Civil Rights Unionism
Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth-Century South
Robert R. Korstad
Publisher: University of North Carolina Press
Imprint: The University of North Carolina Press
Published: 11/2003
Pages: 576
Subject: Political Science, Social Science, Business and Economics
| University of North Carolina
Print ISBN: 9.78E+12
eBook ISBN: 9780807862520
DESCRIPTION
Galvanized by the emergence of the CIO, African Americans took the lead in a campaign that saw a strong labor movement and the reenfranchisement of the southern poor as keys to reforming the South--and a reformed South as central to the survival and expansion of the New Deal. In the window of opportunity opened by World War II, they blurred the boundaries between home and work as they linked civil rights and labor rights in a bid for justice at work and in the public sphere.
But civil rights unionism foundered in the maelstrom of the Cold War. Its defeat undermined later efforts by civil rights activists to raise issues of economic equality to the moral high ground occupied by the fight against legalized segregation and, Korstad contends, constrains the prospects for justice and democracy today.
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