CivilRights Years,1954-1965 (New York,1986).However,a few sociologists have brokenwith the orthodoxperiodization:Aldon Morris,The Originsof the CivilRightsMovement:BlackCommunitiesOrganizing or Change (New York,1984);andJackBloom, Class,Raceandthe Civil Rights Movement (Bloomington, 1987).

786



Labor,Radicals, nd CivilRights 787

of Colored People (NAACP)soared, growingfrom 50,000 in 355 branches n 1940

to almost 450,000 in 1,073 branchessix yearslater.2

The half million blackworkerswho joined unions affiliated with the Congress

of IndustrialOrganizations CIO)were in the vanguardof effortsto transformrace

relations.The NAACP and the Urban League had become more friendly toward

laborin the depressionera, but their legal and socialworkorientationhad not pre-

pared them to act effectively n the workplacesand working-classneighborhoods

where blackAmericansfought their most decisive strugglesof the late 1930sand

1940s. By the early forties it was commonplacefor sympatheticobservers o assert

the centralityof mass unionization in the civil rights struggle.A RosenwaldFund

study concluded, not without misgivings, that "the characteristicmovements

among Negroes are now for the first time becoming proletarian";while a Crisis

reporterfound the CIO a "lamp of democracy" hroughout the old Confederate

states. "TheSouth has not known such a forcesince the historic Union Leagues nthe great days of the Reconstructionera."3

Thismovement gained much of its dynamiccharacter rom the relationshipthat

arosebetweenunionized blacksand the federalgovernmentand provedsomewhat

similiar to the creativetension that linked the church-basedcivil rightsmovement

and the statealmosttwo decadeslater.In the 1950sthe Browndecisionlegitimated

much of the subsequent social struggle, but it remained essentiallya dead letter

until given political force by a growingprotestmovement. In like manner,the rise

of industrial unions and the evolution of late New Deal labor legislation offered

working-classblacksan economic and political standardbywhichthey could legiti-mate their demands and stimulate a popular struggle. The "one man, one vote"

policy implemented in thousandsof National LaborRelationsBoard(NLRB)elec-

tions, the industrial "citizenship" hat union contractsofferedonce-marginalele-

ments of the workingclass, and the patrioticegalitarianismof the government'swar-

time propaganda allgeneratedarightsconsciousness hatgaveworking-class lack

militancyamoraljustification n somewaysaspowerfulasthat evokedbythe Baptist

spiritualityof MartinLutherKing, Jr., a generationlater.4During the warthe Fair

EmploymentPracticesCommittee (FEPC)held little direct authority, but like the

CivilRightsCommissionof the late 1950s,it served to exposeracistconditionsand

spuron blackactivismwherever t undertookitswell-publicizedinvestigations.And

2 HaroldM. Baronand Bennett Hymer,"TheNegro in the ChicagoLaborMarket,"n TheNegro in the Amer-

ican LaborMovement,ed. JuliusJacobson(New York,1968), 188. See also GavinWright, Old South, New South:

Revolutionsin the Southern Economysince the Civil War New York, 1986), 239-57. Fora discussion of black

proletarianization,see Joe William Trotter,Jr., Black Milwaukee: The Making of an Industrial Proletariat,

1915-1945(Urbana, 1985);StevenLawson,BlackBallots: VotingRightsin the South, 1944-1969 (New York,1975),

134; HenryLee Moon,Balance of Power:The Negro Vote(Garden City, 1949), 146-96; and Dalfiume,"'Forgotten

Years,"'99-100.3Dalfiume, "'ForgottenYears,"'100; Harold Preece, "The South Stirs,"Crisis,48 (Oct. 1941), 318.

4James A. Gross,TheReshapingof the National LaborRelationsBoard' National LaborPolicyin Transition,

1937-1947 (Albany, 1981), 5-41; Gary Gerstle, "The Politicsof Patriotism:Americanizationand the Formation

of the CIO,"Dissent, 33 (Winter 1986), 84-92. Racistdiscriminationin hiring, promotion, and senioritywere

hardlyeliminated bythe newCIOunions; see RobertJ.Norrell,"Caste n Steel:Jim CrowCareers n Birmingham,

Alabama," ournal of American History, 73 (Dec. 1986) 669-701.



788 TheJournalof AmericanHistory

just as a disruptiveand independent civil rightsmovement in the 1960scould pres-sure the federalgovernmentto enforce its own laws and move againstlocal elites,

so too did the mobilization of the blackworkingclass n the 1940smake civil rights

an issue that couldnot be ignored byunion officers,white executives,orgovernmentofficials.5

This essayexplorestwo examplesof the workplace-orientedivil rights militancythat arosein the 1940s one in the South and one in the North. It analyzesthe

unionization of predominantly black tobacco workers n Winston-Salem, NorthCarolina, and the ferment in the United Auto Workersn Detroit, Michigan,thatmade that city a center of blackworking-class ctivism n the North. Similarmove-ments took root among newly organizedworkers n the cotton compressmills ofMemphis,the tobaccofactoriesof Richmond andCharleston, he steel millsof Pitts-

burgh and Birmingham,the stockyardsand farm equipment factories of Chicagoand Louisville,and the shipyardsof Baltimore and Oakland.6

Winston-Salemin the War

Winston-Salem had been a center of tobaccoprocessingsince the 1880s, and theR.J. Reynolds TobaccoCompany dominated the life of the city's eighty thousandcitizens. Bythe 1940swhitesheld most of the higherpayingmachine-tending jobs,but blacksformed the majorityof the workforce, concentrated n the preparationdepartmentswherethey cleaned, stemmed, andconditionedthe tobacco.7Thejobswerephysicallydemanding, the air was hot and dusty, and in departmentswith ma-chinery,the noise wasdeafening. Most blackworkersmade only a few cents aboveminimum wage, and benefitswere few. Blackwomen workers xperienced requentverbaland occasionalsexualabuse. Reynoldsmaintained a determinedoppositionto tradeunionism, andtwo unsuccessfulAmericanFederationof Labor AFL)effortsto organizesegregated locals had souredmost blackworkerson trade unionism.

But in 1943 a CIO organizing effort succeeded. Led by the United Cannery,

Agricultural,Packingand Allied Workersof America (UCAPAWA), new uniondrive championed black dignity and self-organization,employing several young

5HerbertR. Garfinkel,When NegroesMarch:TheMarchon WashingtonMovement n the OrganizationalPoli-ticsofFEPC(Glencoe, 1959);LouisKesselman,TheSocialPoliticsof FEPC:A Studyin ReformPressureMovements(Chapel Hill, 1948);William Harris,"Federal ntervention n Union Discrimination:FEPCand WestCoastShip-yardsduring World WarII,"LaborHistory, 22 (Summer 1981), 325-47.

6 HoraceHuntley, "IronOre Miners and Mine Mill in Alabama: 1933-1952"(Ph.D. diss., Universityof Pitts-burgh, 1977); MichaelHoney, "Laborand Civil Rights in the South: The IndustrialLaborMovement and BlackWorkersn Memphis, 1929-1945" Ph.D. diss., NorthernIllinoisUniversity,1987), 422-75; Nell IrvinPainter, TheNarrativeofHosea Hudson: His Lifeasa Negro Communist n the South (Cambridge,Mass., 1979);RickHalpern,"Blackand White, Unite and Fight: The United PackinghouseWorkers' truggleagainstRacism,"paperdeliveredat the North AmericanLaborHistoryConference,Oct. 1985, Detroit (in Lichtenstein's ossession);Dennis C. Dick-erson, "Fightingon the Domestic Front:BlackSteelworkers uring WorldWar II," n Life and Labor:Dimensionsof American Working-ClassHistory, ed. Charles Stephenson and Robert Asher (Albany, 1986), 224-36; ToniGilpin, "Leftby Themselves:A History of United FarmEquipment and MetalWorkers,1938-1955,"draft, Ph.Ddiss., YaleUniversity, 1988 (in Toni Gilpin'spossession).

Nannie M. Tilley, TheBright-Tobaccondustry,1860-1929 (Chapel Hill, 1948);Nannie M. Tilley, TheR.J.Reynolds TobaccoCompany (Chapel Hill, 1985).




black organizerswho had gotten their start in the interracial Southern Tenant

FarmersUnion. Theirdiscreet wo-year rganizingcampaignmade a dramaticbreak-

throughwhen blackwomen in one of the stemmeries stopped work on June 17. A

severe labor shortage, chronic wage grievances, and a recent speedup gave thewomen both the resourcesand the incentiveto transforma departmental sit-down

into a festive, plant-wide strike. The UCAPAWAquickly signed up about eight

thousandblackworkers, rganized a committee to negotiatewith the company,and

asked the NLRB to hold an election.8

The effort to win union recognitionat Reynoldssparkeda spirited debate about

who constituted the legitimate leadership of the black community in Winston-

Salem. Midwaythrough the campaign, six local black business and professional

men -a college professor,an undertaker,a dentist, a store owner, and two mini-

sters dubbed "coloredeaders"by the Winston-Salem ournal, wrote a long letterto the editor urging workers o reject the "followersof John L. Lewis and William

Green"and to remain loyal to Reynolds.In the absence of any formal leadership,

elected or otherwise, representativesof Winston-Salem'ssmall black middle class

had served as spokesmen, brokeringwith the white elite for small concessionsin

a tightly segregatedsociety. The fight for collective bargaining,they argued, had

to remainsecondary o the more importantgoal of racial betterment,which could

only be achieved by "good will, friendly understanding, and mutual respectand

co-operation between the races."Partlybecause of their own vulnerability to eco-

nomicpressure, uchtraditionalblack eaders udged unions, like other institutions,

by their ability to deliver jobs and maintain a precariousracialequilibrium.9

The union campaignat Reynolds transformed he expectationstobacco workers

held of the old community leadership. Reynolds workersresponded to calls for

moderation from "college-trainedpeople" with indignation. "Our leaders,"com-

plained Mabel Jessup, "always ook clean and refreshed at the end of the hottest

day, becausethey workin very pleasant environments.... All I askof our leaders

is that they obtain a job in one of the factories as a laborerand work two weeks.

