Affirmative Action from below: Civil Rights, the Building Trades, and the Politics of Racial Equality in the Urban North, 1945-1969

Labor Studies and the Political Economy of Trump

“…Like any other American political and social institution, unions also had problematic histories of racial and gender bias, discrimination, and exclusion. These, too, became the source of critical attention in the public sphere, especially as the Civil Rights Movement moved from the schools and voting booths to the workplace (Hill, 1968(Hill, , 1996Mclean, 2008;Sugrue, 2004).…”

“…Workers in the building trades lived by a masculine, oft-times racially exclusive, and militant solidarity. But civil rights activism had begun to push federal, state, and local officials to take action against employing contractors and unions who resisted opening the industry to Black workers, while feminism and anti-war activism brought forward critiques of blue-collar masculinity as well as ways of displaying one' s manhood less tied to traditional patriotism (Freeman, 1993;Sugrue, 2004).…”

“…Nixon proved responsive. The administration' s Philadelphia Plan of June 1969, which was aimed at opening the city' s building trades to Black workers, masked the deeper set anti-labor struggle of corporations with a civil rights gloss and overwrought concerns about inflation (Linder, 2000;Stein, 1998;Sugrue, 2004). Narrowly conceived, the plan did not accomplish the dual goals of increased minority access and lower labor costs (Stein, 1998, p. 151).…”

Reframing Community Practice for the 21StCentury: Multiple Traditions, Multiple Challenges

“…As codified in its best-known variant, the neo-Alinskyite model, these endeavors require professional community organizers who understand how to build democratic action organizations, train indigenous leaders, define and analyze political issues, mount organizing campaigns, mobilize participants, and expand the terrain of conflict (Alinsky, 1971;Delgado, 1986;Heathcott, 2005). Historic successes within this broader tradition might be said to include major civil-rights legislation and labor law, antidisplacement actions against urban renewal, and the community reinvestment mandates (Gotham, 1999;Morris, 1984;Sugrue, 2004;Squires, 1992).…”

The individual and “the general situation”: The tension barometer and the race problem at the University of Chicago, 1947–1954

“…Networks of social scientists with ties to civil rights groups and historically black colleges and universities continued to root the race issue in exploitation, intergroup competition, systematic discrimination, and political exclusion through the early 1950s (Cox, 1948;Dawson, 2001;Goluboff, 2007;Holloway, 2002;Kelley, 1990;Sugrue, 2004Sugrue, , 2008. In addition, although Swedish economist Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma (1944) was best known for arguing that the race problem rested in the morality and psychology of white Americans, historian Walter Jackson makes clear that Myrdal presented the political, social, cultural, and psychological sources of racial injustice as complexly intertwined (Jackson, 1990).…”