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chapter 4 Labor Both Fat and Lean Years Unions cannot expect to close the working door in [the black man’s] face in peaceful times and expect his co-operation in troublesome times. They must be consistent. —Chicago Defender, December 1921 Even in regard to its laboring population Chicago exhibits the possibilities of the Negro as an industrial worker as no other city. —E. Franklin Frazier, 1929 Postal workers, as a class, give greater support to the National Association [for the Advancement of Colored People] than any other class. —Daisy E. Lampkin to Robert W. Bagnall, 1928 Whatever halcyon days were seen in the business sphere failed to materialize into a comparable experience for the bulk of the black laboring class during the 1920s.1 Although the war years had brought something positive into the lives of old and new black Chicago residents, the end of war brought a series of negative experiences and ones all too familiar to the black worker in America. Demobilization of the armed forces and the servicemen’s return into the labor force produced a glut of workers. With the Chicago Urban League reporting that unemployment had reached serious proportions, the decade of the 1920s began on rocky foundations , to say the least.2 With this decade beginning with such gloomy prospects of continuous postwar recession and with unemployment rampant, its conclusion inauspiciously produced a similar scenario in place. The recognized features of economic depression in the 1930s then easily came as no surprise to the African American worker in and outside of industry.3 New Negro economic visionaries—and in the reality of the times, actual business titans such as Anthony Overton, Jesse Binga, and Robert S. Abbott—stood tall as trailblazers in the best American capitalistic tradition as they exhibited the entrepreneurial traits of risk taking, strategic and futuristic planning, and an ability to transform dreams into tangible realities with both wealth production and job creation. Consistent with New Negro thinking, the results were manifested in institution building as well as the actual construction of new buildings that completed the visual element in the process of creating the Black Metropolis. As impressive as the presence and influence of business and politics were over black life, the advent of World War I, which produced the black industrial proletariat , left an even more massive workforce seeking change and workplace opportunities in its wake. Moving to a phase in their awareness of their value to the nation’s labor structure, elements of the laboring classes—in particular, Pullman porters and packinghouse employees—considered organizing along the lines of trade unionism to attain goals previously considered unimaginable. As a result, labor consciousness and successful organizing among these groups of workers produced black labor’s most activist decade to date. Their efforts produced progress not only in the labor environment; the groundswell for a determined civil rights thrust was in progress among the ranks and organizational structure of packinghouse workers, Pullman porters, steelworkers, and postal employees as well. Not to be overlooked were numerous contradictions existing in the domain of work that saw great expectations being heralded in some quarters while a reasonable semblance of full employment or even near full employment never materialized . According to the numerous economists and historians who have examined the role of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP), the American Negro Labor Congress, and the various attempts to organize packinghouse workers, the problem of underemployment seemed to be overlooked as well—except for the activities of the aforementioned groups.4 Black labor in the trades experienced racial discrimination within their areas of skills and responded locally by organizing under their own leadership, such as that exemplified by Edward Doty’s Chicago Colored Plumbers Association and later the American Consolidated Trades Council.5 Worsening economic conditions tied to global dislocations, constant migration from the South of workers seeking sustenance and causing a local labor glut, and the early advent of a massive depression in the Black Belt loomed as disruptions for members of the laboring class. These factors exposed the weakness in the black dream of a self-sustaining economy as unemployment remained constant and a threat to attaining a higher quality of life collectively. Consistentwithitsmissionfromthepreviousdecade,theChicagoUrbanLeague took a leadingrolein the1920sin advancing theinterestsofblacklabor.Theorganization reported, “In Chicago, there is diversified employment, to be sure, but there is a significantly heavier concentration in the basic industries; more than that, there are gradations of work from unskilled to skilled. In certain plants skilled workers increased...

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