For decades, civil rights activists fought against employment
discrimination and for a greater role for African Americans in
municipal decision-making. As their influence in city halls across
the country increased, activists took advantage of the Great
Society—and the government jobs it created on the local level—to
advance their goals.
A New Working
Class traces efforts by Black public-sector workers and their
unions to fight for racial and economic justice in Baltimore. The
public sector became a critical job niche for Black workers,
especially women, a largely unheralded achievement of the civil
rights movement. A vocal contingent of Black public-sector workers
pursued the activists' goals from their government posts and sought
to increase and improve public services. They also fought for their
rights as workers and won union representation. During an era often
associated with deindustrialization and union decline, Black
government workers and their unions were just getting started.
During the 1970s and
1980s, presidents from both political parties pursued policies that
imperiled these gains. Fighting funding reductions, public-sector
workers and their unions defended the principle that the government
has a responsibility to provide for the well-being of its residents.
Federal officials justified their austerity policies, the weakening
of the welfare state and strengthening of the carceral state, by
criminalizing Black urban residents—including government workers
and their unions. Meanwhile, workers and their unions also faced off
against predominately white local officials, who responded to
austerity pressures by cutting government jobs and services while
simultaneously offering tax incentives to businesses and investing in
low-wage, service-sector jobs. The combination of federal and local
policies increased insecurity in hyper-segregated and increasingly
over-policed low-income Black neighborhoods, leaving residents,
particularly women, to provide themselves or do without services that
public-sector workers had fought to provide.