BUILDING BRIDGES:
YOUR COMMUNITY AND LABOR REPORT presents an African American History Month
Special Program:
Eyes
on the Prize:
When Black Workers Organize in the South
Produced
by Ken Nash and Mimi Rosenberg
The South has
always been thought of as "unorganizable", like the auto industry
before the 1930s and public workers before the 1960s. But our guest labor
historian Mike Honey shows that the CIO brand of militant unionism had
great success among Southern Blacks and white workers during the 1930s
through the early post-War period. We also talk with Clarence Coe, and
African American unionist at the Memphis Firestone Rubber plant during
the World War II years about the racism of management and of white workers
and with Taylor Rogers, past President of the Memphis Sanitation Workers
Union during whose struggle in 1968 Dr. Martin Luther King,
Jr. gave his life.
When the predominantly
Black women who worked at Delta Pride's catfish processing plant in Mississippi
decided to form a union in the 198s, it seemed like a hopeless situation
to everyone but them and the United Food and Commercial Workers Union.
But when the vote was taken, they won their union and then a bitter strike
in 1990. Now they're organizing other catfish plants in the area, poultry
processing plants, and even taking on the giant Beverly nursing home chain.
We talk with organizers Sarah White and Rose Turner.
On January
20, 2000, hundred of workers clashed with police in Charleston, SC during
a protest against the use of nonunion longshoremen to load a cargo ship.
At least six people were sent to the hospital with injuries and eight
workers were arrested. The clash at the US's 6th-largest port was the
most violent labor dispute on the Charleston waterfront since the late
1960s. We talk with Longshoreman Local President Kenneth Riley.
Bruce Raynor,
now Secretary-Treasurer of the Needletrades Union (UNITE), was formerly
its Southern Area Organizing Director. Here he recounts stories of successes
and failures while concluding that organizing the South, however difficult,
is the key to shifting American politics in a more progressive direction.
Click
below for each segment of our special African American History Month show:
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