Black Railroad Workers in America
March 5th, 2007
Eric Arnesen's Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality is a quality work of social history. Using a mixture of union records, letters, NAACP records, government documents, newspapers (including black newspapers, union newspapers and radical newspapers) and oral interviews Arnesen successfully combines labor and African American history. Although “many black railroaders were pioneer labor and civil rights supporters and labor activists ... the narratives of labor and African-American history have not accorded their struggles a prominent place,” an oversight Arnesen corrects. [1] Arnesen persuasively argues that discrimination on the railroads was a dynamic process shaped by conflicts between white employers and white workers and by black resistance.
Arnesen begins in the nineteenth century, giving an overview of black railroaders over a hundred years in a single chapter. African-Americans have been engaged in railroad work, originally as slaves, since early in US railroad's history. After emancipation railroads supplied tens of thousands of African-Americans with jobs, “providing a source of income that sustained more than a few black communities in the North and South.” [2] Despite mistreatment, black railroad workers tended to be better paid then most other black workers – a “Negro aristocracy of labor” - which often gave them higher social status among other African Americans. Railroads evolved a racial division of labor, dividing occupations into a racial hierarchy with blacks on the bottom. Whites were given the skilled and better paid jobs while blacks were assigned to less skilled jobs requiring manual labor or service work.
Racial discrimination was advocated not only by management but also by white workers and their trade unions. White workers and white managers clashed with each other over the meaning of white supremacy. White unions aimed to drive blacks out of railroading or into jobs few whites wanted so as to monopolize the more desirable jobs for themselves. Employers often used black workers as a low wage alternative to weaken white labor and as a bargaining chip when negotiating with unions, trading discrimination against blacks in exchange for concessions from white unions.
Due to the hostility of white labor unions towards blacks, African Americans tended to have a negative view of organized labor and few joined unions until the World War One era. During the First World War black railroad workers took advantage of labor shortages and a Federal government more favorable towards unionization to form their own unions, which fought both for civil rights and for traditional union goals such as better wages and working conditions. Black railroad workers participated in the wave of strikes and working class unrest that swept the nation after the war. These black railroad unions were ultimately defeated due to opposition from their employers and white unions.
In the thirties black unionism returned, this time on a larger and longer lasting level. Arnesen successfully counterposes the well known Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), lead by A. Phillip Randolph, with lesser known independent African American railroad unions. These unions became important sources of civil rights activism, fighting for both worker and black rights, and in many cases exponents of racial pride. Despite the American Federation of Labor's (AFL) history of racism Randolph believed black workers were better off trying to work inside it to change it in a different direction. The independent unions disagreed, refusing to be part of any “white man's union,” even the anti-racist CIO. With the aid of the AFL and favorable labor legislation the BSCP was able to grow into a large successful union. Without the backing of a labor federation the independents remained small and were forced to turn to alternative strategies to advance their goals, eventually focusing on trying to use the courts to fight discrimination.
The only successful independent union was the International Brotherhood of Red Caps (IBRC). Red Caps provided passengers with service, primarily by carrying their luggage from different parts of the station (often from the curb to the train or vice versa). The IBRC was intended to be an integrated union, but was predominantly black because Red Caps were predominantly black and because many white workers left the union when blacks were elected to leadership positions. The IBRC unsuccessfully attempted to prevent their employers from finding loopholes in the minimum wage requirements of the recently passed Fair Labor Standards Act. As Red Caps declined in the forties and fifties their union went with it.
A. Philip Randolph considered the success of the BSCP as vindication of his strategy, but it was ultimately the legal route pioneered by the independent unions which would break the back of Jim Crow on the rails. During the Second World War Randolph's March on Washington Movement forced President Roosevelt to create the Fair Employment Practices Committee (FEPC) and ban racial discrimination in military-related work, but the FEPC lacked sufficient enforcement mechanisms and was left powerless when the railroad industry refused to comply with its requirements. After the war limited progress was made when a few states passed fair employment laws banning racial discrimination on the railroads. The courts also decided to force white labor unions to take into account the interests of the black workers they were supposed to represent, although the courts still allowed unions to bar blacks from membership in the union.
It was not until the civil rights act was passed that the government finally began to attack racial discrimination on the railroads. Even after that enforcement was slow – sometimes cases literally took decades before they were resolved – and white employees were often hostile towards blacks promoted to positions they were formerly barred from. At the same time the railroad industry as a whole was in decline due to competition from cars, airplanes, and other forms of transportation and so provided a smaller source of employment for African Americans. New hires of any race were increasingly rare, limiting the rate at which the workforce became more diverse.
There is little to criticize in Arnesen's work except possibly some minor issues. Like many other labor histories, Arnesen uses a large number of acronyms which can sometimes make it hard to follow. A page listing all the abbreviations and what they stand for would have been helpful. Some quantitative data on the amount of black employment on the railroads, the rise and fall of the railroads, and possibly other topics could have helped Arnesen illustrate his arguments. Brotherhoods of Color is very dense with lots of details which in a few spots makes it somewhat difficult to read, but this detail also strengthens his argument. Probably the biggest weakness is Arnesen's lack of attention to gender. Even though the majority of railroad workers were men, masculinity or other aspects of gender may have had an impact on black railroad workers that Arnesen does not address. Despite these issues Brotherhoods of Color is a well research study that ably analyzes its topic.
Endnotes
1Arnesen, p. 3.
2Arnesen, p. 39.