Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality

Divided We Stand is a study of how class and race have intersected in American society—above all, in the "making" and remaking of the American working class in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Focusing mainly on longshoremen in the ports of New York, New Orleans, and Los Angeles, and on steelworkers in many of the nation's steel towns, it examines how European immigrants became American and "white" in the crucible of the industrial workplace and the ethnic and working-class neighborhood.

As workers organized on the job, especially during the overlapping CIO and civil rights eras in the middle third of the twentieth century, trade unions became a vital arena in which "old" and "new" immigrants and black migrants forged new alliances and identities and tested the limits not only of class solidarity but of American democracy. The most volatile force in this regard was the civil rights movement. As it crested in the 1950s and '60s, "the Movement" confronted unions anew with the question, "Which side are you on?" This book demonstrates the complex ways in which labor organizations answered that question and the complex relationships between union leaders and diverse rank-and-file constituencies in addressing it.

Divided We Stand includes vivid examples of white working-class "agency" in the construction of racially discriminatory employment structures. But Nelson is less concerned with racism as such than with the concrete historical circumstances in which racialized class identities emerged and developed. This leads him to a detailed and often fascinating consideration of white, working-class ethnicity but also to a careful analysis of black workers—their conditions of work, their aspirations and identities, their struggles for equality. Making its case with passion and clarity, Divided We Stand will be a compelling and controversial book.

"Few books fundamentally reshape intellectual and political debates. This one deserves and promises to do so. No scholar since W.E.B. Du Bois has brought to the study of race and labor in the United States such broad sweep, human detail, and conceptual sophistication. None has given us an account which so aptly combines balanced judgments with a tone which is at once tragic and sympathetic."--David Roediger, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

"Divided We Stand skillfully examines the complex and often contradictory history of the American labor movement through the shifting contexts of racial and class hierarchies. Superbly crafted and clearly argued, Divided We Stand explains how and why race was so central to the making of the white American working class. In this impressive study, Bruce Nelson shows how the new labor history should be written."--Manning Marable, Columbia University

"Divided We Stand is our twenty-first-century 'Making of the American Working Class.' Combining the passion and insight of E. P. Thompson and W.E.B. DuBois, Bruce Nelson tells the story of class and racial formation on the docks and steel mills and explains why solidarity can never be built on mere 'stomach equality.' While presenting an irrefutable case for white racism as American labor's Achille's heel, Nelson never accepts the outcome as a fait accompli. On the contrary, you will discover challenges to white supremacy, paths not taken, and possibilities not yet realized that can point the way to the unmaking of American racism and the remaking of a revitalized labor movement built on racial justice."--Robin D. G. Kelley, author of Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class

"In a series of important articles over the past few years, Bruce Nelson has established himself as one of the foremost historians writing on the explosive issue of race and labor in the twentieth century. Divided We Stand is therefore a much-anticipated book. It will attract a good deal of attention, and deservedly so. It is an outstanding work of history."--Kevin Boyle, University of Massachusetts

Publishers Weekly

The battle for worker's rights in the U.S. has always coexisted with the battle for racial equality, yet these two constituencies have often been on opposing sides. The tortuous process by which predominantly white unionized labor groups gradually came to grips with their history of racial exclusion forms the background of this superbly written, intellectually exciting and pioneering book. A history professor at Dartmouth College, Nelson weds detailed research with in-depth interviews, oral histories and his own first-hand experience (he worked union shop jobs before attending graduate school), producing a study of labor's struggle with race and a critique of the tendency of "new labor history" to ignore blacks and excuse white racism. With grace and acuity, Nelson unites his far-ranging concerns, from the overt racism of many 19th-century Roman Catholic clergy who helped white immigrants organize and the history of companies using blacks who had been excluded from unions as strikebreakers to the deep-seated conflicts between the AFL and CIO over race policies and the use of red-baiting to attack those who attempted to fully integrate unions. In assembling this history, Nelson successfully argues that race and ethnicity have long been central issues in the labor movement. (Jan. 12) Forecast: Like Noel Ignatiev's influential How the Irish Became White and David Roediger's classic The Wages of Whiteness, this book has the potential to profoundly change how we read and think about American history. If it garners the review attention it deserves, it could find a solid audience among readers who enjoyed those books. Copyright 2000 Cahners Business Information.