Then write what they think." W. L. Griffinfelt betrayed."I have attended churchregularly or the past thirty years," e wrote, "andunity and co-operationhavebeen

taught and preachedfrom the pulpits of the variousNegro churches.Now that the

laboringclass of people are about to unite and co-operate on a wholesale scalefor

the purposeof collective bargaining, these same leaders seem to disagreewith that

which they have taught their people."Others rejected the influenceof people who

"havealways old us what the white people want, but somehoworother areparticu-

larly silent on what we want.""We feel we are the leaders instead of you,"asserted

a group of union members.10

8 RobertKorstad, "ThoseWho Were Not Afraid: Winston-Salem, 1943," n WorkingLives: TheSouthern Ex-

posure Historyof Labor n the South, ed. MarcMiller (New York,1980), 184-99; and Robert Korstad,"Daybreakof Freedom:TobaccoWorkers nd the CIO, Winston-Salem, North Carolina,1943-1950"(Ph.D. diss., University

of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, 1987), 2-50; Tilley, R. j Reynolds TobaccoCompany, 373-414.9 Winston-SalemJournal, July 14, 1943, p. 6; ibid., July 25, 1943, p. 6; Horace R. Cayton and George S.

Mitchell, Black Workers nd the New Unions (Chapel Hill, 1939), 372-424.10 Winston-SalemJournal,July 14, 1943, p. 6; ibid., July 16, 1943, p. 6; ibid., July 17, 1943, p. 6; ibid., July

25, 1943, p. 6




Reynolds,the only majortobaccomanufacturern the countrynot undera union

contract,followed tried and true methods to break the union. Management used

lower-levelsupervisors o intimidate unionists and supporteda "no union"move-

ment among white workers,whoseorganizersweregivenfreedom to roam the com-

pany'sworkshopsand warehouses.Thatgroup,the R.J. ReynoldsEmployeesAssoci-

ation, sought a place on the NLRB ballot in order to delay the increasinglycertain

CIO victory. Meanwhile,the white business community organizedan Emergency

Citizens Committee to help defeat the CIO. In a well-publicized resolution, the

committee blamed the recent strikeson "self-seekingrepresentativesof the CIO"

and warned that continued subversionof existingrace relationswould "likely ead

to riots and bloodshed.,,1,

In earliertimes, this combination of anti-union forceswould probablyhavede-

railed the organizing effort. But during WorldWarII, black workershad allieswho

helped shift the balance of power.The NLRB closely supervisedeach stage of theelection processand denied the company'srequest to divide the work orceinto two

bargainingunits, whichwould have weakenedthe position of blackworkers.When

local judges sought to delay the election, governmentattorneysremoved the case

to federalcourt. In December 1943 an NLRB election gave the CIO a resounding

victory.But continued federal assistance, rom the United States ConciliationSer-

vice and the National WarLaborBoard, was still needed to secureReynoldsworkers

a union contract in 1944.12

That first agreement resembled hundreds of other wartimelabor-management

contracts,but in the context of Winston-Salem's raditionalsystem of racerelationsit had radical mplications, because it generated a new set of shop floor rights em-

bodied in the seniority, grievance,and wage adjustment procedures.The contract

did not attack factory segregation for the most part white workerscontinued to

control the better-payingjobs-but it did call forth a new corps of black leaders

to defend the rights Reynolds workershad recently won. The one hundred or so

elected shop stewardswere the "most important people in the plant,"remembered

union activist Velma Hopkins. They were the "natural eaders,"people who had

"takenup money for flowers f someone died or would talk to the foreman[even]before the union." Now the union structure reinforced the capabilities of such

workers:"Wehad training classesfor the shop stewards:What to do, how to do it.

We went overthe contract thoroughly."The shop stewards ransformedthe tradi-tional paternalismof Reynoldsmanagement into an explicit system of benefits and

responsibilities. They made the collective bargainingagreement a bill of rights.13

The growingself-confidenceof blackwomen, who constituted roughly half of the

"Robert A. Levett o David C. Shaw,Aug. 22,1944, in R.J. ReynoldsTobaccoCompany,Case5-C-1730 1945),Formaland InformalUnfairLabor Practicesand RepresentationCasesFiles, 1935-48, National LaborRelations

Board, RG 25 (National Archives); Winston-Salem ournal, Nov. 17, 1943, p. 1.12 "DirectiveOrder,R. J. ReynoldsTobaccoCompanyand the TobaccoWorkersOrganizing Committee" Oct.

18, 1944, Case No. 111-7701-D,Regional WarLaborBoard for the FourthRegion, RG 202 (National Archives).13 "DiscussionOutline forClasses n Shop StewardTraining,"HighlanderFolkSchool, n.d. (in RobertKorstad's

possession);Velma Hopkins interview by Robert Korstad,March5, 1986, ibid.



Labor,Radicals, nd Civil Rights 791

total workforce, provedparticularlysubversiveof existing social relations. To the

white men who ran the Reynoldsplants, nothing could have been more disturbing

than the demand that they negotiate on a basis of equality withpeople whom theyregarded as deeply inferior-by virtue of their sex as well as their class and race.

When union leaders ike TheodosiaSimpson, Velma Hopkins, and MorandaSmithsat down at the bargainingtable with company executives,socialstereotypesnatu-

rally came under assault, but the challenge proved equally dramaticon the shop

floor. For example RubyJones, the daughter of a railway ireman, became one of

the most outspoken shop stewards.Perplexed by her newfound aggressiveness,a

foreman demanded, "Ruby,what do you want?""I want your respect," he replied,

"that's all I ask."14

By the summer of 1944, Local22 of the reorganizedand renamedFood, Tobacco,

Agriculturaland Allied Workers FTA)had become the center of an alternativeso-

cial world that linked blackworkers ogether regardlessof job, neighborhood, orchurch affiliation. The union hall, only a few blocks from the Reynolds Building,

housed a constant round of meetings, plays, and musicalentertainments,as well

as classes n labor history, blackhistory,and currentevents. Local22 sponsoredsoft-

ball teams, checkertournaments, sewing circles,and swimming clubs. Its vigorous

educational programand well-stocked ibrary ntroduced many black workersand

a fewwhites)to a largerradicalculture few had glimpsed before. "Youknow,at that

little library they [the city of Winston-Salem] had for us, you couldn't find any

bookson Negro history,"ememberedViolaBrown."Theydidn't have booksby Ap-

theker, Dubois, or FrederickDouglass. But we had them at our library."15The Communist party was the key political grouping in FTAand in Local22.

FTApresident Donald Henderson had long been associated with the party, and

many organizerswho passed through Winston-Salem sharedhis political sympa-

thies. By 1947 party organizershad recruitedabout 150 Winston-Salemblacks,al-

most all tobaccoworkers.Most of these workers aw the partyasboth a militant civil

rights organization, which in the 1930s had defended such blackvictims of white

southern racism as the Scottsboro boys and Angelo Hearndon, and as a cos-

mopolitan group, introducing members to the largerworld of politics and ideas.

The white North CarolinaCommunist leaderJunius Scales recalledthat the "top

leaders[of Local22] . . . just soakedup all the educationaleffortsthat weredirected

at them. The Party'sprogramhad an explanationof eventslocally,nationally,and

worldwide which substantiatedeverything they had felt instinctively.... It reallymeant businesson racism."The party was an integrated institution in which the

social conventionsof the segregatedSouthwereself-consciouslyviolated, but it also

accommodated itself to the culture of the black community. In Winston-Salem,

14 RubyJones interview by Korstad, April 20, 1979, ibid.15 Worker'sVoice,Aug. 1944; ibid., Jan. 1945, p. 2; ibid., April 1945, p. 2; Viola Brown nterview by Korstad,

Aug. 7, 1981 (in Korstad'spossession). The United Cannery,Agricultural,Packingand Allied Workers f America

(UCAPAWA) hanged its name to reflectthe increasing number of tobaccolocals within it.




therefore,the partymet regularly n a blackchurch and started the meetings witha hymn and a prayer.16

The Communistparty'srelativesuccess n Winston-Salemwasreplicated n otherblackindustrial districts. In the South a clearmajority of the party'snew recruitswereblack, and in northernstateslike Illinois and Michiganthe proportionranged

from 25 to 40 percent.The party'srelativesuccessamong Americanblackswas not

based on itsprogrammatic onsistency:during the late 1940s the NAACP and othercriticspointed out that the wartimepartyhad denouncedcivilrightsstruggleswhenthey challenged the Rooseveltadministrationor its conduct of the wareffort, butthat the partygrew moremilitant once Soviet-American elationscooled.17However,the partyneverabandondedits assault on Jim Crowand unlike the NAACP, which

directed much of its energy towardthe courts and Congress,the Communists ortheirfront groupsmore often organizedaroundsocial or political issuessubject to

locallyinitiated protests,petitions, and pickets.Moreover, he partyadopted whattodaywould be called an affirmativeaction policy that recognizedthe special disa-bilities under which blackworkers unctioned, in the partyas well as in the largercommunity. Although there were elements of tokenism and manipulation in theimplementation of that policy, the party'sunique effort to develop black leaders

gave the Communists a special standing among politically active blacks.18Tobacco ndustrytradeunionism revitalizedblackpolitical activismin Winston-

