Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry

David Goldberg, Trevor Griffey

Cornell University Press, May 2, 2011 - Political Science - 280 pages

Black Power at Work chronicles the history of direct action campaigns to open up the construction industry to black workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The book's case studies of local movements in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle show how struggles against racism in the construction industry shaped the emergence of Black Power politics outside the U.S. South. In the process, "community control" of the construction industry—especially government War on Poverty and post-rebellion urban reconstruction projects— became central to community organizing for black economic self-determination and political autonomy.

The history of Black Power's community organizing tradition shines a light on more recent debates about job training and placement for unemployed, underemployed, and underrepresented workers. Politicians responded to Black Power protests at federal construction projects by creating modern affirmative action and minority set-aside programs in the late 1960s and early 1970s, but these programs relied on "voluntary" compliance by contractors and unions, government enforcement was inadequate, and they were not connected to jobs programs. Forty years later, the struggle to have construction jobs serve as a pathway out of poverty for inner city residents remains an unfinished part of the struggle for racial justice and labor union reform in the United States.

Contents

• Constructing Black Power: 1
• Construction Trades Protests and the Negro Revolt of 1963: 23
• Construction Industry Racism in Newark and the Limits of Liberalism: 48
• Black Contractors Black Capitalism and Affirmative Action in the Bay Area: 68
• 4 Community Control of Construction Independent Unionism and the Short Black Power Movement in Detroit: 90
• The Chicago Coalition for United Community Action and Labors Overseers 19681973: 112
• Nixon the Hard Hats and Voluntary Affirmative Action: 134
• The United Construction Workers Association and Title VII Community Organizing in the 1970s: 161
• White Male Identity Politics the Building Trades and the Future of American Labor: 189
• Notes: 209
• About the Contributors: 255
• Index: 257

About the author

David Goldberg is Assistant Professor of Africana Studies at Wayne State University. Trevor Griffey is a PhD candidate in U.S. History at the University of Washington.

Bibliographic information

• Title: Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry
• Editors: David Goldberg, Trevor Griffey
• Publisher: Cornell University Press, 2011
• ISBN: 0801461952, 9780801461958
• Length: 280 pages
• Subjects: Business & Economics / Industries / Construction; Business & Economics / Labor / General; Political Science / Labor & Industrial Relations; Social Science / Ethnic Studies / American / African American & Black Studies