Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Nelson Lichtenstein, Bruce Nelson, Michael Omi, Christopher Phelps, Eric Schickler, Paul Thomas, Margaret Weir, the editors, and two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments. Earlier versions of this paper were presented at the 29th Annual Southwest Labor Studies Association Conference and the University of California Institute for Labor and Employment 2003 Graduate Student Research Conference. Research for this paper was conducted with the help of a University of California Institute for Labor and Employment Dissertation Fellowship.

In February 1937, members of the United Automobile Workers (UAW) celebrated their pioneering victory over General Motors by waving American flags as they marched out of Fisher Body and paraded through the streets of Flint, Michigan.¹

Recent scholarship has highlighted the importance of this kind of nationalist rhetoric and identity to the rise of industrial unionism in the 1930s and early 1940s. From this perspective, labor leaders and their allies were able to promote unions and a class-based social movement by defining them as the embodiment of core American values and traditions. Workers wanted to be or become American, or to see themselves as upholding American traditions and interests, and were accordingly attracted to unions that embraced and claimed to advance this political culture. Perhaps most significantly, Americanism's broad appeal underpinned an ethnically and even racially inclusive unionism, particularly helping to create pro-union sympathies and a class-based identity among ethnic workers who hoped to secure their position in American society.

Working-class Americanism also gave workers an effective means of defending unions and challenging the power relations governing economic and political life. So, for example, unions were able to draw on John L. Lewis's notion of industrial democracy to legitimate their demands for power in the workplace. Furthermore, the political vision expressed in labor's nationalism helped to impart a somewhat social democratic character to the New Deal order.³

The following analysis seeks to shift our understanding of working-class Americanism in relation to the CIO and as an aspect of New Deal political culture. Against the prevailing emphasis on labor's nationalism as an element in the initial CIO insurgency that helped to open political and social life to formerly excluded workers, in this article I highlight how Americanism was deployed to set limits on the struggle for racial equality in one major CIO union. Drawing on a detailed analysis of the UAW, I argue that the language of even the most progressive Americanism endorsed and advanced a union culture and politics that failed to adequately address the aspirations and just demands of black workers. Given the importance of racial conflict and inequality to American history, this conclusion should significantly modify our understanding of nationalism's role in the CIO and within New Deal politics more generally. While some scholars have taken up elements of this analysis, even the most nuanced arguments, as I will show, have not entailed a sufficient engagement with the racial politics sustained by a liberal nationalist discourse inside the unions.

Liberal Americanism and the Rise of Modern Labor

The analysis of 1930s working-class nationalism has often given little attention to issues of race, with the exceptions resulting in largely positive conclusions about the racial significance of labor's Americanism. So, for example, Gary Gerstle's study of the racially homogeneous Independent Textile Union (ITU) is necessarily limited in this regard, while Thomas Göbel's analysis of the UAW suggests that the inclusive Americanism that incorporated European ethnics into the union also fostered support for black equality among union members.⁵

Gerstle makes the racial content of American identity the central issue in an exploration of the two competing nationalist perspectives – the civic and the racial – that he argues have “decisively shaped the history of the American nation in the twentieth century.”⁶

This ideology is counterposed to a racial nationalism, also inscribed in the Constitution, “that conceives of America in ethnoracial terms, as a people held together by common blood and skin color and by an inherited fitness for self-government.”⁷

By exploring the persistence of such racial nationalism into the 1930s and relating it to progressive politics and the formation of a white identity among European ethnic workers, Gerstle's analysis moves far beyond a simple affirmation of Americanism's inclusive impact within the working class. As he argues with regard to southern and eastern Europeans who sought to assimilate,

Gerstle thus provides important insights into the repressive significance of racial Americanism with regard to both the social pressures (and opportunities) confronting European ethnic workers and the wider racial oppression attached to their attempts to Americanize.

Yet this same emphasis on the restrictive politics of racial nationalism ensures that by comparison the emerging civic nationalism of the New Deal is presented in essentially positive terms, as a constructive if limited force advancing the interests of black and other nonwhite workers in the unions and more generally. In other words, the presence of racial nationalism within the New Deal coalition mars the progressive landscape, but the racial and other consequences of civic nationalism are fundamentally egalitarian:

The problem, from this point of view, would appear to be that New Deal civic nationalism was not always extended to incorporate all social groups.¹⁰

Similar limitations mark Michael Kazin's analysis of New Deal populism and Michael Denning's account of the cultural aspects of the Popular Front. Most importantly, their assessments of progressive working-class nationalism highlight only its racially inclusive significance, even if they also note its unstable character (Denning) or its limited range of impact (Kazin).¹²

To elaborate, what is missing with regard to the labor movement is a consideration of whether this civic nationalism was also used to sustain union practices that served the needs of white workers more than or at the expense of nonwhite workers. We need to consider how the “color-blind” character of this discourse and related conceptions of formal equality might have been used to obscure the realities of racial inequality and to promote and legitimate union policies counter to the demands of workers of color. We must ask whether workers of color were able to effectively draw on civic nationalism to advance their workplace, community, and union struggles. Finally, we need to assess the ways in which this discourse, with its celebration of the American past, encouraged or obstructed white workers' real understanding of the problems faced by workers of color. As I will argue with regard to the UAW, once we take up these questions, it becomes clear that a racially inclusive civic nationalist discourse, in fact, did much to obscure the nature of racial oppression in the United States and was effectively mobilized to disrupt important challenges to black marginalization within the labor movement.

Beyond helping us understand labor's racial politics, my claims about Americanism have broader implications for our understanding of American political culture. The possibility that an ostensibly democratic ideology like working-class Americanism could play this repressive or constraining role stems in part from what Michael Rogin has called the “countersubversive tradition” within American liberalism. Rogin's analysis, and contrasting arguments made by Rogers Smith, therefore help to clarify the nature of the politics in which the UAW participated.

For Rogin, what is imperative is to understand how American liberalism incorporates a practice of political demonology that presents political opponents as subversives in order to regulate debate and reject demands for social change. Scholars have often attributed this countersubversive extremism to marginal individuals or movements on the fringes of American politics, but Rogin instead focuses on “a countersubversive tradition that exists at the core of American politics, not its periphery.” Thus, it is mainstream liberal actors and “institutional centers of power” that have continually employed political demonology in order to defend dominant American interests and values. In this view, American countersubversion takes its shape partly from “the definition of American identity against racial, ethnic, class, and gender aliens.” The “special targets” of political demonology then include “peoples of color, women, aliens, radical workers, and Communists.”¹³

In my view, the politics of Americanism in the UAW involve an important historical instance of the countersubversive tradition that Rogin identifies with American liberalism in general. The nationalist ideology embraced by progressive union leaders facilitated the political repression and exclusion of union dissidents by portraying such dissidents as subversive or illegitimate in relation to the American mainstream and therefore in relation to the union. This was evident not just in the union's reaction to Communists, as might be more easily recognized, but also in the leadership's attacks on black workers who were fighting for racial equality.

