Sentinels for New South Industry: Booker T. Washington, Industrial Accommodation and Black Workers in the Jim Crow South

Labor History

Volumn 44, Issue 3, 2003, Pages

  Kelly, Brian ^a  

^a National Humanities Center   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 0347530344     PISSN: 0023656X     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/002365603200012955     Document Type: Review

References (108)

1. The most authoritative account of the events appears in Aline Helg, "Our Rightful Share": The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). See also Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Louis A. Perez, Jr., "Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 'Race War' in Cuba Reconsidered," Hispanic American Historical Review 66, 3 (1986), 509-539.
2. The most authoritative account of the events appears in Aline Helg, "Our Rightful Share": The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). See also Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Louis A. Perez, Jr., "Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 'Race War' in Cuba Reconsidered," Hispanic American Historical Review 66, 3 (1986), 509-539.
3. The most authoritative account of the events appears in Aline Helg, "Our Rightful Share": The Afro-Cuban Struggle for Equality, 1886-1912 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1995). See also Alejandro de la Fuente, A Nation for All: Race, Inequality, and Politics in Twentieth Century Cuba (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2001), Louis A. Perez, Jr., "Politics, Peasants, and People of Color: The 1912 'Race War' in Cuba Reconsidered," Hispanic American Historical Review 66, 3 (1986), 509-539.
4. In 1898 Washington entered an arrangement with the US military allowing matriculation of Cuban and Puerto Rican students at Tuskegee Institute. Some among them led a series of strikes and mini-rebellions at Tuskegee over complaints about food and prohibitions against their playing baseball on Sundays. "Largely because of the Latin students," notes Harlan, "the school had to construct a guardhouse. The Cubans refused to eat ... and struck against their work. When a teacher and a student tried to put [one of the leaders] in jail, his compatriots jumped them, but they succeeded in making the arrest. Guns were flourished before order was restored." Louis R. Harlan, Booker T. Washington: The Making of a Black Leader, 1856-1901 (New York and London: Oxford University Press, 1972), 283.
5. Booker T. Washington, "Negro Leaders Have Kept Racial Peace," The Continent (Chicago) 43 (October 3, 1912), 1382, in Booker T. Washington Papers (hereafter BTW Papers), ed. Harlan, vol. 11 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 33-34.
6. Booker T. Washington, "Negro Leaders Have Kept Racial Peace," The Continent (Chicago) 43 (October 3, 1912), 1382, in Booker T. Washington Papers (hereafter BTW Papers), ed. Harlan, vol. 11 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 33-34.
7. Adam Fairclough, Better Day Coming: Blacks and Equality, 1890-2000 (New York: Penguin, 2001), xiii.
8. For general remarks about the strengths and weaknesses of this scholarship as it applies to the turn-of-the-century urban South, see my "Racial Uplift and Racial Solidarity in Early Twentieth-Century Birmingham: A Review of Lynne B. Feldman's 'A Sense of Place'," online at: http://h-net.msu.edu/cgi-bin/logbrowse.pl?trx=vx&list=h-labor&month= 0107&week=e (July 2001).
9. Virtually all assessments of Washington, including my own, accept the conclusion reached in early studies by Louis Harlan and August Meier that he combined public submission to white supremacy with surreptitious attempts to challenge specific elements of the Southern racial order. Harlan writes that "Washington "clandestinely financed and directed a number of court suits challenging the grandfather clause, denial of jury service to blacks, Jim Crow service in transportation, and peonage. Thus, he paradoxically attacked the racial settlement he publicly accepted." See Harlan, Washington: Making of a Black Leader, preface, n.p. See also Meier, Negro Thought in America, 110-114.
10. Virtually all assessments of Washington, including my own, accept the conclusion reached in early studies by Louis Harlan and August Meier that he combined public submission to white supremacy with surreptitious attempts to challenge specific elements of the Southern racial order. Harlan writes that "Washington "clandestinely financed and directed a number of court suits challenging the grandfather clause, denial of jury service to blacks, Jim Crow service in transportation, and peonage. Thus, he paradoxically attacked the racial settlement he publicly accepted." See Harlan, Washington: Making of a Black Leader, preface, n.p. See also Meier, Negro Thought in America, 110-114.
11. Jacquelyn Dowd Hall, "Mobilizing Memory: Broadening Our View of the Civil Rights Movement," The Chronicle Review, July 27, 2001, online at: http://www.chronick.com.
12. George Gordon Crawford, Tennessee Coal, Iron and Railroad executive, cited in George R. Leighton, Five Cities: the Story of Their Youth and Old Age (New York: Ayer, 1998), 129.
13. Judith Stein, "Black and White Burdens: Review of Willard B. Gatewood, Jr., 'Black Americans and the White Man's Burden, 1898-1903'," Reviews in American History, March 1976, 89.
14. "The Negro as a Mill Hand," Manufacturer's Record, September 22, 1893.
15. See Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 214-277. Honey's argument is sharply challenged by Alan Draper in Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 (Ithaca: ILR Press, 1994), 10-13.
16. See Michael K. Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1993), 214-277. Honey's argument is sharply challenged by Alan Draper in Conflict of Interests: Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Movement, 1954-1968 (Ithaca: ILR Press, 1994), 10-13.
17. "Southern Bessemer Ores," Manufacturers' Record, October 25, 1890.
18. In recent years a rich historical literature has documented the centrality of labor militancy as a key component of post-Reconstruction black activism. See, for example, Berlin et al., Freedom: a Documentary History of Emancipation (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1990), particularly Series 1, vols.2 and 3, The Wartime Genesis of Free Labor. Historians disagree on whether the Populists ever actually challenged white supremacy. More important here, however, is the question of whether Populism was perceived by the Southern ruling class as a threat to the racial order. About this issue, it would seem there can be little debate.
