John fought for his black union brothers and sisters just as doggedly as he fought for his white ones. To John, the world wasn’t divided between black and white but between capital and labor. There were two kinds of people: the greedy bosses who ran the company and the workers they oppressed. “Company” was an adjective, and not a complimentary one. Whenever his wife argued too strongly from a boss’s point of view, he would lob a bitter insult at her: “You’re just company.”