This insight into how repressive politics often operate within a liberal framework provides a crucial alternative to arguments such as Rogers Smith's, which differentiate liberalism (and republicanism) from the exclusionary strands in American political culture. Like Rogin, Smith seeks to emphasize the political inequalities that appear throughout American history. In contrast to Rogin's arguments, however, Smith develops an analysis that in some ways parallels Gerstle's, viewing these outcomes as essentially sustained by an alternative, “ascriptive” Americanism that rivals the American liberal democratic tradition. Hence, he challenges the Tocquevillian claim (notably made by Myrdal and Louis Hartz) that America is a fundamentally liberal society, pointing out that American law has long been “shot through with forms of second-class citizenship, denying personal liberties and opportunities for political participation . . . on the basis of race, ethnicity, gender and even religion.”¹⁵

This argument rightly highlights the importance of illiberal politics in America. The problem lies in the fact that Smith's effort to demarcate the multiple political traditions that define American political life tends to downplay liberalism's own role in the exclusionary practices he so carefully documents. Smith acknowledges and even emphasizes the frequent blending of liberalism and traditions of ascriptive inequality in American politics, observes that liberal market systems are an independent source of inequality, and stresses that the pursuit of liberal democratic policies generates conditions that periodically foster the resurgence of traditions of ascriptive inequality. Despite these qualifications and complexities, however, his overarching framework emphasizes liberalism's significance as a resource for reformers in light of the logical inconsistency between America's liberal and democratic traditions and its inegalitarian ascriptive ones.¹⁶

Black Workers and the UAW

Compared to the long history of racial exclusion in the American labor movement, the formal positions and concrete practices of the CIO unions marked a major step forward in relation to black workers and other workers of color. As Bruce Nelson points out, the nature and causes of this transition ranged from the purely pragmatic to the highly principled:

Furthermore, even in the face of ongoing resistance from many white workers and union leaders, black workers were able to take advantage of the formal institutions and contractual obligations that emerged with the success of the industrial unions to better promote their workplace interests.

These developments were significantly extended during World War II, as black workers exploited tight labor markets to move into unionized industrial jobs in the North. The wartime context also allowed civil rights organizations such as the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to advance the struggle for black equality by linking racism at home to fascism abroad. In many instances, the CIO joined this struggle, with the UAW playing a leading role in the fight for black inclusion in the workplace. In addition, Nelson Lichtenstein argues, black workers' experiences in relation to the UAW were an important precursor of the modern civil rights movement, “offer[ing] African-American workers a sense of rights-conscious entitlement and a new focus for their collective empowerment.”¹⁸

Civic or liberal nationalism featured as a prominent discourse in these efforts, both among union leaders and in the black community. Thus, while black civil rights leaders asserted that discrimination was unpatriotic and a threat to national unity during the war, unions such as the UAW both endorsed such claims and used the language of Americanism to promote black participation in the labor movement. Moreover, such appeals drew on and encouraged the government's own increasing emphasis on the theme of racial tolerance in a nationalist rhetoric intended to mobilize opposition to the Nazis.¹⁹

Yet, when we take a closer look at the racial politics of the UAW, it becomes clear that this understanding of the racial significance of labor's progressive Americanism is inherently limited. Accepting that civic nationalism was the ideological expression of a new and improved political order in relation to the struggle against racial inequality, it remains necessary to identify the character and limitations of this order rather than simply contrasting it with a more oppressive pre-CIO era. In the UAW, such an analysis reveals that the language of civic nationalism was also employed to undermine the demands and organizing efforts of black workers, and that this use of the discourse had important long-run consequences. While white union members continued to turn to racial nationalism to mobilize against African Americans, the liberal pluralist content of inclusive Americanism afforded UAW activists a viable alternative means of attacking or dismissing the race-based proposals put forward by black workers in the new “egalitarian” labor movement. To be specific, such proposals were challenged on civic nationalist grounds by being characterized as calls for special treatment or reverse discrimination that went against American democratic traditions. Moreover, black workers and their allies who sought to overcome the racial hierarchies and divisions that persisted in the factories, in Detroit's residential neighborhoods, and in the UAW, at times found it necessary to break with and oppose the logic of such Americanism.

To substantiate this argument my analysis proceeds as follows. I begin by elaborating on the racially integrative role of civic nationalism in the UAW's organizing drive at Ford's River Rouge plant. This organizing campaign was the most important early instance of UAW engagement with black workers and signaled organized labor's new level of commitment to African Americans. If developments at “the Rouge” confirm that civic nationalism served as an expression of the labor movement's break with racial exclusion, however, several other conflicts in the period reveal how the discourse was simultaneously emerging as a means of opposing more radical demands for black equality. By exploring these conflicts, it becomes possible to see how civic nationalism facilitated not only a break with the old order but also the labor movement's long-term embrace of a new racial status quo defined by a modified, but very real, racial hierarchy among organized workers.

The first such conflict is the 1942 struggle for black occupancy of the Sojourner Truth housing project in Detroit. In this instance, white rank-and-file members of the UAW used both racial nationalist and civic nationalist arguments to oppose black workers and their allies who sought to defend black use of the project. While UAW officials ultimately supported black demands, and notably echoed black activists in drawing on nationalist language to legitimate this position, this struggle thus marks the emerging adoption of an explicitly race-neutral American Creed to defend racial inequality in liberal terms. The full significance of this development becomes clear when we consider how this ideology was embraced by Walter Reuther and his supporters in the UAW leadership as a means of building and maintaining a political base among conservative white workers and defending a particular political regime within the UAW.

To develop this point, I focus on the struggle for black representation on the UAW International Executive Board (IEB). This struggle, which actually began in 1939, became a prominent manifestation of the racial conflict inside the union over the course of the next two decades. As black workers and the left-wing leadership faction in the UAW sought to establish a specifically black seat on the board, the Reuther leadership consistently turned to civic nationalist rhetoric to oppose this demand as a call for unequal treatment. In taking this position, Reuther and his allies consciously appealed to a segment of the white membership in very similar terms to those used by opponents of black occupancy in the Sojourner Truth conflict. Such rhetorical strategies helped to consolidate and sustain the Reuther regime's power in the union, and set the stage for later conflicts along similar lines with black radicals in the 1960s.

For black workers, the Reuther leadership's rise to power helped to ensure significant marginalization in relation to leadership positions, and ongoing lack of access to skilled employment in the auto industry. Although black workers made up about 13 percent of the auto industry by the early 1960s, and about 25 percent of the UAW by the end of the 1960s, no black member of the UAW was elected to the executive board until 1962, and, for six years thereafter, the union had only one black board member out of twenty-six. Furthermore, except in those locals where black members made up a majority or near-majority of the membership, the election of African Americans to other leadership positions remained very limited into the 1970s.²⁰

With regard to employment in the skilled-trade jobs,

This was despite the fact that, in 1960, black workers comprised 26 percent of the Detroit-area auto plant workforce at Chrysler and 23 percent at General Motors. Even at the Rouge plant, with its history of black militancy and progressive politics, in 1960, less than 250 of the 12,500 black workers were among the 7,000 skilled trades employees.²⁴

The UAW was not directly or formally involved in hiring, but, as William Gould argues, to dismiss the issue of union racism on this basis

Certainly, by the mid-1950s, the union had a meaningful influence over the hiring of apprentices at Ford and other companies and actively participated in excluding blacks.²⁶

Lack of union commitment to black workers was also evident in the fact that the UAW's Fair Employment Practices Department (FEPD) was without the power to address these issues. Instead, it played a largely symbolic role under the leadership of a Reuther appointee, William Oliver, who had no constituency or political support in the union.²⁸

My argument, then, is that this political regime inside the UAW was defended through a racially informed articulation of civic nationalism that emerged in the early days of the union and increasingly came to the fore as a means of opposing black challenges to racism and inequality in the UAW and in the workplace. In other words, civic nationalism helped to promote racial integration within the labor movement and to bring black workers into the union, but it then served to legitimate a racial hierarchy inside the UAW that was also reflected in the workplace. I am not arguing that the ideas associated with liberal Americanism in themselves directly caused this modified racial hierarchy to emerge, but rather that such discourse resonated with many white union members, and thereby facilitated, defended and gave meaning to this kind of restrictive outcome, which, in an important sense, emerged out of the interplay of factional struggles among the leadership with the perceived interests of white workers (alongside employer discrimination in the case of workplace inequalities). This analysis therefore tells us something about the nature, uses, and parameters of the ideology of liberal Americanism in practice, and also in more theoretical terms.