19. For useful surveys of black labor activism in the Jim Crow South, see Paul B. Worthman and James R. Green, "Black Workers in the News South, 1865-1915," in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, ed. Huggins, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971); Eric Arnesen, "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review 55 (1993), 53-87; Rick Halpern, "Organized Labor, Black Workers, and the Twentieth-Century South: The Emerging Revision," in Race and Class in the American South since 1890, ed. Stokes and Halpem (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 43-76; Daniel Letwin, "Labor Relations in the Industrializing South," in A Companion to the American South, ed. John Boles (London: Blackwell, 2001), 424-443.
20. For useful surveys of black labor activism in the Jim Crow South, see Paul B. Worthman and James R. Green, "Black Workers in the News South, 1865-1915," in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, ed. Huggins, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971); Eric Arnesen, "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review 55 (1993), 53-87; Rick Halpern, "Organized Labor, Black Workers, and the Twentieth-Century South: The Emerging Revision," in Race and Class in the American South since 1890, ed. Stokes and Halpem (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 43-76; Daniel Letwin, "Labor Relations in the Industrializing South," in A Companion to the American South, ed. John Boles (London: Blackwell, 2001), 424-443.
21. For useful surveys of black labor activism in the Jim Crow South, see Paul B. Worthman and James R. Green, "Black Workers in the News South, 1865-1915," in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, ed. Huggins, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971); Eric Arnesen, "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review 55 (1993), 53-87; Rick Halpern, "Organized Labor, Black Workers, and the Twentieth-Century South: The Emerging Revision," in Race and Class in the American South since 1890, ed. Stokes and Halpem (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 43-76; Daniel Letwin, "Labor Relations in the Industrializing South," in A Companion to the American South, ed. John Boles (London: Blackwell, 2001), 424-443.
22. For useful surveys of black labor activism in the Jim Crow South, see Paul B. Worthman and James R. Green, "Black Workers in the News South, 1865-1915," in Key Issues in the Afro-American Experience, ed. Huggins, vol. 2 (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1971); Eric Arnesen, "Following the Color Line of Labor: Black Workers and the Labor Movement before 1930," Radical History Review 55 (1993), 53-87; Rick Halpern, "Organized Labor, Black Workers, and the Twentieth-Century South: The Emerging Revision," in Race and Class in the American South since 1890, ed. Stokes and Halpem (Oxford: Berg, 1994), 43-76; Daniel Letwin, "Labor Relations in the Industrializing South," in A Companion to the American South, ed. John Boles (London: Blackwell, 2001), 424-443.
23. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
24. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
25. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
26. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
27. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
28. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
29. Judith Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others': The Political Economy of Racism in the United States," Science and Society 38 (1974-75), 434-441; Meier, Negro Thought in America, 38-39. On black Democrats, Else Barkley Brown writes (123-124) that "[b]lack men and women ... throughout the South, initiated sanctions against those black men perceived as violating the collective good by supporting Conservative forces. Black Democrats were subjected to the severest exclusion: disciplined within or quite often expelled from their churches and mutual benefit societies; denied board and lodging with black families." Later, as "formal political gains... began to recede and economic promise became less certain... political struggles over relationships between the working-class and the newly emergent middle-class, between men and women, between literate and non-literate, increasingly became issues" in Richmond (130). See Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146. See also Peter Kolchin, First Freedom: The Responses of Alabama's Blacks to Emancipation and Reconstruction (Westport: Greenwood, 1972), 132, and the documents in Herbert Aptheker, A Documentary History of the Negro in the United States, vol. 1 (New York: Citadel, 1951), 565-568, 576-579 and Edmund L. Drago, Hurrah for Hamptonl: Black Red Shirts in South Carolina During Reconstruction (Fayetteville: University of Arkansas Press, 1998), 57-94. August Meier writes that while initially "those who [stood] with the Democrats tended to be the old servant class or successful, conservative businessmen," the composition of Democratic supporters changed as Southern blacks dejected by the desertion of their cause by Republicans began to tactically divide their votes. See Meier, "The Negro and the Democratic Party, 1875-1915," Phylon 17 (1956), 2, 173-191 (quote from 174).
30. Stein, " 'Of Mr. Booker T. Washington'," 432.
31. August Meier, "Negro Class Structure in the Age of Booker T. Washington," Phylon 23 (1962), 258. Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) writes that the "Negro elite - professional men, lawyers, or small, financially ambitious merchants ... were quite eager to promote the concept of 'separate but equal". Thus in only ten years after the Emancipation, there was already a great reaction setting in. All the legal chicanery and physical suppression the South used to put the Negro back in his place was, in effect, aided and abetted by a great many so-called Negro leaders." Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: Harper Trade, 1963), 53.
32. August Meier, "Negro Class Structure in the Age of Booker T. Washington," Phylon 23 (1962), 258. Leroi Jones (Amiri Baraka) writes that the "Negro elite - professional men, lawyers, or small, financially ambitious merchants ... were quite eager to promote the concept of 'separate but equal". Thus in only ten years after the Emancipation, there was already a great reaction setting in. All the legal chicanery and physical suppression the South used to put the Negro back in his place was, in effect, aided and abetted by a great many so-called Negro leaders." Jones, Blues People: Negro Music in White America (New York: Harper Trade, 1963), 53.
