Drawing on scores of interviews with black and white tobacco workers
in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, Robert Korstad brings to life the
forgotten heroes of Local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and
Allied Workers of America-CIO. These workers confronted a system of
racial capitalism that consigned African Americans to the basest jobs
in the industry, perpetuated low wages for all southerners, and
shored up white supremacy.
Galvanized
by the emergence of the CIO, African Americans took the lead in a
campaign that saw a strong labor movement and the reenfranchisement
of the southern poor as keys to reforming the South--and a reformed
South as central to the survival and expansion of the New Deal. In
the window of opportunity opened by World War II, they blurred the
boundaries between home and work as they linked civil rights and
labor rights in a bid for justice at work and in the public sphere.
But
civil rights unionism foundered in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Its
defeat undermined later efforts by civil rights activists to raise
issues of economic equality to the moral high ground occupied by the
fight against legalized segregation and, Korstad contends, constrains
the prospects for justice and democracy today.
