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Yahoo
26-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What America Made of Marx
The young cigar maker in New York City attended a few socialist meetings in the 1870s. But he longed to hear 'constructive' ideas about how to achieve a better life for himself and his fellow workers. Then an older craftsman, who was a veteran of the European left, offered to take him through 'something tangible' that 'will give you a background philosophy.' That something was The Communist Manifesto. The document, recalled his untutored protégé, 'brought me an interpretation of much that before had been only inarticulate feeling.' Reading that Marx and Engels hailed 'the ever expanding union of the workers' as 'the real fruit' of class struggle encouraged him to organize a durable labor movement. After the ambitious cigar worker left his rolling bench to become a full-time union leader, he would always be suspicious of intellectuals, socialist or otherwise, who believed they had a duty to tell wage earners how to liberate themselves. All his life, he adhered, in effect, to Marx's 1864 motto, 'The emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves.' That erstwhile cigar maker was Samuel Gompers, founder and longtime president of the American Federation of Labor—the organization that evolved into the AFL-CIO and has dominated American unionism for well over a century. Gompers became a harsh critic of Marxian radicals: He thought their desire to yoke the labor movement to the fate of a socialist party would violate the independence of unions and lead them into a dead end of sectarianism, repression, and defeat. Still, the inspiration the young Gompers drew from the Manifesto appears to support the argument Andrew Hartman makes in his sprawling, often provocative new survey, Karl Marx in America: 'Marx gained purchase in American life because he offered a powerful theory of freedom—one that doubled as a map of an alternative American future.' If the bearded German icon left a strong imprint on organized labor—the movement he believed would be pivotal to overthrowing capitalism—then it must have shaped the views of millions of ordinary Americans who burned to change their society in fundamental ways. Hartman sweeps with gusto through over a century and a half of U.S. history, revealing the influence of Marxism on dozens of institutions, individuals, and events, obscure and famous. Did you know that the revolutionary sage wrote or co-wrote nearly 500 articles for the New-York Tribune during the Civil War era, when it was one of the most popular newspapers in the nation? Or that at least two of his disciples were officers in the Union Army? Or that Franklin D. Roosevelt's 'political philosophy rhymed with Marxism'? While Hartman might overstate the importance of these political details, he largely succeeds at a different, if lesser, mission: to narrate how vital arguments about Marxist thought were to men and women who spent their lives battling about two distinct clusters of well-educated Americans, Marxism has long been a fruitful subject— either a set of ideas to think with or a cudgel to wield against ideological foes. In the first camp are radical and reform-minded intellectuals who take Marx's ideas seriously—even as they ceaselessly dispute, revise, and apply them to explain the evolving forms of American culture, economics, and politics. In the second camp thrive officeholders and propagandists on the right. For them, the old Rhinelander's name and a crude or false version of his doctrines serve as a perennial bogeyman to scare the public away from a welfare state and movements on the left. The Trump administration's recent vow to cancel federal funding that allegedly promotes some evil known as 'Marxist equity' fits a line of attack that has been around since Lenin occupied the Kremlin. Hartman's treatment of both left literati and right-wing witch-hunters brims with insight, cogently presented. In his most original foray into the burned-over ground of left intellectual history, he brings to life a number of thinkers about whom even most academics know little or nothing. There was Friedrich Sorge, who immigrated to New York from exile in Europe after fighting in the revolution of 1848 and 'was arguably better versed in Marx's writings' than anyone in his new country. Sorge, who helped found the nation's first socialist party—the Workingmen's Party of the United States—in 1876, argued that competing in elections would accomplish nothing unless wage earners first organized into powerful unions. Although neither of the parties that flew the Marxist banner across the country in the twentieth century won more than a handful of offices beyond the local level, both the Socialist Party and the Communist Party stamped their mark on American thought and culture. The SP nurtured such writers as Jack London and Helen Keller. During his five campaigns for president on the Socialist ticket, Eugene Debs articulated the need for a 'cooperative commonwealth' in terms borrowed from the Bible as well as the gospel of historical materialism. And while American Communists never abandoned their fealty to the tyrannical rulers of the Soviet Union, they did inspire such famous critics of class oppression and white supremacy as Woody Guthrie, Dorothea Lange, and Angela Davis. Among the more obscure figures whom Hartman profiles is Raya Dunayevskaya, a Ukrainian émigré, who created, after World War II, a fresh variant of the old doctrine she called 'Marxist humanism.' Her aim was to rescue a philosophy of human liberation from the Communists who had converted it into 'the theory and practice of enslavement.' Together with the great Trinidadian writer and organizer C.L.R. James, Dunayevskaya argued that Marx had sharply criticized all forms of labor under capitalism—enslaved or waged—as assaults on individual freedom. Departing from an orthodox focus on white industrial wage earners allowed them to broaden the definition of the exploited to include women, racial minorities, and students. 