Black Labor History

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.labor-studies.org/blacklabor.php

Negro History Week was celebrated for the first time in 1926 during the second week in February. This month was chosen because Frederick Douglass and Abraham Lincoln celebrate their birthdays during the month. In 1976 Negro History Week became Black History Month and the rich history of African Americans began to receive special attention during the entire month of February.

As historians take a closer look at the many facets of black history in this country, they often find themselves documenting not only the struggle of an oppressed people but how that struggle was part of a larger social and economic movement to improve the lives of the working class.

In, "The Power of Remembering: Black Factory Workers and Union Organizing in the Jim Crow Era," Michael Honey addresses this idea when he writes, "The black freedom struggle is a long one. It is inter-generational, multi-layered, and includes all classes of folk. More often than not, history tells us about educators, professionals, preachers, and others who we perceive as leading the movement for change. To really understand the freedom struggle, however, we must know about the life histories of ordinary people, the disinherited, working-class and poor people who rarely appear in the history books. To locate their stories, historians have increasingly shifted their research to the local level and to the years and the generations prior to the 1954-1965 period, usually considered the high point of the civil rights struggle in the South. Attention to these earlier years has begun to direct our vision toward connections between community, civil rights, and labor struggles, toward the crucial perspective and influence of women, and toward the role of ordinary people in creating the basis for change."

Michael Honey's perspective can be found here: http://www.oah.org/meetings/2001/honey.html


Additional Resources at link.