Northern corporations ran propaganda campaigns targeting southern Black workers

Evidence

Despite the campaigns of terror and violence directed against them, and which had been a constant undercurrent in their lives since the Reconstruction, most of them were still reluctant to break historical, social, and cultural ties by migrating to confrontations with northern antipathies. To meet this problem, corporate managers had developed a sophisticated propaganda campaign to excite the interests of southern Black workers. Labor recruiters were sent South with instructions to fill the empty freight cars often accompanying them; Black newspapers (some subsidized by northern industrialists), led by the Chicago Defender, ran articles on the opportunities for employment in the North juxtaposed with accounts of the anti-Black activities of southern whites. — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 998

Categorization

• XREF: Corporate recruiting of Black labor on anti-racism appeals connects to Robinson’s broader theme of capitalism manipulating racial division.