Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW

by August Meier, Elliott Rudwick, Prof. Joseph William Trotter (Foreword)

"For almost two decades, August Meier and Elliott Rudwick have roamed the frontier of Afro-American history, blazing trails that others have followed. This book forges a solid link between race and class conflict in the twentieth century."
---Ira Berlin, The Nation "This fact-filled study is essential to students of the labor and civil rights movements."
---David Kusnet, The New Republic "A fascinating slice of history illustrating important race and class issues that are still with us."
--- Library Journal "By ignoring the conventional lines between labor and black history, Meier and Rudwick have found an unexplored middle ground---the net of relations between the black community and white economic institutions---that shaped the working life of blacks in Detroit's auto plants. This is a major achievement."
---David Brody, Professor Emeritus of History, University of California, Davis ". . . an important work . . . one of the first to apply the nitty-gritty of social and institutional history to 20th century African American and labor history."
---Eric Arnesen, University of Illinois at Chicago Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW is essential reading for historians of labor and race in America, as well those interested in Detroit's importance as a crucible for American urban history.

Genres: Nonfiction, Labor

312 pages, Paperback

First published September 6, 1979

Reviews

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

In this 1979 labor and civil rights history August Meier and Elliott Rudwick sought to answer the question of how African-Americans went from being generally suspicious of unions and pro-management, as a result of being employed as strikebreakers, discriminatory practices of white craft unions, and racism by white workers, to being amongst the most pro-union of workers. They argue because of the UAW's strong engagement with the NAACP, the Urban League, and black clergy that eventually black workers switched sides, which seems like somewhat of a weak argument. Still, the history they present in the critical years of 1937-43, starts with Ford's racial paternalism which actually saw his company at the forefront of hiring black workers, engaging with black clergy, and hiring black replacement workers during any strikes, and the UAW leadership realizing that they would need to be strongly committed to anti-racism and engage with issues important to African-Americans if they were to build a multiracial union that could stand together against divide-and-conquer tactics.

Sometimes this meant walking the line of standing up for black workers even when racist white coworkers mistreated them, such as 1943 when white workers engaged in a wildcat strike against black hiring, which saw the UAW push for government intervention to have the strike ended and the ring leaders fired. In the 1940 strikes, still, even with the engagement of black community leaders, which had endorsed the UAW's efforts, a sizeable majority of black workers did not support the UAW-CIO, instead supporting the AFL union favored by Ford. However, after the UAW's victory, black workers quickly became very supportive of the UAW as it engaged with issues important to black workers, such as fights against police brutality, housing discrimination, and job discrimination. Ford quickly abandoned its policies of racial inclusion, so made the UAW push even harder against racial discrimination.

This book has been criticised for overemphasizing black leadership organizations like the NAACP and the Urban League, and underemphasizing black workers and radicals like the Communists who pushed hard for their inclusion. Reuther shared the goals of racial inclusion and pushed hard partly to take away the issue from the Communists. Research that came later does a good job of rectifying this misconception, like in "red" Local 600 that represented the Rouge complex.

[Mason Wyss · Rating 4 out of 5]

Meier and Rudwick go into great detail about the labor attitudes of Black people in Detroit during the depression, the organizing drives that overcame pro-Ford sentiments, and the struggle between left-wing and racist factions in the union.

Even as overt anti-Black racism is less common among white Americans in the 21st century than it was during WWII, modern activists could still glean some interesting anti-racist tactics from the pages of this book. For instance, then president of the UAW requested aid from the New Deal war time labor programs and sided with the bosses in firing hate strikers that organized wildcat strikes against Black promotions. This, to me, seems to fall incredibly short of stamping out racist sentiments in the union, and siding with the boss is never a good long-term strategy. Firing racist wildcat leaders in the short-term is a good start and a necessary show of force against reactionary elements in the union, but only a long term strategy based around education and inoculation against the bosses’ attempts to divide workers on race will build the strength and solidarity of the union.

The most interesting part of the book was seeing how the leadership of the UAW navigated the contradictions between siding with the NAACP in housing and electoral issues, while remaining incapable of reining in racism among the white rank-and-file.

Ultimately though, it is worth noting that unions in the US lost to neoliberal reaction in the second half of the century, and failure to reckon with racism among their ranks, along with a decline in militancy, could have played parts in that.