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Brotherhoods of Color
Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality
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by Eric Arnesen
Harvard University Press
Due/Published
March 2002, 352 pages,
paper
ISBN
0674008170
New in paper (S02) From the time the first tracks were laid in the early nineteenth century, the railroad has occupied a crucial place in America's historical imagination. Now, for the first time, Eric Arnesen gives us an untold piece of that vital American institution--the story of African Americans on the railroad. African Americans have been a part of the railroad from its inception, but today they are largely remembered as Pullman porters and track layers. The real history is far richer, a tale of endless struggle, perseverance, and partial victory. In a sweeping narrative, Arnesen re-creates the heroic efforts by black locomotive firemen, brakemen, porters, dining car waiters, and redcaps to fight a pervasive system of racism and job discrimination fostered by their employers, white co-workers, and the unions that legally represented them even while barring them from membership. Decades before the rise of the modern civil rights movement in the mid-1950s, black railroaders forged their own brand of civil rights activism, organizing their own associations, challenging white trade unions, and pursuing legal redress through state and federal courts. In recapturing black railroaders' voices, aspirations, and challenges, Arnesen helps to recast the history of black protest and American labor in the twentieth century. Contents Prologue
1. Race in the First Century of American Railroading
2. Promise and Failure in the World War I Era
3. The Black Wedge of Civil Rights Unionism
4. Independent Black Unionism in Depression and War
5. The Rise of the Red Caps
6. The Politics of Fair Employment
7. The Politics of Fair Representation
8. Black Railroaders in the Modern Era Conclusion
Notes
Acknowledgments
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Review
The struggle of black workers through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries has somewhat been lost in the shuffle. Labor historians have tended to focus on the white working-class and civil rights histories have concentrated on the black middle-class. Eric Arnesen's rich and engrossing history of black railroad workers remedies this regrettable oversight and returns the remarkable story of black workers to the forefront of both the labor and civil rights movements. Arnesen's study not only rescues a fascinating and important part of United States history, it is also a powerful analysis of the conflicts and cruel contradictions of race and class. In the years after the Civil War building railroads was one of the few places Black men, and sometimes women, could work aside from sharecropping. Working on the railroads offered slightly better pay and a more esteemed status within the Black community. However, it was also fraught with discriminatory practices enacted by the railroad managers the white labor unions, and government legislation. During the building of railroads, Blacks were restricted to certain menial jobs and while they were allowed to be Pullman porters, they were not hired as conductors. Moreover, Pullman porters were expected to behave in a manner that conformed to white expectations of the subservient Uncle Tom. Management, particularly in the South, shrewdly played whites against blacks to distract worker attention away from wage increases and to discourage labor organization between the races. At the beginning of the twentieth century and in the aftermath of World War I, black workers became more vocal in their demands and gradually their unions began to win concessions. Yet these developments represented new challenges: disputes within black unions on how far to challenge an industry that was one of the few to give them steady employment and whether to align themselves with white workers. The white labor movement was also split with many wanting to maintain segregation in the workplace while the more radical unions made attempts to branch out. Remarkably, it was not until the 1960s and 1970s that many racial restrictions were finally eliminated. Arnesen's superb narrative of the long and painful history of black railroad workers captures the dramatic sweep of a vital chapter in United States history and provides fascinating portraits of the individuals and organizations that bravely challenged racism and job discrimination. Thomas Sugrue, author of The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit, writes, "Eric Arnesen has made an extraordinary contribution to African American and labor history with this elegant, provocative book….Arnesen dramatically expands the boundaries of civil rights history and reminds us of the centrality of labor to the struggle for racial justice in modern America. Sweeping in scope, intimate in detail, this is history at its best." To read Eric Arnesen's and other historians' suggestions for works on labor history Two recent titles on the intersection of race and labor: |
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