Beyond the 'Proletarian turn': Black workers, the rise of organized labour and the fragile foundations of civil rights protest in the urban North during the New Deal

This dissertation offers a fresh interpretation of the impact of the rise of organized labour on black working communities during the New Deal. Labour historians have detailed the racial practices of the numerous unions who grew in size and strength during the 1930s, while studies of black civil rights have probed the experiences of black leadership groups who advocated support for black participation in industrial unionism. A new overarching paradigm of civil rights struggle has emerged which praises the emergence of a powerful left-oriented, union-based rights movement. This dissertation argues that this interpretation is flawed for failing to place the constituency who supposedly benefitted from the rise of labour in a central role: black workers.

This dissertation builds its analysis of the rise of unionism upon the experiences of black workers. It is in this context that assessments of the achievements of leadership groups should be conducted. A comparative methodology focusing on Detroit and New York City is employed. Chapters 1 and 2 recreate the local experiences of black workers in the foundational period of biracial unionization between 1933 and 1941. Two key themes emerge. First, the distribution of black workers in specific local settings offered the potential for concentrated groups of workers to use organized labour as a vehicle to advance black rights. In addition, existing constraints on black employment were often reinforced by unions’ increased power. Similarly, the interconnected control of employment by unions, government and management groups opened up new avenues of protest, but could also make identifying and tackling the sources of workers' discrimination more difficult. Both of these issues highlight the contradictory impact of unionization on black workers' lives while also demonstrating the demand for coordinated activism placed upon protest leaders.

Chapters 3, 4 and 5 assess the extent to which opponents of organized labour, local supporters of organized labour and national civil rights groups were able to take up the agenda called for by workers. The recurrent failure to establish effective and coordinated protest coalitions lay not necessarily in the ideological or political failings of protest leaders. The unique demands for multifaceted and coordinated activism ultimately proved beyond the capacity of protest leaders. As a result, appraisals of the rise of labour need to be removed from value-laden conceptions that celebrate the ‘opportunities found’ for working rights protest. Instead, by emphasizing the fragile foundations of labour-based protest, it is suggested that the renewed focus on workers’ lives allows for an altogether new way of examining the influence of the New Deal on the black freedom struggle.