Black power at work : community control, affirmative action, and the construction industry
Author(s)
Bibliographic Information
Black power at work : community control, affirmative action, and the construction industry
ILR Press/Cornell University Press, 2010
Available at / 2 libraries
-
No Libraries matched.
- Remove all filters.
Note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Description and Table of Contents
Description
Black Power at Work chronicles the history of direct action campaigns to open up the construction industry to black workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The book's case studies of local movements in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle show how struggles against racism in the construction industry shaped the emergence of Black Power politics outside the U.S. South. In the process, "community control" of the construction industry-especially government War on Poverty and post-rebellion urban reconstruction projects- became central to community organizing for black economic self-determination and political autonomy.
The history of Black Power's community organizing tradition shines a light on more recent debates about job training and placement for unemployed, underemployed, and underrepresented workers. Politicians responded to Black Power protests at federal construction projects by creating modern affirmative action and minority set-aside programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but these programs relied on "voluntary" compliance by contractors and unions, government enforcement was inadequate, and they were not connected to jobs programs. Forty years later, the struggle to have construction jobs serve as a pathway out of poverty for inner city residents remains an unfinished part of the struggle for racial justice and labor union reform in the United States.
Table of Contents
Introduction: Constructing Black Power
by David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey
1. "Revolution Has Come to Brooklyn": Construction Trades Protests and the Negro Revolt of 1963
by Brian Purnell
2. "The Laboratory of Democracy": Construction Industry Racism in Newark and the Limits of Liberalism
by Julia Rabig
3. "Work for Me Also Means Work for the Community I Come From": Black Contractors, Black Capitalism, and Affirmative Action in the Bay Area
by John J. Rosen
4. Community Control of Construction, Independent Unionism, and the "Short Black Power Movement" in Detroit
by David Goldberg
5. "The Stone Wall Behind": The Chicago Coalition for United Community Action and Labor's Overseers, 1968-1973
by Erik S. Gellman
6. "The Blacks Should Not Be Administering the Philadelphia Plan": Nixon, the Hard Hats, and "Voluntary" Affirmative Action
by Trevor Griffey
7. From Jobs to Power: The United Construction Workers Association and Title VII Community Organizing in the 1970s
by Trevor Griffey
Conclusion: White Male Identity Politics, the Building Trades, and the Future of American Labor
by David Goldberg and Trevor Griffey
Notes
About the Contributors
Index
by "Nielsen BookData"