Where Do Black Americans Belong In The Conversation About Labor Unions?
Published a 100 years ago, the writings of Booker T. Washington + W.E.B Du Bois illuminate the conflicting feelings many Black Americans still have around the labor movement.
M y idea of unions prior to law school were something along the lines of, “eh, I’m not too sure about them,” a sentiment that only persisted when I became an employment and labor attorney. The discourse I heard again and again in my community was that unions were not accepting of Black people.
Yet D.C.’s main industry is working for the federal government and most Black union workers are in the public sector today. I grew up in the suburbs of Washington, D.C. myself — Prince George’s county — the wealthiest Black county in America, but wealth is relative, and “Black wealth” is vastly different from wealth.
While I have never belonged to a union myself, a union provided my family a stable income and incredible health insurance until I became an adult. My father, a career public librarian, never spoke a word about his union. (That is until the pandemic swept the nation, and the protections it offered were brought into sharp focus and he began discussing it regularly.)
