workingclasshistory:

On this day, 24 September 1883, during his Address to the National Convention of Colored Men in Louisville, Kentucky, Frederick Douglass criticised trade unions that refused to organise Black workers. However, unfortunately most unions in US would ignore him and maintain whites-only memberships, which weakened them and enabled employers to play off different groups of workers against each other in various disputes. Even after unions were eventually desegregated, nearly a century later many unions even with significant levels of Black membership maintained predominately white leaderships, and ignored the concerns of Black workers. This state of affairs was challenged and eventually largely overturned by self-organised Black workers. One example of this was the case of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit in the 1960s and 70s, who we learn about in this podcast: https://workingclasshistory.com/2018/08/28/e12-the-league-of-revolutionary-black-workers-in-detroit/ https://www.facebook.com/workingclasshistory/photos/a.296224173896073/1218384475013367/?type=3