Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham.

Black Workers' Struggle for Equality in Birmingham. Edited by Horace Huntley and David Montgomery. Afterword by Odessa Woolfolk. The Working Class in American History. (Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press, c. 2004. Pp. xiv, 244. $35.00, ISBN 0-252-02952-6.)

This collection of seventeen interviews with trade union activists in Birmingham, Alabama, offers precious insights into the relationship between labor and civil rights struggles. The personal stories told here bring out the bitter, frightening, and heroic details of the fight for equality waged by the generation that spanned the labor union and freedom movements from the 1930s through the 1960s. This collection first and foremost documents the voices of black workers, but it also includes the voices of a few white unionists who joined the fight for equal rights. Their struggle to make the right choices, not just for themselves but also for their children and grandchildren, dominates this wonderful but painful book. White supremacy and anticommunism made unions an uncertain ally of black workers. Yet because of the New Deal's Wagner Act, they could vote in elections, run for office, and fight for equal opportunities at the workplace and in unions. Thus, black workers used the labor movement in creative ways to improve their lot and to support the larger black freedom movement. These oral histories provide significant insights into how the black working-class struggle unfolded, and the book is a great addition to freedom movement history.

Horace Huntley, who initiated the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute's Oral History Project, must be given much of the credit for locating these individuals and recording their unusual narratives. His 1976 doctoral study of black workers in the mining and steel mill districts of Birmingham first opened this topic up to scholars, and his continuing dedication to collecting oral histories of black workers is creating a substantial research archive ("Iron Ore Miners and Mine Mill in Alabama, 1933-1952" [University of Pittsburgh, 1976]). The Civil Rights Institute is the one historical repository and museum of the civil rights movement that clearly links the freedom movement to the black working class and thereby helps the general public to more fully understand the depth of America's racial-economic apartheid.

David Montgomery's overview essay makes this book especially valuable. Using his words sparingly, Montgomery soberly documents how mine and mill owners used ugly, brutal racism to squeeze profits from white as well as black workers and the crushing terror white police used to silence civil rights unionists. His is a wonderfully synthetic account that explains the historical context, cites all the relevant literature, and draws out incisive comments and insights from the interviews in the book. It deserves to be reprinted and used for any course or anthology on labor and civil rights movements.

Those teaching labor, civil rights, or southern history would do well to use this book as a centerpiece for reflection and discussion. There is a degree of randomness in how the interviews are arranged. But clearly this organization is done for the purpose of letting workers speak for themselves without too much intervention by historians. There is perhaps no better place to start for an insight into the specifics of white supremacy and the harsh struggle for economic justice and freedom that has characterized working-class and black life in the South and America.

MICHAEL HONEY

University of Washington, Tacoma