One hundred years ago this year, African American employees of the Pullman Company — a railroad manufacturer and operator — formed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the first Black labor union to eventually be recognized by the American Federation of Labor.
The union was led by A. Philip Randolph, a prominent labor organizer and early civil rights leader who was instrumental in pressuring Presidents Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman to bar racial discrimination in the defense industry and segregation in the military, respectively. Randolph was also a key organizer of the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, during which Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.
Yet Randolph’s major achievements for both labor and civil rights mask a different truth about unions in the early- to mid-20th century, says Kenneth Mack ’91, historian and the Lawrence D. Biele Professor of Law at Harvard. The reality, Mack says, is that many labor unions — whose leadership and membership was almost exclusively white — were often uneasy with and even actively hostile towards civil rights.
“The basic problem from top to bottom,” Mack says, “is that many labor unions discriminated against Black workers and excluded them from their organizations.”
But Mack says that despite often facing overt racism, Black workers found ways to make their voices heard, both through Black-led unions like Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, in multiracial coalitions like the United Auto Workers in Detroit, and through the work of leaders like Dr. King, who espoused the importance of economic justice alongside civil rights. That legacy continues today, as Black leaders occupy top positions at labor organizations such as the Service Employees International Union, AFL-CIO, UAW, and the Communication Workers of America, and play a prominent role in unionization efforts at Amazon and elsewhere.
In a conversation with Harvard Law Today, Mack explained the connection between the early- to mid-20th century labor and Civil Rights movements — and how the contemporary efforts around labor and social justice may find more solidarity.
Harvard Law Today: A. Philip Randolph founded the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, but he was also a key figure in the civil rights movement. In general, what was the connection between these movements?
Kenneth Mack: Historically, many people have thought they were connected to one another — both were movements to challenge hierarchy in some form. In the early 20th century, labor organizing seemed to be the wave of the future. Many people in Europe and America believed that labor was trying to respond to the problems of a modern industrial, urban society.
But the problem between labor and civil rights was always that labor unions — many, but not all — discriminated against Black workers and excluded them from their organizations. That was the basic problem from top to bottom, albeit with some notable exceptions, particularly leftist union groups such as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Black leaders had a variety of opinions about that problem. Some were hostile to unions because these organizations discriminated, while others believed that there should be Black unions because, they reasoned, if white unions keep us out, we should organize our own unions. And third, some were of the opinion that the object was to get unions to stop discriminating and to include Black workers. Many leaders held some combination of the second and third of these positions.
HLT: What was Randolph’s view on that?
Mack: Randolph helped found a Black union — the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, as we discussed. Eventually, the union becomes a member of the AFL. Once that happens, Randolph keeps pushing the AFL to adopt a non-discrimination requirement, but it continually refuses.
HLT: Can you tell us more about the position of the AFL toward civil rights during this time?
Mack: The AFL, or American Federation of Labor, was the main labor federation in the early 20th century, particularly after the decline of the IWW. The AFL allowed its constituent unions to discriminate against Black workers. Its leaders often claimed that they didn’t endorse discrimination, but the organization kept rejecting civil rights activists’ demands to adopt a non-discrimination requirement for unions that desired to become members.
However, a rival union federation was formed during the New Deal. Initially part of the AFL, it eventually called itself the CIO — the Congress of Industrial Organizations. CIO unions were much more welcoming of Black workers than the AFL. This federation included steel workers and auto workers, and in general, these unions were much more favorable to civil rights.
HLT: How did labor unions discriminate against Black workers in this era?
Mack: Some of the constituent unions in the AFL simply didn’t allow Black workers to join their locals. And if you’re a union local, you become the exclusive representative for the workers at a particular location, particularly once this practice is authorized by New Deal-era legislation. So, if you’re the exclusive representative and you don’t allow Black people in your union, then Black people simply can’t be employed at that location. There were also unions that didn’t explicitly bar Black members but were very hostile to them. This would be an apt description of many construction unions, for instance, as late as the 1960s and 1970s.
But there were other unions where interracial organizing was the norm — the auto workers in Detroit, for instance. The position of the civil rights-oriented unions like the auto workers was both noble and pragmatic. Walter Reuther, the head of the United Auto Workers, was a believer in civil rights to his bones, but there were also pragmatic reasons for his union not to discriminate as much as it might have otherwise. For instance, if Black workers are out of the union, then they’ll always undercut the union. In other words, if there are people who are not in your union and they’re willing to work, then those people can be recruited to come to work when the union goes on strike.