To fully understand the significance of this use of Americanism, we need to see it as an expression of New Deal racial liberalism, or what Omi and Winant call the “ethnicity paradigm of race.” In this paradigm, which became the “progressive/liberal ‘common sense’ approach to race” during the New Deal and the war, race was viewed as a social category instead of a biological one, and integration was accepted as inevitable and even desirable. Yet for racial minorities, “this victory was a hollow one . . . for the paradigm was solidly based in the framework of European (white) ethnicity, and could not appreciate the extent to which racial inequality differed from ethnic inequality.”³⁰

The unique structural barriers faced by racial minorities were not recognized, and challenges to the ethnicity paradigm that pointed to these barriers and proposed distinct political solutions to racism were perceived (or portrayed) to violate the principle of equal individual treatment endorsed by the liberal tradition. There was, in other words, no room in this framework for “a more radical racial identity” embraced by blacks (and other people of color) “which demanded group rights and recognition.”³¹

The limits of racial liberalism as a response to the history of racism in the United States were thus given expression in the prevailing politics of the industrial union movement, defeating significant challenges from the left. It is true that such politics also took shape in the context of, and at times importantly opposed, a more conservative racial politics defended by many white workers and still prominent in the national political arena. However, this analysis nonetheless clarifies the racially restrictive implications of civic nationalism as it was put into practice over time – implications that did not just derive from its inability to fully displace an explicitly racialized conception of American identity.

Americanism and the Union Campaign at River Rouge

The UAW's organizing campaign at Ford's River Rouge plant in Dearborn helps us to understand the inclusive role of Americanism during the emergence of a racially integrated labor movement. Nationalist rhetoric dominated the organizing drive, with the union countering Henry Ford's longstanding efforts to equate his company with Americanism and arguing instead that Ford was, in fact, a bastion of un-American practices and beliefs. Given the importance of the victory at Ford to the overall success of the UAW, this struggle confirms the significance of nationalism as a labor ideology during the New Deal.

In the period just before U.S. entry into World War I, Ford officials famously developed an Americanization program for the company's immigrant workers, at the Highland Park plant inside Detroit. Among the rituals at the Ford English School was a symbolic graduation ceremony in which participants descended into a melting pot and exited as Americans. Stephen Meyer calls this kind of assimilation program, adopted by a number of companies and managers, “a new strategy for the management of an immigrant workforce” that reversed earlier practices:

Unionism, of course, was defined as counter to American traditions in such programs.³²

By late 1937, when the UAW sought to build on its victories at General Motors and Chrysler by organizing Ford, the ideological struggle over the meaning of Americanism looked very different. UAW newspapers targeted to the 80,000 workers at the Rouge complex compared the campaign to the Revolutionary and Civil Wars, and declared that “the UAW will organize Ford because all automobile workers are determined never to submit to kings, dictators, thugs and degenerates.”³³

When the organizing drive resumed in 1940 following the temporary resolution of internal union conflicts, UAW President R. J. Thomas declared that “the Ford myth is wearing out. People no longer think of Henry Ford as a pioneer who was the first to pay a $5 a day wage. Among workingmen and all thinking men, the name of Ford no longer means enlightenment. It means repression and dictatorship.”³⁵

Ford employed an average of 11,000 black workers between 1937 and 1941 (over five times more than any competitor), with the vast majority at River Rouge.³⁷

When the strike began on April 1, most black workers left the factory and honored the picket line. But, as Meier and Rudwick describe, “some men did remain in the foundry, and early the next morning before the UAW had cordoned off the area, hundreds more bypassed the barricades and made their way inside the gates.”³⁹

While approximately 1,000 workers remained in the plant up to the end of the strike on April 11 (when Ford agreed to an NLRB election), these appeals helped bring hundreds of black workers out of the plant and marked the shift to a pro-union position of important black religious leaders and the Detroit NAACP. The efforts of the NAACP youth councils, whose sound truck (borrowed from the UAW) circled the Rouge plant and black neighborhoods, also helped defeat a back-to-work campaign initiated by the AFL, “and must have done much to deflect the rising antagonism among the white workers.”⁴¹

Both during the strike and in the run-up to the NLRB election, the UAW's appeals to black workers made frequent use of the language of Americanism. A leaflet circulated “To All Negro Ford Workers” during the strike declared the Ford Motor Company un-American and in violation of U.S. law. In contrast to the AFL, which followed a “lily-white” union policy, the CIO was described as “the only labor union that has endeavored to end the persecution and discrimination of the Negro worker in American industrial life.” The union emphasized that, in organized shops, the UAW had established higher wages, equal pay for all workers, and union seniority rules that gave black workers greater job security. Asserting that blacks must recognize “that the interests of Negro workers are the same as the interests of white workers,” the leaflet called on black workers “to rally behind the Ford workers in their struggle for industrial democracy.”⁴³

As the UAW campaigned for a CIO vote in the NLRB election, a Ford Facts edition written by and for black workers compared the union's struggle for collective bargaining at Ford to Lincoln's efforts to save the United States, arguing that the strike was a necessary last resort much like the Civil War. Ford policy was described as machine slavery, and Donald Marshall, a black employee in Ford's Service Department who had hiring authority over black personnel, was characterized as an “Uncle Tom” stooge and the “modern version of the old time slave whipper and driver.”⁴⁴

The language of Americanism thus provided an effective means of contrasting the UAW's program with Ford's practices, helping to erode black loyalty to the company. Black community leaders joined the union in making such arguments, notably blending Lincoln's prolabor sympathies with his contribution to black freedom as a means of legitimating the strike and the UAW in relation to black workers.⁴⁶

Black organizing efforts in the UAW comprised an important element in the larger black struggle for workplace rights that gained momentum as the country geared up for the war. Just as the confrontation with Ford was unfolding, A. Philip Randolph mobilized the black community for a march on Washington to demand “jobs in national defense and equal integration in the fighting forces.” Randolph used the language of Americanism to defend the march, proposing the slogan “We loyal Negro American citizens demand the right to work and fight for our country.” On this basis, he argued,

With significant backing from the NAACP and the Urban League and the prospect of 100,000 marchers, the march became enough of a threat that Eleanor Roosevelt and Fiorello La Guardia sought to persuade Randolph to call it off. Randolph, however, insisted he would go ahead unless he got an executive order “with teeth in it.” Against these and other pressures, including accusations of black chauvinism for excluding whites from the proposed march, he continued to emphasize the importance of black self- organization if African Americans were going to benefit from the national defense economy. This commitment to black struggle paid off when a June 18 meeting at the White House led to the signing of Executive Order 8802 six days before the July 1 march date, banning employment discrimination in the defense industries or the federal government based on race, creed, color, or national origin, and establishing a temporary Fair Employment Practices Committee. On this basis, Randolph decided to cancel the march (without consulting, and against the wishes of, a number of younger militants involved in the March Committee), but the March on Washington mobilization, which continued as a movement after July 1, nonetheless marked an important shift to mass pressure on the government as a central strategy in black protest activity.⁴⁸

