Labor and the Business of Race

From grocery stores, to private homes, and oil fields, Black workers battled against racially discriminatory employment practices and exploitative labor conditions in the twentieth century United States. Our panel considers how Black workers sought to lay claim to better jobs, wages, and working conditions. Geographically, we are focused on the South, with a particular emphasis on the city of Atlanta. Chronologically, our work tracks how Black workers responded to economic dislocations from the Great Depression to the rise of neoliberalism in the 1970s.
We demonstrate that the issue of labor was inextricably bound to the broader economic conditions of Black Americans, particularly matters of consumption. We track how Black workers fought for increased purchasing power and Black shoppers boycotted to demand Black staff. We show how Black laborers and their allies built alliances with and in opposition to both the federal and local government.
Dr. Eshe Sherley explores the changing economy in the U.S. South through Black women’s domestic labor. Sherley demonstrates how Black maids developed themselves into a powerful political constituency in 1970s Atlanta. Dr. Micah Jones uses the 1935 Atlanta A&P Boycott to reframe the Don’t Buy Where You Can’t Work campaigns of the 1920s and 1930s as a Black consumer movement. Dr. Danielle Wiggins recounts the NAACP’s criticism of President Jimmy Carter’s National Energy Plan. Wiggins shows how Black organizations framed the 1970s energy crisis as a racial and economic justice issue that jeopardized both Black employment and Black Americans’ freedom to engage equitably in the post-civil rights consumers’ republic.
Altogether, our panel contends that these battles over the conditions in which Black people lived, labored, and consumed reshaped the political economy and racial hierarchy of the United States.