Race, Class, and Power in the Alabama Coalfields, 1908-21University of Illinois Press, 2001 - 264 pages In this lucid and supremely readable study, Brian Kelly challenges the prevailing notion that white workers were the main source of resistance to racial equality in the Jim Crow South. Kelly explores the forces that brought the black and white miners of Birmingham, Alabama, together during the hard-fought strikes of 1908 and 1920. He examines the systematic efforts by the region's powerful industrialists to foment racial divisions as a means of splitting the workforce, preventing unionization, and holding wages to the lowest levels in the country. He also details the role played by Birmingham's small but influential black middle class, whose espousal of industrial accommodation outraged black miners and revealed significant tensions within the African-American community. |
Contents
Introduction | 3 |
Judgment Day 1908 | 17 |
The Operators Dilemma | 25 |
Copyright | |
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ACOA ACOA/AMI Records African Americans Alabama Coal Alabama miners American attempt Birming Birmingham Age-Herald Birmingham district Birmingham Labor Advocate Birmingham Reporter Bittner Papers black and white Black Coal Miners black labor black middle class black miners black workers challenge cial coal camps Coal Company Coal Miners coal operators colored complained confrontation convict DeBardeleben District 20 early efforts elites employers federal Fitch Governor Greenback-Labor Party immigration industrial interracial Iron Jim Crow John Fitch July Kilby Administrative Files labor agents Labor History Letwin Lewis meeting militancy mingham mining camps NAACP Negro organized labor owners president prominent race leaders racial racism role rouster scabs seemed Sept Sipsey skilled Sloss Furnaces social social equality South southern strike strikebreakers strikers TCI's tion U.S. Steel UMW officials UMW's union officials wages Walker County welfare capitalism white miners white supremacy white workers workforce working-class wrote