The coincidence of this mobilization with the UAW victory at Ford suggests the potential social significance and opportunities for growth of a union movement committed to the struggle for black equality. In addition, the two events convey the ways in which black workers and community leaders were at times able to turn Americanism to their purposes. But if the Ford campaign helped to produce a layer of black activists who continued the fight for workplace equality following Executive Order 8802, it is also important to recognize the limits of the UAW's response to black auto workers. Immediately following the Ford NLRB vote, Reverend Charles Hill, a prolabor community leader tied to the National Negro Congress (NNC), was the lead signatory on a letter from the Citizens' Committee on Negro Labor that called on the union to do more to make black workers feel they are “definitely a part of the workers movement.” According to the letter, the Committee was “disappointed in the progress made by the Ford Organizing Committee among Negro workers. Many resources, including the good will of important Negro Leaders and organizations, have been neglected or sought only at the last possible moment.”⁴⁹

These limits came through even more clearly at other plants. In the context of initial organizing drives, this often reflected the fact that the black workforce was not large enough to compel union attention.⁵⁰

A similar disregard and even hostility toward black concerns was also evident during a strike at Dodge Main in 1939. Tensions between white and black workers had marked the local since the 1937 sit-down that established the UAW at the plant.⁵²

In this instance, then, rather than addressing specific black concerns the union sought to intimidate black workers into abiding by the interests of the white majority. This threat was paired with the suggestion that black workers were responsible for dividing the workforce at the plant, reversing the actual source of racial divisions inside the local and within the labor movement more generally. Furthermore, the flier went on to claim that “a victory for us is a victory for you,” reducing black interests to class interests with no indication of the distinct problems of racism. Given this kind of rhetoric, and reflecting UAW organizing strategy at companies other than Ford, black skepticism toward organized labor and rank-and-file white workers persisted despite developments at the Rouge. Meier and Rudwick emphasize, in fact, that though events at Ford marked an important turning point in the relationship between Detroit's black community and the union, “the higher status of many blacks in the Rouge work force and their participation in Local 600's affairs was still a unique situation.”⁵⁵

The Conflict Over Sojourner Truth

In 1942, tensions between black and white workers erupted over the occupancy of Sojourner Truth Homes. In this context, civic nationalism was mobilized not just by black community leaders and the UAW officials who supported black use of the project, but also by white workers who hoped to prevent African Americans from living at Sojourner Truth. Civic nationalism allowed white workers to oppose black occupancy in “democratic” terms, by arguing that public housing for black workers amounted to unequal treatment or reverse discrimination against Detroit's white majority. By looking at this struggle, we can therefore better understand the complex trajectory of civic nationalism as a discourse used to defend racial inequality in the working class. The fact that this kind of language resonated with white workers also points to its usefulness for the Reuther leadership during racial conflicts inside the UAW. As we will see, the liberal ideology of Americanism allowed the Reuther caucus to dismiss black demands and align with the more conservative white union members while maintaining a formal commitment to racial equality. This nuanced position in turn served to advance the rise to power of the Reuther regime, which relied substantially on support from conservative white workers and local union officials.

With integrated housing not considered an option, Sojourner Truth was, as the name reflects, specifically intended to address the housing needs of black workers. Built as part of the federal government's response to the migration of defense workers into Detroit, the location was chosen based on proximity to a racially mixed neighborhood that included a number of black homeowners. In addition, black-Polish interactions in the largely Polish community of Hamtramck, which was just south of the site, had historically been relatively positive. Despite this history, Polish workers became the primary opponents of black occupancy of the project. White opposition to the project was at first joined by that of middle-class black residents of nearby Conant Gardens, who expressed concerns about depreciating property values. When the racial character of white opposition became clear, however, the Conant Gardens Community Association quickly shifted to supporting the project.⁵⁶

An exclusively white homeowners' association, the Seven Mile–Fenelon Improvement Association, had been organized by realtor Joseph Buffa “for the explicit purpose of barring blacks from the neighborhood.” Most of its 1,300 members and two vice-presidents “were working-class Polish Catholics, but its primary leadership came from Italian realtors Buffa and John Dalzell (as president and secretary) and Anglo laborers Virgil Chandler and Leonard J. Stewart.”⁵⁷

After a series of appearances at housing commission and council meetings, in January 1942, the association won an initial victory when federal government officials reversed their earlier decision and ruled that Sojourner Truth would be used for white workers.⁵⁹

Ongoing white picket lines outside City Hall and Sojourner Truth were then followed by a riot when black tenants attempted to move in at the end of February. The arriving moving vans were blocked by a white crowd in an intersection four blocks from the project, while a police line separated white and black demonstrators on either side of the street. A series of fights broke out over the course of the day, with the police using tear gas to disperse a crowd that had grown to as many as 1,000 people. The police responded to the upheaval by clearing the area of all African Americans, including residents, and arresting several hundred people. 109 were held for trial, virtually all of them black.⁶¹

While city officials used the incident to justify suspending black occupancy, the UAW became an increasingly important participant in the citizens committee. UAW President R. J. Thomas called for immediate black occupancy under police protection, and continued to support this position even as Polish union members living near the project circulated petitions against him. Federal authorities also stood by their decision, and black residents began moving in at the end of April.⁶²

Polish opposition to black occupancy reflected the increasingly tense conditions of wartime Detroit. Housing was scarce and the conversion of factories to war production had left thousands of workers temporarily unemployed.⁶³

Whereas in earlier periods housing conflicts had divided along ethnic lines, now Polish workers joined other opponents of black occupancy in articulating their status as white Americans who had a right to the neighborhood that included Sojourner Truth.⁶⁵

If, as this argument suggests, becoming American and becoming white were heavily intertwined, it is not surprising that this alliance also continually emphasized its American character. The Cass meeting included the singing of the national anthem, and white protestors waved the American flag outside City Hall after federal authorities went back to designating Sojourner Truth for black occupancy.⁶⁹

Certainly supporters of black occupancy were concerned about this racial nationalist discourse. An editorial in the liberal black newspaper, the Michigan Chronicle, worried that the housing dispute revealed the danger that the word Americanism would join the “ignominious company” of words like Nazism, fascism, totalitarianism, imperialism, and tyranny. This concern was mirrored in a letter to The Catholic Worker from an observer of the violence at Sojourner Truth who wondered whether “the Negro can help but doubt democracy, too, if he accepts these pickets as the representative American citizens they call themselves.”⁷¹

The power of this identity is also reflected in the fact that Polish and other eastern European workers embraced race-based Americanism despite being organized through the language of inclusive Americanism during the Rouge campaign. To be sure, some of these workers experienced the union's more antagonistic racial politics during the Dodge Main strike in 1939, and white workers found themselves in conflict with black strikebreakers at both plants.⁷²

To take one important example, pro-UAW Polish language radio broadcasts by Stanley Nowak, elected state senator in 1938, reached an audience that encompassed thousands of workers at Ford and other companies, including not just Poles but also Czechs, Slovaks, Ukrainians, and Russians.⁷³

