In his new book, Paul D. Moreno wants to revise our understanding of the relationship between black workers and unions in U.S. history by refuting the “divide and conquer” view of this relationship. In the “divide and conquer” story, employers have actively sown conflict between white workers and black workers in order to undermine the bargaining position of labor. Moreno, the Grewcock Professor of History at Hillsdale College, wants to replace this view with one closer to a neoclassical “economics of discrimination” framework, combined with a “public choice” model in which groups with common economic interests seek to use the state to further their goals.

The main contribution of this book is that it tracks the contentious relationship between black workers and labor unions over such a broad sweep of time, integrating histories that have previously been told in piecemeal fashion (up to the Great Depression, or from the depression to the Civil Rights era, or for particular industries only). This virtue, though, is related to the primary weakness of the book. In his effort to cover so much terrain, Moreno fails to provide much analysis of how particular events conform or fail to conform to the theoretical point he wants to make.

In addition to introductory and concluding chapters and an appendix entitled “‘Divide and Conquer’: The Folklore of Socialism,” the book contains seven chapters examining the antebellum era of “free labor;” the period “From Reconstruction to Jim Crow;” the Progressive Era; the years from 1920 to 1935; the New Deal era and World War II; the Civil Rights era; and the period from 1965 to the present.

The early chapters draw in part on Robert Higgs's work (especially Competition and Coercion: Blacks in the American Economy 1865–1914. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1977) in arguing that black advance in the post–Civil War era was aided by competitive markets and generally hindered by collective action to limit that competition. As the organized labor movement took shape through this period, unions tried to raise wages by excluding black workers from training and employment when they could. In doing so, they inevitably created a pool of potential replacement workers and strike breakers who counteracted union efforts in many instances. Moreno emphasizes the importance of this strikebreaking activity and views it as an example of the kind of competition that erodes discrimination within a Beckerian framework, rather than as evidence of a conscious plan by employers to divide workers.

But unions and black workers were not always opposed to each other in this era. Moreno describes how the United Mine Workers in Alabama were racially inclusive, to the point that mine owners tried to turn the public against their 1907 strike by suggesting that the union favored “social equality” between the races. On the other hand, mining unions in Illinois remained racially exclusive. In West Virginia, black mine workers were more fully integrated into the union and supported it “zealously,” and strikes there “were more likely to be broken by poor whites” (p. 106). After bringing this variation in union practices to our attention, though, Moreno briskly moves on before analyzing in detail what it means for the broader points he wants to make.

As the federal government and several state governments took a more active role in regulating labor relations in the 1920s and 1930s, black workers and white unions often found themselves taking opposing positions on these policies, according to Moreno. In particular, black leaders and legislators opposed bills limiting the use of court injunctions to end strikes. During debate on the Wagner Act, the NAACP sought an amendment requiring unions to be nondiscriminatory, but the AFL opposed this, and no such requirement was included in the final bill.

Ultimately, though, the growing foothold that black workers gained in Northern industry would require unions to begin to alter their position regarding black labor. The emergence of the CIO and their strategy of forming industrial, rather than craft, unions would further this growing unity. Despite his general emphasis on conflict between black workers and labor unions, Moreno does note that “there was substantial merit in the claim that the CIO had done more to improve American race relations than any other organization” (p. 193). Again, though, Moreno points out that there was considerable variation in race-related practices across CIO unions and locals: “A New York local of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers established a vigorous fair employment committee, while fifty workers in a St. Louis United Electrical local left their jobs when their employer upgraded black workers” (p. 206). And again we are left to wonder whether this kind of variation should be taken as evidence in support of the “economics of discrimination” story that Moreno wants to tell.

Moreover, Moreno appears to agree that some employers did begin to engage in a “divide and conquer” strategy, or something like it, during this period when the black-union alliance was strengthening. He says that the 1954 Brown decision “and the AFL and CIO support for it gave employers the opportunity to exploit racial tensions as never before” (p. 228), and that “[i]n the mid-1950s, Southern employers began to use the issue of racial equality to divide black and white workers to prevent unionization” (p. 229). It would seem, then, that where conditions allowed it, employers were willing to play on racial animosity to reduce worker unity, even if this racial animosity was not created solely by their efforts.

Though the position of black workers in unions had become entrenched by the 1960s, Moreno argues that the advent of effective civil rights and antidiscrimination legislation would create new impediments to cooperation between black workers and organized labor. A central point of conflict was the treatment of seniority rights, which black leaders felt perpetuated the effects of past discrimination. Federal contract compliance policies, especially in construction work, would also be a source of tension. Ultimately, the impact of these kinds of conflicts would be overwhelmed by the rapid decline in the importance of organized labor in general through the late twentieth century.

Moreno does a creditable job of pulling together a great deal of material covering nearly two centuries of black-union relations. His attention to the conflicting efforts of black workers and labor leaders to shape labor market policy is a particularly valuable contribution. His effort to connect this history to very large questions about the nature of market economies is laudable. He takes a clear position on these large questions, and this point of view gives his writing vigor, though it occasionally leads to distracting rhetoric (e.g., his description of Martin Luther King Jr., as “essentially a socialist” [p. 224], and his claim that “under the Wagner Act, employers were forbidden to tell the truth about union racial policies while unions were free to lie about the employer's position” [p. 228]). He also makes some controversial claims in a rather offhand manner. For instance, he claims that the Reagan administration continued to forcefully implement affirmative action policies (pp. 282–83), though this would appear to conflict with the position of Jonathan Leonard (“The Impact of Affirmative Action Regulation and Equal Employment Law on Black Employment.” Journal of Economic Perspectives 4 [Fall 1990]: 47–63), among others. Despite these flaws, this book will be useful for individuals interested in an overview of black-union relations in the long-term and for those interested in an interpretation that focuses on workers, rather than employers, as shapers of racial employment patterns.