33. Henry W. Grady, The New South and Other Addresses (New York: Maynard, Merrill & Co., 1904), 53. Oliver Cromwell Cox writes that " [t] he Southern oligarchy proposed to use the best Negroes, the most gifted of them, to forestall the political aspirations of their own people." Cox, "Leadership Among Negroes in the United States," in Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action, ed. Alvin W. Gouldner (New York: Russell and Russell, 1950), 238.
34. Henry W. Grady, The New South and Other Addresses (New York: Maynard, Merrill & Co., 1904), 53. Oliver Cromwell Cox writes that " [t] he Southern oligarchy proposed to use the best Negroes, the most gifted of them, to forestall the political aspirations of their own people." Cox, "Leadership Among Negroes in the United States," in Studies in Leadership: Leadership and Democratic Action, ed. Alvin W. Gouldner (New York: Russell and Russell, 1950), 238.
35. Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 2, 321; Harlan, Washington: Making of a Black Leader, 166.
36. Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 2, 321; Harlan, Washington: Making of a Black Leader, 166.
37. Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 4 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1975), 17, n. 1.
38. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: A.L. Burt, 1901), 159; "The Educational and Industrial Emancipation of the Negro: An Address before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences," February 22, 1903, in BTW Papers, ed. Harlan, vol. 7 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 94; Southern States Farm Magazine, January 1898, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 4, 375.
39. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: A.L. Burt, 1901), 159; "The Educational and Industrial Emancipation of the Negro: An Address before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences," February 22, 1903, in BTW Papers, ed. Harlan, vol. 7 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 94; Southern States Farm Magazine, January 1898, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 4, 375.
40. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: A.L. Burt, 1901), 159; "The Educational and Industrial Emancipation of the Negro: An Address before the Brooklyn Institute of Arts and Sciences," February 22, 1903, in BTW Papers, ed. Harlan, vol. 7 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 94; Southern States Farm Magazine, January 1898, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 4, 375.
41. See, for example, Washington, Up From Slavery, 158.
42. H. C. Harris of Birmingham quoted in Proceedings of the National Negro Business League, Boston (August 23-24, 1900), 219.
43. Washington shared the concern expressed by white elites that the "lesser race," deprived of patrician guidance, was rapidly "deteriorating" and perhaps even on the road to extinction. David W. Blight traces the emergence of white consensus about black degeneration in "popular literature ... minstrelsy, film, and cartoons, and, most tellingly,... in academic high places. Produced by historians, statisticians in the service of insurance companies, and scientists of all manner, a hereditarian and social Darwinist theory of black capacity fueled racial policies of evasion and repression. By the turn of the century, [popular] Negrophobia was ... buttressed by highly developed, academic notions of blacks as a 'vanishing race,' destined to lose the struggle of natural selection. " David W. Blight, "Quarrel Forgotten or Revolution Remembered? Reunion and Race in the Memory of the Civil War, 1875-1913," in Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, ed. Blight and Simpson (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997), 162-163. See also Fairclough, Better Day Coming, 12-13, 25. Typical of this view was an editorial in the Manufacturers' Record which warned that "In considering [the race] problem most of us are prone to forget that the Negro is but forty years removed from slavery; that those forty years have done much to counteract the benefits conferred by slavery upon the Negro in the elemental training which changed him from an indolent savage to a worker ..." Manufacturers' Record, May 1, 1902.
44. Washington shared the concern expressed by white elites that the "lesser race," deprived of patrician guidance, was rapidly "deteriorating" and perhaps even on the road to extinction. David W. Blight traces the emergence of white consensus about black degeneration in "popular literature ... minstrelsy, film, and cartoons, and, most tellingly,... in academic high places. Produced by historians, statisticians in the service of insurance companies, and scientists of all manner, a hereditarian and social Darwinist theory of black capacity fueled racial policies of evasion and repression. By the turn of the century, [popular] Negrophobia was ... buttressed by highly developed, academic notions of blacks as a 'vanishing race,' destined to lose the struggle of natural selection. " David W. Blight, "Quarrel Forgotten or Revolution Remembered? Reunion and Race in the Memory of the Civil War, 1875-1913," in Union and Emancipation: Essays on Politics and Race in the Civil War Era, ed. Blight and Simpson (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1997), 162-163. See also Fairclough, Better Day Coming, 12-13, 25. Typical of this view was an editorial in the Manufacturers' Record which warned that "In considering [the race] problem most of us are prone to forget that the Negro is but forty years removed from slavery; that those forty years have done much to counteract the benefits conferred by slavery upon the Negro in the elemental training which changed him from an indolent savage to a worker ..." Manufacturers' Record, May 1, 1902.
45. William J. Edwards, Twenty-Five Years in the Black Belt (Tuscaloosa: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 109, 110-111.
46. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 20; Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf, 1998), 148.
47. Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 20; Leon F. Litwack, Trouble in Mind: Black Southerners in the Age of Jim Crow (New York: Knopf, 1998), 148.
48. Testimony of Mrs. Ward, November 15, 1883, Report on Relations Between in Labor and Capital, vol. 4 (Washington: U.S. Senate Commission on Education and Labor, 1885), 343, cited in Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom, 59-60. On day-to-day resistance among Atlanta domestics, see Hunter, 57-62.
49. Speech of Oswald Garrison Villard, Proceedings of the National Negro Business League, Sixth Annual Convention (August 16-19, 1905), 45-48, 52.