The Communist-linked Polish newspaper Glos Ludowy (People's Voice), with which Nowak was associated, made similar appeals at the time of the Sojourner Truth conflict, arguing for black occupancy as a matter of great importance to the entire community and asserting that

Rejecting the logic of such appeals, Polish and eastern European workers joined the Seven Mile-Fenelon Improvement Association and protested black occupancy of Sojourner Truth in sufficient numbers to lead U.S. Representative Rudolph Tenerowicz, a former mayor of Hamtramck whose district included the project site, to reverse his initial support for black public housing in the community.⁷⁶

This consolidation of a white alliance around housing issues was paralleled by the defense of “white” jobs in the auto plants, most visibly in a series of hate strikes carried out in response to International union and company attempts to upgrade black workers. Perhaps the most serious strike took place at Packard, where company officials, some openly racist, sought to undermine the union by provoking racial conflict. In June 1943 (just before the Detroit race riot), management actions helped to induce a walkout of 20,000 or more white workers after three African Americans were moved to the aircraft assembly line. In this case and others, militant black workers were able to join with the International and the federal government to eliminate the worst discrimination for the duration of the war. But the postwar layoffs and ongoing white hate strikes (which continued into the 1950s) worked to reinstate the exclusionary employment patterns and discrimination of the prewar period in many locals.⁷⁷

At the same time, however, and as reflected in the Sojourner Truth conflict, elements of a civic nationalist discourse were emerging among white workers as a distinct means of opposing housing and jobs for African Americans. In both meetings and fliers, opponents of Sojourner Truth argued that blacks were receiving disproportionate and therefore unfair attention from city and federal officials.⁷⁸

Clearly, this use of Americanism by white workers involved a complex interaction of directly racial appeals to white workers and marginally more subtle arguments that emphasized racial conflict within an ostensibly democratic framework opposed to special or unequal treatment. Virgil Chandler, for instance, made both kinds of arguments during the meeting at Cass. There was, then, a blending of liberal and ascriptive Americanist rhetoric in a manner somewhat consistent with Rogers Smith's multiple traditions framework. The distinction that needs to be emphasized, however, is that the liberal discourse employed here provided an additional way of defending racial hierarchy. It was not just something illogically combined with ascriptive inegalitarianism, but instead offered another political logic that could independently undermine the struggle for black equality. What “democratic” Americanism facilitated in this context was a disregard for the extensive barriers faced by black workers in their pursuit of equal housing in the private sector. As Thomas Sugrue notes, only “1,500 of the 186,000 single-family houses constructed in the metropolitan Detroit area in the 1940s were open to blacks.” At the same time, more than two-thirds of the city's new residents, about 150,000 people, were black.⁸²

This combination of racial and civic nationalism would continue to frame the politics of white homeowners and neighborhood associations as they sought to maintain segregated neighborhoods into the 1960s.⁸³

These appeals also stressed the inclusive vision of civic nationalism, with one flier emphasizing that:

In this regard, Polish residents in the vicinity of Sojourner Truth were particularly targeted. A leaflet issued by the citizens committee “To Loyal and Patriotic Polish-Americans Living Near Sojourner Truth Homes,” declared that:

Wartime patriotism and notions of the national interest were thus used in an attempt to defend black workers and to forge a workers' alliance across racial divisions.

Such language clearly reflected the politics and rhetorical style of citizens committee chair Rev. Hill, who was close to the Communist Party. Indeed, Hill was forced to respond to charges by Tenerowicz and others that the citizen committee included Communists intent on manipulating the situation for their own ends.⁸⁸

As noted, the UAW played an important role in the ultimate achievement of black occupancy at Sojourner Truth. The citizens committee emphasized the union's support for black war workers, in particular highlighting statements made by the executive board and President Thomas. Following the February riot, Thomas was quoted as asserting that opponents of black occupancy were guilty of taking the law into their own hands and thereby undermining “confidence in our government.” Particularly in light of the war, Thomas argued, it was imperative that all races work together:

The board, which had been slower to articulate a formal position, used similar language in a resolution adopted on March 18, emphasizing the repulsiveness of racial prejudice during a war for the preservation of democracy.⁹⁰

The UAW thus joined other supporters of black occupancy in defining the issue as one of democratic and national significance. Black workers' interests were fundamentally consistent with American traditions and the national interest, while opponents were effectively serving the foreign interests of America's fascist enemies. The union went even further in defending racial equality a year later, when union leaders joined black community leaders in calling for residential integration at Ford's new Willow Run plant. Given the racial politics of the AFL and Mayor Jeffries, the Sojourner Truth victory “would have been impossible if mixed housing had been the goal,” and this was evident in the defeat suffered by supporters of integration in the fight over Willow Run.⁹¹

Despite UAW militancy on this issue in response to the extensive organizing efforts of the black community, the more restrictive dimension of UAW racial politics was also taking shape at this time. In this regard, the Sojourner Truth struggle is important because it reveals the possibilities for civic nationalism as a politically effective rhetoric for expressing white rank-and-file opposition to demands for black equality. This development would then be extended as Walter Reuther won out in his leadership struggle with the union's left wing partly on the basis of support from conservative white workers. The destruction of the Communist-led left in the UAW (and across the labor movement) accordingly marked a lost oppor- tunity for a labor-oriented civil rights movement to develop in the immediate postwar period.⁹²

Americanism and Black Leadership in the UAW

While R. J. Thomas was using the language of democratic and minority rights to equate African Americans with Poles and Italians in the housing controversy, union leaders (including Thomas) were employing the same language to resist efforts to secure a black seat on the IEB as an illegitimate demand for special treatment. In this regard, UAW officials replicated the discourse of white opponents of black occupancy of Sojourner Truth, attempting to present their rejection of a black board member as a reflection of American democratic traditions. We can see in this conflict how the Reuther caucus used civic nationalism not only to integrate black workers but also to set crucial limits on the defense of black interests.

For the Reutherites, opposition to a black seat reflected both a power struggle against the rival “left-wing” UAW caucus and an effort to forge stronger ties to those white members who opposed the fight for racial equality inside the UAW. This political alliance between Reuther and the union's conservative ranks would continue to pose problems for black UAW members into the 1950s and 1960s. When Reuther's presidential victory in 1946 was followed by the collapse of the rival left-wing faction that had helped to highlight black demands, black activists formed new networks to pursue the goal of black representation. Their struggle was followed by that of a younger generation of black workers, whose frustration with Reuther and his caucus culminated in the radical black nationalist insurgence inside the UAW in the late 1960s. As we will see, in this instance as with the earlier leadership conflicts, social democratic union leaders resorted to the language of inclusive Americanism to oppose important demands made by black unionists and their allies.

