African Americans and the politics of race among Detroit's auto workers, 1941--1971 (Michigan).

详细信息   

• 作者：Lewis-Colman ; David Morgan.
• 学历：Doctor
• 年：2001
• 导师：Stromquist, Shelton
• 毕业院校：The University of Iowa
• 专业：History, United States.;History, Black.;Sociology, Industrial and Labor Relations.
• ISBN：0493299866
• CBH：3018590
• Country：USA
• 语种：English
• FileSize：18946503
• Pages：443

文摘

In this dissertation I examine a tradition of independent race-based activism among African-American automobile workers in Detroit between 1941–1971. Beginning in World War II, black workers organized caucuses inside the United Auto Workers Union (UAW) and provided leadership to civil rights groups in the community that sought to improve the living conditions of Detroit's black working-class. For the next three decades black workers used similar strategies to challenge racism in the workplace and community. Two characteristics defined this race-based activism. First, these activists believed that they must give priority to the particular needs black workers faced in racially demarcated workplaces and in a union dominated by whites. Second, black workers wanted more than the elimination of formal discriminatory barriers. They sought to build grass roots momentum to achieve measurable gains for black workers. These commitments persisted despite divisions among black activists precipitated by the Cold War and played out during the years of Civil Rights mobilization in the 1950s and 1960s. For example, although colored by the political residue of Cold War anti-Communism, the race-based organizing of liberal activists in the Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC) in the 1950s provided a bridge between black workers' World War II activism and the nationalist Revolutionary Union Movements (RUMs) in the late 1960s.;I also examine white unionists' responses to black workers' activism. Many white unionists supported racial equality but remained uncomfortable with black workers' independent activism. Racial liberals, like UAW president Walter Reuther, who led the union believed such activism undermined class solidarity, union stability, and was Communist inspired. After World War II, the union's leaders undermined race-based activism through red-baiting and by creating a gradual less color conscious civil rights program that focused on legislative reform, education, and contractual changes. The UAW's expanded civil rights program helped eliminate some formal discriminatory barriers but failed to improve substantially black workers' conditions. Ironically, as the union became increasingly committed to civil rights, its leaders consistently undermined black workers' independent activism that provided the pressure from below required to translate formal civil rights victories into real gains for African Americans.