Salem. Until the coming of the CIO, NAACP attacks on racial discriminationseemed radical, and few blacksriskedassociating with the organization. A 1942

membershipdrive did increasebranchsize from 11 to 100, but most new memberscame from the traditionalblackmiddle class:mainly teachersand municipal busdrivers.The Winston-SalemNAACP became a mass organizationonly after Local22 conductedits own campaign for the city branch. As tobaccoworkerspoured in,the local NAACP reached a membership of 1,991 by 1946, making it the largestunit in North Carolina.'9

Unionists also attacked the policies that had disenfranchisedWinston-Salemblacks for more than two generations. As part of the CIO PoliticalAction Com-mittee'svoterregistrationand mobilization drive,Local22 inauguratedcitizenship

16 Junius Scales nterview byKorstad,April 28, 1987 (in Korstad'spossession);Ann Matthews nterviewbyKor-stad, Feb. 1986, ibid. See alsoJunius Irving Scalesand RichardNickson, Cause at Heart: A FormerCommunistRemembers Atlanta, 1987),201-19;andRobin D. G. Kelley,"HammerN' Hoe:BlackRadicalsandthe CommunistParty in Alabama, 1929-1941" Ph.D. diss., University of California, Los Angeles, 1987), 296-311.

17 RogerKeeran,TheCommunist Partyandthe Auto WorkersUnions (Bloomington, 1980), 234; Painter,Nar-rativeofHoseaHudson, 306-12;Nat Ross,"TwoYears f the ReconstitutedCommunistParty n the South,"PoliticalAffairs,26 (Oct. 1947), 923-35; Wilson Record,Race and Radicalism:TheNAACP and the CommunistParty nConflict (Ithaca, 1964), 84-168; IrvingHowe and B. J. Widick, The UAW and WalterReuther(New York,1949),223-25.

18 SaulWellman nterviewbyLichtenstein,Nov. 10, 1983 (in Lichtenstein's ossession);MarkNaison, The Com-munist Party n Harlem (Urbana, 1984), 23-34.

19William H. Chafe, Civilitiesand Civil Rights: Greensboro,North Carolina,and the Black Struggle forFreedom(New York, 1980), 29-30; LucilleBlackto SarahMarch,March28, 1945;Winston-Salem, 1945-55, file,box C140,National Association for the Advancement of ColoredPeople Papers(ManuscriptsDivision, LibraryofCongress);GlosterCurrentto C. C. Kellum, Nov. 19, 1947, ibid.; Memorandum, Feb. 9, 1942, North CarolinaState Conferencefile, box C141,ibid; Membership Report, July 31, 1946, ibid.




classes,politicalrallies,and citywidemass meetings. Union activistschallengedthe

powerof registrarso judge the qualificationsof black applicantsand insisted that

blackveteransvote without furthertests. The activistsencouragedthe city'sblacks

to participatein electoralpolitics. "Politics S food, clothes, and housing,"declared

the committee that registeredsome sevenhundred new blackvoters n the months

before the 1944 elections.20After a visit to Winston-Salem in 1944, a Pittsburgh

Couriercorrespondentwrote, "Iwas awareof a growingsolidarityand intelligent

mass action that will mean the dawn of a New Day in the South. One cannotvisit

Winston-Salemandmingle with the thousandsof workerswithout sensinga revolu-

tion in thought and action. If thereis a 'New'Negro, he is to be found in the ranks

of the labor movement."21

Organizationand political powergave the blackcommunity greater leverageat

city hall and at the county courthouse.NAACP and union officialsregularly ook

part in municipal governmentdebate on social servicesfor the blackcommunity,minority representationon the police and fire departments, and low-cost public

housing. In 1944and 1946newly enfranchisedblackshelped reelectCongressman

John Folger,a New Deal supporter,againststrongconservative pposition. In 1947,

after black registrationhad increasedsome tenfold in the previousthree years,a

minister,Kenneth Williams, won a seat on the Boardof Aldermen, becoming the

first blackcity official in the twentieth-centurySouth to be elected againsta white

opponent.22

Civil Rights Militancyin Detroit

The social dynamic that had begun to revolutionizeWinston-Salemplayed itself

out on a far largerscalein Detroit, makingthat city a centerof civil rightsmilitancy

in the war years.Newly organizedblackauto workerspushed forwardthe frontier

of racialequalityon the shop floor,in the politicalarena,and within the powerful,

million-member United Auto Workers.Despite increasingracism among white

workers,union goalsand civil rightsaimslargelyparalleledeach other in the 1940s.

In 1940about4 percentof all auto workerswereblack;the proportionmore than

doubled duringthe warand roseto about one-fifth of the auto workforcein 1960.

Although proportionally essnumerousthan in Winston-Salem,blackswerenever-

thelesscentralto the labor process n manyof Detroit'skeymanufacturing acilities.

Excluded romassemblyoperationsandskilledwork,blacksdominatedthe difficult

and unhealthy, but absolutely essential, work in foundry, paint shop, and wet

sanding operations.23

20 UCAPAWANews, Aug. 1, 1944,p. 2.; ibid., Sept. 1, 1944, p. 5; Worker'sVoice,Oct. 1944,p. 3; ibid., March

1946,p. 4. Forpoliticsin the preunion era,see BerthaHamptonMiller, "Blacks n Winston-Salem,North Carolina,

1895-1920:CommunityDevelopment in an Eraof BenevolentPaternalism"Ph.D. diss., DukeUniversity,1981),

6-74; Worker'sVoice, Oct. 1944, p. 3.21 Pittsburgh Courier,June 3, 1944.22 Board of Aldermen,Winston-Salem,North Carolina,Minutes,vol. 30, p. 278 (City Hall, Winston-Salem,

N.C.); ibid., vol. 32, p. 555.23 HerbertR. Northrup, OrganizedLaborand the Negro (New York,1944), 186-88; August MeierandElliott

Rudwick,Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAWVNew York,1979), 3-7.



794 The Journalof AmericanHistory

FordMotor Company'sgreatRiverRouge complex containedthe largestconcen-

trationof blackworkers n the country.More than half of its nine thousand black

workers aboredin the foundry,but Henry Ford'speculiarbrandof interwarpater-

nalismhad enabled blacksto securesome jobs in virtuallyeveryForddepartment.

The companythereforeproveda meccafor blackworkers.Those who workedthere

proudlyannounced, "Iwork for Henry Ford,"and wore their plant badges on the

lapelsof theirSundaycoats.Fordreinforcedhis hold on the loyaltyof Detroit'sblack

workingclass by establishingwhat amounted to a separatepersonnel department

that recruitednewworkers n the recommendationof an influential blackminister.

Thatpolicy,whichcontinued until the early1940s, strengthenedthe pro-company,

anti-union attitude of most churchmenand reinforced he hostilityshownthe early

CIO by leadersof the Detroit Urban League and the local NAACP branch.24

UAWleadersrecognized that unless blackworkerswere recruitedto the union

they might undermine effortsto consolidateUAW powerin keymanufacturingfa-cilities.The dangerbecameclearduringthe raciallydivisive1939ChryslerCorpora-

tion strikewhen management tried to starta back-to-workmovementspearheaded

by blackworkers,and it provedeven more apparentduring the 1940-1941Fordor-

ganizing drive,when blackworkershesitated to join the union. During the April

1941 Ford strike, severalhundred scabbed inside the plant. In response, UAW

leadersmade a concertedeffortto win overelements of the local black bourgeoisie

who werenot directlydependent on Ford'spatronagenetwork.The ensuing conflict

within the Detroit NAACP chapter was only resolvedin favorof the UAW after

Ford'sunionization. Thereafterblackworkers,whose participationin union activi-ties had laggedwell behind those of most whites, becameamong the most steadfast

UAW members. The UAW itself provided an alternative focus of power, both

cooperatingwith and challenging the black churchand the NAACP as the most

effectiveand legitimate spokesmanfor the black community.25

Many alented, politicallysophisticatedblackofficersand staffersemergedin the

UAWduringthe mid-1940s,although neverin numbersapproaching heir propor-

tion of union membership.Blackswere a majorityin almost everyfoundry and in

most paint shops, so locals that represented manufacturing facilities usually

adoptedthe United MineWorkersormulaof including a blackon the election slate

as one of the top four officers.Localswith a large blackmembership also elected

blacks o the annualUAWconvention,where the one hundred andfifty to twohun-

dred black delegates in attendance representedabout 7 or 8 percent of the total

voting roll. And almost a score of blacksalso securedappointment ashighly visible

UAWinternationalrepresentativesduring the early 1940s.26

Ford'sRiverRougecomplexovershadowed ll otherDetroitareaproductionfacili-

ties as a centerof blackpolitical power.Although most blackshad probablyvoted

24 Meier and Rudwick,Black Detroit, 8-22.25 Ibid., 39-87.26 Shelton Tappes nterviewbyHerbertHill, Oct. 27, 1967,Feb. 10, 1968(Archivesof LaborHistoryandUrban

Affairs,Wayne State University,Detroit, Mich.).



Labor,Radicals,and Civil Rights 795

_ ~~~~~~~~A-

Black members of the United Automobile Workersmeet during an

organizing drive at Ford MotorCompanyin 1941.Oscar Noble is speaking.Shelton Tappessits at his right.

