Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890 (review)

BOOK REVIEWS91 trapped her in the passive, non-public female world of the past. Throughout her life, Lucy Webb Hayes remained consistently noncommittal on the more controversial issues facing women—on encouragement for business enterprises by women, on woman suffrage, and on professional education for women. Geer's biography is well written, and she has delved into materials that have not previously been fully utilized. However, there is much about this biography that, at times, tends to worship the unsung heroine. There is also much about the lengthy accounts of the social life and the travel and vacation itinerary of the Hayes family that seems to deaden psychological insight and trivialize what must have been a time of severe tension for such a woman caught between two worlds. The reader is left wishing that the author could have peered between the lines of her note cards. Steven L. Piott University of Wisconsin Center-Marshfield Black Labor in the South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1890. By Peter J. Rachleff. (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1984. Pp. xi, 249. $34.95.) Peter Rachleff presents a history of the organizational and ideological development of the black laboring community in postbellum Richmond. Not surprisingly, he finds that racial separation characterized most aspects of ordinary working-class life. Yet, as he focuses on black laborers' quest for an enduring institutional vehicle for their activism, he finds that black and white workers cooperated in the short-lived working-class reform movement of the Knights of Labor to challenge the status quo. Rachleff describes blacks' efforts to build a cohesive community through the extended family, the church, and "secret societies" for selfimprovement , mutual assistance, and trade or political activity. He creatively pictures the family lives, social relationships, employment circumstances , associational activities, and political ideas of the first two post-emancipation generations of blacks in Richmond. While more privileged blacks initially directed the community politically , by 1870 working-class activists assumed the leadership of black Richmond. By 1873 they had tried the Republican party, Colored National Labor Union, and trade unions to express mass black action, with no one of these offering consistent or permanent success. As the depression of 1873 sapped the shared resources of blacks, their efforts at striking for adequate wages also proved futile. Rachleff explains that blacks' lack of political power and lack of formal ties to white working-class organizations meant that they could not halt cross-racial strikebreaking. After a short period of cooperation with the Readjuster party, workingclass black activists flocked to the Knights of Labor. Segregated assemblies 92CIVIL WAR HISTORY of both races cooperated in a lengthy and successful economic boycott, during which they created a "movement culture." Rachleff uses this term in the titles of two chapters, yet he never defines it satisfactorily in the text or notes, simply referring readers to other authors for a discussion of the concept. Knights' strength peaked in the spring of 1886, but disagreements between the racially segregated assemblies over social equality and joint political action soon caused the demise ofthe Knights locally. In this analysis Rachleff follows the interpretation of Leon Fink in Workingman 's Democracy (1983). To describe the world of black laborers, Rachleff draws upon manuscript federal censuses, records of the Richmond Branch of Freedmen's Savings Bank, newspapers, black and labor periodicals, and records of labor organizations. Unfortunately he cites the records of the Freedmen's Savings Bank without any reference to specific portions of the records. While he also cites a variety of secondary sources, particularly ones dealing with black and labor history, he does not cite the most recent history of postwar Richmond, Michael B. Chesson's Richmond After the War, 1865-1890 (1981). Twelve tables in an appendix provide detailed information regarding employment patterns in industries that hired large numbers of blacks. One table that presents the Richmond population by wards in 1870 would have been far more useful had it been expanded to include data for 1880 and 1890. A map of postwar Richmond showing the creation of gerrymandered wards would also have been helpful to readers. As in any pioneering work of this sort focusing on one community, comparative comments would have broadened the impact of...