Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers

by Michael K. Honey

Book Overview

Widely praised upon publication and now considered a classic study, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights chronicles the southern industrial union movement from the Great Depression to the Cold War, a history that created the context for the sanitation workers' strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis in April 1968. Michael K. Honey documents the dramatic labor battles and sometimes heroic activities of workers and organizers...

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252063058
• ISBN13: 9780252063053
• Release Date: March 1993
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 400 Pages
• Weight: 1.26 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

A Must for Anyone Interested in Memphis Working Class History

Michael Honey does a fantastic job in explaining the CIO's contribution to the Struggle for Civil Rights. The Left-Led CIO Unions, most of all FTA Local 19, prepared a cadre of African-American working class leaders in Memphis, who were, in fact, the precursors to those of the 1960s. A must for anyone interested in the study of the Labor role in Civil Rights History in Memphis and the South in the 1930s-1950s.

Best book about the working class South I have read.

Can't understand how this country works if you don't see how racism has been used, especially to divide workers. Honey writes about a pivotal time in American history when the working class was organizing and had the potential to transform the South for workers and African-Americans. The lessons are no less true today. A must read for organizers of any persuasion.