'Her Marxist theory of revolution was tailored for the 1960s,' Hartman aptly observes. But the radical feminists who coined the phrase 'the personal is political' grasped the same insight without seeking legitimacy in Marx's Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. Both James and Dunayevskaya arrived in the United States in the 1920s, before the Great Depression, when Marxists of all stripes understandably viewed that long downturn as proof of the chaos and misery endemic to capitalism. Surely, Americans would be open to a theory that would now seem like common sense. Organizers who happened to be Communists or Socialists played a major role in mobilizing the big strikes that birthed the unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the factories where cars, steel, and refrigerators were made: Members of the Communist Party were the chief architects of the sit-down strike in Flint, Michigan, during the winter of 1936–1937 that established the United Auto Workers as a power in the land. Yet Marxists gained more influence among writers and artists in the 1930s than among ordinary people. For all their fervor, leftist intellectuals struggled to understand why their message often failed to resonate more widely. At the polls, workers spurned Marxist candidates in favor of those from the party of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the patrician-turned-populist. One worker acclaimed FDR as 'the only man we ever had in the White House who would understand that my boss is a sonofabitch.' Bowing to reality, Socialist and Communist organizers narrowed their goals to union recognition, job security, and higher wages instead of a society run by and for the working class. The larger message of Marxism wasn't getting through: As Hartman remarks, 'Either there was something wrong with their theory, or there was something wrong with the working class.' The literary critic Kenneth Burke argued that paying closer attention to how Americans actually talked about their problems could help Marxists appeal to them in terms they might grasp. Poetic discourse, he mused, would advance the class struggle better than alien-sounding jargon. In his landmark 1935 history of the Civil War and Reconstruction, W.E.B. Du Bois hailed Black people for engaging in the biggest 'general strike' in U.S. history when they fled to Union lines, depriving Confederate planters of their labor. If white workers had only shed their racial privilege, he contended, they could have forged a potent alliance across the color line. Alas, 'not enough … were familiar with Capital,' Hartman says, and so they embraced the new Jim Crow order. Du Bois remained a Marxist all his life, but some talented younger leftists soon abandoned their faith in what they took to be a failed theory and became liberal proponents of American exceptionalism. In his immensely popular 1948 book, The American Political Tradition, the historian Richard Hofstadter maintained, a bit sadly, that radical dissenters had never made much headway against a consensual culture that was 'intensely nationalistic and for the most part isolationist … fiercely individualistic and capitalistic.' Whereas the Marxists of the '30s and '40s may have failed to convert the working class, their successors in the '80s and '90s didn't even attempt as much. As conservatives from Ronald Reagan to Donald Trump tore away at the legacies of the New Deal, the Great Society, and the New Left, American Marxism entered a newly insular phase. A number of scholars took refuge in spinning out new versions of Marxism whose only audience was inside academia. The literary theorist Fredric Jameson sought to unmask the alienating function of 'commodity fetishism' with 'real thought' that 'demands a descent into the materiality of language and a consent to time itself in the form of the sentence.' Hartman aptly comments, 'Cultural theory made a fetish of difficult language.' In their tome Empire (2000), Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri aimed to give left anti-globalizers an updated version of The Communist Manifesto but managed only to float an abstract hope that 'the multitude's ultimate demand for global citizenship' would be realized through discrete acts of resistance in locations scattered around the world. 