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Reviews in American History 29.4 (2001) 573-580



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Civil Rights Unionism

James Green


Eric Arnesen. Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2001. 352 pp. Figures, notes, and index. $42.00.

Eric Arnesen's book begins with a reflection on the "vital contribution" railroad work made "to the economic health of African American communities in the North and the South" (p. 1). As one commentator said in 1918, the "rank and file of the black railway men" represented "the bone and sinew of the race in the cities." Their labor provided "a stepping stone" for many who entered business and professional occupations. For others the railroad operating trades offered--more than most available opportunities--a chance for job security and an industrial wage.

Until World War II, far more black men worked on the railroad than in any other type of wage-earning employment. A 1924 Department of Labor study found that 136,065 African Americans toiled in the industry, as compared to 42,489 in coal mining and approximately 40,000 in federal employment. The survey did not include the corps of black dining car cooks and waiters. The largest number counted--95,713--were laborers, a group which is unfortunately neglected in this book, perhaps because they were less vocal and less organized and therefore left little in the way of records in contrast to other black railway men like the highly visible porters (20,224), the fireman and brakeman (nearly 11,000 in total and 27 percent of all these workers in the South), and the switchmen (2,874) whose ranks had been reduced by militant assaults from the unionized white trainmen before World War I. After the war the firemen and brakeman faced similar attacks and their numbers also declined drastically. The extreme segregation of the industry, which endured until the 1970s, is reflected in the fact that among nearly 140,000 African American workers there were only 111 engineers, 97 telegraphers, 33 conductors, and 2 superintendents. 1 One limitation of Arnesen's very informative book about these workers is that the occupational demography of black railway men is not adequately represented over time. A statistical appendix would have helped a great deal. [End Page 573]

Nonetheless, Brotherhoods of Color greatly advances our understanding of the black working class by showing how horrendously these men suffered in order to work and survive in a brutal industry, which arrayed all its forces against them. Out of this ordeal emerged a group of working-class race leaders whose struggle against white supremacy was as important as any of the campaigns led by the "talented tenth."

Eric Arnesen fills a missing chapter in labor history--one covered only partially in the numerous accounts of A. Philip Randolph and the Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP)--a union which is given no more attention here than nearly unknown organizations of black firemen, dining car waiters, car cleaners, and Red Caps. For these groups of neglected workers, Arnesen unearths fascinating and revealing documentation of spirited and protracted struggles for equality. He does not explore the black workers' identities or their roles as husbands, fathers, church members, and community leaders--although this would have added a valuable dimension to the book. Instead of cultural and social history, Arnesen offers us an old-fashioned labor and political history, combined with business and legal history. In the process he profiles the men who led a forgotten struggle for black freedom and traces--using the tested tools of his craft--their encounters with frighteningly hostile white institutions.

Brotherhoods of Color breaks new ground in working-class political and institutional history. Indeed, there was surprisingly little scholarship for Arnesen to rely upon, not much more than passages or chapters on black railroaders and unions in earlier labor histories by F. Ray Marshall, Philip S. Foner, William H. Harris, and in the legal studies of union discrimination by Herbert Hill. 2 Why this neglect?

While labor historians have devoted "disproportionate attention" to the exclusionary role of white workers and their unions, they have...

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