Against the Grain

Labor, Race, and the South

The failure to unionize the South, to organize Southern workers in the 1930s and ’40s on the basis of interracial worker solidarity, had momentous and enduring consequences for race relations and worker well-being in the U.S. as a whole. So argues Michael Goldfield, who in his new book points to the marginalization of leftists within unions and federations like the CIO. (Encore presentation.)

Michael Goldfield, The Southern Key: Class, Race, and Radicalism in the 1930s and 1940s Oxford University Press, 2020