Widely praised upon publication and now considered a classic study, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights chronicles the southern industrial union movement from the Great Depression to the Cold War, a history that created the context for the sanitation workers' strike that brought Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. to Memphis in April 1968. Michael K. Honey documents the dramatic labor battles and sometimes heroic activities of workers and organizers that helped to set the stage for segregation's demise.

Winner of the Charles S. Sydnor Award, given by the Southern Historical Association, 1994.  Winner of the James A. Rawley Prize given by the Organization of American Historians, 1994.  Winner of the Herbert G. Gutman Award for an outstanding book in American social history.

Michael K. Honey is the Fred T. and Dorothy G. Haley Professor of the Humanities at the University of Washington Tacoma. His books include Going Down Jericho Road: The Memphis Strike, Martin Luther King's Last Campaign and the award-winning Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle.

Acknowledgements xi
INTRODUCTION: Labor and Civil Rights 1
I: Southern Apartheid and the Labor Movement
ONE: Segregation and Southern Labor 13
TWO: No Bill of Rights in Memphis 44
II: Labor's Struggle for the Right to Organize
THREE: The Rise and Repression of Industrial Unionism 67
FOUR: Black and White Unite 93
FIVE: Race, Radicalism, and the CIO 117
SIX: Black Scares and Red Scares 145
III: Industrial Unionism and the Black Freedom Movement
SEVEN: War in the Factories 177
EIGHT: The CIO at the Crossroads 214
NINE: The Cold War against Labor and Civil Rights 245
CONCLUSION: Legacies 279
Abbreviations 293
Notes 295
Primary Sources Consulted 349
Index 353