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7. "We Had Struggled in Vain": Protest for Construction Jobs and Specters of Violence
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7 “we had struggled in vain” Protest for Construction Jobs and Specters of Violence It comes to my mind that at least a quarter of a century ago we sat in on the City Commission for Human Rights, a bunch of black working folk, because it was not doing its job. And as a matter of fact, in twenty-five years it still hasn’t done its job as it pertains to the building trades and now we are having another hearing. —James Houghton, president, Harlem Fight Back, speaking at a public hearing on the construction industry in New York City sponsored by the New York City Commission on Human Rights and the New York City Office of Labor Services, 1990 Brooklyn CORE’s campaign to integrate the construction workforce building the Downstate Medical Center inspired tremendous community support and attracted over one hundred new affiliate members to the chapter’s ranks. The movement also set in motion conflicts between militants and reformers that would ultimately cause the chapter to move away from the types of demonstrations that made Brooklyn CORE able to gain audience with power brokers, as it did during the Ebinger’s campaign , the demonstrations against Lefrak, and its protests against infrequent garbage collection. For many reasons, the issue of discrimination in employment, especially discrimination in the construction industry, would be a particular source of rage and frustration, not only for CORE members and leaders, but also for the city’s black population. The construction trades were palpable symbols of entrenched white economic privilege; their powerful unions refused to give African Americans jobs in one of the highest pay niches of the city’s blue-collar labor market. 210 • Fighting JiM Crow in the County oF Kings Even when the national civil rights movement was at the height of its power and prestige, northern urban construction unions stubbornly refused to desegregate their ranks, especially in skilled trades. Indeed, racial discrimination in construction industries was one of the most important civil rights issue in cities throughout the Northeast and Midwest during the summer of 1963. Most African American and Puerto Rican construction workers were relegated to menial, low-skilled jobs. The Downstate Medical Center construction project revealed how the state and city government and the powerful building trades unions perpetuated these discriminatory labor patterns.1 The attack by northern, urban civil rights activists against employment discrimination in the building trades industry marked a significant moment when activists applied pressure tactics for blacks’ immediate entrance into one of the most racially segregated and well-paying sectors of the U.S. workforce. In the short run these protests achieved little in terms of breaking down the racial barriers in construction unions. But as some of the largest protests to sweep northern cities during the early 1960s, these campaigns served as the catalysts to transform first-time demonstrators into lifelong political activists. Campaigns like Downstate also helped create new, more militant organizations, such as Harlem Fight Back, which spent decades struggling to secure jobs for black workers in the building trades. And these campaigns against discrimination in the construction trades focused the attention of the larger black freedom movement on employment discrimination, job-creation initiatives , and calls for economic justice through affirmative action. In fact, calls for economic justice in northern cities occurred at the same time as southern movements for voting rights and access to public accommodations . Demands for increased black employment opportunities did not first emerge in the mid- to late 1960s. When historians pay closer attention to black social movements outside the South, they see the ways desegregating jobs and racially segregated unions were always part of the postwar struggle for black rights. In the early 1960s this ongoing struggle gained much-needed energy, direction, and attention through northern efforts to desegregate the construction trades unions.2 The Downstate Medical Center expansion project was typical of the types of state-funded construction work that black workers were systematically shut out from during the early 1960s. It consisted of two new additions to the sprawling Kings County Hospital complex: a new, 350-bed teaching hospital and renovations of the State University of New York (SUNY) medical school in New York City. The construction was part of the $353 million that the state had earmarked in 1960 to [18.209.229.59] Project MUSE (2024-03-29 07:26 GMT) “We Had Struggled in Vain” • 211 expand the entire SUNY system by 1965. Upgrading the state’s two medical schools...