Black workers remember : an oral history of segregation, unionism, and the freedom struggle / Michael Keith Honey.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 375-390) and index.

This text provides firsthand accounts of the experiences of black southerners living under segregation in Memphis. It demonstrates how black workers resisted racial apartheid and underscores the active role of black working people in history.

Preface: Black history as labor history -- Introduction: the power of remembering -- 1. Segregation, racial violence, and Black workers. Fannie Henderson witnesses southern lynch law. William Glover recounts his frame-up by the Memphis police. Longshore leader Thomas Watkins escapes assassination -- 2. From country to city: Jim Crow at work. Hillie and Laura Pride move to Memphis. Matthew Davis describes heavy industrial work. George Holloway remembers the Crump era. Clarence Coe recalls the pressures of White supremacy -- 3. Making a way out of no way: Black women factory workers. Irene Branch does double duty as a domestic and factory worker. Evelyn Bates reflects on her lifetime of factory work. Susie Wade tells how she built a life around work. Rebecca McKinley remembers the strike at Memphis Furniture Company -- Interlude: not what we seem -- 4. Freedom struggles at the point of production. Clarence Coe fights for equality. Lonnie Roland and other Black workers implement the Brown decision on the factory floor. George Holloway's struggle against White worker racism -- 5. Organizing and surviving in the Cold War. Leroy Clark follows the pragmatic road to survival in the Jim Crow south. Leroy Boyd battles White supremacy in the era of the red scare -- Interlude: arts of resistance -- 6. Civil rights unionism. Leroy Boyd tells how Black workers used the movement for civil rights to revive local. 19. Factory worker Matthew Davis becomes a community leader. Edward Lindsey recalls Black union politics. Alzada and Leroy Clark fight for unionism and civil rights. Alzada Clark organizes Black women workers in Mississippi -- 7. "I am a man": unionism and the Black working poor. Taylor Rogers relives the Memphis sanitation strike. James Robinson describes the worst job he ever had. Leroy Boyd and Clarence Coe recall a strike and the death of Martin Luther King. William Lucy reflects on the strike's meaning and outcome -- 8. The fate of the Black working class: the global economy, racism, and union organizing. Confronting deindustrialization. Ida Leachman tells how her union continues to organize low-wage workers. George Holloway and Clarence Coe reflect on the importance of unions and the struggle against racism -- Epilogue: scars of memory.

"The labor of black workers has been crucial to economic development in the United States. Yet because of racism and segregation, their contribution remains largely unknown. This work tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words from the 1930s to the present. It provides first-hand accounts of the experiences of black southerners living under segregation in Memphis, Tennessee, the place where Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated during a strike by black sanitation workers. Eloquent and personal, these oral histories comprise a unique primary source and provide a new way of understanding the black labor experience during the industrial era. Together, the stories demonstrate how black workers resisted apartheid in American industry and underscore the active role of black working people in history."--Jacket.

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