'While the Right has been busy taking the White House,' Todd Gitlin quipped about such fanciful notions, 'the left has been marching on the English department.' Since the Great Recession, young activists on the left have turned to a more demotic style of Marxism to make sense of economic inequality as well as to protest it. Hartman points to the 'maximally accessible' prose in Jacobin, the magazine founded in 2010 by Bhaskar Sunkara, and to podcasts like Chapo Trap House, in which 'more than a hint of Marxism' flavors relentless put-downs of deluded liberals. This new generation has failed to gain more than a few slivers of political power: Its electoral victories in Washington have been limited to a handful of candidates endorsed by the Democratic Socialists of America, notably Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib, and the increased prominence of Bernie Sanders. To paraphrase the famous line chiseled on Marx's gravestone in London's Highgate Cemetery: American Marxists have only analyzed the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change Hartman doesn't capture why Marxists have found difficulty in spreading the word in the United States, and often claims victories for his cherished tradition when the story is more complicated. Take the example of Samuel Gompers. What the AFL leader learned from Marx convinced him to oppose the political strategy adopted by American Marxists. A socialist attorney once called Gompers 'the most class-conscious man I know.' But that mindset drove the labor leader to avoid using socialist rhetoric or making big promises about destroying capitalism. He knew such stances would turn off most working men and women in his nation, who demanded higher wages and better treatment on the job—not a proletarian revolution. What was true of labor was even more the case for other movements on the American left whose adherents were drawn from a variety of classes. From abolitionism to the heyday of the civil rights crusade in the 1960s, most Black organizers sought legitimacy and inspiration from such texts as the Bible and the Declaration of Independence—not the words of the Manifesto. Few feminists who were not also socialists took their cues from a nineteenth-century patriarch who wrote little about women besides noting the cheap labor they provided to factory owners. And environmentalists who yearn to do away with fossil fuels know the Soviet regime that made Marxism its state religion developed some of the filthiest carbonized industries on Earth. Even those prominent American activists who did praise what Marx wrote—who included Martin Luther King Jr. in his grad-uate student days—did not employ his language or endorse his ideas as they built powerful social movements. The 'freedom' from class exploitation that Hartman heralds was not the type that motivated many Americans, other than those who joined a socialist or communist party. And the membership and electoral clout of their organizations paled beside those of parties inspired by Marxism in nearly every other industrial nation. Through most of U.S. history, influential dissenters have spoken in registers more indigenous to the republic—democratic, Christian, and populist. 'The people' was a more common, inclusive term than 'the working class,' and urgent calls to realize the promise of self-government resonated far more widely than stern attacks on the power of the homegrown 'bourgeoisie.' 'To make everything depend upon economic forces,' wrote the progressive thinker Richard T. Ely in 1894, 'is shutting one's eyes to other forces, equally great and sometimes greater.' He added, 'one must be blind to historical and actual phenomena who would make religion merely a product of economic life.' Hartman tends to disparage this tradition as 'moral leftism,' but it has been a major driver of nearly every insurgency of consequence in U.S. the right, however, the M-word has long proved an effective weapon in its perpetual war against anyone branded as enemies of liberty and the nation itself. This assault began during the presidency of FDR. 'So help me God,' Father Charles Coughlin vowed in 1936 to his huge radio audience, 'I will be instrumental in taking a Communist from a chair once occupied by Washington.' But invocations of Marx became routine during the Red Scare after World War II and have rarely been absent since then. Senator Joseph McCarthy denounced a 'religion of immoralism … invented by Marx … and carried to unimaginable extremes by Stalin.' Reagan gave Richard Nixon some advice about how to campaign in 1960 against his Democratic opponent for the presidency: 'Shouldn't someone tag Mr. Kennedy's bold new imaginative program with its proper age? Under the tousled boyish haircut is still old Karl Marx—first launched a century ago.' In recent years, Trumpist hacks with big followings gleefully slap the label 'cultural Marxism' onto any phenomena they detest, from critical race theory to teachers' unions to the alleged bias of the liberal media. In a 2021 book, the talk-show jockey Mark Levin called on all Americans 'who love their country, freedom, and family' to fight back against Marxists who 'pursue a destructive and diabolical course for our nation, undermining and sabotaging virtually every institution in our society.' What makes such attacks plausible to millions of Americans was—and remains—the public's ignorance of what Marx actually wrote and believed. Hartman takes pains to show that both liberal critics and right-wing demonizers got his favorite thinker terribly wrong. He argues, with persuasive quotations, that Marx was opposed to neither free speech nor democracy, and thus the tyrannical regimes run by his would-be followers would have appalled him. But if far more Americans think Castro, Stalin, and Mao were genuine Marxists than will ever read a page of Capital, The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, or even the Manifesto, that is just further proof of the small impression his American disciples have made on their fellow citizens. Despite the right's hostility, some