50. Councill in Colored American, August 11, 1900, cited in Meier, Negro Thought in America, 210; Fanny Jackson Coppin cited in Cynthia Neverdon-Morton's discussion of the Hampton Negro Conference in Afro-American Women of the South, 113. Article on the futility of education in "[a]rt and music for people who lived in rented houses and have no bank account" appears in Tuskegee Student 14 (1902), 1-3, cited in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 6 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 469. Chisum's early career is discussed in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 219, n. 1. Washington's comments on domestic training appeared in Colored Alabamian, January 23, 1909.
51. Councill in Colored American, August 11, 1900, cited in Meier, Negro Thought in America, 210; Fanny Jackson Coppin cited in Cynthia Neverdon-Morton's discussion of the Hampton Negro Conference in Afro-American Women of the South, 113. Article on the futility of education in "[a]rt and music for people who lived in rented houses and have no bank account" appears in Tuskegee Student 14 (1902), 1-3, cited in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 6 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 469. Chisum's early career is discussed in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 219, n. 1. Washington's comments on domestic training appeared in Colored Alabamian, January 23, 1909.
52. Councill in Colored American, August 11, 1900, cited in Meier, Negro Thought in America, 210; Fanny Jackson Coppin cited in Cynthia Neverdon-Morton's discussion of the Hampton Negro Conference in Afro-American Women of the South, 113. Article on the futility of education in "[a]rt and music for people who lived in rented houses and have no bank account" appears in Tuskegee Student 14 (1902), 1-3, cited in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 6 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 469. Chisum's early career is discussed in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 219, n. 1. Washington's comments on domestic training appeared in Colored Alabamian, January 23, 1909.
53. Councill in Colored American, August 11, 1900, cited in Meier, Negro Thought in America, 210; Fanny Jackson Coppin cited in Cynthia Neverdon-Morton's discussion of the Hampton Negro Conference in Afro-American Women of the South, 113. Article on the futility of education in "[a]rt and music for people who lived in rented houses and have no bank account" appears in Tuskegee Student 14 (1902), 1-3, cited in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 6 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 469. Chisum's early career is discussed in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 219, n. 1. Washington's comments on domestic training appeared in Colored Alabamian, January 23, 1909.
54. Councill in Colored American, August 11, 1900, cited in Meier, Negro Thought in America, 210; Fanny Jackson Coppin cited in Cynthia Neverdon-Morton's discussion of the Hampton Negro Conference in Afro-American Women of the South, 113. Article on the futility of education in "[a]rt and music for people who lived in rented houses and have no bank account" appears in Tuskegee Student 14 (1902), 1-3, cited in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 6 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 469. Chisum's early career is discussed in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 219, n. 1. Washington's comments on domestic training appeared in Colored Alabamian, January 23, 1909.
55. Councill in Colored American, August 11, 1900, cited in Meier, Negro Thought in America, 210; Fanny Jackson Coppin cited in Cynthia Neverdon-Morton's discussion of the Hampton Negro Conference in Afro-American Women of the South, 113. Article on the futility of education in "[a]rt and music for people who lived in rented houses and have no bank account" appears in Tuskegee Student 14 (1902), 1-3, cited in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 6 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977), 469. Chisum's early career is discussed in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 219, n. 1. Washington's comments on domestic training appeared in Colored Alabamian, January 23, 1909.
56. Birmingham Age Herald, August 16, 1903; James W. Sloss cited in Daniel L. Letwin, "Race, Class and Industrialization: Black and White Coal Miners in the Birmingham District of Alabama, 1878-1897," Ph.D. dissertation, New Haven, 1991, 55.
57. Birmingham Age Herald, August 16, 1903; James W. Sloss cited in Daniel L. Letwin, "Race, Class and Industrialization: Black and White Coal Miners in the Birmingham District of Alabama, 1878-1897," Ph.D. dissertation, New Haven, 1991, 55.
58. BTW to Glenn R. LeRoy, March 31, 1903, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 109-110; editor W. C. Smith in the Charlotte Messenger, February 24, 1883, cited in Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 85.
59. BTW to Glenn R. LeRoy, March 31, 1903, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 109-110; editor W. C. Smith in the Charlotte Messenger, February 24, 1883, cited in Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 85.
60. BTW to Glenn R. LeRoy, March 31, 1903, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 109-110; editor W. C. Smith in the Charlotte Messenger, February 24, 1883, cited in Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 85.
61. BTW to Glenn R. LeRoy, March 31, 1903, in Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 7, 109-110; editor W. C. Smith in the Charlotte Messenger, February 24, 1883, cited in Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 85.
62. Birmingham Reporter, August 9, 1919.
63. Birmingham Reporter, December 4, 1920; August 9, 1919; Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 85, 96; Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom, 173, and Chapter 8, "Dancing and Carousing the Night Away," 168-186. Hunter concludes the chapter by suggesting that "[m]uch was at stake for the black middle class in this struggle to contain and eradicate vernacular dance. The controversy over dancing occurred as a modern black bourgeoisie asserted its claim to define and direct racial progress. The black elite sought to impose its own values and standards on the masses, to obliterate plebeian cultural expressions that, in its view, prolonged the degradation of the race" (186). Feldman contends, similarly, that "members of the middle class believed it was their duty to perform as role models for the downtrodden and that the crude behavior displayed by members of the lower classes was responsible for the race's problems, including Jim Crow legislation." Feldman, Sense of Place, 189.
64. Birmingham Reporter, December 4, 1920; August 9, 1919; Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 85, 96; Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom, 173, and Chapter 8, "Dancing and Carousing the Night Away," 168-186. Hunter concludes the chapter by suggesting that "[m]uch was at stake for the black middle class in this struggle to contain and eradicate vernacular dance. The controversy over dancing occurred as a modern black bourgeoisie asserted its claim to define and direct racial progress. The black elite sought to impose its own values and standards on the masses, to obliterate plebeian cultural expressions that, in its view, prolonged the degradation of the race" (186). Feldman contends, similarly, that "members of the middle class believed it was their duty to perform as role models for the downtrodden and that the crude behavior displayed by members of the lower classes was responsible for the race's problems, including Jim Crow legislation." Feldman, Sense of Place, 189.