CourtesyArchivesof Labor and UrbanAffairs, Wlayne tate University.

againstthe UAWin the NLRBelections of May1941,the unionization process,par-

ticularlyradical in its reorganizationof shop floor social relations at the Rouge,

helped transformthe consciousnessof these industrialworkers.With severalhun-

dred shop committeemen in the vanguard,workers ntimidated many foremen,

challenged top management, and broke the company spy system. "Wenoticed a

verydefinite

changein attitude of the

workingman,"recalledone

supervisor."It

was terrible for a while. . . the bosses were just people to look down on after the

union came in." Forthe next decade,RougeLocal600 proveda centerof civil rights

militancyand a training ground for black leaders. The Rouge foundry sent more

than a scoreof blackdelegates to everyUAWconvention,providedat least half of



796 The Journal of American History

RichardT Leonard,a United Auto Workersofficial, addressesameeting of Local 600 during the 1941 strikeagainstFord MotorCompany.

CourtesyArchivesof Laborand UrbanAffairs, WayneState University.

all blackstaffershired by the UAW,and customarilysupplied Local600 with one

of its top officers.FoundrymanShelton Tappes,a 1936 migrant from Alabama,

helped negotiate a then-unique anti-discriminationclause into the firstUAW-Ford

contractand went on to serveas recordingsecretaryof the sixtythousand-memberlocal in the mid 1940s.27

The Rougewasalsoa center of Communistpartystrengthin Detroit. The radical

tradition there had remained unbroken since World War I when the Industrial

Workers f the Worldand other radicalunion groupshad briefly lourished.Skilled

workersromNorthernEuropehad providedmost membersduringthe difficultin-

terwaryears,but after1941the partyrecruitedheavilyamong blacks,and at its peakin the late 1940sit enrolled450 workers,almosthalf from the foundry.The Rouge

was one of the few workplaces n the countrywhere Communists, blackor white,

could proclaimtheirpolitical allegiancewithout immediate persecution.As late as

27 RobertRobinson interviewby Lichtenstein,Oct. 9, 1983 (in Lichtenstein'spossession);Ed Lock interview

by Peter Friedlander,Dec. 1976, ibid.; WalterDorachinterviewby Lichtenstein,Oct. 14, 1982, ibid.; Meier and

Rudwick,BlackDetroit, 106-7.




1948 Nelson Davis, the black Communist elected vice-president of the nine

thousand-manRougefoundry unit within Local600, sold severalhundredsubscrip-tions to the Daily Worker very year. But even here, Communist influence amongblack workersrested on the party'sidentification with civil rights issues; indeedmany blackssaw the party's oundry department "club"as little more than a mili-

tant raceorganization.28With almostone hundredthousandblack workers rganizedin the Detroit area,

black union activistsplayed a central role in the civil rights struggle. They de-manded the hiring and promotion of black workers n metropolitan warplants,

poured into the Detroit NAACP chapter,and mobilized thousands to defend black

occupancyof the SojournerTruthHomes, a federally funded projectthat became

a violent center of conflict between white neighborhood groups and the housing-starvedblackcommunity.In those effortsblack activistsencountered enormousre-

sistance not only from plant management and the Detroit political elite but alsofrom white workers,midlevel union leaders under direct pressure rom white con-

stituents, and conservativesn the blackcommunity.But asin the civil rights move-

ment of the early1960s, blackmilitantsheld the politicalinitiative, so that powerful

white elites-the top officeholders in the UAW,company personnel officers,andthe government officials who staffed the War Labor Board and War Manpower

Commission had to yield before this new waveof civil rightsmilitancy.29As in Winston-Salem, massunionization transformed he characterof the black

community's traditional race advancement organizations. Under pressure from

Local 600 leaders like Tappes, Horace Sheffield (his rival for leadership of thefoundry), and the pro-union minister CharlesHill, the NAACP and the UrbanLeaguebecame more militant and activist. Blackcommunity leadershipstill came

largelyfrom traditional strata:lawyers,ministers, doctors, and teachers, but the

union upsurgereshapedthe protest agenda and opened the door to new forms ofmass struggle. The NAACP itself underwent a remarkable ransformation.In thesuccessful effort to keep the SojournerTruth housing project open to blacks,

NAACPofficialshad for the firsttime workedcloselywith the UAWmilitants who

organizedthe demonstrationsand proteststhat forestalledcity or federalcapitula-tion to the white neighborhoodgroupsthat fought blackoccupancy.Thatmobiliza-tion in turn energized the local NAACP,as almost twentythousand new members

joined, making the Detroit branchby far the largestin the nation. Blackworkers

pouredin fromthe region'srecentlyunionized foundries,tireplants, andconvertedauto/aircraft acilities, and from city government,streetcar ines, restaurants,and

retail stores.30

28 Wellman interview; Paul Boatin interview by Lichtenstein, Oct. 12, 1982 (in Lichtenstein'spossession);Keeran, Communist Partyand the Auto WorkersUnions, 33-67; U.S. Congress, House, Committee on Un-AmericanActivities, Communism n the DetroitArea, 82 Cong., 2 sess.,March10-11, 1952, pp. 3036-45; 3117-35.

29 MeierandRudwick,BlackDetroit, 175-206; AlanClive,Stateof War:Michigan n WorldWarII Ann Arbor,1979), 144-51.

30 "20,000Members n 1943,"Crisis,50 (May1943), 140-41; DominicJ. Capeci,Jr., RaceRelations n WartimeDetroit: The SojournerTruthHousing Controversyof 1942 (Philadelphia, 1984), 75-99, 111-13.




By 1943 the Detroit NAACP wasone of the most working-class haptersin the

country.Its new laborcommittee, the largestand most activegroup in the branch,servedas a forum for black workers o air their grievancesand as a pressuregroup,

urgingcompaniesand the government o advanceblackjob rights.With UAWsup-

port, the labor committee sponsoredan April 1943 marchand rallythat brought

ten thousand to CadillacSquareto demand that managersopen war ndustry jobsto thousandsof still-unemployedblackwomen in the region.Although the NAACP

old guardrepulseda direct electoralchallengefromUAWmembers and their sym-pathizers, the chapteradded two unionists to its executiveboardand backedprotest

campaigns argelyshaped byUAWmilitants: massrallies, picketlines, and big lob-

bying delegationsto city hall, Lansing,and Washington. Bythe end of the wartheministerial eadershipof the blackcommunitywasin eclipse. HoraceWhite, a Con-gregationalminister, admitted: "The CIO has usurped moral leadership in the

[Negro] community."31On the shop floor, black workers ought to break out of traditionaljob ghettos

in the foundry and janitorialservice,precipitating a seriesof explosive"hate" trikesaswhite workerswalked off the job to stop the integrationof blackworkersnto for-

merly all-white departments.The strikeswerealmost always ailures,however,notonly becausefederalofficialsand UAWleadersquickly mobilized to cut them off

but also becausethey failed to intimidate most blackworkers.During the wartherewereprobablyas many demonstrationsand protest strikes ed by black workersas

racially nspired white walkouts.32 orexample, at Packard, ceneof one of the most

infamous hate strikes of the war, black workerseventually triumphed over whiterecalcitrance.A racialist personnel manager, a divided union leadership, and a

heavily southern work force heightened racial tensions and precipitated severalwhite stoppagesthatculminatedinJune 1943 whenmorethantwenty-five housandwhites quit workto prevent the transferof three blacksinto an all-white depart-ment. But black workerswere also active. Under the leadership of foundryman

ChristopherAlston, a Young Communist League member, they had earliershut

down the foundry to demand that union leaders take more forceful action againstrecalcitrantwhites; and in

the months after the big wildcat hate strike,those sameblacksconducted strikesand proteststhat kept the attention of federalofficialsandlocal union leadersfocusedon theirproblems.Theirmilitancypaid off; bythe endof 1943 about fivehundred blackshad moved out of the Packardoundry and into

heretoforeall-white production jobs.33Although newly assertivesecond-generationPolesand Hungarianshad come to

see their jobs and neighborhoods as under attackfrom the equally militant black

community,top UAWofficialschampioned civil rights duringthe war.In the after-

31 "20,000Members n 1943,"141;"Allout for Big DemonstrationagainstDiscrimination," ile 1943, box C86,NAACP Papers;Meier and Rudwick, BlackDetroit, 114-17;Howe and Widick, UAW1nd WalterReuther, 103.

32 Meier and Rudwick,Black Detroit, 136-56.33RichardDeverall to Clarence Glick, "UAW-CIOLocal 190 Wildcat Strikeat Plant of PackardMotorCo.,"

RichardDeverallNotebooks (CatholicUniversityof America,Washington);"NegroWorkersStrike o Protest HateStrike,"'MichiganChronicle,Nov. 18, 1944,FairEmployment Practicesvertical ile (Archivesof LaborHistoryandUrban Affairs);Meier and Rudwick, Black Detroit, 162-74.




math of the great Detroit raceriot of 1943, in which the police and roving bands

of whites killed twenty-fiveblacks, the UAW stood out as the only predominantly

white institution to defend the black community and denounced police brutality.

