The Making of Black
THE
BLACK WORKER
by Lerone Bennett, Jr. for Ebony Magazine, July 1972
Labor has built this
great metropolis of the new world, built it as coral insects build the
foundations of islands-build and die; build fr01n the fathomless depth of the
ocean until the mountain billows are dashed into spray as they beat against the
fortifications beneath which the builders are forever entombed and forgotten.
-Eugene V. Debs
To understand black is to understand work-and the denial of work. It was work or, to be more precise, it was the white demand for cheap and exploitable labor that brought black people to these shores. And it was in and through the work relationship that the fundamental structures of the black community were formed.
No less important in this general connection was
the impact of black workers on American society. It was the work of black
workers, it was the unpaid and underpaid work of black men, women and children
which changed the flora and fauna of large sections of the
To understand the black experience is to understand that point. It is also to understand that leap of the spirit which enabled embattled black workers to endure slavery, peonage and para-colonialism.
Take this hammer
and carry it to the captain, Tell him I'm gone, Tell
him I'm gone, Tell him I'm gone.
This is the
hammer that killed John Henry, But it can't kill me,.But
it won't kill me, But it won't kill me.
This image, at once aural and visual, reverberates through all the reaches of the black experience and underlines the fact that the history of black people is, among other things, a history of work.
To assess the meaning of that history, and to situate it in the dynamics of the declining phases of capitalism, it is necessary to trace the arc of black labor from legal slavery to economic slavery to para-colonialism. More than that: it is necessary to follow that arc with the guidance of three or four conceptual formulations which release the reality which isolated statistics sometimes conceal.
First of all and most importantly of all, it is
necessary to understand that white Americans have deliberately and
systematically used black workers for white economic purposes.
In the slave epoch, for example, black workers were forced to play the role of
pump primers in the development of the necessary capital which assured the
growth of
In considering the role of the black worker, one must keep this point in mind. One must also remember that the relationship of black workers to the American economic structure is a mass relationship. In other words, black workers are oppressed as a group. This means, on one level, that the role of black workers is a result not of chance or individual characteristics but of white national decisions on the use of black workers. It means, at a still deeper level, that black workers as a group have been confined to marginal economic roles by fraud, violence and a system of institutionalized racism. As we indicated in the last installment, the primary mechanisms of. this system are dual labor markets: a white primary market of relatively well paid jobs and a black secondary market of hot, dirty, low-paying jobs.
A third item in this equation is the fact that white Americans have deliberately manipulated the educational system in order to assure a dependable supply of uneducated laborers. A fourth and final point is that black workers have been forced to fight a rearguard action against a pincer movement of both white capital and white labor. Since the seventeenth century, white capital has repeatedly used black labor to depress wages and to divide and mystify the labor force. For almost as long a period, white labor has used every weapon at its command to restrict black labor to menial tasks.
The implications of these points are clear and
extensive, as Dan Lacy pointed out in a recent book on The White Use of Blacks
in
As this quote indicates, and as the work of W.E.
DuBois, Eric Williams and others documents, the
work relationship is central to an understanding of black and white America. In
fact, the founding of this country was inextricably intertwined with the
capturing, transporting and colonization of African workers. In the beginning,
as we have seen, desperate attempts were made to colonize Indian and European
workers. But it soon became clear that the mastering of the vast stretches of
the New World required more laborers than Indian America and
"First of all," DuBois added, "their work called for widening stretches of new, rich black soil-in Florida, in Louisiana, in Mexico; even in Kansas. This land, added to cheap labor, and labor easily regulated and distributed, made profits so high that a whole system of culture arose in the South, with a new leisure and social philosophy. Black labor became the foundation stone not only of the Southern social structure, but of Northern manufacture and commerce, of the English factory system, of European commerce, of buying and selling on a world-wide scale; new cities were built on the results of black labor, and a new labor problem, involving all white labor, arose both in Europe and America." Blacks played an indispensable role in this process.
Bent, as DuBois said,
"at the bottom of a growing pyramid of commerce
and industry," the black workers of
No less significant in the building of the country were slave laborers who worked on docks and in factories and who were largely responsible for the construction of Southern railroads. Nor can we forget the invaluable contributions of black artisans who were the master craftsmen of the South. There were carpenters, blacksmiths, masons, and millwrights on every plantation, Black artisans were also numerous in the larger cities. "Whatever the shortcomings the weight of evidence shows," M. W. Jernegan said, "that there was a great increase in numbers [of slave artisans]; that they were more valuable than untrained slaves, and much sought after; that they competed with free white labor especially in the towns; " and they were the most important agency in the commercial development of the South."
