Robert H. Zieger, ed.,Southern Labor in Transition, 1940-1995. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. x + 346 pp. $42.00 cloth.

2000 ◽  
Vol 57 ◽  
pp. 152-155
Author(s):  
Daniel Letwin
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
New South ◽  
World War ◽  
World War One ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
University Of Tennessee ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Road Map ◽  
Industrial Organizations

Beginning with the surge of interest in slavery a generation ago, the South has steadily emerged as an integral part of America's labor past. From the mid-1970s into the early 1990s, attention flowed chiefly to the period from Reconstruction through World War One. And pathbreaking studies continue to appear on the women and men, white and black, who worked the farms, homes, docks, mines, forests, craft-shops, railroads, factories, and service trades of the New South. Lately, though, the frontier of research has shifted to the eras of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO), World War Two, the early Cold War, and the civil rights movement—a chapter of Southern labor history once left to journalists, activists, and social scientists. Southern Labor in Transition, 1940–1995, edited by Robert H. Zieger, offers a valuable road map of current scholarship.

The Failure of Labor Unionism in the US South

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cody R. Melcher ◽  
Michael Goldfield
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Supremacy ◽  
The South ◽  
Us South ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
The American South ◽  
White Workers

The failure of labor unions to succeed in the American South, largely because national unions proved unable or unwilling to confront white supremacy head on, offers an important key to understanding post–World War II American politics, especially the rise of the civil rights movement. Looking at the 1930s and 1940s, it is clear that the failure was not the result of a cultural aversion to collective action on the part of white workers in the South, as several histories have suggested, but rather stemmed from the refusal of the conservative leadership in the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) to organize an otherwise militant southern workforce composed of both whites and Blacks. These lost opportunities, especially among southern woodworkers and textile workers, contrasts sharply with successful interracial union drives among southern coal miners and steelworkers, especially in Alabama. Counterfactual examples of potentially durable civil rights unionism illustrate how the labor movement could have affected the civil rights movement and transformed politics had the South been unionized.

The Newest South

2019 ◽  
pp. 61-108
Author(s):  
Brenda Plummer
Keyword(s):  
Popular Culture ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Racial Inequality ◽  
New South ◽  
Deep South ◽  
Cultural Patterns ◽  
Political Economic ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

Brenda Plummer examines the effect of the U.S. space program on race relations in key areas of the South, and the impact of that connection on popular culture. She also explores the intersection of the struggle for racial equality and aerospace exploration, as both constituted potent narratives of freedom in the American imaginary. Plummer disputes the assumption that NASA as an instrument of modernization and partner in the creation of the New South was implicitly allied with the civil rights movement. While the transformation of parts of the Deep South undeniably broke up earlier political, economic, and cultural patterns, aerospace research and development helped inaugurate a successor regime that neither challenged the structural foundations of racial inequality nor guarded against the production of new disparities.

Conclusion

2020 ◽  
pp. 225-234
Author(s):  
Kurt Edward Kemper
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Liberal Arts ◽  
College Athletics ◽  
The United States ◽  
Medium Size ◽  
World War ◽  
Multiple Pressures ◽  
Economic Elites

Throughout much of the NCAA’s first half century, the organization maintained an uneasy collection of commercialized schools that pursued highly competitive athletics for publicity and profit; liberal arts colleges that saw college athletics as a component of their educational and leadership missions; and smaller and medium-size state schools that wanted to play athletics for competitive glory but lacked the size, resources, and finances of the big-time powers. Unable to balance those three interests, the NCAA largely ignored the concerns of the latter two while devoting itself to the service of commercialized athletics. This fraught arrangement finally came asunder in the years after World War II when multiple pressures from scandals, racial criticisms, and growing pressure for access to the NCAA Basketball Tournament finally forced concessions. The concessions made in the mid- to late-1950s, however, did not reshape the balance of power in the NCAA, as the organization remained wholly committed to serving the interests of big-time commercialized athletics. In this regard the challenges faced by the NCAA mirrored the larger social and cultural upheaval in the United States following World War II. The civil rights movement, second-wave feminism, and opposition to the war in Vietnam all challenged the authority of existing political and economic elites yet did not mark any fundamental shift in power in American life. The question, then, is not really how did the NCAA manage to survive but, rather, how did its critics ever hope to succeed?

Introduction: The Desegregation Dilemma

1995 ◽  
Author(s):  
David J. Armor
Keyword(s):  
School Districts ◽  
School Choice ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Federal Courts ◽  
State Court ◽  
Social Scientists ◽  
State Constitutions ◽  
Current Events ◽  
The City

