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Robert M. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865.

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Robert M. Zieger, For Jobs and Freedom: Race and Labor in America since 1865 (Lexington: The University Press of Kentucky 2007)

IT COMES ACROSS well in this pungent book that the history of us labour does not fit a classic picture of class-conscious workers nobly combating their exploitative and reactionary employers. For much of the history that Zieger covers, organized labour did not hold the moral high ground over the state and private corporations with respect to its record on race relations. In the history of the labour movement before the 1930s, covered in the key second and third chapters of the book, the most reactionary political strains in the movement were exemplified by the "big four" white railroad brotherhoods and the craft unions which made up the core of the American Federation of Labor (AFL).

Zieger qualifies the notion of a deeply racist labour movement with the observation that as early as 1902 the AFL included a significant African-American minority among its members. African Americans were not admitted into the AFL by way of membership of its...

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