Civil Rights Unionism

by Robert R. Korstad

2003 · UNC Press Books

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.

The Wayward Preacher in the Literature of African American Women

by James Robert Saunders

2017 · McFarland

In African American culture the preacher has traditionally held many roles: minister of faith, orator, politician, idealist, and most importantly, leader. But the preacher was also traditionally male, and in many ways this advanced the perception that African American women were incapable of questioning the authority of black men. Nella Larsen, Zora Neale Hurston, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, and Terry McMillan wrote of flawed African American preachers, empowering their female characters by exposing the notion of the black preacher as beyond reproach. The writings of these five women warn African American women—and society as a whole—of the power of the religious functionaries who insist that the self must be virtually obliterated in order for salvation to be attained.

The Color of Their Skin

by Robert A. Pratt

1992 · University of Virginia Press

A major study of school desegregation in a Virginia locality, The Color of Their Skin traces the evolution of Richmond public schools from segregation to desegregation to resegregation over the decades following the Brown decision.