65. Birmingham Reporter, August 12, 1916.
66. White, Too Heavy a Load, 70.
67. William E. Montgomery argues that in the years following Reconstruction an "expanded [black] aristocracy," which included the "mulatto-dominated elite [and] blacks from the ranks of teachers, ministers, lawyers, and physicians... formed their own churches" in order, one contemporary observer suggested, "to get as far as possible from the ordinary Negro." Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree: The African-American Church in the South, 1865-1900 (Baton Rouge: LSU Press, 1993), 260.
68. Wayne Flynt, "Alabama White Protestantism and Labor, 1900-1914," Alabama Review, October, 1981, 206, 208.
69. Montgomery writes that as "the Baptist and Methodist churches became more conservative, with expanding bourgeois values, their services and congregations looked and sounded more like the Presbyterian, Congregational, and Episcopal churches of the black aristocracy" and "began to lose their appeal to poor, uneducated people who looked in growing numbers to the new holiness, pentecostal, and spiritual movements for the religious experiences that would elevate their lives. See Montgomery, Under Their Own Vine and Fig Tree, 345-346. Paul Harvey concurs, arguing that "[r] acial and cultural interchange figured importantly in early Holiness/Pentecostalism. A faith born not in the South, but attracting white and black southern folk disaffected by the embourgeoisment of dominant urban religious institutions, early Pentecostalism functioned much like the early national camp meetings." Harvey, "Racial Interchange in Early Southern Pentecostalism: Paper Delivered at the Annual Meeting of the Southern Historical Association," November 16-19, 2001, New Orleans, 1.
70. "The Alabama Mining Camp," The Independent, October 3, 1907, 790-791; J. B. Hodges to W. N. Sangster, January 15, 1923, Box 47:4, "Church-Blox," Kirby Lumber Company Collection, RG D-034, Houston Metropolitan Research Center (hereafter KLCR).
71. World's Work 14 (1907), 9125-9134.
72. "An Address by William Taylor Burwell Williams on Washington's Tour of Virginia," July 4, 1909, in Harlan(ed.),BTWPapers, vol. 10(Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1981), 144. Williams was a Hampton graduate and later a member of the faculty at Tuskegee. The 1909 Newport News visit was followed up by a trip to Page, West Virginia, where Washington addressed a meeting of black miners (148). 1912 meeting reported in "An Account of a Speech in Newport News, Virginia," Tuskegee Student, August 1, 1912.
73. "An Account of a Speech in Newport News, Virginia," Tuskegee Student, August 1, 1912.
74. Nell Irvin Painter, "Social Equality, Miscegenation, Labor, and Power," in The Evolution of Southern Culture, ed. Numan V. Bartley (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 60.
75. Gaines writes that elites "opposed racism by calling attention to class distinctions among African Americans as a sign of evolutionary race progress... The self-help component of uplift increasingly bore the stamp of evolutionary racial theories positing the civilization of elites against the moral degradation of the masses. " Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 20-21. Greenwood reports that Charlotte race leaders opposed Democratic Party legislation calling for segregation on the rails "chiefly on the grounds that it did not take into account class differences among blacks." They voiced "no objection to being separated from white people if they will place colored ladies and gentlemen in a coach where they can be protected against white and black roughs alike ..." Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 204-205.
76. 46 Gaines writes that elites "opposed racism by calling attention to class distinctions among African Americans as a sign of evolutionary race progress... The self-help component of uplift increasingly bore the stamp of evolutionary racial theories positing the civilization of elites against the moral degradation of the masses. " Gaines, Uplifting the Race, 20-21. Greenwood reports that Charlotte race leaders opposed Democratic Party legislation calling for segregation on the rails "chiefly on the grounds that it did not take into account class differences among blacks." They voiced "no objection to being separated from white people if they will place colored ladies and gentlemen in a coach where they can be protected against white and black roughs alike ..." Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy, 204-205.
77. See Washington to John Elbert McConnell, December 17, 1885, Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 2, 284.
78. Washington's speech cited in Basil Mathews, Booker T. Washington: Educator and Racial Interpreter (London: SCM Press, 1949), 223. Some measure of white elite reaction to the accommodationists' silence on racial violence can be gleaned in the satisfaction expressed by white observers at annual meetings of Washington's National Negro Business League. Reporting on the NNBL's 1900 Convention in Boston, Gunton's Magazine noted that although "[t]he New Orleans riots occurred while the preparations for the conference were being made," the "streets of New York resounded to the cries of negro-hunting mobs just at the time when many of the delegates were leaving their homes to come to Boston," and the "newspapers were filled with accounts of the disturbance at Akron," the proceedings passed without "one single reference to the riots or the conditions which gave rise to them." "These were business men, come to Boston for a definite purpose with which politics had no connection." The Boston press reported similarly that "There was no politics [or] clamoring for rights. There was as little sentimentality as in a meeting of stock jobbers or railroad directors," See Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 6, 76-77. In almost identical terms the Manufacturers' Record ("Negroes Who Work," August 27, 1903) remarked on the NNBL's Nashville Convention in 1903 that it was "gratifying to hear so few complaints urged against the white people ... But two babblements were uttered against 'the oppressions' of the white man out of a delegation of 1500 representatives of the industrial negroes from every part of the country. This serves to show that that portion of the negro race which wishes to work had no cause for just complaint. It is the loafer, the idler, the fellow who wants the government to come to his assistance, the improperly educated, who want social equality and advantages that their merits do not justify."