Despite nearly four decades of controversy and debate over school segregation, the desegregation dilemma is still largely unresolved. The “busing” problem has received less national attention in recent years, and there are no riots, bus burnings, and school boycotts, as witnessed in earlier decades. Yet current events reveal the depth of a dilemma that has divided educators, parents, jurists, social scientists, and many other groups since the beginning of the civil rights movement. Indicators of the current desegregation dilemma are numerous. Hundreds of school districts throughout the country still impose busing for desegregation purposes, many under court orders that are now more than twenty years old. Although the types of desegregation plans have evolved to some extent, with increased emphasis on school choice, many plans still compel children to attend schools that their parents would not choose, solely for the purpose of racial “balance.” Further, after a period of quiescence, school desegregation was again the subject of several major Supreme Court decisions in 1991 and 1992. The decisions affected the length of time and the conditions under which a school district has to maintain a court-ordered busing plan. Although these decisions dispelled a common misconception that school systems have to maintain desegregation plans “in perpetuity,” it is still unclear how many school districts can or will end their busing plans. Finally, new desegregation litigation and controversies continue to surface. In 1989 a lawsuit was initiated in a Connecticut state court by the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to compel desegregation between the city of Hartford and its suburban districts. A similar city suburbs desegregation strategy failed in the federal courts, but the Hartford lawsuit seeks to build on the success of school equal-finance cases under state constitutions. In 1991 the school board of La Crosse, Wisconsin, adopted a busing plan to equalize economic (rather than race) differences among schools. Reminiscent of the busing controversies of the 1970s, all board members who supported the busing plan were voted out of office in a regular and a recall election, reflecting the widespread community opposition to busing for the purpose of achieving socioeconomic balance in schools.

Epilogue

2020 ◽  
pp. 179-192
Author(s):  
Donald W. Rogers
Keyword(s):  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Liberties ◽  
Bill Of Rights ◽  
Jersey City ◽  
Constitutional Protection ◽  
Congress Of Industrial Organizations ◽  
Industrial Organizations ◽  
Police Harassment ◽  
The Right ◽  
American Civil Liberties Union

This epilogue shows that Hague v. CIO had a legacy more complex than its reputation as a speech rights victory for workers and others over dictatorial city boss Frank Hague under the Bill of Rights. The American Civil Liberties Union and renamed Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) immediately split over the decision’s ramifications. Moreover, while the ruling enlarged constitutional protection for the right of public assembly to the benefit of Jehovah’s Witnesses, civil rights demonstrators, and others, it did little to enhance picketing and other “labor speech,” or to shield union organizers from police harassment. And while the decision freed the CIO to organize in Jersey City, it did not destroy Mayor Hague, who accommodated CIO unions and was ousted later due to city politics.

Quaker Brotherhood

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allan W. Austin
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Race Relations ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
Extensive Study ◽  
Japanese American ◽  
World War ◽  
Interracial Relations ◽  
History Of

This is the first extensive study of the American Friends Service Committee's interracial activism in the first half of the twentieth century, filling a major gap in scholarship on the Quakers' race relations work from the AFSC's founding in 1917 to the beginnings of the civil rights movement in the early 1950s. The book tracks the evolution of key AFSC projects, such as the Interracial Section and the American Interracial Peace Committee, that demonstrate the tentativeness of the Friends' activism in the 1920s, as well as efforts in the 1930s to make scholarly ideas and activist work more theologically relevant for Friends. Documenting the AFSC's efforts to help European and Japanese American refugees during World War II, the book shows that by 1950, Quakers in the AFSC had honed a distinctly Friendly approach to interracial relations that combined scholarly understandings of race with their religious views. Highlighting the complicated and sometimes controversial connections between Quakers and race during this era, the book uncovers important aspects of the history of Friends, pacifism, feminism, American religion, immigration, ethnicity, and the early roots of multiculturalism.

“The Negro Nurse—A Citizen Fighting for Democracy”

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charissa J. Threat
Keyword(s):  
African American ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
World War I ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
White Male ◽  
African American Female ◽  
Equal Rights ◽  
World War ◽  
Female Nurses

This chapter examines the efforts by black female nurses and white male nurses to claim a space for themselves in a profession that relegated them to the margins. It begins with a discussion of the founding of the National Association of Colored Graduate Nurses and the Army Nurse Corps (ANC), along with an overview of healthcare and home-front racial politics during World War II. It then turns to nurse shortages during World War I and World War II and proceeds by analyzing the World War II integration campaign by African American female nurses within the larger context of the civil rights movement. In an effort to break down racial barriers, the chapter shows that African American nurses co-opted traditional gender conventions to make the claim that the sex of the nurse, not race, should determine nursing care for soldiers. It also explores how African Americans used wartime rhetoric about equality and democracy on behalf of their campaign for equal rights, justice, and opportunity.

From Forced Tolerance to Forced Busing: Wartime Intercultural Education and the Rise of Black Educational Activism in Boston

2010 ◽  
Vol 80 (3) ◽  
pp. 293-327
Author(s):  
Zoë Burkholder
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Civil Rights ◽  
Civil Rights Movement ◽  
The United States ◽  
World War ◽  
Political Factors ◽  
Teacher Resistance ◽  
Racial Tolerance ◽  
Fertile Ground ◽  
Tolerance Education

In this article, Zoë Burkholder explores the historical interplay of the emergence of tolerance education in the United States and the rise of black educational activism in Boston. By uncovering a pointed lack of tolerance education in Boston and a widespread promotion of tolerance education in other cities in the early half of the twentieth century, the author reveals how racial, historical, and political factors complicated tolerance education's local implementation in Boston. Informed by local racialized politics in the 1940s, the predominantly Irish Catholic teaching force in Boston declined to teach lessons on racial tolerance that were popular nationwide during World War II. Burkholder argues that this site of active teacher resistance against tolerance education provided fertile ground for black educational activism in Boston during the civil rights movement. These findings presage the well-documented virulence of white protest to school integration in Boston and complicate our understanding of integration in today's educational context.

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