Many companies simply didn’t hire colored workers at all but for altogether different reasons from the South. It wasn’t because of an explicit Berlin Wall of exclusion, written into law and so engrained as to not need to be spelled out for people on either side, as in the South. Instead, in the North, companies and unions said that, however much they might want to hire colored people, their white workers just wouldn’t stand for it. And, for the sake of morale, the companies and unions weren’t going to force the issue.