During the hate strikes, UAWleaders often sought the protection of a War Labor

Board back-to-workorder in order to deflect white rank-and-fileanger onto the

government and away from themselves. But officials like UAW Vice-president

WalterReuthermade it clearthat "theUAW-CIOwouldtell anyworker hat refused

to workwith a colored worker hat he could leave the plant because he did not be-

long there."34

Intraunion competition for black political support encouraged white UAW

officials to put civil rights issues high on their agenda. During the 1940s black

staffersand localunion activistsparticipated n an informalcaucusthat agitatedfor

more black representatives n the union hierarchyand more effort to upgrade black

workers n the auto shops. Initially chaired by Shelton Tappesof Local600, thegroup was reorganizedand strengthened by George Crockett, an FEPC awyerthe

UAW hired to head its own FairEmployment PracticesCommittee in 1944. The

overwhelmingmajorityof UAWblacks,however,backed he caucus ed by Secretary-

TreasurerGeorge Addes and Vice-presidentRichardFrankensteen,n which Com-

munists played an influential role. The Addes-Frankensteen aucus endorsed the

symbolicallycrucial demand for a Negro seat on the UAW executive board and

generallysupported black-white slates in local union elections. The other major

UAWfactionwas led byWalterReutherand a coterieof ex-socialistsand Catholics,

whoseowninternalunion supportcame fromworkersn the General Motorsplants(Flint andWesternMichigan), n the South, and in the aircraft abricating acilitiesof the Eastand Midwest.SupportforReuther'sactionwasparticuarly trong among

the more assimilated Catholics and Appalachianwhites in northernindustry.Reu-

therdenouncedproposals or a blackexecutiveboardseatas"reverseim Crow," ut

his groupalso advocatedcivilrights, not so much becausethey expected to win black

politicalsupport, but because the rapid growthof a quasi-autonomousblackmove-

ment had made militancyon civil rightsthe sine qua non of seriouspolitical leader-

ship in the UAW.35

A Moment of Opportunity

Bythe mid-1940s,civil rightsissues had reacheda level of nationalpolitical salience

that they would not regain for another fifteen years.Once the domain of Afro-

34 Capeci, Race Relationsin WlartimeDetroit, 78-82, 164-70; Meierand Rudwick, Black Detroit, 164.35 "Addes-Frankensteeno Support Proposal for UAW BoardMember,"Sept. 25, 1943, Michigan Chronicle,

FairEmploymentPracticesvertical ile (Archivesof LaborHistoryand Urban Affairs);"[Reuther]SlapsAddes forStandon RaceIssues,"Oct. 2, 1943, ibid.; "UAWLeadersAssail 1,400Hate Strikers," pril 29, 1944, ibid.; "Splitin Ranksof OfficialsAid to Cause,"Sept. 16, 1944, ibid.; "ReutherUrges Supportof NAACP MembershipCam-paign,"Detroit Tribune, une 1, 1946, ibid.; George Crockett nteviewby Hill, March2, 1968 (Archivesof LaborHistoryandUrbanAffairs);WilliamDodds interviewbyLichtenstein, une 12, 1987 (in Lichtenstein'spossession);MartinHalpern, "The Politics of Auto Union Factionalism:The MichiganCIO in the Cold WarEra,"MichiganHistorical Review, 13 (Fall 1987), 66-69.




American protestgroups, leftist clergymen,and Communist-ledunions and front

organizations,civil rightsadvocacywasbecoming a defining characteristic f urban

liberalism.Thus ten states established fair employment practicecommissionsbe-

tween 1945 and 1950, and four major cities- Chicago,Milwaukee,Minneapolis,and Philadelphia- enacted tough laws against job bias. Backedby the CIO, the

Americans or DemocraticAction spearheadeda successful effort to strengthenthe

Democraticparty'scivil rights plank at the 1948 convention.36In the South the labormovementseemed on the verge of a majorbreakthrough.

Fortunemagazinepredictedthat the CIO's"OperationDixie" would soon organizekeysouthernindustrieslike textiles. Black workersprovedexceptionallyresponsiveto such union campaigns, especially in industries like lumber, furniture, and

tobacco,wheretheyweresometimesa majorityof the work orce.Between1944and

1946the CIO'spoliticalactionapparatushelped elect liberalcongressmenand sen-

ators n a few southernstates,while organizations hat promotedinterracialcooper-ation, such as the SouthernConferencefor Human Welfareand HighlanderFolk

School, experiencedtheir most rapidgrowthand greatesteffectivenessn 1946and

1947.37

The opportune moment soon passed. Thereafter, a decade-long decline in

working-classblack activismdestroyed he organizationalcoherenceand ideologicalelanof the labor-basedcivilrights movement. Thatdefeat has been largelyobscured

by the brilliantlegal victories won by civil rights lawyers n the 1940s and 1950s,and by the reemergenceof a new mass movement in the next decade. But in

Winston-Salem, Detroit, and other industrialregions, the time had passedwhenunionized blacklabor wasin the vanguardof the freedomstruggle.Threeelementscontributed to the decline. First, the employeroffensive of the late 1940s put alllaboron the defensive.Conservatives sedthe Communist issueto attackNew Dealand FairDeal reforms,a strategythat isolated Communist-oriented blackleadersand helped destroywhat was left of the Popular Front. The employers'campaignprovedparticularlyeffectiveagainstmany recentlyorganized CIO locals with dis-proportionatenumbersof blackmembers. Meanwhile,mechanizationand decen-

tralizationof

the most laborintensiveand heavily blackproductionfacilitiessappedthe self-confidenceof the blackworkingclassand contributedto high ratesof urbanunemployment in the yearsafter the KoreanWar.

Second,the most characteristicnstitutions of American iberalism, ncluding theunions, race advancement organizations, and liberal advocacy organizations,adopted a legal-administrative,f not a bureaucratic,approach o winning citizen-ship rights for blacks.The major legislative goal of the union-backedLeadership

36 HarvardSitkoff, "HarryTrumanandthe Election of 1948:The Coming of Age of Civil Rights in AmericanPolitics,"JournalofSouthernHistory,37 (Nov. 1971),597-616. See alsoPeterJ. Kellogg, "CivilRightsConscious-

ness in the 1940s,"Historian, 42 (Nov. 1972), 18-41.37 "LaborDrives South,"Fortune, 34 (Oct. 1946), 237; Woage arner,April 12, 1946, p. 3; New YorkTimes,

April 21, 1946, p. 46; Final Proceedings of the Eighth ConstitutionalConvention of the Congressof IndustrialOrganizations,November 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 1946, Atlantic City, New Jersey (Washington, n.d.), 194; BarbaraSue Griffith, The Crisisof American Labor:Operation Dixie and the Defeat of the CIO (Philadelphia, 1988).




Conferenceon CivilRightsin the 1950swas revisionof Senate Rule 22, to limit the

use of the filibusterthat had long blocked passageof a national FEPCand other

civilrights legislation.The UAWand other big unions cooperatedwith the NAACP

in the effort, but the work was slow and frustratingand the strugglefar removed

from the shop floor or the drugstorelunch counter.38

Finally, the routinization of the postwarindustrial relationssystem precluded

effortsby blackworkers o mobilize a constituency ndependent of the leadership.

Focusingon incrementalcollectivebargaininggains andcommittedto socialchange

only if it waswell controlled,the big unions becamelessresponsive o the particular

interestsof their blackmembers. By 1960 blackshad formed oppositional move-

ments in severalold CIOunions, but they now encounteredresistance o their de-

mands not only from much of the white rankand file but also fromunion leaders

who presidedoverinstitutions that had accommodatedthemselvesto much of the

industrial tatus uo.39

PostwarReaction:Winston-Salem

Likemost laborintensivesouthernemployers,R. J. Reynolds neverreachedan ac-

commodationwith union labor,although it signed contractswith Local22 in 1945

and 1946. Minimum wage laws and collectivebargainingagreementshad greatly

increasedcosts of production, especiallyin the stemmeries, and the blackwomen

employedthere were the heart and soul of the union. Soon afterthe war, the com-

panybegana mechanizationcampaignthat eliminated severalpredominantlyblackdepartments. When the factories closed for Christmasin 1945 new stemming

machines installed in one plant displacedover seven hundred blackwomen. The

union proposeda "share he workplan," but the companywas determined to cut

its work force and change its racialcomposition by recruitingwhite workers rom

surroundingcounties. The black proportion of the manufacturing labor force in

Winston-Salem dropped from 44 to 36 percent between 1940 and 1960.40

The technologicaloffensiveundermined union strength, but by itself Reynolds

couldnot destroyLocal22. When contractnegotiationsbeganin 1947,the company

rejectedunion demandsfor a wageincreasepatternedafterthosewonin steel, auto,

and rubberearlier n the spring. Somewhatreluctantly,Local22 called a strikeon

May 1. Blackworkersand virtuallyall of the Negro community solidly backedthe

union, which held out for thirty-eight days until a compromisesettlement was

reached. But, in a patternreplicatedthroughoutindustrialAmerica n those years,

38 Paul Sifton to VictorG. Reuther,"RevisedCivil Rights Memorandum,"une 13, 1958, Civil RightsAct of

1958 file, box 25, Joseph Rauh Collection (Libraryof Congress).39 SumnerRosen, "TheCIOEra, 1935-5 5," n TheNegro in the AmericanLaborMovement,ed.JuliusJacobson

(New York, 1968), 188-208; HerbertHill, "The RacialPracticesof OrganizedLabor:The ContemporaryRecord,"

ibid., 286-357.40 Worker'sVoice, an. 1947, p. 2; Tilley,R.j Reynold'sTobaccoCompany, 485-88; EverettCarll Ladd,Negro

PoliticalLeadership n the South (Ithaca, 1966),61. See also HowellJohn Harris, TheRight to Manage:Industrial

RelationsPolicies of American Business in the 1940s (Madison, 1982), 96, 157.



802 The Journal of American History

Xx

3 ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~~2

* . . _~~ ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

*:.

_ 3' ~ ~ ~ ~~~~~~1 .._ .

