Watch: America’s Racist History of Labor
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By Felice León, The Root
News flash: The history of labor in America is racist….
Labor Day became a federal holiday in 1894 after a railroad strike led by the American Railway Union known as the Pullman Strike.
This was a turning point in the labor movement, though it didn’t benefit all American workers. Black Pullman porters weren’t allowed to participate in the strike because they were not allowed in the white unions. But black people did unionize.
Some associate black unions with A. Philip Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which was established in 1925. But some scholars date black unions to as early as 1838. And in 1869, there was the Colored National Labor Union, which was established by a ship caulker named Isaac Myers. Though the CNLU was short-lived, it paved the way for black unions to come.
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I am unemployed due to racism. Many of us are unemployed or underemployed and then looked at as if we are dirty or bad for not having a job. We go to school and get these highly technical degrees. Graduate at the top of the class and then struggle to get and keep a marginal job where your boss is like an overseer who loves to subjugate for fun. Soon you are told you have an “attitude”. I found this is nothing but code word for “you sassed the overseer”. There are so many parallels to slave life in the American corporate system.