of Marx's ideas still have great value almost 150 years after he died. As I wrote in these pages back in 2016, Marx 'brilliantly captured the propulsive dynamic' of the capitalist economy that has now conquered the entire world. What's more, 'our credulous addiction to the magical little computers in our pockets and purses demonstrates the wisdom of the section about 'the fetishism of commodities' in the first volume of Capital.' Anyone who cares about the multiple injuries of class can also learn from Marx's thorough dissection of the system of labor and production that generates so much wealth and so much pain. Yet, at the core of his thought is the determination that capitalism, like all earlier forms of class society, will inevitably fall victim to its own contradictions. After helping dig its grave, proletarians will begin to construct a world of caring and abundance for all. In 1938, George Orwell wrote that 'to the vast majority of people, Socialism means a classless society, or it means nothing at all.' But the gospel of self-reliance and the unions that struggle mainly for better pay and shorter hours have appealed to far more Americans than has the future predicted by Marx and echoed by his disciples. In the twenty-first century, a lot more working women and men have been willing to vote for an authoritarian billionaire who relishes destruction of the welfare state than have rallied to gain a measure of economic power for themselves. A theory that does not unravel that contradiction can do little to defeat Trumpism or build a more egalitarian society for Americans or anyone else.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
May Day rallies demand improved pay and conditions
CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) – It's the first day of May, or May Day. Officials provide updates on multi-million dollar Springfield Courthouse project May Day has come to be recognized as International Workers' Day, which means rallies worldwide from workers fighting for better conditions and better pay. USA Today states that on May 1, 1886, more than 340,000 American workers walked out of their jobs in support of the eight-hour work day, which was proposed by the American Federation of Labor two years prior. After two days, activists organized a union action at the McCormick Harvesting Machine Company in Chicago, and during this protest, police intimidated and ultimately beat the strikers, resulting in the death of at least six people. Then, on May 4, 1886, a rally was held at Chicago's Haymarket Square. This protest was meant to be non-violent, but violence took place, and several civilians were killed at the hands of police, and dozens were injured. In 1889, labor advocates deemed May 1 as International Workers' Day, or May Day. Over 1,100 protests against President Donald Trump and billionaire Elon Musk are scheduled worldwide for Thursday. Here in Massachusetts, protests are planned across the state. In Springfield, activists plan to stand out at the post office on Main Street beginning at 5:00 p.m. The Massachusetts Nurses Association told 22News they'll be picketing outside of Baystate Medical Center, located at 759 Chestnut Street, from 4:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. That comes as another round of layoffs was announced at the hospital this week. WWLP-22News, an NBC affiliate, began broadcasting in March 1953 to provide local news, network, syndicated, and local programming to western Massachusetts. Watch the 22News Digital Edition weekdays at 4 p.m. on Copyright 2025 Nexstar Media, Inc. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
Yahoo
01-05-2025
- Politics
- Yahoo
What is May Day? Seattle's complicated history with the event
May Day, celebrated on May 1, is known as a day for marches and rallies across the region— particularly surrounding workers' rights. History of May Day – International Workers Day May Day commemorates the struggle and the lives lost during the fight to ensure the traditional workday we are now accustomed to. It all began in the 1880s. According to the American Postal Workers Union, industrial workers were tired of long hours and harsh conditions. The organization now known as the American Federation of Labor coordinated a nationwide strike for May 1, 1886— for workers to demand the 8-hour workday. In Chicago, anarchists and labor activists began a multi-day strike, which later became known as the Haymarket affair of 1886, according to The Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. By the third day, things turned violent—with numerous protesters and police officers dying. On May 1, 1886, NPR reports that more than 340,000 workers took part in national actions in support of an eight-hour day. To honor the Chicago workers, Time reports that the International Socialist Conference in 1889 named May Day a labor holiday, creating what many now call International Workers' Day. May Day Turmoil in Seattle Protests in Seattle on May Day haven't always gone smoothly. For four consecutive years, starting in 2012, anarchists and anti-capitalists dressed in black clashed with police. 2012 Protesters flooded downtown streets, some shattering windows, firing paintballs, setting fires, and blocking traffic. Many businesses went into lockdown as a result. KIRO 7's cameras captured much of the turmoil. The mayor at the time, Mike McGinn, issued an order that allowed police to confiscate items that could be used as weapons, such as large dowels, handles for signs, ball peen hammers and tire irons. Several people were arrested. 