Union Divided: Black Musicians’ Fight for Labor Equality

The American Federation of Musicians (AFM) was a union to be reckoned with in the early to mid-twentieth century. Affiliated with the AFL, the union represented musicians who performed in movie theaters and in symphony orchestras; at Broadway shows, local theaters, and on radio and television stations; for the Hollywood studios and the record producers; at nightclubs, restaurants, saloons, gambling houses, dance halls, and burlesque shows; on public marches, in private homes, and at weddings. In other words, AFM musicians performed at every kind of musical venue. Although most of its members were white, the union also enrolled several thousand African American musicians. However, except in Detroit, New York City, Newark, and Canada, the union had separate “colored” and white locals in each city. Asian American musicians were usually admitted to the white locals, Latino/as to the Black locals. In Philadelphia some white musicians joined the Black local.Several good books and dissertations have been written about African American musicians’ locals. Amy Absher’s fine 2014 study The Black Musician and the White City: Race and Music in Chicago, 1900–1967 explores the struggles of Black musicians to support themselves despite being barred from performing anywhere except in the Bronzeville area and routinely defrauded by gangsters. Jon Burlingame’s 1997 study For the Record: The Struggle and Ultimate Political Rise of American Recording Music Within Their Labor Movement carefully examines the merger of the musicians’ Black and white locals in Los Angeles in 1953. In her 1993 doctoral dissertation and in several chapters in the 2011 anthology she edited, Feeding the Soul: Black Music, Black Thought, Diane Turner probed the experience of African American musicians in their Philadelphia local. Other authors have investigated the African American locals in New York City, Buffalo, St. Louis, San Francisco, Seattle, and Pittsburgh.Leta Miller’s Union Divided: Black Musicians’ Fight for Labor Equality is the first examination of all African American musicians’ locals throughout their history. Her book stands out not only for its breadth but also for her approach to the race issue. Most scholars have attributed the creation of the Black musicians’ locals to the prejudices of white musicians and union leaders. Miller offers a more nuanced explanation, arguing, “The establishment of dual unions separated by race but competing in the same territory is a far more complex phenomenon than simply a brazen refusal to admit members due to skin color—although such overt racist actions were certainly manifest in some cities” (4).Although there were exceptions, most Black musicians preferred to be in segregated locals until the 1940s, according to Miller. She presents a convincing explanation of why this was so. The American Federation of Musicians consisted of more than a hundred locals. The locals typically dealt with small employers, which is one reason the larger locals could exercise considerable bargaining power. The president of each local would appoint a committee whose members would decide which musician would receive a union card. Without a union card, it was hard for musicians to get jobs in restaurants, bars, or movie theaters. Unsurprisingly, African American applicants preferred to be evaluated by musicians of their own race.In a segregated marketplace, Black musicians practiced and performed together. When traveling, they ate, drank, roomed, and gambled together. And their locals provided funds for families when a member died. As a result, firm bonds formed among members of Black locals. The larger locals were able to purchase a building, with rooms for the officers, a meeting hall, rehearsal rooms, and a bar. Local 208 in Chicago, the largest African American local, purchased a second building in which the officers and other members could rent apartments that were cleaner and less expensive than those available from white owners.Of course, not all Black musicians were as fortunate as the members of Local 208. No African American musicians were able to start a local of their own without the permission of the international in New York, which in turn required approval from the relevant white local. Many white locals refused to grant such permission. They would only approve “subsidiary” locals, which had no decision-making powers of their own and could not send representatives to the international convention. Even Black musicians in locals certified by the international were highly restricted. Few Black musicians were allowed to perform in city downtowns or in white neighborhoods. As I noted earlier, Black musicians’ pay was frequently siphoned off by gangsters. Yet the alternatives were no better. New York City, for instance, Miller observed, “has often been praised in writing about the AFM for maintaining a racially integrated union throughout its history. A deeper exploration . . . reveals that the New York white unionists, through deft negotiating, thwarted the formation of a Black local” (41–42). It was no better in Newark’s integrated local, where jobs remained segregated as late as 1967.Despite these barriers and despite the prohibition of liquor in 1920, the Black musicians’ locals thrived in the early to mid-1920s. But work for musicians fell precipitously following the advent of sound movies and improvement in the quality of phonograph records in the late 1920s. Work declined further during the Great Depression. Although the Black bands led by Duke Ellington, Count Basie, Cab Calloway, Jimmy Lunceford, Chick Webb, and Andy Kirk succeeded in the 1930s, thousands of other Black musicians lacked work. With the emergence of bebop quartets and the accompanying decline of the big bands in the 1940s, even the Ellington and Basie bands suffered.The musicians’ locals began to integrate in the 1950s. They did so slowly at first and more rapidly following the passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and pressure from the American Federation of Musicians’ Civil Rights Committee. By 1971 all but one of the Black locals had merged with the larger white locals. In the process the Black locals lost their buildings, leaders, influence, and many members, while the Black local in Philadelphia was decertified.The disappearance of the Black locals in the music industry and the falling number of union jobs for African American musicians during the 1960s and 1970s preceded the loss of well-paying union jobs for Black workers in manufacturing in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. We can be grateful to Leta Miller for putting this story together.

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