When the idea of a black seat was first raised at the March 1939 convention, there was little effective opposition to new UAW President R. J. Thomas's rejection of the proposal. Black delegates suggested that a black member-at-large on the board would help with the organizing at Ford, and would also counter the recent creation of a black at-large seat by Homer Martin's rival auto worker caucus that was now competing with the CIO-backed UAW.⁹³

Although the majority of black union members sided with the CIO-backed UAW against Martin's caucus, Martin tried to use events at the convention as an example of the racism of his opponents. Frank Evans, the leading black member in Martin's group, “sought to exploit the disappointment of the blacks in the Unity Caucus convention, by reminding them of the white delegates' hearty applause for Thomas as he ruled the discussion of the black seat out of order.”⁹⁶

In the aftermath of the Dodge strike, the UAW continued to describe its position in relation to black workers as a rejection of Jim Crow unionism. Under the heading “No Jim Crow In the CIO,” a flier compared the track record of the CIO with that of the AFL, quoting Thomas's statement opposing a separate Negro Department and asserting that the CIO “gives the Negro the full rights he deserves as an American and as a fellow worker.” Homer Martin, on the other hand, was charged with practicing Jim Crowism when he asked black and white workers to attend separate meetings during the strike. In addition, the CIO emphasized that at least twenty AFL unions barred black members and pointed out that Martin tried to subject black workers to violence by encouraging them to act as strikebreakers at Dodge Main.⁹⁸

This dynamic was particularly evident at the 1943 convention in Buffalo, by which point the rival factions in the UAW were the Reuther caucus and the Communist-influenced caucus led by George Addes and Richard Frankensteen. When black unionists put forward a motion proposing a minorities department to be headed by an elected black board member, they hoped to win the support of both sides, which were competing for black votes in a close election for secretary-treasurer between Addes and Richard Leonard from the Reuther camp.⁹⁹

This opposition became clear when Victor Reuther was the first delegate called to speak in favor of the Constitutional Committee's majority proposal establishing a minorities department with a director to be appointed by the UAW president. Reuther argued that the union must reject the minority report backed by most black delegates since “we should not establish the practice of giving special privileges to special groups, because that is a Jim Crow privilege and will rebound and kick in the teeth the very people it is trying to help.” Further, “if there is a special post for Negroes, then in all justice there should be a post at large for the Catholics, the women, the Jews, the Poles, and all the rest. That is not in keeping with democracy or true trade unionism.”¹⁰¹

In the course of a contentious discussion, this position was echoed by R.J. Thomas and Walter Reuther, at the time a UAW vice-president along with Frankensteen. Thomas declared that the demand for a black seat was a request for special favors and pointed to the problems faced by other groups in the union as comparable to those faced by black workers: “I say to you there are other groups discriminated against in our union, and I know there are, because I know delegates representing local unions right here in this convention that are discriminating against the Jewish race.”¹⁰²

Reuther described the problem of racism as one that must be solved “if we are going to win the fight to save democracy in this country,” and went on to state that he stood “in opposition to discrimination from any source.” He then indicated his rejection of the proposal on principle, whatever the political costs in terms of support from black delegates:

Instead of creating a seat for a black representative, the union should be able to elect a black board member as with any other elected official: “There are Negro brothers in every local in positions of leadership, doing a splendid job leading the workers in their work, regardless of race or creed or color, and if that is true down below, it can be true up on top if we have the courage and intelligence.” He concluded by appealing to convention participants to “go out of here tonight, and tomorrow when we adjourn, not as Negro Auto Workers, not as Jewish Auto Workers, not as Polish Auto Workers, – let us go out of here as UAW auto workers together.”¹⁰³

Appeals to democracy, race-blind politics, and the American creed of equal treatment were thus used by the Reuther caucus to defend the status quo of black exclusion from the International leadership. The abstract logic of such positions and political traditions served to obscure the actual history and specificity of black oppression in America. As with the earlier comparisons with the AFL, these arguments were then paired with references to the UAW's positive accomplishments relative to organized labor's dubious track record to suggest that progress, though slow, was being made through the consistent approach of the leadership.

Black leaders and their allies at the convention repeatedly challenged this way of thinking about the black experience in the union and society, arguing that the problems of black workers could only be adequately addressed if the union recognized the historically specific, racial character of black oppression. Shelton Tappes, a black worker in the Rouge foundry who became Local 600 Recording Secretary in 1941, emphasized the distinction between ethnicity and race and highlighted the centrality of racism against blacks in American society, referring in particular to problems of racial segregation that had disrupted plans to hold the convention in St. Louis:

Another black worker from the left-wing caucus, Hodges Mason from Bohn Aluminum and Brass Local 208, similarly argued that the convention needed to make clear that the union was fully committed to addressing the problem of racial inequality rather than hiding behind a convenient smoke screen to avoid taking action, particularly with regard to “the Negro question.”¹⁰⁵

Leading white Communists also played an important role in backing the minority motion. Unsurprisingly, the party's involvement in the struggle for a black seat and related measures was at times highlighted by opponents of black representation in order to further dismiss the issue by associating it with un-American communism.¹⁰⁷

Although the communists made a weak attempt to associate their position with American values, their arguments effectively challenged the logic of progressive Americanism. This was true even as the party itself continued to employ nationalist language in the wartime version of the Popular Front, appealing to workers in these terms, for example, to promote the no-strike pledge and incentive pay as measures necessary to defeat the fascists. The complicated nature of the Communists' relationship to nationalism comes through even more clearly in the fact that from the late 1930s onward, they often replicated the arguments on race they were now opposing in the UAW, for example, by using the language of Americanism in ways that blurred the distinct social character of race relative to ethnicity, and also in the context of making a partial break with their earlier commitment to militant, independent organizing among black workers.¹¹⁰

Reflecting this commitment to Americanism, party spokesman Nat Ganley, who read the minority report as a member of the Constitutional Committee, defended the proposal for a black seat as a “sound American position,” which should not be distorted by “smokescreen arguments that it represents Jim Crowism.” Yet in seeking to claim the ground of authentic American practice, Ganley was conceding that it was precisely on these terms that the minority position was coming under attack. His response, like that of Tappes, was to argue for a more sophisticated, historically rooted way of engaging with the problem of race – an approach that opposed the uncritical teleological view of American history embodied in notions such as the American Creed. He thus proceeded to reject the idea that other groups were equivalent to blacks in terms of the problems they faced or the history through which they had suffered. “None of these problems have anything in common with the Negro problem” he asserted, going on to emphasize that only “Negroes are lynched just because they are Negroes.”¹¹¹

The points promoted by Ganley, Tappes, and other supporters of a black seat also pointed to the racial constraint on class solidarity embodied in appeals such as Reuther's, which asked members to leave the convention as UAW workers, not as black workers, Polish workers, and so on. Although this appeal appeared to endorse class politics across racial lines, it actually served to defend the position of white workers by disregarding the reality of racism faced by workers of color inside the union and at the workplace. This underlying racial logic was further revealed in the claim that black workers were requesting special privileges when they pursued representation in the leadership and demanded that the union address their concerns. Here the opponents of the leadership proposal effectively presented certain black demands as a threat to the interests of white (particularly ethnic) workers, implying that they would be losing out to those receiving the special treatment. White workers were therefore identified in terms of their racial status, with black workers construed as their opponents in a struggle for union power. In this sense, the possibility of a truly inclusive class politics rooted in a real acknowledgement of the distinct experience of black oppression was sacrificed to a politics grounded in white racism.