Local22 members kept spiritshigh with gospel and union songsduring their thirty-eight-daystrikeagainstthe

R.J. ReynoldsTobaccoCompanyin 1947.

CourtesyWinston-SalemJournal.

Communistinfluence within

theunion

becamethe

keyissue aroundwhich

manage-ment and its allies mounted their attack. The Wi:nston-Salemournal soon

denounced Local22 as "captured . . lock, stock and barrel"by the Communist

party, warning readers that the strikewould lead to "open rioting."This expose'

brought Local 22 officers under the scrutinyof the House Committee on Un-



Labor,Radicals,and Civil Rights 803

-s ... . n

_-'. ~:4. 2i:ies .-

k~~~~~~~~~~~

Tobaccoworkerspicket at a plant entranceduring the 1947 strike

by Local22 againstthe R.J. ReynoldsTobaccoCompany.

CourtesyWinston-Salemournal

AmericanActivities (HUAC), which held a highly publicized hearing on theWinston-Salemsituation in the summer of 1947.4'

Communistpartymemberscontributed to the volatilityof the situation. In the

late 1940s,Local22 found itself politicallyvulnerable when foreign policy resolu-

tionspassed by the shop stewards' ouncil followed Communistpartypronounce-ments. The party's nsistenceon the promotionof blacks nto public leadershippo-sitionssometimes put workerswith little formal education into union leadership

jobstheycouldnot handle. Moreover,he party'sobsessionwith "whitechauvinism"

backfired.After the 1947 strike,Local22 made a concertedeffort to recruitwhite

workers.Some young veteransjoined the local, although the union allowedmost

41 Winston-Salemjournal, May19, 1947, p. 1;Tilley,R.J. Reynolds TobaccoCompany,400-401; U.S. Congress,

House, Committee on Un-AmericanActivities, HearingsRegarding Communismin Labor Unions in the United

States, 78 Cong., 1 sess., July 11, 1947, pp. 63-122; Winston-SalemJournal, July 12, 1947, p. 1.




to pay their dues secretly.42 he party objected,rememberedNorth Carolina eader

Junius Scales,"'If they got anyguts,'they would say, 'let them stand up and fight,'

not realizing, as many blackworkersand union leaders realized, that for a white

worker o just belong to a predominantlyblack union at that time was an act of

great courage."43

With its work force increasinglypolarized along racial and political lines, Rey-

nolds renewedits offensivein the springof 1948. Black workers emainedremark-

ably loyal to the union leadership, but the anticommunistcampaign had turned

most white employees against the union and eroded support among blacksnot

directly involvedin the conflict. The companyrefusedto negotiate with Local22

on the grounds that the union had not complied with the new Taft-HartleyAct.

The lawrequiredunion officers o sign an affidavitswearing hey were not members

of the Communistpartybeforea union could be certifiedas a bargainingagent by

the NLRB.Initially,all the CIO internationals had refusedto sign the affidavits,but by 1948 only Communist-orientedunions such as FTA still held out. When

Reynoldsproved intransigent, there was little the union could do. FTAhad no

standing with the NLRB,and it was too weak to win another strike.44

At the same time, Local22 began to feel repercussionsrom the conflict within

the CIOoverthe status of unions, like the FTA,that had rejectedthe MarshallPlan

and endorsedHenryWallace'sProgressiveparty presidentialcampaignin 1948. A

rivalCIO union, the United TransportServiceEmployees (UTSE),sent organizers

into Winston-Salem to persuadeblackworkers o abandon Local22. In a March

1950 NLRB election, which the FTA requested after complying with the Taft-HartleyAct, UTSEjoined Local22 on the ballot. The FTA ocalretained solid sup-

port among its black constituency,who faithfully paid dues to their stewardseven

after the contracthad expiredandin the faceof condemnationof their union - from

the company,the CIO, and HUAC. Eventhe black community leader Alderman

Williams askedworkers o vote againstthe union and "sendthe Communistsaway

for good."YetLocal22 captureda pluralityof all the votes cast,and in a runofftwo

weeks laterit won outright. But when the NLRBacceptedthe ballotsof lower-level

white supervisors, he scalesagain tipped againstthe

local.45Local22 disappearedfrom Winston-Salem'spolitical and economic life, and a

far more accommodativeblack community leadershipfilled the void left by the

union'sdefeat. Beginning in the mid-1940s,a coalition of middle-classblacksand

white businessmoderateshad soughtto counterthe growingunion influence within

the blackcommunity.They requesteda studyof local racerelations bythe National

Urban League'sCommunity Relations Project (CRP). Largelyfinanced by Hanes

42Jack Fry interviewby Korstad, Oct. 16, 1981 (in Korstad'spossession).43 HarveyA. Levenstein, Communism,Anticommunism, and the CIO Westport, 1981), 286-87.44 Winston-SalemJournal, uly 15, 1947, p. 14;RobertBlack nterviewby Korstad,March4, 1985 (in Korstad's

possession).45 Winston-SalemJournal,March18, 1950, p. 1; ibid., March22, 1950, p. 1; ibid., March25, 1950, p. 1; ibid.,

April 6, 1950, p. 1; Tilley, R. j Reynolds TobaccoCompany, 404-12.




HosierypresidentJamesG. Hanes, the CRPstudy appeared n late 1947 and called

for improvedhealth, education and recreational acilities, but it made no mention

of workplace ssues.The UrbanLeagueforesawa cautious, "stepby step approach"

andproposedthat an advisorycommittee drawn rom the blackmiddle classdiscuss

community issueswith their white counterpartsand help city officialsand white

philanthropistschannel welfareservicesto the black community. The Winston-

SalemJournal called the CRP'srecommendationsa "blueprintfor better commu-

nity relations"but one that would not alter "the frameworkof race relations."46

The Urban League'sprogramhelped make Winston-Salem a model of racial

moderation.Blackscontinued to registerand vote in relativelyhigh numbers and

to elect a single blackalderman.The city high school was integratedwithout inci-

dent in 1957, whileWinston-Salemdesegregated ts libraries,golf course,coliseum,

and the police and fire departments.But the dynamicand democraticquality of

the blackstrugglein Winston-Salemwould neverbe recaptured.NAACP member-ship declinedto lessthan five hundredin the early 1950s,and decisionmakingonce

againmoved behind closed doors.When a grievancearosefrom the blackcommu-

nity, a group of ministersmet quietly with Hanes; a few phone calls by the white

industrialist ed to desegregationof the privately owned bus company in 1958.47

A similarstoryunfolded in the plants of the R. J. ReynoldsTobaccoCompany.

After the destructionof Local22, the companyblacklistedseveral eading union ac-

tivists,yet Reynoldscontinuedto abide bymanyof the wagestandards,benefitpro-

visions,and seniority policies negotiated duringthe union era.The companyreor-

ganized its personnel department;rationalizedproceduresfor hiring, firing, andevaluatingemployees;and upgraded ts supervisoryorce by weedingout old-timers

and replacingthem with college-educated oremen. To forestallunion activity,Rey-

nolds kept its wagesslightlyaheadof the rates paid by its unionized competitors.48

In February 1960, when sit-ins began at segregated Winston-Salem lunch

counters, the voicesof blackprotestwereagain heard in the city'sstreets.But the

generationof blackswho had sustainedLocal22 playedlittle rolein the new mobili-

zation. College and high school studentspredominatedon the picket lines and in

the newprotest organizations hatconfrontedwhitepaternalismandchallengedthe

black community'sministerial leadership.NAACP membershiprose once again;

moreradicalblacksorganizeda chapterof the Congressof RacialEquality(CORE).

Public segregationsoon collapsed.49

The subsequenttrajectory f the freedomstrugglein Winston-Salemwastypical

of that in many black communities. Heightened racialtensions set the stage for a

46 ReginaldJohnsonto LesterGranger,memorandum,Jan. 28, 1946, Community RelationsProject,Winston-

Salem, North Carolina, ile, box 27, series6, National Urban LeaguePapers Library f Congress);Winston-Salem

Journal, Nov. 16, 1947, sec. 3, p. 1.47 Ladd,Negro PoliticalLeadership, 121-27, 134-35; Blackto March,Jan. 25, 1950, 1946-55, file, box C140,

NAACP Papers;Tilley, R.J ReynoldsTobaccoCompany,410; Aingred GhislayneDunston, "The BlackStruggle

for Equality in Winston-Salem, North Carolina:1947-1977" (Ph.D. diss., Duke University, 1981), 59.48 Tilley, R.J Reynolds TobaccoCompany, 412-14, 454-58, 463-71.49 Dunston, "BlackStrugglefor Equality," 1-161.




1967riot and a burst of radicalism,followed by the demobilization of the protest

movement and yearsof trenchwarfare n the city council. The political careerof

LarryLittle, the son of Reynoldsworkerswho had been membersof Local22, high-

lighted the contrastsbetween the two generationsof black activists. Little moved

fromleadershipof the North CarolinaBlackPantherpartyin 1969to city alderman

in 1977,but despitethe radicalismof his rhetoric,crucial ssues of economicsecurity

and workplacedemocracywere not restoredto the political agenda in Winston-

Salem. Because black activistsof his generation confronted the city's white elite

without the organizedbackingof a lively,massinstitution like Local22, their chal-

lenge provedmoreepisodicand lesseffective han that of the previousgeneration.50

The Limitsof Liberalism n PostwarDetroit

A similardemobilization took place in Detroit after the war.There the union, aswell asthe companies,helped undermine the independent working-class aseblack

activistshad built in the six yearssinceUAW organizationof the FordMotorCom-

pany.Racial ssues werenot of primary mportancein the factionalconflict of 1946

and 1947 that broughtWalterReutherto the presidencyof the UAW.The victory

of his caucuswas based both on rank-and-file ndorsement of Reuther'sbold social

vision, especiallyas exemplifiedin the GeneralMotorsstrikeof 1945-1946, and in

the Reuthergroup'santicommunism,whichstruckan increasingly esponsivechord

afterpassageof the Taft-HartleyAct.51Nevertheless,the Reuthervictorygreatlydi-

minished blackinfluenceand independencewithin the UAWand the liberal-laborcommunity in which the union played such an important role. Reutherwasas ra-

cially egalitarianas his opponents, but the political logic of his bitterlycontested

victory- he won less than 10percentof blackdelegate votes in 1946- meant that

Reutherowedno organizationaldebt to the growingproportionof union members

who were black.