79. Washington's speech cited in Basil Mathews, Booker T. Washington: Educator and Racial Interpreter (London: SCM Press, 1949), 223. Some measure of white elite reaction to the accommodationists' silence on racial violence can be gleaned in the satisfaction expressed by white observers at annual meetings of Washington's National Negro Business League. Reporting on the NNBL's 1900 Convention in Boston, Gunton's Magazine noted that although "[t]he New Orleans riots occurred while the preparations for the conference were being made," the "streets of New York resounded to the cries of negro-hunting mobs just at the time when many of the delegates were leaving their homes to come to Boston," and the "newspapers were filled with accounts of the disturbance at Akron," the proceedings passed without "one single reference to the riots or the conditions which gave rise to them." "These were business men, come to Boston for a definite purpose with which politics had no connection." The Boston press reported similarly that "There was no politics [or] clamoring for rights. There was as little sentimentality as in a meeting of stock jobbers or railroad directors," See Harlan, BTW Papers, vol. 6, 76-77. In almost identical terms the Manufacturers' Record ("Negroes Who Work," August 27, 1903) remarked on the NNBL's Nashville Convention in 1903 that it was "gratifying to hear so few complaints urged against the white people ... But two babblements were uttered against 'the oppressions' of the white man out of a delegation of 1500 representatives of the industrial negroes from every part of the country. This serves to show that that portion of the negro race which wishes to work had no cause for just complaint. It is the loafer, the idler, the fellow who wants the government to come to his assistance, the improperly educated, who want social equality and advantages that their merits do not justify."
80. "Cheap Southern Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 16, 1890; "The South and Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 10, 1905; "The Negro Problem," Manufacturers' Record, October 28, 1898. See also "Difficulties of the Labor Problem in Southern Industries," Manufacturers' Record, July 20, 1905: "One quality of the negro... is that he shows no disposition to unionize or to strike in the aggregate, however embarrassing his striking as an individual may be"; "Labor in the South," Manufacturers' Record, May 15, 1886: "... one great cause of [the] rapid development of manufactures at the South is the comparative steadiness of labor in that section and the infrequency of strikes and wrangles ... [T]he difference in steadiness and freedom from interruption is an enormous advantage to Southern industry." In their classic study, Greene and Woodson acknowledged both the paternalist dynamic and the strikebreaking role of black workers, though they focused more closely on Northern industry in the early to mid-20th century. "The main factor in the increase of Negroes in the iron and steel industry," they wrote, "has been the general absence of the tendency among Negro workers to unite for collective bargaining." While their study highlighted the ways in which organized labor's racism reinforced the alienation of black workers from organizing efforts, they found black workers "so bound to the interests of their employers that little fear of their striking was entertained by factory owners." Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930), 252.
81. "Cheap Southern Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 16, 1890; "The South and Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 10, 1905; "The Negro Problem," Manufacturers' Record, October 28, 1898. See also "Difficulties of the Labor Problem in Southern Industries," Manufacturers' Record, July 20, 1905: "One quality of the negro... is that he shows no disposition to unionize or to strike in the aggregate, however embarrassing his striking as an individual may be"; "Labor in the South," Manufacturers' Record, May 15, 1886: "... one great cause of [the] rapid development of manufactures at the South is the comparative steadiness of labor in that section and the infrequency of strikes and wrangles ... [T]he difference in steadiness and freedom from interruption is an enormous advantage to Southern industry." In their classic study, Greene and Woodson acknowledged both the paternalist dynamic and the strikebreaking role of black workers, though they focused more closely on Northern industry in the early to mid-20th century. "The main factor in the increase of Negroes in the iron and steel industry," they wrote, "has been the general absence of the tendency among Negro workers to unite for collective bargaining." While their study highlighted the ways in which organized labor's racism reinforced the alienation of black workers from organizing efforts, they found black workers "so bound to the interests of their employers that little fear of their striking was entertained by factory owners." Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930), 252.
82. "Cheap Southern Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 16, 1890; "The South and Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 10, 1905; "The Negro Problem," Manufacturers' Record, October 28, 1898. See also "Difficulties of the Labor Problem in Southern Industries," Manufacturers' Record, July 20, 1905: "One quality of the negro... is that he shows no disposition to unionize or to strike in the aggregate, however embarrassing his striking as an individual may be"; "Labor in the South," Manufacturers' Record, May 15, 1886: "... one great cause of [the] rapid development of manufactures at the South is the comparative steadiness of labor in that section and the infrequency of strikes and wrangles ... [T]he difference in steadiness and freedom from interruption is an enormous advantage to Southern industry." In their classic study, Greene and Woodson acknowledged both the paternalist dynamic and the strikebreaking role of black workers, though they focused more closely on Northern industry in the early to mid-20th century. "The main factor in the increase of Negroes in the iron and steel industry," they wrote, "has been the general absence of the tendency among Negro workers to unite for collective bargaining." While their study highlighted the ways in which organized labor's racism reinforced the alienation of black workers from organizing efforts, they found black workers "so bound to the interests of their employers that little fear of their striking was entertained by factory owners." Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930), 252.
