Waterfront Workers of New Orleans: Race, Class and Politics, 1863-1923 - Hardcover

Arnesen, Eric

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 019505380X ISBN 13: 9780195053807

Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc, 1991

Synopsis

This is an account of the New Orleans dockworkers and their formation of an inter-racial labour movement from 1880 to 1894, and again from 1901 to 1923. After the Civil War, Louisiana had no social group that exercised a clear and sustained cultural and political hegemony over the others, and sharp conflicts over racial and class issues marked the struggle for political control. This was particularly acute in New Orleans, which had what was in effect a long-standing black middle class. These free people of colour, along with ex-slaves under their guidance, fostered legislation that dismantled the segregated streetcar system and opened schools and jobs to blacks. For the dockworkers, however, solidarity came not only from other blacks, but from white co-workers as well, as they formed trade unions and eventually brought together a single union federation. This volume describes how the newly-formed Dock and Cotton Council successfully resisted efforts by employers to separate black and white unions, diminish workers' control over jobs, and restructure the organization of labour on the waterfront.

About this title

From the Back Cover

Bridging the gap between African-American and labor history, Waterfront of New Orleans focuses on ten thousand black and white riverfront workers and class and race relations from the turbulent Civil War and Reconstruction years to the early twentieth century's age of segregation.

Edition details

• Publisher: Oxford University Press Inc
• Publication date: 1991
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 019505380X
• ISBN 13: 9780195053807
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 366