2013 With the exception of a few minor scuffles, Seattle Police said the May Day March itself 'went off without a hitch.' However, two hours after it ended, officers said another group of demonstrators smashed windows and hurled rocks at them. Protesters ignited smoke bombs and threw fireworks at people, and officers eventually began loading many of them into transport vans. Eight officers were hurt – mostly bumps and bruises, but one officer was hit in the knee by a 'fist-sized' rock. A woman driving by the commotion was also hurt. Officers said someone threw a glass bottle at her car and shattered her window. About 17 people were arrested for offenses such as property destruction and assault. 2014 The Seattle Police Department said an afternoon rally, organized by El Comite, was peaceful. However, a second unpermitted group began causing problems. Police said the group hurled bottles, bricks and firecrackers at them and lit several dumpsters on fire. In total, ten people were arrested – including one man for assaulting an officer. 2015 Two peaceful demonstrations took place before things took a turn in the city. One permitted by El Comite – the other unplanned. Mid-afternoon, officers spotted a crowd of about 75 people wearing masks near the Federal Courthouse, and that's where things took a turn. In total, three police officers were hospitalized, and five others were hurt during the events of May Day in 2015. Sixteen people were arrested—many carrying knives, hammers, and other types of weapons. The violence and arrests were a result, according to police, largely because of an unpermitted march on Capitol Hill, which grew into a 'full-scale riot.' Video showed people breaking windows of buildings, lighting the American flag on fire and hitting officers with sticks. The Seattle Police Department said it spent about $288,000 in overtime for the event. 2016 A man threw unlit gasoline-filled beer bottles at Seattle police. One officer suffered leg burns after a flash-bang grenade ignited gasoline from a bottle that shattered at his feet. The police department said that in total, five officers were hurt. Seattle police used pepper spray to disperse black-clad anti-capitalist protesters. Officers said the group threw rocks, flares, bricks, and Molotov cocktails at them. At least nine people were arrested. The violence came after a peaceful protest that happened earlier in the day – similar to years past. 2017 Rioters were arrested in Olympia after protests turned violent. A confrontation between protestors and onlookers escalated, which led to 9 arrests. 2018 Hundreds gathered and marched in a mostly peaceful demonstration in Seattle. Only one arrest was made after a masked man threw a rock at the Amazon Spheres.
Chicago Tribune
03-04-2025
- General
- Chicago Tribune
New museum in Pullman to recognize women's role in labor movement
A. Philip Randolph set the stage for the Civil Rights movement by forming and leading the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925, which 10 years later became the first African American labor union to be affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The contributions of Randolph and those he represented are highlighted in a museum in Chicago's Pullman neighborhood, the historic home of the country's largest sleeping car company. Now a new effort is afoot to recognize an oft overlooked element of that effort. Randolph's success at organizing a union that would represent thousands of workers all over the United States rested squarely upon the efforts of women such as Rosina Corrothers Tucker. Tucker was the wife of a Pullman porter and became an early advocate for the union that pushed for better pay, better working conditions and a grievance process. She also became a labor organizer for other labor groups and a crusader for civil rights. As a tribute to the efforts Tucker and other women involved in this effort, the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum officially broke ground Saturday — the close of Women's History Month — for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters Ladies Auxiliary Women's History Museum. The new museum is part of the Pullman National Historical Park and it is within the Pullman National Historic Landmark District as well as the country's first Black Labor History Tourism District. It is considered an extension of the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porters Museum and will occupy a three-story rowhouse at 10432 S. Maryland Ave., just steps away. The Pullman Company closely monitored the activities of their employees, the porters, and punished those who supported the union. But the wives of porters, as well as maids employed by the Pullman company, were seen as less likely to face scrutiny. So scores of them visited the homes of the porters to share literature about the union. Wife, activist and organizer Tucker didn't manage to stay invisible for long. The Pullman Company tried to fire her husband, but she stood up to them. She also founded and became president of the Brotherhood's International Ladies' Auxiliary Order, also known as the Women's Economic Councils. The councils sprouted up throughout the U.S. and elsewhere, enabling members to organize the porters and maids more openly. Through them, Tucker also built lasting connections with other labor unions. Besides paying tribute to the women of the Ladies Auxiliary, the museum is expected to showcase the contributions of C.J. Walker, the first female self-made African American millionaire; U.S. Rep. Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman to seek the Democratic nomination for president in 1972; Carol Mosley-Braun, the first Black woman to serve in the U.S. Senate; and other notable Black women. Though the museum will take shape in the 9th Ward, Englewood's 16th Ward Alderman Stephanie D. Coleman, chairwoman of the Chicago Aldermanic Black Caucus, hosted its dedication ceremony. Staged beneath a large white tent, the ground-breaking event attracted a crowd of state, county and Chicago officials, as well as friends and nearby residents. Coleman introduced Dr. Lyn Hughes, founder of the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum, and commended her for also having led the effort to establish the new museum. Harkening back to the establishment of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters a century ago, Coleman said of the author and Black labor historian, 'Here we are 100 years later, living out our ancestor's wildest dreams because of this young woman, this young at the age of 80.' Hughes responded with plenty of youthful spirit. 'If doors don't open for me, I kick them in,' she said. 'People who do what we do are cultural workers. We do this because it's necessary, because no one else is standing there. And we do it at great sacrifice.' Hughes recalled decades ago buying the museum property as home for herself and her family. Arsonists set fire to it one night in 1998. Fortunately, she and her family escaped, but not without great material loss and heavy emotional trauma. Cars and belongings burned as well, all in the middle of the night. 'We were in our pajamas,' she said. The property has not been improved since, said David A. Peterson, president and executive director of the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum. In April, Drumlin Architects in Chicago will begin creating architectural plans for transforming the structure, said James Holland, an architect for the firm. Meanwhile, Layla Patrick, a sixth grader and straight-A student at Skinner North Elementary, will begin researching history related to the mission of the museum after accepting a position as junior historian for the National A. Philip Randolph Pullman Porter Museum. 'The opportunity to explore and understand the legacy and history of my great people fills me with joy beyond words,' she told the crowd Saturday.' I am honored to follow in the footsteps of great women like Dr. Hughes, the Pullman porters and other important women who have helped with this process.'
Yahoo
07-02-2025
- General
- Yahoo
'Thank goodness for them': Black History Month honors labor leaders amid Trump rollbacks
When Nannie Helen Burroughs established the National Association of Wage Earners in the early 20th century, Black women and girls were facing unchecked racism and sexism in the workplace. They were often relegated to low-paying jobs like sharecropping or domestic service, two occupations in which women suffered harassment, violence and even jail time for the smallest infractions, according to Danielle Phillips-Cunningham, author of Nannie Helen Burroughs: A Tower of Strength in the Labor World. Burroughs tried to register her organization as an official union under the American Federation of Labor, now known as the AFL-CIO, but its leaders turned her down. So Burroughs led her own employment agency in Washington, D.C., where she made uniforms for domestic workers and held lectures on women's rights and issues affecting Black workers across the nation. She'd established her own school to educate female students in fields they were barred from, like stenography, and provide them credentials Burroughs hoped would make employers take them more seriously. The work required great sacrifice. Unable to secure funding from white or Black men without compromising her vision, Burroughs sometimes had to hunt her own food and sell crops to provide for her students, said Phillips-Cunningham, a Rutgers University–New Brunswick professor in the department of labor studies and employment relations. Burroughs is one of many Black labor leaders who have fought to secure better working conditions for people color, trailblazing work that still continues today, labor experts, including Phillips-Cunningham, say. 'You still see this tradition of Black people having to create their own spaces to advance labor rights,' she said. This month, that work is being celebrated by the Association for the Study of African American Life & History, the advocacy organization founded by the father of Black History Month, scholar Carter G. Woodson. This February, the month's theme is African American labor. Though it was chosen well before President Donald Trump was re-elected, the theme has become particularly salient in light of Trump's recent attacks on diversity, equity and inclusion programs and ongoing restrictions on Black history lessons in schools, according to Karsonya Wise Whitehead, president of ASALH. 'This is an exceptional theme for this particular time, because it is making people think about these contributions, it's making people think about who does America belong to, and it's making people think about who built America,' said Whitehead. Black History Month 2025: Here's the history behind the month-long celebration As union membership peaked following the end of World War II, some progressive groups in the deeply segregated labor movement began organizing across racial lines, according to Emily Twarog, a professor of history and labor studies at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. But many unions, particularly those in industrial industries like steel and auto workers still had breakaway factions of Black employees, she said. 