Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham (review)

Reviewed by: Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham Susan W. Thomas Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham. Edited by Horace Huntley and David Montgomery. Champaign, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2004. 244 pp. $35 hardback. A compilation of seventeen oral interviews gleaned from the Oral History Project of the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute, Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham supplements the increasing number of historical works focusing on the link between civil rights and labor activism. The selected interviews provide a personal view of the city's black working class history as they emphasize the ways in which labor organizing benefited them in the workplace and beyond. With few exceptions, the interviews highlight workers' realization that "the Civil Rights Movement would not have been able to do a lot of things . . . had it not been for the labor movement." Although Birmingham has a well-known history of activism during the decades of the Civil Rights Movement, the purpose here is to uncover the hidden history of black workers who organized in the workplace and battled racism on all fronts. David Montgomery provides an analytical twenty-five page overview of the formation of the black working class in Birmingham, a post-bellum industrial city that drew poor whites and blacks into the mines and factories throughout the early twentieth century. Carefully examining the connections between black workers' activism and their concurrent participation in the struggle for racial equality in the wider community, Montgomery outlines the development of the city's industrial base and the role of legally sanctioned segregation in defining black lives. While Montgomery's introduction is useful for placing the interviews in historical context, the accounts themselves are valuable for providing a fresh perspective on how black workers understood their own lives. The editors preface each interview with brief biographical remarks and provide useful footnotes for clarification, when necessary. Many of the interviews focus on the significance of the black church (particularly in relation to the work of Reverend Fred Shuttlesworth) as a source of spiritual support in the fight against discrimination and for civil rights. Several interviewees indicate that their involvement in the church either ignited their consciousness to the cause of civil rights or enabled them to bring their rights consciousness borne in the workplace to their neighborhoods. Although the title indicates that these will be remembrances of life and work in Birmingham, a number of those interviewed provide information about conditions in other large cities, including Chicago. In addition, not all of those whose interviews appear were blacks. Eula McGill, a well-known white union organizer and activist, explains in her own words the rationale [End Page 118] for including her interview in this volume: "We had to fight for our Civil Rights. So many people think Civil Rights are just black rights. Civil Rights are everybody's rights. They are human rights." Accessible to a broad audience, Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham will prove useful as a resource in undergraduate labor history courses and for students seeking easy access to compelling documentary evidence of the close ties between black workers' participation in labor organizing and their battle for civil rights. Montgomery's analytical introduction will benefit all who are concerned with issues of race and labor. Susan W. Thomas University of North Carolina Copyright © 2006 the West Virginia University Press, for the United Association for Labor Studies

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