83. "Cheap Southern Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 16, 1890; "The South and Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 10, 1905; "The Negro Problem," Manufacturers' Record, October 28, 1898. See
84. "Cheap Southern Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 16, 1890; "The South and Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 10, 1905; "The Negro Problem," Manufacturers' Record, October 28, 1898. See also "Difficulties of the Labor Problem in Southern Industries," Manufacturers' Record, July 20, 1905: "One quality of the negro... is that he shows no disposition to unionize or to strike in the aggregate, however embarrassing his striking as an individual may be"; "Labor in the South," Manufacturers' Record, May 15, 1886: "... one great cause of [the] rapid development of manufactures at the South is the comparative steadiness of labor in that section and the infrequency of strikes and wrangles ... [T]he difference in steadiness and freedom from interruption is an enormous advantage to Southern industry." In their classic study, Greene and Woodson acknowledged both the paternalist dynamic and the strikebreaking role of black workers, though they focused more closely on Northern industry in the early to mid-20th century. "The main factor in the increase of Negroes in the iron and steel industry," they wrote, "has been the general absence of the tendency among Negro workers to unite for collective bargaining." While their study highlighted the ways in which organized labor's racism reinforced the alienation of black workers from organizing efforts, they found black workers "so bound to the interests of their employers that little fear of their striking was entertained by factory owners." Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930), 252.
85. "Cheap Southern Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 16, 1890; "The South and Labor," Manufacturers' Record, August 10, 1905; "The Negro Problem," Manufacturers' Record, October 28, 1898. See also "Difficulties of the Labor Problem in Southern Industries," Manufacturers' Record, July 20, 1905: "One quality of the negro... is that he shows no disposition to unionize or to strike in the aggregate, however embarrassing his striking as an individual may be"; "Labor in the South," Manufacturers' Record, May 15, 1886: "... one great cause of [the] rapid development of manufactures at the South is the comparative steadiness of labor in that section and the infrequency of strikes and wrangles ... [T]he difference in steadiness and freedom from interruption is an enormous advantage to Southern industry." In their classic study, Greene and Woodson acknowledged both the paternalist dynamic and the strikebreaking role of black workers, though they focused more closely on Northern industry in the early to mid-20th century. "The main factor in the increase of Negroes in the iron and steel industry," they wrote, "has been the general absence of the tendency among Negro workers to unite for collective bargaining." While their study highlighted the ways in which organized labor's racism reinforced the alienation of black workers from organizing efforts, they found black workers "so bound to the interests of their employers that little fear of their striking was entertained by factory owners." Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson, The Negro Wage Earner (Washington, DC: The Association for the Study of Negro Life and History, 1930), 252.
86. Harlan writes that Washington "all his life reflected the general viewpoint that Bryce [editor of Hampton's conservative Southern Workman] expressed." Cox concludes that the "essentially capitalist philosophy of individualism [led] Washington to take a consistently antilabor position in the continuing struggle between capital and labor." See Harlan, Washington: Making of a Black Leader, 90-91; Cox, "Leadership Among Negroes," 255.
87. Harlan writes that Washington "all his life reflected the general viewpoint that Bryce [editor of Hampton's conservative Southern Workman] expressed." Cox concludes that the "essentially capitalist philosophy of individualism [led] Washington to take a consistently antilabor position in the continuing struggle between capital and labor." See Harlan, Washington: Making of a Black Leader, 90-91; Cox, "Leadership Among Negroes," 255.
88. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: A.L. Burt, 1901), 62; F. E. Edmunds to Washington, July 4, 1914; Washington to Edmunds, July 8, 1914, in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 13 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 81, 84.
89. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: A.L. Burt, 1901), 62; F. E. Edmunds to Washington, July 4, 1914; Washington to Edmunds, July 8, 1914, in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 13 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 81, 84.
90. Booker T. Washington, Up From Slavery (New York: A.L. Burt, 1901), 62; F. E. Edmunds to Washington, July 4, 1914; Washington to Edmunds, July 8, 1914, in Harlan (ed.), BTW Papers, vol. 13 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1984), 81, 84.
91. Gordon, Caste and Class, 117-118. See also William F. Holmes, "The Arkansas Cotton Pickers' Strike of 1891 and the Demise of the Colored Farmers' Alliance," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 32 (1973), 107-113.
92. Gordon, Caste and Class, 117-118. See also William F. Holmes, "The Arkansas Cotton Pickers' Strike of 1891 and the Demise of the Colored Farmers' Alliance," Arkansas Historical Quarterly 32 (1973), 107-113.
93. For an extensive discussion of Birmingham race leaders and their involvement with industrial elites, see my Race, Class and Power, especially Chapter 3, 81-106. On Tuskegee involvement in welfare work, see Stein, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," 447-448, and C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 358-359. Labor Department observations on black preachers in the 1920 strike appear in Edwin C. Newdick, "Employers Foster Race Prejudice," February 24, 1919, Records of the Department of Labor, RG 174, National Archives, Washington, DC.
94. For an extensive discussion of Birmingham race leaders and their involvement with industrial elites, see my Race, Class and Power, especially Chapter 3, 81-106. On Tuskegee involvement in welfare work, see Stein, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," 447-448, and C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 358-359. Labor Department observations on black preachers in the 1920 strike appear in Edwin C. Newdick, "Employers Foster Race Prejudice," February 24, 1919, Records of the Department of Labor, RG 174, National Archives, Washington, DC.
95. For an extensive discussion of Birmingham race leaders and their involvement with industrial elites, see my Race, Class and Power, especially Chapter 3, 81-106. On Tuskegee involvement in welfare work, see Stein, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," 447-448, and C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 358-359. Labor Department observations on black preachers in the 1920 strike appear in Edwin C. Newdick, "Employers Foster Race Prejudice," February 24, 1919, Records of the Department of Labor, RG 174, National Archives, Washington, DC.