Behind the political rhetoric, Reuther's rejection of a black seat needs to be understood on several levels. On the one hand, the Reuther leadership feared the creation of a black seat as a mechanism that would add another supporter of the Addes-Frankensteen caucus to the executive board. Most black members backed the left-wing faction, with much of the support emerging out of the extensive Communist presence at River Rouge and reflecting the party's ongoing fight for racial equality. The Reutherites therefore saw the proposal for a black seat as a “factional ploy” that must be defeated in the struggle to gain control over the union.¹¹²

At the same time, the Reuther faction's decision to oppose the seat was related to their efforts to organize the more conservative white workers in the union, including those tied to the Association of Catholic Trade Unionists (ACTU).¹¹³

Reuther's ties to the union's right wing rested most explicitly on the politics of anticommunism, but, in places like Dearborn “racial tensions always remained a barely hidden subtext.”¹¹⁵

The Reuther faction's victory on this issue in 1943, with both proposals being rejected by the convention, was a significant defeat for black workers and their allies, and Reuther's subsequent move toward full control of the International set important limits on black opportunity within the UAW. According to Korstad and Lichtenstein, despite Reuther's racial egalitarianism, “the political logic of his bitterly contested victory – he won less than 10 percent of black delegate votes in 1946 – meant that Reuther owed no organizational debt to the growing proportion of union members who were black.” Even as Reuther and the UAW forged important ties to the NAACP and became prominent labor participants in the national level civil rights struggle, Reuther's base among assimilated Catholics and southern whites led the union leadership to balk at addressing a number of racial issues within the union itself.¹¹⁷

As Tappes saw it, Reuther's ascendancy and the decline of the Addes camp meant “the loss of a tremendous amount of influence for the Negro worker in the UAW.”¹²⁰

Sheffield had long been associated with the Reuther caucus, and, in 1943, he ultimately took a position against the minority proposal, arguing that it was too watered down to be meaningful. It was true that Ganley had presented a proposal that would only give the at-large seat one vote on the board rather than the thirty votes initially advocated by Tappes, arguing that this revision would allow delegates to support a black seat without fearing that their actions would alter the balance of power between the two leadership blocs.¹²²

TULC leaders decided in advance of the 1959 convention that they would make a surprise move from the floor by nominating a black leader for vice-president. Just before the convention, Sheffield and other black Reutherites engaged in an unproductive argument over black representation at a Reuther caucus meeting where the chair made the familiar assertion that a black seat was as inappropriate as a Polish one. Reuther himself reacted defensively to the pressure coming from inside his caucus, asserting that the union, as “part of America,” was only able to address racism at a pace consistent with the mores of the wider society. Acknowledging this negative reality of American history, he then proceeded to reverse the source of the problem by suggesting that it was more a matter of waiting for the right black member to emerge: “There will come a time when a Negro will be qualified and . . . at such a time a Negro will be placed on the board.”¹²⁴

Given this response from the Reuther caucus, Sheffield accordingly went ahead with the TULC plan at the convention, nominating black official Willoughby Abner from Chicago Amalgamated Local 734 for a vice-presidency. Abner declined the nomination as agreed, but Sheffield used his nomination speech to denounce the history of black exclusion from the leadership and to make a veiled attack on Reuther's suggestion that the problem was the lack of qualified black members. When black concerns received little attention in subsequent convention discussions, many black delegates participated in a walkout organized by another TULC leader, Buddy Battle.¹²⁵

As Korstad and Lichtenstein point out, the problem for Reuther was that placing an African American on the board would undermine the very regime he had created:

Nonetheless, black outrage at the positions and attitudes on display at the convention would soon force Reuther to take a firmer stand in favor of black representation. Shortly after the convention, he agreed to nominate a black candidate for the board at the next convention.¹²⁷

By this point the alliance between the UAW and the civil rights movement was also starting to show signs of strain. Civil rights tactics had moved beyond the legalistic approach and Washington-based lobbying that had characterized the collaboration between the NAACP and the UAW. The “grass-roots activism” of the Montgomery bus boycott “was markedly different from the top-down, carefully calibrated actions the UAW favored.” Then, in 1961, Herbert Hill, the NAACP labor secretary, released a report emphasizing that many unions were still guilty of an “institutionalized pattern of anti-Negro employment practices.”¹³⁰

That same year, the TULC became an increasingly mass organization in Detroit when it joined the NAACP in supporting the successful mayoral candidacy of white liberal Jerome Cavanagh, who defeated the UAW's preferred candidate, the more conservative Louis Miriani. Reuther's response to the growing significance of this independent black movement, which had more than 10,000 members by 1962, was to bypass Sheffield in favor of a less prominent black unionist, Nelson Edwards, for the executive board seat. Reuther may well have been accommodating the demands of most IEB members, who, “rightly feared TULC as a threat to the racial status quo over which they had come to preside.” His move also succeeded in weakening the TULC, as Edwards formed a competing black network and eventually appointed Sheffield his administrative assistant.¹³³

In finally placing a black representative on the board, Reuther downplayed the step of enacting what he had previously called a “Jim Crow policy” by creating the new seat alongside two other new at-large positions, both filled by Reuther supporters.¹³⁴

In-plant racism and brutal working conditions led black rank-and-file militants at Dodge Main to form the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM) in 1968. Off-shoots quickly followed at other plants, particularly in Detroit. Adopting radical black nationalist and socialist positions, these organizations, united in the League of Revolutionary Black Workers (the League), paired their criticisms of management with a strong attack on the UAW leadership for its inadequate response to the problems faced by black workers, who made up an increasingly large share of the union. They also characterized older, more moderate black leaders as sellouts and Uncle Toms. At a general level they argued that the UAW was crippled by the existing collective bargaining system and rejection of unauthorized strikes.¹³⁵

The UAW's reaction to the League's emphasis on the problem of racism was to condemn the organization for its departure from American traditions. The IEB issued a statement that began by declaring that “the UAW will not protect workers who resort to violence and intimidation with the conscious purpose of dividing our union along racial lines,” going on to note that the nation was living through trying times – “times that test the common sense of the American people and their commitment to democratic values.” The union, it was argued, had long struggled for equal rights and opportunities for all people regardless of race, creed, or color. In the face of new problems brought on by technological change, workers must remain united to achieve their goals. It was therefore necessary to reject the actions of the “extremists and racial separatists” in the League: “The UAW has always fought against the bigotry and prejudice of white racism because we have understood that separation along racial lines, whether by white people or black people, serves only to weaken our Union and is therefore intolerable.”¹³⁶

Although the letter acknowledged the soundness of establishing black organizations as a means of black self-determination, at the same time the overall perspective thus continued to equate black workers' race-based actions inside the union with white racism. In addition, the IEB's perspective focused on defining DRUM and its off-shoots as a threat to the union's racial unity, instead of recognizing that these organizations emerged in response to the existing racism and division confronted by black workers. An even stronger position involving similar underlying logic was taken by Emil Mazey, who placed DRUM radicals outside the range of acceptable American politics by describing them as a “handful of fanatics who are nothing but black fascists, using the same tactics of coercion and intimidation that Hitler and Mussolini used in Germany and Italy.”¹³⁷

One consequence of this defensive reaction to black radicalism was that the union became increasingly unwilling to respond to rank-and-file demands. This was particularly clear when workers attempted to address a severe speedup at Chrysler in 1973. Although the League had by then fallen apart, its insurgent approach to union and workplace issues had set the stage for the emergence of other dissident groups encompassing both black and white workers. These groups were instrumental in bringing about a series of wildcat strikes over issues of racism and deteriorating working conditions at Chrysler's Jefferson, Forge, and Mack plants. Conditioned by their earlier confrontation with the League, union officials, no less than management, viewed such actions in Detroit as the work of troublemakers who threatened to bring down “the labor relations system that they knew and believed in.” For that reason, Heather Ann Thompson argues, they wanted only “to put a stop to rank-and-file dissent, rather than tak[ing] a hard, perhaps painful look at what was motivating it.”¹³⁸