When the Reuthergroup consolidated their controlof the union in 1947, there

was a largeturnovern the NegroUAWstaff.Blackswith ties to the opposition, such

asJohn Conyers,Sr., and William Hardin, two ofthe

firstblackstaffers,and the

articulate awyer,George Crockett,the de facto leader of the UAW'sblackcaucus,

were oustedfrom theirposts. The youngdynamo,ColemanYoung,lost his job with

the WayneCountyCIOcouncil. Tappeswashiredas a UAW nternationalrepresen-

tative in the early 1950s, but only afterhe had broken with the Communists and

lost his base of support in the Rouge plant.52

During the 1950sand 1960s,the Reuthergroupunderstoodthat civil rights was

a litmus test of labor iberalism.Reuther at on the boardof directorsof the NAACP,

50Ibid., 270-71.51 ohn Barnard, WalterReutherand the Rise of the Auto WorkersBoston, 1983), 101-17;MartinHalpern,

"Taft-Hartleynd the Defeatof the ProgressiveAlternative n the United Auto Workers,"aborHistory,27 (Spring,1986), 204-26.

52 Crockett nterview; Tappes nterview;Studs Terkel,Division Street,America (New York, 1971), 328-30.




and the UAWprobablycontributed more funds to that organizationthan all other

trade unions combined. The UAWalso proved a ready source of emergencyfunds

for the MontgomeryImprovementAssociation, the Southern ChristianLeadership

Conference(SCLC),and Students for a Democratic Society's early community or-

ganizing activities. Reuther was outraged that the AFL-CIOdid not endorse the

1963 Marchon Washington;his union had provided much of the early funding,

and he would be the most prominentwhite to speak at the interracialgathering.53

Reutheralso maintained a high profileon civil rights issues within the UAW.As

president, he appointed himself co-directorof the union's FairEmployment Prac-

tices Department and used the FEPDpost to denouce racial discrimination and

identify himself with postwarcivil rightsissues.Reutherpushed for a fair employ-

ment practicesbill in Michigan and led the successfulUAW effort to integrate the

AmericanBowling Congress.During the crucialmonths after he had won the UAW

presidency,but beforehis caucushad consolidated controlof the union, such activ-ism helped defuse black opposition; when Reutherwas reelected in 1947 he won

about half of all black delegate votes.54

Despite this public, and well-publicized, appearance, he emergence of a more

stable postwarbrandof unionism undermined civil rights activism n the UAW.As

in many unions, the Reutherregime sought to eliminate or to coopt potentially dis-

sident centers of political power.Local600 was such a center of opposition, where

blackunionists still within the Communist orbit continued to play an influential,if somewhat muted, role well into the 1950s. Immediately after the 1952 HUAC

hearingsin Detroit, which publicized the continuing presence of CommunistsinLocal600, the UAWInternationalExecutiveBoard put the huge local under its di-

rectadministration.Six months later,tens of thousandsof Rougeworkers eelected

theirold officers,but the influenceandindependenceof the giant local nevertheless

wanedin the next fewyears.Leadersof the UAWdefusedmuchof the local'sopposi-

tional characterby appointing many of its key leaders, including Tappes and

Sheffield, to the national union staff.

Equally important, Ford'spostwarautomation and decentralizationslashedthe

Rougework orcein half, eliminatingthe predominantlyblackproduction foundry.

The same phenomenon was taking place in many of Detroit's other highly un-

ionized production facilities, so that by the late 1960sa ring of relativelysmall and

mainly white manufacturing facilities surrounded Detroit's million plus black

population. Meanwhile, high levels of blackunemployment became a permanent

featureof the urban landscapeafter the 1957-1958recession.Not unexpectedly, he

size and social influence of the unionized blackworkingclass ceased to grow,al-

53WalterReuther, "The Negro Worker'sFuture,"Opportunity, 23 (Fall 1945), 203-6; William Oliver to RoyReuther, "Status of UAW Officersand NAACP Memberships,"Feb. 21, 1961, file 24, box 9, UAW CitizenshipDepartment (Archivesof LaborHistory and Urban Affairs);Herbert Hill interview by Lichtenstein,June 20, 1987(in Lichtenstein'spossession).

54Martin Halpern, "The Disintegration of the Left-CenterCoalition in the UAW, 1945-1950" (Ph.D. diss.,

University of Michigan, 1982), 237-40, 273-74, 433-37; Tappes interview.




though this stagnation wasmasked by the militance of inner-cityminority youthlate in the 1960s.55

TheUAW'sFairEmploymentPracticesDepartment alsodefused civilrights activ-ism in the union. After 1946 the department was led by William Oliver, a blackfoundryman from Ford'sHighland Park actory.Unlike the politicized blacks from

the Rouge, Oliver had no large reservoirof political support in the UAW, nor didhe attemptto build one. During Oliver's enure, the FEPDhad a dual role: it repre-

sented the UAW to the national civil rights community, the NAACP, the UrbanLeague,and the more liberal federal agencies and congressmen; and it processed

discriminationcomplaints as they percolatedup from black workers n the locals.Ratherthan serving as an organizing center for UAW blacks,the FEPDbureaucra-tized the union'scivil rights activities."Wearea fire station"admitted Tappes,who

served n the departmentduring the 1950s and 1960s, "andwhen the bell ringswe

run to put out the fire."56A UAW retreatfrom civil rightsmilitancyalso became evident in politics. From

1937 to 1949, the UAWsought to reshapeDetroit's formally"nonpartisan"lectoral

politics along interracialclass lines. Thus in 1945 and 1949 RichardFrankensteen

and George Edwards,both formerUAW leaders, fought mayoralcampaignsthathelped move integratedhousing and police brutalityto the center of localpolitical

debate. Both were defeated by conservative ncumbents, but their labor-oriented

campaigns neverthelessprovided a focus around which civil rights forces could

mobilize. However,afterthe CIO's"bitterestpolitical defeat in the motor city," n

1949, the UAW ceased to expend its political capital in what many of its leadersnow considered fruitlesscampaignsto take overcity hall. The UAW continued to

back the liberal governorG. Mennen Williams, but in the city proper the union

made peace with conservativesike Albert Cobo and LouisMiriani, who had built

much of their political base on segregationisthomeowner movements.57

Neither the Communistparty nor the NAACP was able to fill the void openedup by the UAWdefault. In the early 1950s many erstwhileleaders of the union's

black caucusjoined the Detroit Negro Labor Council (NLC), a Communist frontorganization.But the NLC faced relentlesspressure rom the NAACP,HUAC, andthe UAW,which denounced the council as a "Communist-dominated,dual un-

ionist organization which has as its sole objective the disruption and wrecking ofthe Americanlabor movement."58 oth the UAW and the NAACP made exclusion

55 William D. Andrew,"Factionalism nd Anti-Communism: FordLocal600,"LaborHistory, 20 (Spring1979),227-36; Dorachinterview. See also Nelson Lichtenstein, "Lifeat the Rouge: A Cycleof Workers'Control," n Lifeand Labor,ed. Stephenson and Asher, 237-59.

56 Tappes interview;Oliver to RoyReuther, "FordPlant, Indianapolis,'"Dec. 20, 1957, file 29, box 8, UAWCitizenship Department (Archives of Labor History and Urban Affairs); Oliver to WalterReuther,"PreliminaryAnalysisof AllegationsMade againstUAW by the NAACP LaborSecretaryWhich WereUnfounded'"Nov. 1, 1962,file 10, box 90, Walter ReutherCollection, ibid.

57Dudley W. Buffa, Union Powerand American Democracy: The UAW and the DemocraticParty, 1935-72(Ann Arbor, 1984), 133-73; B. J. Widick, Detroit: City of Race and Class Violence(Chicago, 1972), 151-55.

58 Proceedings,FourteenthConstitutionalConvention,International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace,and AgriculturalImplement Workers f America (UAW), March22-27, 1953, Atlantic City, NewJersey (n.p.,[19531),264; Philip Foner,Organized Labor and the Black WorkerNew York, 1981), 295-309.




of Communistsfrom civil rights coalition work a high priority n the early 1950s,

and the NLCdissolvedin 1956. The NAACP,of course,maintained a cordial rela-

tionship with the UAW,but it also declined in postwarDetroit. After reaching a

wartimepeak of twenty-four housand in 1944, membershipdropped to six thou-

sand in 1950, when there was much discussion of the need to "rehabilitate"what

had once been the organization'sargest unit. In the early 1950s national NAACP

membership also fell to less than half its wartime level.59

When civil rights reemergedas a major issue in union and city politics in the

late 1950s, the Reuther leadership often found its interestscounterposed to the

forces mobilized by the freedom movementof that era. By 1960 Detroit's popula-

tion wasabout 30 percentblack, and upwardsof a quarterof all auto workerswere

Mexicanor black. At the Rouge plant between 50 and 60 percent of production

workerswere nonwhite.60

Reuther'smode of civil rights advocacyseemed increasingly nadequate as thefearsand conflictsof the earlyColdWarera receded.Two ssuesseemed particularly

egregious. First,blackparticipation n UAW skilledtradesapprenticeshipprograms

stoodat minuscule levels, 1percentor less. Second,no black saton the UAWexecu-

tive board, although blackshad been demanding that symbolically mportant post

in UAWconventiondebatessince the early 1940s. Failure o make progresson those

problemsgenuinely embarrasedwhite UAW eaders,but Reutherandhis colleagues

weretrapped by the regimeoverwhich they presided.Reutherhesitatedto takeon

the militant and well-organized skilled trades, then in the midst of a long-

simmeringcraftrebellionagainstthe UAW'sndustrialunionism. Nor could a blackbe easily placed on the UAWexecutive board. In no UAWregion did blackscom-

mand a majorityof all workers;moreoverReuther loyalistsheld all existing posts.