By almost all accounts, these artisans were
uncommonly talented. Some of their work, notably the iron grills of
Analyzing this situation some years later, an engineer who learned his trade from a slave artisan wrote: "One only needs to go down South and examine hundreds of old Southern mansions, and splendid old church edifices, still intact, to be convinced of the fact of the cleverness of the Negro artisan, who constructed nine-tenths of them. . . ." He added: "There are few, if any, of the carpenters of today who, if they had the hand tools, could get out the 'stuff' and make one of those old style massive panel doors-who could work out by hand the mouldings, the stiles, the mullions, etc., and build one of those windows, which are to be found today in many of the churches and public buildings of the South. . . For the carpenter in those days was also the 'cabinet maker,' the wood turner, coffin maker, generally the pattern maker, and the maker of most things made of wood. The Negro blacksmith held almost complete sway in his line, which included the many branches of forgery, and other trades which are now classified under different heads from that of the regular blacksmith. The blacksmith in the days of slavery was expected to make any and every, thing wrought of iron. He was for all intents and purposes the 'machine blacksmith,' 'horseshoer,' 'carriage and wagon ironer and trim ''filer,' gunsmith, wheelwright; and often whittled out and ironed the hames, the plowstocks, and the 'single trees' for the farmers, and did a hundred other things too numerous to mention. They were experts at tempering edge tools, by what is generally known as the water process. But many of them had secret processes of their own for tempering tools which they guarded with zealous care."
Four obvious but important points should be made about this general situation. First, the contributions of black workers have never been adequately acknowledged. Second, slave workers were not paid and the fruits of their labor were appropriated and used to enrich others. Third, black workers were denied the right to use their energies and skills for the advancement of the black community. Fourth, slave masters and the managers of the social structure ruthlessly used slave labor to impoverish all workers.
This last point is of crucial importance, for it played a role in sowing the seeds of disunity in the working class. White workers, who could not compete with rich slave masters, were pushed to the margins of society where they lived at a subsistence level and nursed their passionate fear and hatred of black workers. Instead of attacking the rich slave masters, the poor whites focused their resentment on the slaves of the slave masters. And from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century repeated attempts were made to limit the work experiences of slaves and free black workers. Failing in their attempts to displace slave workers, white workers physically attacked free black workers and attempted to drive them from coveted trades.
These tactics were generally successful in the
North where white capital and white labor confined most free black workers to
domestic and personal service. In 1855, for example, 87 per cent of the
employed black workers in
In the North, as in the South, black women were
workers. Most black women workers in the North were maids and laundresses.
Because of the pervasive discrimination against black men, many black women
were also the main supporters of families. "In this extremity,"
Lorenzo J. Greene and Carter G. Woodson wrote, "the Negro washerwoman rose
to prominence. She became in many instances the sole breadwinner of the family.
She washed and, ironed while her all but idle husband brought in and carried
the clothes back to the homes." Greene and Woodson added: "A census
taken in
To make matters worse, the tenuous position of
the black worker in the North was constantly challenged by white immigrants.
Between 1830 and 1860, some five million white immigrants came to
The black response to this economic crisis was varied. Some black leaders advocated emigration; others called for violent and nonviolent protest; 'still others championed concerted action in the political and economic arenas.
