Postwar Northern unions expelled Black workers from skilled trades

Evidence

In the late 1860s and early 1870s, according to William Z. Foster (a historian who twice in his life headed the American Communist Party as its General Secretary), “There was much good will between the National Labour Union and the Colored National Labor Union, and if they could not establish closer working unity between Negro and white workers, this was due to their failure to overcome a number of serious obstacles. Chief among these was the NLU failure to combat the employers’ Jim Crow policies in industry. The white workers tended to oust Negro workers from the skilled trades, to refuse to work with them in the shops, and to bar them from the trade unions. This white chauvinist trend which was to wreak such havoc in the labor movement in later decades, was already manifest among unions in the NLU.” — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2206

Categorization

Category: Factual Claims

Related

• White workers excluded Blacks from skilled trades in postbellum unions (similarity 0.89)
• White unions’ Jim-Crow exclusion blocked interracial labor unity in the 1870s (similarity 0.80)
• Postwar demobilization in Britain ousted black workers and triggered 1919 race riots. (similarity 0.80)

Broader Connections

• Postwar demobilization in Britain ousted black workers and triggered 1919 race riots. #epitomizes (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 2379
• Industrial capital weaponized racism to fragment the labor movement #expands (0.75) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 960
• Black labor exploitation continued in new forms after slavery’s legal abolition #expands (0.70)
• Post-emancipation labor systems trapped former slaves by law and poverty. #expands (0.70) — Dubois, Laurent, Avengers of the New World_ The Story of…, 642
• Foundational workers’ histories erased Black presence from the English working class #expands (0.65) — Cedric J. Robinson, Black Marxism_ The Making of the Black…, 1546
• Black historiography was a defensive response to post-Emancipation labor repression #expands (0.60)
• Enslaved black women worked as hard as men but were barred from supervisory roles #complicates (0.60) — bell hooks, Ain’t I a Woman_ Black Women and…, 62