In attacking these dissenters, the union remained consistent in its rhetoric, accusing its critics “of being anti-democratic at best and, at worst, it accused them of being engaged in communist plots.” The most significant protest, at Chrysler's Mack Stamping plant, was defined by the UAW leadership as the action of outsiders, rather than as a legitimate protest. Furthermore, UAW Vice President Doug Fraser emphasized that “the agitators . . . represent only a very tiny fraction of the total Chrysler workers in the Detroit area and I advocate a policy of no surrender.” In this way the UAW attempted to portray the rank-and-file action as the illegitimate, undemocratic behavior of a subversive minority that did not deserve any toleration from the leadership.¹³⁹

The union reaction culminated in active support for the company's decision to call for police intervention to end the Mack strike. Led by police commissioner and mayoral candidate John Nichols, police entered the plant to evict fourteen workers conducting a sit-down in the cafeteria. When the wildcat persisted despite this action, more than 1,000 UAW officials marched to the Mack plant and forcibly ended the strike.¹⁴⁰

Conclusion

Even in its civic nationalist form, working-class Americanism thus played an important role in sustaining arguments made by white union leaders and rank-and-file members against black demands in the community, inside the union, and ultimately in the workplace. This use of the discourse had its origins in the late 1930s, even as UAW leaders were drawing on similar language to encourage black participation in the union and to challenge some instances of racism around housing and workplace issues. In the case of the UAW, we can conclude, then, that from its very inception labor's civic nationalism provided a foundation for a long-term union politics that integrated black workers but also approached the struggle for black equality in a highly constrained manner.

This use of the language particularly came to the fore as a way of framing the racial politics of Reuther and his allies as their caucus struggled to secure and maintain control over the union. This was most evident in the conflict around black representation on the IEB. This issue was highly significant in symbolic terms, but it also reflected a lack of political accountability to black members on the part of the Reuther regime. Black workers certainly saw the ongoing failure to achieve black representation as a central problem indicative of their standing in the union. While, at times, they, too, used civic nationalist ideas to defend their interests, these workers clearly recognized that arguments couched in such terms were undermining their position in the union, particularly on the leadership question. Significantly, in 1968, when Herbert Hill asked Shelton Tappes what he felt about the promise and ultimate results of UAW unionism, Tappes answered that “gradually, I think, the whole thing leveled off to just another American institution that contained all the Americanisms which we had hoped were not there – the racisms.”¹⁴²

In Detroit, the racial use of civic nationalism by the UAW leadership can be related to the more general white social resistance to black equality, particularly manifested in the rise of the homeowners' movement that sought to maintain white neighborhoods. This persistent housing segregation ultimately combined with black unemployment – caused, as Sugrue notes, by deindustrialization, technological change, decentralized manufacturing, and workplace discrimination – to set the stage for the black upheaval in the 1960s.¹⁴³

Moreover, as events in the 1960s and 1970s show, the civic nationalist language used to oppose black interests inside the union also provided a means of defending union opposition to the organizing efforts of rank-and-file workers who faced severe problems in the workplace, many of which involved racism. To be clear, the advances made around issues of race by the UAW and the CIO were real and significant, in terms of both formal positions and concrete actions. In important respects, the rise of civic nationalism reflected and promoted this shift, providing an ideological framework more conducive to the struggle for racial equality than were most earlier labor ideologies. Nonetheless, a substantial segment of the white ranks and the leadership faction that sought to win their support sacrificed a full struggle for black equality to narrower conceptions of collective self-interest, and Americanism, even in its progressive form, offered an ideological justification for this end.

The theoretical and historical analyses developed by scholars such as Omi and Winant shed light on the content of this justification. Civic nationalist views regarding democratic practice and equal rights offered a means of characterizing race-based organizing and leadership demands among black workers as a form of reverse discrimination. We can see in these liberal pluralist arguments a pioneering instance of the analysis now put forward to attack programs such as affirmative action. In addition, such arguments explicitly embraced what Omi and Winant call the “ethnicity paradigm of race,” which obscured the distinct historical experience of racial oppression by equating the black position in society with that of European ethnic immigrants. On this basis, black workers' more radical actions and proposals could be rejected as politically inappropriate, with African Americans expected to integrate into the union on the same terms as white ethnic workers.

In line with Rogin's analysis of the pluralist tradition, UAW leaders were able to use the language of tolerance to present their own position as one that fairly included black workers in the democratic politics of the union without giving them special treatment as a group. The political debate was thereby defined within limits that did not acknowledge the specific problems faced by African Americans. This kind of marginalization was then escalated to a stronger demonization when black workers increased their criticism of the liberal framework, particularly in the 1960s. DRUM's more militant proposals were portrayed as undemocratic and intolerant, perhaps even fascist, as a way of excluding black radicals from the political process in the union. This conflict so circumscribed the UAW's tolerance of rank-and-file militancy that a similar political analysis was then used to discredit the wildcat strikes of the early 1970s.

The continuity between the UAW's civic nationalism and present-day attacks on affirmative action indicates the ongoing need to recognize American liberalism's capacity for defending existing racial inequalities.¹⁴⁴

Without discounting the significance of the recent developments explored by Smith, attention to the limits of liberalism may be particularly relevant today when the prevailing paradigm on race remains the liberal ethnicity perspective outlined by Omi and Winant. In other words, we need to consider how liberalism might be mobilized to uphold racial inequality in a context where illiberal arguments have been significantly marginalized, as in the UAW, instead of simply thinking in terms of a conflict (at least at the logical level) between liberal and ascriptive ideologies. The multiple traditions perspective fails to engage with this trajectory of American liberalism when Smith links the current opposition to race-conscious policies such as affirmative action to the revival of ascriptive Americanism noted above.¹⁴⁵

In keeping with the perspective I am advancing, then, we need to understand the constrained racial liberalism of the UAW not only as a reflection of the Reuther leadership's balancing act between its political base and a genuine commitment to racial egalitarianism, but also in relation to the more general racial politics of the period. Both the racially liberal state and the early civil rights movement operated within the dominant paradigm of ethnicity, supporting negative measures such as the outlawing of discrimination (while restrained by the government's accommodation with southern Democrats), but inattentive to problems that went beyond the elimination of “race-thinking” and the attainment of formal equality for each individual.¹⁴⁷

Moreover, the conflict in the union offers an instance where this conception of equality was actively employed against major demands made by black workers. This is particularly significant because the Reuther faction adopted these tactics in relation to a challenge from the left that offered a more radical understanding of race and the civil rights struggle in America. While this Communist-influenced alternative was unlikely to prevail in the overall political context of the postwar period, it is nonetheless noteworthy that the Reuther leadership worked to defeat it from within the union.

From this point of view, the racial politics expressed through a nationalist discourse added significantly to the obstacles undermining a broadly inclusive class politics inside the UAW. White workers were organized around their racial identity in a perceived conflict with black workers, and union officials who built a regime on this basis came to fear black challenges to the status quo as a threat to their power. This regime rejected the explicitly racist politics sometimes embraced by white workers, but it also accepted a racial hierarchy in the UAW.¹⁴⁸