'They have to fight really hard sometimes for equal recognition and not being segregated into the kind of crappiest jobs in the plants,' Twarog said. These Black labor groups also quickly became instrumental in the broader Civil Rights Movement of the 1950s and 1960s. A. Philip Randolph, who waged a 12-year fight to get higher wages and shorter shifts for the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, was a key figure in the planning of the famous 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom and the United Auto Workers provided much of the funding for the event. But the economic demands of the march and its keynote speaker Martin Luther King, Jr. are still not well known, even among labor activists, Twarog said. 'He's a pivotal figure in civil rights history, but we don't teach people that he was actually a major labor activist and was on his way to a picket line when he was assassinated,' she said, referencing the 1968 Memphis sanitation workers strike sparked by the deaths of two trash collectors. 'And I think it's going to continue to get worse as the federal government tries to determine what can and cannot be taught in the classroom and when the states begin to alter textbooks and pick and choose what pieces of American history they want to teach,' she later added. After the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, Twarog said more job opportunities opened up for African Americans particularly in municipal jobs like the post office or sanitation thanks in part to Title VII, which bars discrimination and employment on the basis of characteristics including race and gender. She said this also led to a massive uptick in organizing in the public sector, which helped further integrate unionizing efforts. Women like Dorothy Lee Bolden also picked up the mantle of the work done by Burroughs, Phillips-Cunningham said. She said Bolden went house to house in Atlanta, gathering the support needed to form the National Domestic Workers Union in 1968, which quickly became a political powerhouse and served more than 10,000 people. 'Even the late Jimmy Carter said for any politician Black or white who wants to run, to have a shot at winning an election in the state of Georgia, they must talk to Dorothy Lee Bolden and members of the National Domestic Workers Union of America,' Phillips-Cunningham said. Though the national organization no longer exists, Phillips-Cunningham said the Georgia arm of Bolden's group has remained influential in the campaigns of politicians including two-time Georgia gubernatorial candidate Stacey Abrams, Sen. Raphael Warnock and former President Barack Obama. 'Dorothy is no longer with us, but the legacies of her organizing have extended into today,' she said. Today, Black workers like Service Employees International Union President April Verrett and National Education Association President Becky Pringle have risen to the highest ranks of the movement, particularly following nationwide conversations jump started by the 2020 racial justice protests, Phillips-Cunningham said. But many are still pushing for change from the margins, through dedicated centers and organizations that specifically research and advocate for legislation that addresses the issues that still plague Black workers today. Black workers remain more likely to be union members than white, Asian, and Hispanic workers, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in January. But Black employees, especially women, still generally earn less than their white counterparts, and they are the most likely group to say they've experienced discrimination at work, according to Pew Research Center. 'So there have been some gains, but there's still a lot of work to do concerning this very age-old and deeply rooted problem of racism and sexism,' Phillips-Cunningham said. Twarog said federal agencies like the Department of Labor have also given out grants to increase the representation of women and people of color in different industries, but that funding may be at risk under the Trump administration. Meanwhile labor unions like the Illinois chapter of the AFL-CIO, the largest federation of labor groups in the U.S., have also made strides by launching initiatives to increase representation of women and minority groups in specific trades like construction, she added. 'When there's a mandate to broaden out who's included, it works. It works really well,' Twarog said. 'And it doesn't mean that unqualified people are getting hired.' Phillips-Cunningham said she is deeply troubled by the 'crisis' caused by the Trump administration's rollback of protections for workers of color and hobbling of federal regulatory commissions meant to protect workers rights. But she said she's proud to see unions like the SEIU leading the effort to challenge these moves. 'Black labor organizers, thank goodness for them, because they are motivated. They are out there. They are organizing. They're filing lawsuits. They are educating people about what is happening,' she said. This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Black History Month honors African American labor amid DEI attacks
