Emerson College Library: Black History Month: African Americans and Labor (2025 Theme)

African Americans and Labor (2025 Theme)

"The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora."

((ASALH 2025 Statement on the Theme of Black History Month)

Beyond Emerson Resources

African American Freedoms
The University of Maryland collection of primary source documents relating to Black labor unions and worker's rights movements.
Chicago History Museum: The Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
A general overview of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, written by Chicago History Museum's assistant curator Brittany Hutchinson.
Facing Freedom Collection
Collection of primary sources relating to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters from the Chicago History Museum.

Black Labor Leaders

A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil Rights by Cornelius L. Bynum
A. Philip Randolph's career as a trade unionist and civil rights activist fundamentally shaped the course of black protest in the mid-twentieth century. Standing alongside individuals such as W.E.B. Du Bois and Marcus Garvey at the center of the cultural renaissance and political radicalism that shaped communities such as Harlem in the 1920s and into the 1930s, Randolph fashioned an understanding of social justice that reflected a deep awareness of how race complicated class concerns, especially among black laborers.
Bayard Rustin by James Haskins
A biography of Bayard Rustin, a skillful organizer behind the scenes of the American civil rights movement whose ideas stongly influenced Martin Luther King, Jr.
The Curt Flood Story by Stuart L. Weiss
An examination of Curt Flood's often troubled personal life and explores his possible motives for suing Major League Baseball in 1970. For challenging baseball's reserve system, which he likened to bondage, the St. Louis Cardinals center fielder in time was lionized. Stuart Weiss examines the man behind the decision, exploring the span of Flood’s life and shedding light on his relationships with those who helped shape his determination to sue baseball and providing a new perspective on the lawsuit that found its way to the U.S. Supreme Court.
A Forgotten Sisterhood by Audrey Thomas McCluskey
In the late nineteenth through the mid-twentieth century a small group of women overcame personal and professional hardships to gain national prominence as educational reformers and social activists. This book takes a biographical look at Lucy Craft Laney, Mary McLeod Bethune, Nannie Helen Burroughs, Charlotte Hawkins Brown.
For Jobs and Freedom by Andrew E. Kersten (Editor); David Lucander (Editor)
As the head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and a tireless advocate for civil rights, A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979) served as a bridge between African Americans and the labor movement. During a public career that spanned more than five decades, he was a leading voice in the struggle for black freedom and social justice, and his powerful words inspired others to join him. In the absence of an autobiography, this volume offers the best available presentation of Randolph's ideas and arguments in his own words.
Mary McLeod Bethune: A Biography by Rackham Holt
A biography of the Negro educator and humanitarian who founded Bethune-Cookman College, served in Federal positions, and worked for bettering the status of women and Negroes.
Until I Am Free by Keisha N. Blain
A blend of social commentary, biography, and intellectual history, Until I Am Free is a manifesto for anyone committed to social justice. The book challenges us to listen to a working-poor and disabled Black woman activist and intellectual of the civil rights movement as we grapple with contemporary concerns around race, inequality, and social justice. Award-winning historian and New York Times best-selling author Keisha N. Blain situates Fannie Lou Hamer as a key political thinker alongside leaders such as Martin Luther King Jr., Malcolm X, and Rosa Parks and demonstrates how her ideas remain salient for a new generation of activists committed to dismantling systems of oppression in the United States and across the globe.

Untold: Unionizing Domestic Workers / Dorothy Bolden
Civil rights activist Dorothy Bolden made it her mission to empower America's working class. Her activism empowered domestic workers across the nation - and created noticeable change in the workplace for thousands of Black women.

Labor Movements

Black Power at Work by David Goldberg (Editor); Trevor Griffey (Editor)
Black Power at Work chronicles the history of direct action campaigns to open up the construction industry to black workers in the 1960s and 1970s. The book's case studies of local movements in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle show how struggles against racism in the construction industry shaped the emergence of Black Power politics outside the U.S. South.
Black workers : a documentary history from colonial times to the present by Eric Foner and Ronald L. Lewis
This book is a celebration of the progress of the Black Worker through the usage of primary source documents.
Black Workers and the New Unions by Horace R. Cayton; George S. Mitchell
This is a book for those who want to know what really happens when, in circumstances of enormous complexity and under the impetus of the New Deal, an irresistible drive for labor organization runs head-on into an immovably imbedded race prejudice. It is based on interviews by the authors with those people most intimately concerned.
Black Workers Remember by Michael Keith Honey
Black Workers Remember tells the hidden history of African American workers in their own words. It provides striking firsthand accounts of the experiences of black southerners living under segregation in Memphis, Tennessee. Eloquent and personal, these oral histories comprise a unique primary source and provide a new way of understanding the black labor experience during the industrial era.
The Economic Civil Rights Movement by Michael Ezra (Editor)
The Economic Civil Rights Movement is a collection of thirteen original essays that analyze the significance of economic power to the black freedom struggle by exploring how African Americans fought for increased economic autonomy in an attempt to improve the quality of their lives. It covers a wide range of campaigns ranging from the World War II era through the civil rights and black power movements and beyond.
A Long Hard Journey by Patricia C. McKissack; Fredrick L. McKissack
A chronicle of the first black-controlled union, made up of Pullman porters, who after years of unfair labor practices staged a battle against a corporate giant resulting in a "David and Goliath" ending.
The Negro and the American Labor Movement by Julius Jacobson
This title examines the historical relationship between African Americans and organized labor in the United States, exploring issues like discrimination within unions, the role of Black workers in labor movements, and the struggles for equal rights within the workforce
Winning the War for Democracy by David Lucander
Scholars regard the March on Washington Movement (MOWM) as a forerunner of the postwar Civil Rights movement. Led by the charismatic A. Philip Randolph, MOWM scored an early victory when it forced the Roosevelt Administration to issue a landmark executive order that prohibited defense contractors from practicing racial discrimination. Winning the War for Democracy : The March on Washington Movement, 1941-1946 recalls that triumph, but also looks beyond Randolph and the MOWM's national leadership to focus on the organization's evolution and actions at the local level.

Black History Month

2025 Flyer

Working the Boats by Claire Andrade-Watkins

African Americans and Labor (2025 Theme)

Beyond Emerson Resources

Black Labor Leaders

Labor Movements