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Organized Labor in the 20th Century South, edited by Robert H. Ziegler, University of Tennesee Press, 1991

Reviewed by Dave Silver
6 January 1998

"Organized Labor" explores the significant role that trade unionism played in shaping the industrial, political, economic and social life of the 20th Century South. It depicts the centrality of race and the essays try to come to grips with the question of how distinctive as well as what similarities existed in the southern working class and and southern patterns of labor relations. Rich sources both oral and archival are tapped such as the oral history collections at the University of North Carolina and the Southern Labor Archives in Atlanta.

Among the themes explored are Labor Espionage, Textile Workers struggles to unionize, the 1922 Railroad Shopmen's Strike, the struggl e for racial justice and Industrial Unionism in Memphis, interracial unionism among Fort Worth's Packinghouse Workers and the struggle against anti-union sentiment in Arkansas and Florida.

There are vivid descriptions of the role of such heroines as "Mother" Jones in the coal mining areas of the South in the 1910's and early twenties and Ella May Wiggins songstress and martyr of the Gastonia strike in 1922 Although the contributions of such groups as the Southern Conference Educational Fund and the Communist Party deserved greater documentation, this volume is an important guide to understanding the rich labor history of the South.