To Render Invisible: Jim Crow and Public Life in New South Jacksonville

7. Labor’s Counterpublic

7 labor’s Counterpublic The black counterpublic was not the only one to emerge during this time. In Mary P. Ryan’s Civic Wars, she tracks workers and white women who entered into the public sphere for the first time in the nineteenth century.1 Similar to many other places, labor and woman suffrage counterpublics were organized with and without the inclusion of blacks respectively. Although blacks were indispensable to the creation of labor’s counterpublic, black women were excluded from the woman’s suffrage movement organized by middle-class white women. In many cases, since white workers and women were on the margins of the public sphere themselves, blacks were pushed even further to the margin within those counterpublics. Ironically enough, it was black labor in the saw mills who helped usher in the local labor movement and what would eventually become labor’s counterpublic. Unions, strikes, and collective organizing were important to cultivate a discourse in the public concerning working hours and the right of labor to organize. As with other forays into public life, public space and how it is produced was central to the success of the movement. 106 \ To Render Invisible When Jacksonville transitioned from a small agricultural community to an industrial seaport town, its workforce too transformed. Black workers en masse moved to the city—drawn there with the availability of skilled and unskilled wage labor. Like other industrial and port cities, working-class residents soon took to collective organizing to protest for higher wages and standardized working hours. Similarly to cities in the northeast, public space would be the theatre by which workers collectively voiced their grievances on display for citizens and civic leaders alike to either witness or intervene. Maintaining a presence and often times policing public spaces afforded labor unions a chance to recruit and replicate themselves. Black workers would always have a place in the local labor movement; however, similar to the public sphere, they were pushed out to the margins and ultimately had to form a black labor counterpublic to engage labor’s public.2 In May 1873 black lumber-mill workers organized a union they called the Labor League. Throughout the numerous mills workers were exclusively black, and albeit short-lived, the Labor League represented not only the first black union but also the first documented case of labor organizing in the city’s history. A number of black mill workers organized the union in private spaces and passed a series of resolutions to present to the mill owners. Included in those resolutions were demands for more pay and a standard ten-hour workday. At this meeting a number of men were elected to take those demands to the mill owners and speak on behalf of workers supporting the union effort. Their demands represented an engagement with the public sphere where the union effort was under attacked by the dominant public. The Tallahassee Weekly lamented that, “the mill owners will no doubt receive the committee kindly, but capital will be able to hold its own in this country for many days yet. And shall we say that it ought to be otherwise?” A reporter for the Jacksonville Republican claimed that the union men believed that they were, “confidently trusting in the generosity, and sense of right and justice of their employers.”3 On the morning of 10 June, when the mill owners made it clear they were not going to consider the Labor League’s demands, most black workers in the lumber mills refused to show up. “Strike at the Saw Mills” informed the readers of the newspaper what happen to the negotiations. The Labor League picked a curious time to go on strike because two of the saw mills were undergoing repairs and maintenance thus employed no staff. Additionally this was the summer that began the Panic of 1873, Labor’s Counterpublic \ 107 so there was a surplus of men out of work nearby who were desperate enough to cross the picket lines.4 Although the strikers were flexible to the pay issue, their demand for a standard ten-hour workday was nonnegotiable. They claimed they were required to work up to twelve hours a day. Mill owners stated that in the summer months they required eleven- to twelve-hour workdays, but during the winter, workers worked no more than eight and a half hours. Additionally mill owners calculated breaks for lunch and changing of...