96. For an extensive discussion of Birmingham race leaders and their involvement with industrial elites, see my Race, Class and Power, especially Chapter 3, 81-106. On Tuskegee involvement in welfare work, see Stein, "Of Mr. Booker T. Washington and Others," 447-448, and C. Vann Woodward, Origins of the New South, 358-359. Labor Department observations on black preachers in the 1920 strike appear in Edwin C. Newdick, "Employers Foster Race Prejudice," February 24, 1919, Records of the Department of Labor, RG 174, National Archives, Washington, DC.
97. M. L. Alexander to M. L. Fleishel, November 4, 1911, Box 205, KLCR; Lumber Trade Journal, December 15, 1912.
98. "Special Report on Industrial Conditions in the Mills and Logging Camps of the Southern Pine Association," August 1918, Box 67b, Southern Pine Association Records, Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge, cited in James E. Fickle, "Management Looks at the 'Labor Problem': The Southern Pine Industry During World War I and the Postwar Era," Journal of Southern History 40 (1974), 68.
99. "Special Report on Industrial Conditions in the Mills and Logging Camps of the Southern Pine Association," August 1918, Box 67b, Southern Pine Association Records, Louisiana State University Archives, Baton Rouge, cited in James E. Fickle, "Management Looks at the 'Labor Problem': The Southern Pine Industry During World War I and the Postwar Era," Journal of Southern History 40 (1974), 68.
100. Cited in Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad, Nameless Towns: Texas Sawmill Communities, 1880-1942 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 113; J. W. Herndon to C. P. Myer, September 15, 1911, Box 197, KLCR.
101. Cited in Thad Sitton and James H. Conrad, Nameless Towns: Texas Sawmill Communities, 1880-1942 (Austin: University of Texas Press, 1998), 113; J. W. Herndon to C. P. Myer, September 15, 1911, Box 197, KLCR.
102. W. T. Hooker to C. P. Myer, August 14, 1911, Box 197, KLCR; Kirby Company to Crawford, June 6, 1917, Box 338, KLCR.
103. Voice of Colored Labor, 1923, Box 343, KLCR; SLOA to All Members, November 5, 1918, Box 489, Kurth Collection, Forest History Collection, East Texas Research Center, Stephen F. Austin State University, Nacogdoches, TX.
104. Despite their considerable differences, before the turn of the century both Washington and DuBois pursued elitist solutions to the predicament of black Southerners. But while DuBois looked to a "Talented Tenth" to lead the black masses, he never pursued the alliance with white elites so central to Washington's outlook. After 1900, of course, the gulf between them widened further, and by the First World War the cadre that would form the NAACP began to pay serious attention to the predicament of black laborers and to openly criticize Southern white employers, an important shift precluded for Washington by his commitment to industrial accommodation. On the early symmetry between Washington and DuBois, see Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 73-75, and Adolph L. Reed Jr. W. E. B. DuBois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 53-70.
105. Despite their considerable differences, before the turn of the century both Washington and DuBois pursued elitist solutions to the predicament of black Southerners. But while DuBois looked to a "Talented Tenth" to lead the black masses, he never pursued the alliance with white elites so central to Washington's outlook. After 1900, of course, the gulf between them widened further, and by the First World War the cadre that would form the NAACP began to pay serious attention to the predicament of black laborers and to openly criticize Southern white employers, an important shift precluded for Washington by his commitment to industrial accommodation. On the early symmetry between Washington and DuBois, see Joel Williamson, The Crucible of Race: Black-White Relations in the American South Since Emancipation (New York: Oxford University Press, 1984), 73-75, and Adolph L. Reed Jr. W. E. B. DuBois and American Political Thought: Fabianism and the Color Line (New York: Oxford University Press, 1997), 53-70.
106. Theodore Rosengarten, All God's Dangers: the Life of Nate Shaw (New York: Knopf, 1974), 543.
107. Eric Foner, Who Owns History? Rethinking the Past in a Changing World (New York: Hill & Wang, 2002), xiv.
108. An abbreviated list of such scholarship would include, in order of publication, Thomas Holt, Black Over White: Negro Political Leadership in South Carolina during Reconstruction (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977); Neil McMillen, Dark Journey: Black Mississippians in the Age of Jim Crow (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1982); Peter J. Rachleff, Black Labor in Richmond, 1865-1890 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1989); Eric Arnesen, Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class, and Politics, 1863-1923 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990); Joe William Trotter, Coal, Class, and Color: Blacks in Southern West Virginia, 1915-1932 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1990); Janette Thomas Greenwood, Bittersweet Legacy: The Black and White "Better Classes" in Charlotte, 1850-1910 (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 1994); Elsa Barkley Brown, "Negotiating and Transforming the Public Sphere: African American Political Life in the Transition from Slavery to Freedom," Public Culture 7 (1994), 107-146; Fon Louise Gordon, Caste & Class: The Black Experience in Arkansas, 1880-1920 (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1995); Kevin K. Gaines, Uplifting the Race: Black Leadership, Politics, and Culture in the Twentieth Century (Chapel Hill, 1996); Tera W. Hunter, To 'Joy My Freedom: Black Women's Lives and Labors after the Civil War (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1997); Deborah Gray White, Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994 (New York: W.W. Norton, 1999); Lynne B. Feldman, A Sense of Place: Birmingham's Black Middle Class Community, 1890-1920 (Tuscaloosa, 1999); Victoria W. Wolcott, Remaking Respectability: African American Women in Interwar Detroit (Chapel Hill: UNC Press, 2001); Brian Kelly, Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-1921 (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2001).