Creatinga new executiveboardslot seemed the only alternative,but that would di-

lute the power of existing board members and flatly repudiate Reuther'slong-

standing opposition to a specificallyblack seat on the executiveboard.61

In this context, and in the immediate aftermathof the Montgomerybus boycott,

an independent black protest movement reemergedin Detroit politics with the

founding of the TradeUnion LeadershipCouncil (TULC) n 1957. InitiallyTULC

was little more than a caucusof UAW black staffers,but under the leadershipof

Horace Sheffield the organizationchallenged Reutheritehegemony. Despite the

UAW'sgood reputation, Sheffieldexplainedin 1960, a black-ledorganizationwas

needed because"the liberal white trade unionists had long been 'mothballed,' . I

by the extensivegrowthof 'businessunionism!"'62TULCopened a new chapterin

59 HerbertHill to RoyWilkins, Dec. 23, 1949, Hill-1949 file, box C364, NAACPPapers;"GraphicRepresenta-tion of Detroit BranchNAACP Campaigns,1941 to 1948,"Detroit file, box C89, ibid.; "Memorandum or Gloster

Currenton Rehabilitationof Detroit Branch,"April 20, 1950, ibid.; Record,Raceand Radicalism, 132-231;LeroneBennett, Jr., Confrontation:Black and White (Chicago, 1965), 213.

60 Widick, Detroit, 138-40; "UAWFair PracticesSurvey-1963," file 12, box 90, ReutherCollection; RobertBattle to James Brown, "RE:Civil Rights Hearing,"Dec. 13, 1960, file 13, box 50, ibid.

61 William Gould, Black Workersn White Unions (Ithaca, 1977), 371-88; JackStieber, Governingthe UAW

(New York, 1962), 83-88; "UAWFairPracticesSurvey-1963."62 Horace Sheffield, "BitterFrustrationGave Added Impetus to TradeUnion LeadershipCouncil,"Michigan



810 The Journalof AmericanHistory

Detroitpolitics in the 1961mayoraltyrace.The incumbent mayor, Miriani,had the

supportof virtuallyall elements of the Detroit powerstructure, ncluding the UAW,

but he was hated by most blacksand not a few whites because of his defense of

Detroit's increasingly brutal and racist police department. Sheffield used the

mayoralcampaignofJerome Cavanagh,a young liberallawyer, o establishhis own

networkamong Detroit's blacktrade union officialsand makethe TULCa mass or-

ganizationof overseventhousandmembersin 1962and 1963.Thereafter,a number

of blackactivistswhose political roots went back to the anti-Reutherforcesof the

1940swon electiveoffice, sometimes over bitter UAWprotest. They includedJohnConyers,Jr., who took Detroit's second black congressionalseat in 1964, George

Crockett,who won election as RecordersCourt judge in 1966 and later went on to

Congress,and Coleman Young, who become mayor in 1973.63

TULC proved less successful in remolding UAW politics. The organization's

mushroomgrowth,combined with the growth of the civil rightsmovement, forcedthe UAWto put a black on its executiveboard in 1962. But for this position the

Reutherleadershipchose none of the blacks prominently associatedwith TULC

militancy,but insteadthe relatively ittle known NelsonJackEdwards,a black staff

representative.Although blackappointmentsto the UAW staffincreasedmarkedly

in the 1960s,TULC ailed to generate a mass movementamong rank-and-fileblack

workers.TULCrepresented he generationof blackactivistspoliticized in the 1940s,

but manyhad spent the intervening yearson union staffsor in local office so they

no longer enjoyed an organic link with the younger black militants who were

flooding into Detroit's auto shops.64When the Dodge RevolutionaryUnion Movement(DRUM)and other blackin-

surgenciesswept through the auto industry in the late 1960s, the new generation

had come to see UAWliberalismas indistinguishablefrom corporateconservatism.

Theyweremistaken,but in 1968, that yearof greatexpectationsand smashedhopes,

such distinctions seemed beside the point. ManyTULC veteransfound DRUM's

wholesale condemnation of the UAW irresponsible,while the young militants

thought their elders merely a reformistwing of Reuther'sunion leadership. A

reportedexchangeconveysDRUMmembers' impatience with TULCveterans' oy-

alty to the union. Shelton Tappesis said to have told a group of black Chrysler

workers who had been fired for staging an outlaw strike and were picketing

SolidarityHouse, the UAW'sofficial home: "Ifthe TULChad done what it wasorga-

Chronicle,May 28, 1960, HoraceSheffield verticalfile (Archivesof LaborHistory and Urban Affairs);B. J. Widickinterviewby Lichtenstein,Aug. 6, 1986 (in Lichtenstein'spossession).

63 Buffa, Union Power,139-42; Widick, Black Detroit, 151-56; The UAW made an all-out, but ultimately un-

successful,effort to stop George Crockett'sreentryinto mainstreampolitical life. See Nadine Brown, "Crockett

SupportersChargeUnion 'Takeover'n First,"Detroit Courier,Oct. 6, 1966, George Crockettverticalfile (Archives

of LaborHistory and Urban Affairs);and MorganO'Leary,"Hectic '49 Trial Haunts Crockett'sBid for Bench,"

Detroit News, Oct. 7, 1966, ibid64Nelson JackEdwardsand Willoughby Abner, "Howa Negro Won a Top UAWPost,"Detroit Courier,April

4, 1964,vertical ile, TradeUnion LeadershipConference (Archivesof LaborHistoryand UrbanAffairs);"Reuther

OutlinesUAWPosition on SheffieldAssignment," ile 9, box 157, ReutherCollection;Hill interview;Widick in-

terview.




nized for therewouldn't be anysuch developmentasDRUM."And one of the young

picketsreportedlyanswered,"Andif Reuther and the other bureaucratshad done

what the union was organizedfor, therewouldn'thave been any need for TULC."65

Conclusion

E. P.Thompsononce assertedthat most socialmovementshavea life cycleof about

six years. And unless they make a decisive political impact in that time, that

"windowof opportunity,"hey will havelittle effecton the largerpoliticalstructures

they hope to transform.66orthe blackfreedomstrugglethe mid-1940sofferedsuch

a time of opportunity,when a high-wage,high-employmenteconomy,rapidunion-

ization, and a pervasive ederal presencegave the blackworkingclassremarkable

self-confidence,which establishedthe frameworkor the growthof an autonomous

labor-orientedcivil rightsmovement.The narrowingof public discourse n the earlyColdWarera contributedlargely o the defeatand diffusionof that movement. The

rise of anticommunismshatteredthe PopularFront coalition on civil rights, while

the retreatand containmentof the union movement deprivedblack activistsof the

political and social space necessaryto carryon an independent struggle.

The disintegrationof the blackmovement in the late 1940sensured that when

the civil rights struggle of the 1960s emerged it would have a different social

characterand an alternativepolitical agenda, which eventuallyprovedinadequate

to the immense social problemsthat lay beforeit. Likethe movementof the 1940s,

the protestsof the 1960smobilized a black community that was overwhelminglyworking-class.However, he key nstitutionsof the new movementwere not the trade

unions, but the blackchurch and independent protestorganizations.Its commu-

nity orientationand stirringchampionshipof democraticvalues gave the modern

civil rights movement a transcendentmoral powerthat enabled a handful of or-

ganizers romgroupslikethe StudentNonviolent CoordinatingCommittee, SCLC,

and COREto mobilize tens of thousandsof Americans n a seriesof dramaticand

crucialstruggles.Yet evenas this SecondReconstructionabolishedlegal segregation

and discrimination,many movement activists,including MartinLutherKing, Jr.,

recognizedthe limits of theiraccomplishment.After 1965 theysought to raise ssues

of economic equality and working-classempowermentto the moral high ground

earlier occupied by the assaultagainstde jure segregation.67 In retrospect,we can

see how greatlythey were handicappedby their inability to seize the opportunities

a verydifferent sort of civil rights movement found and lost twenty yearsbefore.

65 Foner, OrganizedLaborand the Black Worker, 23.66 Notes on E. P.Thompson, speechin supportof Europeanpeacemovement,July 8, 1983,Berkeley,California

(in Lichtenstein's ossession).The notion that protestmovementshavea limited time framein which to make their

impactfelt is also put forwardby FrancesFox Pivenand RichardA. Cloward,PoorPeople'sMovements:Why They

Succceed, How They Fail (New York,1977), 14-34.67 David Garrow,Bearingthe Cross:MartinLuther King.Jr, and the Southern ChristianLeadershipConfer-

ence (New York,1986), 431-624.

Documents

Early Civil Rights