Being redandblackinJim Crow America:Notes on the ideology and travails of Afro‐America's socialist pioneers, 1877–1930

First as Tragedy, Then as Farce: WEB Du Bois, Left-Wing Radicalism, and the Problem of Interracial Labor Unionism

“…More important than this personal and intellectual history, however, is the resurgent insistence on a transhistoric logic of white working class behavior. 25 Besides simply being methodologically incomplete, as I believe I have shown, it is a dangerous, if not simply defeatist, political position grounded in short-term and selective memory (see James, 1999: 58). Du Bois’s most important contribution to the study of the perpetuation of racial inequality, the claim that white workers pursue their material interests as whites in competition with Blacks, and, in so doing, become the primary promulgators of white supremacy, accurately explains much of American race relations.…”

“…As a result of the tightening labor market in industrial East St Louis during the First World War, white workers were relatively successful in organizing themselves in trade unions. In order to ease this tightening labor market and decrease wages, employers recruited thousands of Black workers from the South to undercut the prevailing industrial wage (Du Bois, [1920] 1999. White workers, for the most part, excluded these Black workers from their unions and organized specifically to gain a white monopoly of the labor pool (Du Bois, [1920] 1999: 53).…”

“…White workers, for the most part, excluded these Black workers from their unions and organized specifically to gain a white monopoly of the labor pool (Du Bois, [1920] 1999: 53). When white workers failed at achieving this latter goal through unionization, they turned to violence, killing dozens, if not hundreds, of Black workers-male and female-and their children, while burning or otherwise destroying their homes (Du Bois, [1920] 1999. In what I consider the most succinct statement of Du Bois's account of racialized competition under American capitalism, Du Bois describes the riot as follows:…”

“…If the black workingmen of the South could earn a decent living under decent circumstances at home, they would not be compelled to underbid their white fellows. (Du Bois, [1920] 1999 Racial antagonism, again, is driven by economic necessity-not immorality or ignorance, but by the "shadow of hunger" that "drives us to war and murder and hate" (Du Bois, [1920] 1999.…”

Freedom’s Stock: Political Consumerism, Transnational Blackness and the Black Star Line

“…The BSL utilized this strategy to pique the interests of people eager to claim ownership of citizenry benefits related to access to consumer goods and services as well as a chance at economic prosperity. Though the BSL was key in engaging blacks in a specific type of racialized political consumerism, which would link transnational racial unity and consumer interest, the UNIA’s economic self-help projects extended beyond the BSL and included such endeavors as the Negro Factories Corporation, grocery stores, restaurants, and laundry services, as well as uniform, hat and clothing stores (James, 2003). The UNIA had a tradition of interpreting the realm of consumerism as political and integral to the economic uplift of the race.…”