Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights

Michael K. Honey is the Fred T. and Dorothy G. Haley Professor of the Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma. His books include Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign and the award-winning Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle.

• Acknowledgements xiINTRODUCTION: Labor and Civil Rights 1I: Southern Apartheid and the Labor MovementONE: Segregation and Southern Labor 13TWO: No Bill of Rights in Memphis 44II: Labor's Struggle for the Right to OrganizeTHREE: The Rise and Repression of Industrial Unionism 67FOUR: Black and White Unite 93FIVE: Race, Radicalism, and the CIO 117SIX: Black Scares and Red Scares 145III: Industrial Unionism and the Black Freedom MovementSEVEN: War in the Factories 177EIGHT: The CIO at the Crossroads 214NINE: The Cold War against Labor and Civil Rights 245CONCLUSION: Legacies 279Abbreviations 293Notes 295Primary Sources Consulted 349Index 353

"Packs the emotive power of a zillion 'race' memoirs precisely because it is the story of what happened when black and white workers collectively challenged the powers-that-be in the meanest city in the South."--Robin D. G. Kelley, The Nation "A vitally important contribution to the scholarly debate about the relationship between class and race in American history."--Bruce Nelson, Journal of American History "Among the best and most ambitious recent works on labor in the South. . . . Few readers of this book are likely to remain unmoved by Honey's account of the exceptional sacrifice, courage, and vision displayed by labor activists in Memphis."--Georgia Historical Quarterly "Sheds considerable light on numerous themes of importance to historians of a multiplicity of specialties, from labor and African American history, to historians of the South and twentieth-century America."--Labor History "A well-researched and carefully written book. . . . Anyone interested in the Southern labor movement must consult this work."--Mississippi Quarterly "A major contribution to the history of labor, race relations, and the twentieth-century South. . . . Honey vividly brings the labor movement to life and places Memphis in the wider context of southern and national history."--Pete Daniel, author of The Shadow of Slavery: Peonage in the South, 1901-1969 "A major new study of how the Solid South restrained social reform and labor's strength in New Deal America."--David Montgomery, author of The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor Activism, 1865-1925