African American Labor History Links
African American Labor History
- Memphis: We Remember — Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. and the 1968 Memphis Sanitation workers' strike
- Firsts in Black Labor History (Illinois Education Association/Wayback Machine copy)
- Africana.com: Labor Unions in the United States (Wayback Machine copy)
- Building Bridges: The Challenge of Organized Labor in Communities of Color — by Robin D.G. Kelley, New York University
- African Americans and the American Labor Movement — by James Gilbert Cassedy, Prologue: Quarterly of the National Archives and Records Administration, Summer 1997, vol. 29, no. 2
- Black Workers Remember — by Jacqueline Jones, The American Prospect, vol. 11, no. 15, June 19 - July 3 2000.
- The Power of Remembering: Black Factory Workers and Union Organizing in the Jim Crow Era — by Michael Honey, Organization of American Historians, 3/13/2001
- Answers.com: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Encyclopedia of Chicago: Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: 1925-1969 — guide from Lexis/Nexis
- Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: Records of the Ladies Auxiliary of the BSCP, 1931-1968 — guide from Lexis/Nexis
- Records of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters: Records of the BSCP Relations with the Pullman Company, 1925-1968 — guide from Lexis/Nexis
- A. Philip Randolph Institute
- Biographical Notes on Bayard Rustin, 1912 - 1987
- Bayard Rustin - Biography — African American Publications; free registration required
- Brother Outsider: The Life of Bayard Rustin — PBS
- Norman Hill: An Activist for Black Labor
- Biographical Notes on Clayola Brown — national president of the A. Philip Randolph Institute, 2004 - date; formerly international vice president of the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union
- Coalition of Black Trade Unionists
- William Lucy — founder and president of CBTU; International Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees.
- Nelson "Jack" Edwards — United Automobile Workers organizer and first national treasurer of CBTU.
- Cleveland Robinson — President of District 65 Distributive Workers of America and first elected vice president of CBTU.
- Charles Hayes — International Vice President of United Food & Commercial Workers; first trade unionist ever elected to Congress (1983-1993); CBTU's first executive vice president.
- William H. Simons — President of Washington Teachers Union, Local 6; past vice president of the American Federation of Teachers; CBTU's first elected national secretary
- Isaac Myers, 1835-1891 — organized the Colored National Labor Union, first national black labor organization, in 1869
- African American Miners in the United Mine Workers of America
- Benjamin H. Fletcher — African American labor organizer. In 1913, Fletcher organized black dock workers into the Marine Transport Workers Union in Philadelphia under the Industrial Workers of the World.
- The Story of Hosea Hudson: Lessons of a "Black worker in the deep South" still loom large — Communist Party member and CIO organizer in the 1930's
- Biography and Papers of Ernest Calloway, 1909-1989 — African American political activist and labor organizer, president of St. Louis NAACP.
- James Rapier — organizer for the Colored National Labor Union (Illinois Education Association/Wayback Machine copy)
- Earl George — first African American president of a union local in Washington State (ILWU Local 9); helped found the National Negro Labor Council in 1951.
- Coleman Young, 1918-1997 — organizer and director for the Congress of Industrial Organizations' United Public Workers in 1946; helped form the National Negro Labor Council and served as the organization's only national organizer; first African American mayor of Detroit. (Illinois Education Association/Wayback Machine copy)
- Coleman Young — African American Publications Biography
- Rosina Tucker, 1881-1987 — founder and secretary-treasurer of the International Ladies' Auxiliary and a force in the establishment of its parent organization, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
- Rosina Tucker — by David Pitts, U.S. Information Agency
- Lucy Parsons, 1853-1942 — Industrial Workers of the World leader
- Lucy Parsons (1853-1942): The Life of an Anarchist Labor Organizer — by Joe Lowndes, Free Society, vol. 2, no. 4, 1995
- Lucy Parsons: A Life Dedicated to Justice — by Caeli Thibeault, Illinois History, April 1998
- The Lucy Parsons Project
- Maida Springer-Kemp: Pittsburgher instrumental in labor unions in Africa — by Yevette Richards, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, 2/28/2000. International Ladies' Garment Workers' Union organizer in the 1930s; first African-American business agent in the ILGWU; first African-American woman to represent the AFL internationally.
- Minnesota African American Labor History
- African-Americans in unions: Working towards power — by Mark Gruenberg, Workday Minnesota
- Frank Boyd — one of the founders of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.
- Charles James — president of the St. Paul Trades & Labor Assembly in 1902.
- Nellie Stone Johnson — organizer and first female vice president of the Minneapolis Hotel and Restaurant Workers Union Local 665.
- Paul Robeson 1898-1976 — This educational packet contains considerable material on the singer's support of African American labor struggles, including the National Labor Conference for Negro Rights
- Frederick Douglass — abolitionist and vice president of the National Colored Labor Union in 1868. (Illinois Education Association/Wayback Machine copy)
- The Black-Labor Alliance: Strengthening the Partnership for Economic Justice by Tom Donahue, AFL-CIO
- League of Revolutionary Black Workers — by A.Muhammad Ahmad. African-American labor organization formed in Detroit in the 1960s
- Black Workers and the Labor Movement — Chapter 7 from Introduction to Afro-American Studies: A Peoples College Primer by Dr. Abdul Alkalimat
- Charleston on the Black Waterfront — by Howard Zinn, 1/20/2001: "Just after the Civil War, black dockers in Charleston and Savannah Georgia struck for wages and against a poll tax. The Charleston men had formed their own union, the Longshoremen’s Protective Union Association. ..."
- Atlanta Washerwomen's Strike — 1881 strike by the Washing Society, an association of African American washerwomen in Atlanta, GA.; free registration required
African American Labor History — Books and Films
- Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King’s Last Campaign — By Michael K. Honey, Norton, 2006
- "I Am a Man" — 1st chapter of Killing the Dream: James Earl Ray and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr. by Gerald L. Posner. Deals with 1968 Memphis sanitation workers' strike.
- "At the River I Stand" — 1993 film about the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers'strike
- "A. Philip Randolph: For Jobs and Freedom" — 1996 film about A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- "Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle" — 1983 film about the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
- "Struggles in Steel: the Fight for Equal Opportunity" — 1996 film about the history of African American steelworkers from 1875 to the present.
- The Challenge of Interracial Unionism: Alabama Coal Miners 1878-1921 — by Daniel Letwin, University of North Carolina Press, 1998
- Marching Together: Women of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters — by Melinda Chateauvert, University of Illinois Press, 1997
- Black Workers Remember : An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle George Gund Foundation Imprint in African American Studies by Honey, Michael K. Berkeley, Calif. University of California Press, 1999.
- African-American Workers (Cornell University)
- Pullman Porters and the Rise of Protest Politics in Black America, 1925-1945 — by Beth Tompkins Bates, University of North Carolina Press, 2001
- Maida Springer: Pan-Africanist and International Labor Leader — by Yevette Richards, Univ. of Pittsburgh Press, 2000
- African-Americans, Labor and Society: Organizing for a New Agenda — edited by Patrick L. Mason, Wayne State University Press, 2001
- Black Unionism in the Industrial South — by Ernest Obadele-Starks, Texas A & M University Press, 1999
Martin Luther King, Jr.
African American History - General
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