Beginning in the 1830s, with the first black
conventions, and continuing until the Civil War, black leaders repeatedly
called for the organization of Tuskegee-type trade schools. Attempts were also
made to organize black trade w1ions. Perhaps the first black trade union was
the short-lived American League of Colored Laborers which was organized in
As the crisis deepened, and as the white assault on the black worker continued, Frederick Douglass sounded a general alarm in the March 4, 1853, edition of Frederick Douglass' Paper. "LEARN TRADES OR STARVE!" the headline said. The editorial supported this stem alternative with the. following argument. "The old avocations, by which colored men obtained a livelihood, are rapidly, unceasingly and inevitably passing into other hands; every hour sees the black man elbowed out of employment by some newly arrived emigrant, whose hunger and whose color are thought to give him a better title to the place. . . ." Douglass added:
"White men are becoming house-servants,
cooks and stewards on vessels-- at hotels---- They are becoming porters,
stevedores, wood-sawyers, had-carriers, brick-makers, white-washers and
barbers, so. that the blacks can scarcely find the
means of subsistence---- A few years ago, and a white barber would have been a
curiosity--now their pales stand an every street. Formerly blacks were almost
the exclusive coachmen in wealthy families: this is so no longer; white men are
now employed, and for aught we see, they fill their servile station with an obsequiousness as profound as that of the blacks. The
readiness and ease with which they adapt themselves to these conditions ought
not to be lost sight of by the colored people. The meaning is very important,
and we should learn it. We are taught our insecurity by it. Without the means
of living life is a curse, and leaves us at the mercy of the oppressor to
become his debased slaves. Now, colored men, what do you mean to do, for you
must do something? The American Colonization Society tells you to go to
Douglass' editorial contained a great deal of illuminating information an the nature of the crisis, but his conclusion was something less than helpful. For the crisis, as his editorial so eloquently pointed out, was bound up with the fact that white Americans refused to give black Americans work precisely because they were black.
It is to be observed in this connection too that by the 1850s, the familiar patterns of institutionalized racism were well established in the North. By that time, white laborers were combining to displace blacks, and white employers were elaborating various techniques for barring blacks from factories and offices. It is interesting to note that black workers also received hostile receptions in the offices, shops, and factories of the white abolitionists. An additional and equally interesting fact is that few white abolitionists addressed themselves to the economic problems of black workers.
In this light, we can better understand the failure of the public policies of the Reconstruction period. The central failure of this period, as so many commentators have observed, was the failure to free black workers and to provide an economic infrastructure for the paper freedom of the Thirteenth, Fourteenth, and Fifteenth amendments. Some public leaders, notably Frederick Douglass, Thaddeus Stevens and Charles Sumner, perceived this and made a desperate attempt to legislate economic equality. But they were defeated by the greed, cynicism, and indifference of white Northerners who had no intention of endangering the exploitability of such a vast labor reserve. A second point to bear in mind is that the black masses waged a somewhat unfocused but nevertheless significant struggle for economic freedom. When the federal government refused to grant forty acres and a mule, the freedmen appealed to the Reconstruction governments in the South. In some cases . . . the leaders of those governments passed tenancy legislation which protected tenants from arbitrary seizures. Bills were also passed to enable poor persons to obtain credit, and state agencies were created to look out for the interests of the poor. On the local level, Republican justices of the peace (many of whom were black) and predominantly black juries frequently ruled in favor of renters and sharecroppers in the constantly recurring disputes over wages, liens, and land. These measures, though well meaning, were inadequate; and white Southern leaders launched a campaign to reestablish political and economic control over the black workers of the South.
In this contest, which raged for a whole generation, white Southern leaders were motivated primarily by economic objectives. From the beginning of the Reconstruction period, white Southern leaders had manifested extreme anxiety over the stability of their labor supply. As Carl Schurz noted in a postwar tour of the South, white people still believed that the black worker existed "for the special object of raising cotton, rice, and sugar for the whites, and that it [was] illegitimate for him to indulge, like other people, in the pursuit of his own happiness in his own. way." Schurz added: "But although the freedman is no longer considered the property of the individual master, he is considered' the slave of society."
Despite fraud and violence, black workers used political power in the Reconstruction period to make gains on several fronts. Commenting on. this fact, the Florida African Methodist Episcopal Conference said:
Whereas labor. is the basis of all wealth, and wealth is an absolute necessity of civilized society. . .Resolved by the convention of ministers and laymen of the Methodist Episcopal Church of Florida, that we congratulate our people upon the rapid progress they have made in the past six years, and upon the increase of mixed industry, homesteads, and small farms in opposition to the ruinous plantation system, and [we consider] those together with the increase in school houses and churches, and also the deposit of nearly three million dollars in the savings-banks, as a greater pledge of our progress to the friends of freedom throughout the world than can be found in the house of any people who sprang from as lowly a condition as ourselves. . . .
When, towards the end of Reconstruction, white
leaders unleashed the Klan and other terrorist organizations, they said frankly
that their central concern was not race but property and labor. They claimed
that the new state governments were being used to favor the interests of poor
laborers at the expense of employees. Lewis E. Parsons, a former governor of
With this view in mind, and with the tacit support of Northern industrialists, the emerging class of bankers, railroad men, industrialists and planters overthrew the Reconstruction regimes and reestablished a new form of slavery.