The Olive Branch -

[Ricter]

Depends in large part on whether or not minorities, particularly blacks, were allowed to join.

Even so, not being able to use white water fountains, white restrooms, white restaurants, white movie theatres, etc, was a bummer. And there was the whole illegal racial intermarriage thing. And segregated schools.

So was life "better"? Depends on one's viewpoint.

My understanding is that many "blacks" had union jobs, since there was so much more unionization anyway. Employment was better and they shared in that. Not to the extent "whites" did, I'm sure, but better per capita than today.

No disagreement re the social issues.

 

[dbphoenix]

My understanding is that many "blacks" had union jobs, since there was so much more unionization anyway. Employment was better and they shared in that. Not to the extent "whites" did, I'm sure, but better per capita than today.

No disagreement re the social issues.

Some unions, such as steel, were more inclusive than others. And there's tons of info online.

But, again, it depends on what one means by "better". Regardless of how great the wages might be in one's union job, he still couldn't eat in the same restaurants, stay in the same hotels, swim in the same pools.

Since whites didn't have to deal with any of this, few of them think about it, particularly now. Which is why the whole White Privilege thing goes right past most of them.


FYI:

By the 1960s blacks and other minorities accounted for 25% of union membership, but the AFL-CIO was still ambivalent about race. Discrimination was officially forbidden, and labor officially supported civil rights. But many unions continued to keep blacks out. Trade unions, particularly in the construction industry, simply didn't allow African-Americans to become apprentices. Even the International Ladies Garment Workers Union opposed federal job training programs for blacks, fearing job competition.

At the same time, the labor movement continued to serve as one means through which blacks to fight for equality and important links developed between the civil rights movement and unions. It was E.D. Nixon, a rank and file member of the BSCP, who brought Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. to Montgomery, Alabama to support the 1955 bus boycott. The action became one of the seminal events of the civil rights movement.

Thirteen years later, King was again linking civil rights to labor organizing. Sanitation workers in Memphis, Tennessee—most but not all of them African-American—were so poorly paid that 40 percent of them qualified for welfare even though they worked full time. Health insurance was minimal, as were pensions and vacations. They worked in filthy, unsafe conditions, and were sent home for the least infraction.

The city refused to negotiate with the union and in February 1968 the workers went on strike. Their struggle came to symbolize the plight of the working poor and of the African-American community in general. The strike drew the interest of King, who had begun to emphasize through his Poor People's Campaign the importance of economic issues in the civil rights struggle. King's presence in support of the strike put a national spotlight on the workers' struggle. When he returned in April, intending to lead a massive nonviolent march to support the workers, an assassin shot him dead in a Memphis motel.