Organized labor
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Southern Blend
John Rittmann
Today’s Mardi Gras when I’m writing this, so I’ve got Mobile on my mind. It’s a gorgeous city – if you haven’t had the opportunity to go, I recommend looking for one.
I lived there briefly as a teenager before I flunked out of smart kid school. The city itself was incorporated in 1819 and has served as a major shipping hub for the state throughout the length of its tenure. I always thought of the shipyards as fertile ground for the beginnings of workers’ unions in our state.
However, the fact is that the need for representation of the common laborer goes back much further than one might think. This unrest was not shipped in from other countries or states – it was dug up from our very own dirt.
As with many things in Alabama’s history, many of our shared experiences are complicated by the South’s past support of slavery and continued institutionalized negativity toward people of color. This was a particular struggle during Reconstruction, when labor from all residents was severely needed. Funds to pay for labor were in short supply, and the concept of fairly paying Black Alabamians was unfortunately foreign. From “Encyclopedia of Alabama:”
“In 1867, one of the first instances of an organized work stoppage in Alabama occurred. Mobile authorities reported an attempt at a general strike by workers in the city that was supported most strongly by Black laborers on the levee, in the saw-mills, and among those employed at odd jobs, although it was apparently instigated by sympathetic whites. This early incident in a growing movement showed that despite deep racial divisions, whites and Blacks occasionally could work together toward common interests. By the late 1870s, these tenuous attempts at cooperation were reflected in the collaboration between white laboring men and Mobile’s Black voters in independent political campaigns led by Workingmen’s parties and, later, the Greenbacks and Populists.”
Despite the early start, there also aren’t many instances of organized labor during or following Reconstruction. Many of Alabama’s poor were independent sharecroppers or agricultural laborers. It wasn’t until Alabama’s industrialization period that changes began to solidly take place.
As we’ve previously discussed, Alabama’s history of industrialization is a story of coal and textiles. Both of these industries heavily relied on inequitable labor practices – with cotton’s history of sharecropping and slave labor, and Alabama coal’s connection to prison labor, the financial structure of both of these industries was built on sand in our state.
Coal was the source of true organized labor in our state. Rather than workers spread across sprawling cotton fields, the mines required close proximity in cramped dark tunnels. The Black and white laborers developed a sense of companionship as coworkers, and they found themselves talking to one another throughout the day. This increased willingness to work together and a recognition of their common struggle to put food on the table.
This was the beginning of Alabamian connection to national labor unions, the Greenback Labor Party and the Knights of Labor, which established local assemblies connected to coal. It makes sense that this is connected to coal – no one’s saying that agricultural work is easy, but you’re also much less likely to die making money for someone else.
The smaller organizations in the state became affiliate chapters for larger labor unions, the American Federation of Labor and United Mineworkers of America. This strength in numbers approach helped the workers to be given more safety and higher wages. This wasn’t achieved easily. The last two decades of the 1800s involved long lasting, bitterly intense strikes that led to uneasy truces between workers and employers.
I wish this first entry on this topic had a happy ending. I wanted to be able to say that workers were able to set aside racial divides in order to achieve long-lasting results. However, the resurgences of discrimination against people of color that popped up as reconstruction settled again set people back. Labor unions began denying the membership of Black workers, and there wasn’t enough support for Black workers to fully advocate for their needs. Without this representation in organized labor, the presence of skilled Black laborers disappeared.
To be continued.