Title: The challenge of interracial unionism
First published: 1998
Description: This study explores a tradition of interracial unionism that persisted in the coal fields of Alabama from the dawn of the New South through the turbulent era of World War I. Daniel Letwin focuses on the forces that prompted black and white miners to collaborate in the labor movement even as racial segregation divided them in nearly every other aspect of their lives.

Letwin examines a series of labor campaigns - conducted under the banners of the Greenback-Labor Party, the Knights of Labor, and, most extensively, the United Mine Workers - whose interracial character came into growing conflict with the southern racial order. This tension gives rise to the book's central question: to what extent could the unifying potential of class withstand the divisive pressure of race?

Arguing that interracial unionism in the New South was much more complex and ambiguous than is generally recognized, Letwin offers a story of both promise and failure, as a movement crossing the color line alternately transcended and succumbed to the gathering hegemony of Jim Crow.
Subjects: History, Coal miners, African American coal miners, African American labor union members, Labor unions, Afro-American coal miners, Afro-American membership, Trade-unions, Labor unions, history, Labor unions, united states, African americans, alabama, Mineurs de charbon, Syndicats, Histoire, Mineurs de charbon noirs américains, Syndiqués noirs américains, BUSINESS & ECONOMICS, Labor, POLITICAL SCIENCE, Labor & Industrial Relations, Labor & Workers' Economics
Places: Alabama
LC classification: HD6515.M615 L478 1998