The labor of black workers has been crucial to economic development in the United States. Yet because of racism and segregation, their contribution remains largely unknown. Spanning the 1930s to the present, this title tells the history of African American workers in their own words.

Synopsis and Acknowledgments Preface: Black History as Labor History Introduction: The Power of Remembering  1 Segregation, Racial Violence, and Black Workers  Fannie Henderson Witnesses Southern Lynch Law  William Glover Recounts His Frame-up by the Memphis Police  Longshore Leader Thomas Watkins Escapes Assassination  2 From Country to City: Jim Crow at Work  Hillie and Laura Pride Move to Memphis  Matthew Davis Describes Heavy Industrial Work George Holloway Remembers the Crump Era  Clarence Coe Recalls the Pressures of White Supremacy  3 Making a Way Out of No Way: Black Women Factory Workers  Irene Branch Does Double Duty as a Domestic and Factory Worker  Evelyn Bates Reflects on Her Lifetime of Factory Work  Susie Wade Tells How She Built a Life around Work Rebecca McKinley Remembers the Strike at Memphis Furniture Company Interlude: Not What We Seem  4 Freedom Struggles at the Point of Production  Clarence Coe Fights for Equality  Lonnie Roland and other Black Workers Implement the Brown Decision on the Factory Floor George Holloway's Struggle against White Worker Racism  5 Organizing and Surviving in the Cold War  Leroy Clark Follows the Pragmatic Road to Survival in the Jim Crow South  Leroy Boyd Battles White Supremacy in the Era of the Red Scare  Interlude: Arts of Resistance  6 Civil Rights Unionism  Leroy Boyd Tells How Black Workers Used the Movement for Civil Rights to Revive Local I9 Factory Worker Matthew Davis Becomes a Community Leader  Edward Lindsey Recalls Black Union Politics  Alzada and Leroy Clark Fight for Unionism and Civil Rights Alzada Clark Organizes Black Women Workers in Mississippi  7 "I Am a Man": Unionism and the Black Working Poor  Taylor Rogers Relives the Memphis Sanitation Strike fames Robinson Describes the Worst job He Ever Had  Leroy Boyd and Clarence Coe Recall a Strike and the Death of Martin Luther King William Lucy Reflects on the Strikes Meaning and Outcome  8 The Fate of the Black Working Class: The Global Economy, Racism, and Union Organizing  Confronting Deindustrialization Ida Leachman Tells How Her Union Continues to Organize Low-Wage Workers  George Holloway and Clarence Coe Reflect on the Importance of Unions and the Struggle  against Racism  Epilogue: Scars of Memory  References and Notes  Index  Illustrations