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Class as Race and Gender|Making and Breaking a Labor Union in the Jim Crow South

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Larry J. Griffin  and
Robert R. Korstad
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Extract

Early in 1944 the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) certified Local 22 of the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied Workers of America (UCAPAWA) as the bargaining agent for manufacturing workers at the R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) in Winston-Salem, North Carolina. The local was built and largely sustained by the collective actions of African Americans, especially women, who quickly made it the primary institutional locus advancing the racial aspirations of Winston-Salem's black working class. Operating the largest tobacco manufacturing facility in the world and employing a workforce of 12,000, none unionized (Tilley 1948, 1985), RJR vigorously fought the local from its inception.

Type
Articles
Information
Social Science History , Volume 19 , Issue 4 , Winter 1995 , pp. 425 - 454
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 1995 

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