HLT: Were there any African American leaders who were entirely against working with the labor movement?
Mack: By the mid-1930s, the argument that Black leaders or civil rights leaders should not work at all with labor was the minority position. Instead, the argument was about tactics. For instance, should we support labor union legislation, if that legislation does not have a nondiscrimination requirement for unions that are being granted organizing rights under law?
I also want to mention that the two main labor federations combine in 1955 and become the AFL-CIO, and the combined organization was far more welcoming of Black workers than had been the historical AFL. By the time of the March on Washington of 1963, and there was a strong union presence in the march organization, although the AFL-CIO resisted calls to formally endorse the march. By this point, very few prominent leaders in Black politics are hostile to unionization, but there are a variety of positions on the question of what to do about discrimination by unions.
HLT: The March on Washington’s full title was the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Although this isn’t a direct reference to unions, it’s clear that organizers had an economic mission in addition to a civil rights-focused one. How did march organizers see those things as connected?
Mack: The March on Washington was organized by Bayard Rustin and A. Philip Randolph, two very experienced civil rights leaders who thought that economic justice, labor organizing, and civil rights advocacy were not separate programs or objectives. When Rustin and Randolph first started to organize the march around 1961, many of their goals were economic: full employment, public works, job training, things like that. They thought that these goals and passing a civil rights act, which would ban many kinds of discrimination, were all part of the same agenda.
“If we look at the locations where the unionization drive has been strongest and most successful, they tend to be locations with an interracial labor force, where people of different backgrounds feel that they’re in a disadvantageous situation and that they can make progress together.”
HLT: Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., who delivered perhaps his most famous speech at the march, also spoke often about economic justice and its relationship to social justice. Can you tell us about his views?
Mack: Dr. King’s views evolved over time, but even as a younger man, he was very much interested in economic justice and what we would call social justice. As the 1960s progressed, he kept encountering many of the barriers to both causes. He famously came north to Chicago in 1966 to organize around housing discrimination and other urban problems, and he was essentially run out of town. He was out-maneuvered by the Chicago mayor, Richard J. Daley, and felt quite frustrated. During the course of his public career, he encountered more and more barriers to economic justice, and worked them into his program for change. Just to cite one example, if one reads his famous speech opposing the Vietnam War in 1967, he’s talking a good deal about economic justice, he’s talking about peace, he’s talking about anti-violence, and he thinks that all these things are deeply connected to one another. But he was also responding to the world around him — the barriers and frustrations he encountered as the 1960s wore on.
HLT: What happens to the unions immediately after the Civil Rights Act of 1964?
Mack: In some places, things didn’t change. Some unions resisted court orders to stop discriminating or prevented Black members from advancing or holding certain kinds of roles. White-dominated railway unions, for instance, continued to be hostile to Black workers for years. It’s not until the 1970s that Black workers make sufficient inroads in the railway brotherhoods. Of course, by then, railroad transit and shipping had been a declining industry for quite some time, thus the whole industry is falling apart by the time Black workers can join freely.
HLT: Despite the immense challenges Black workers faced, they had some of the highest unionization rates by the 1970s — a trend that continues today. Are there ways in which you see modern labor organizing as connected to the movements for racial and social justice?
Mack: At its best — and the labor movement has not always been at its best — the labor movement has been utopian and opposed to hierarchy, and its goals have included economic justice for its members and the larger society. That agenda is still very relevant today. Deindustrialization has been in motion for decades. There has been a long-term decline in wages and living standards for the bulk of the population, and there is a sense among many American workers that they don’t really have a future.
Again, at its best, labor has supported a program of addressing problems that individuals or small groups of workers can’t solve on their own — a recognition that there is value in solidarity among people who don’t have a great deal of means. That still dovetails with the agenda of the civil rights movement and many movements for social justice.
To take one modern example, let’s look at the movement to unionize at Amazon warehouses. Workers have alleged that they don’t have good working conditions, that there are safety problems, and other criticisms of their employer. Amazon views itself as a paternalistic company — its self-image is that of a modern, innovative organization where people can advance themselves within the company without the need for a union. But a good number of people at many of its locations see it differently. And if we look at the locations where the unionization drive has been strongest and most successful, they tend to be locations with an interracial labor force, where people of different backgrounds feel that they’re in a disadvantageous situation and that they can make progress together. That is the traditional agenda of organized labor — at least when it’s at its best. And again, it’s not always been at its best.
Want to stay up to date with Harvard Law Today? Sign up for our weekly newsletter.