African American History in the Archives

Records, 1942- 1969
268 boxes (111 feet, 8 inches). 

Correspondence; minutes; financial records; grievances; constitutions; information on organization campaigns in various locals in the district; records of anti-discrimination activities, 1943-1957.

Records, 1950-1954, bulk 1950-1957
2 folders
Local 249-A was organized and chartered November 1, 1949. The organization was comprised of African American motion picture operators in Dallas. Its purpose was to place African American men as operators in each Dallas theater that was patronized exclusively by African American patrons. On February 11, 1969, Local 249-A merged with Local 249, which was previously an all white local.
Minutes, photographs, legal documents, newspaper clipping, and booklet. The photographs depict members of Locals 249, 249-A, and 279-A. The clipping and a court case are about a suit brought against Local 249 by Samuel R. Tankersley on behalf of the local’s African American members over loss of seniority due to the merger.

1 box
Lee Lewis (1902-1972) was a member of the International Alliance of Theatrical Stage Employees and Moving Picture Machine Operators of the United States and Canada, Local 279A, an all-Black local union in Dallas, Texas. In 1947, he and other Black unionists organized the Texas Federation Club to protest discrimination experienced by blacks at Texas State Federation of Labor conventions. This collection contains correspondence, minutes, printed material, and photographs pertaining to the Texas Federation Club.

AR637
Records, 1962-1994
1 Box (0.2 linear feet)
Ivory Davis was a member of the Independent Metal Workers Union, Local No.2 in Houston, Texas, which was the Jim Crow (African American) Local. While working at Hughes Tool Company in Houston, an apprenticeship was made available to which Davis applied. He was rejected due to his race. With the help from Local No.2 leader, Columbus Henry, Davis was able to fight against the discrimination. In 1964, after much struggle, Davis was finally accepted into the program. Also, the case ended with the Independent Metal Workers Union being decertified as the bargaining agent for Hughes Tool due to its discriminatory practices.

The materials relate to Davis’s attempt in 1959 and the early-1960s to secure an apprenticeship at Hughes Tool Company. The collection includes documents related to Mr. Davis and Local No. 2’s case against Local No.1 (the white union local) and Hughes Tool Company.

AR164
Records, 1934-1973.
1 box and 5 reels of positive 35 mm microfilm (originals in the Southern Historical Collection, University of North Carolina Library, Chapel Hill). Scrapbook; clippings; Share-Croppers Voice, 1935-1937 (photocopy and microfilm); correspondence; proceedings of Third and Fifth Annual Conventions; interviews with and by H.L. Mitchell, co-founder of the STFU; publications on the history of the STFU. (See also Collection M 17 and OH 29, OH 31, OH 51)

A publication by the NAACP outlining the effects of Right to Work laws on African-American laborers.
PAM 1222C

On the basis of extensive archival research, Alan Draper illuminates the role organized labor played in the southern civil rights movement. He documents the substantial support the AFL-CIO and its southern state councils gave to the struggle for Black equality, suggesting that labor's political leadership recognized an opportunity in the civil rights movement. This text illustrates the tension developed between labor's political leadership, desperate to create a party system in the South that included Black laborers, and a rank and file determined to preserve southern Democracy by enforcing segregation.
E 185.615 .D715 1994

Fascinating stories of enormous human interest from case studies illustrate both the need for and the effectiveness of the Freedmen's Bureau in Texas. Established by Congress in 1865 to help newly emancipated blacks make the transition from slavery to freedom, the Freedmen's Bureau is considered the first social welfare agency in American history.
E 185.93 .T4 C76 1992

Black Unionism in the Industrial South presents the struggles of Black workers who fought for equality and unionization in the heyday of Gulf Coast industry. Ernest Obadele-Starks examines the workers' responses to racial and class domination and their creative strategies to reach their goals. Facing public and corporate policies that typically deferred to white workers, Black workers banded together to achieve representation in the workplace, form union auxiliaries, charter their own local unions, seal alliances with members of the Black middle class, and manipulate the media to benefit their cause.
HD6490.R22 U66 2000

In a book that fundamentally challenges our understanding of race in the United States, Neil Foley unravels the complex history of ethnicity in the cotton culture of central Texas. This engrossing narrative, spanning the period from the Civil War through the collapse of tenant farming in the early 1940s, bridges the intellectual chasm between African American and Southern history on one hand and Chicano and Southwestern history on the other.
F 395 .A1 F65 1997

Making it in Hell, says Bruce Jackson, is the spirit behind the sixty-five work songs gathered in this eloquent dispatch from a brutal era of prison life in the Deep South. Through engagingly documented song arrangements and profiles of their singers, Jackson shows how such pieces as "Hammer Ring," "Ration Blues," "Yellow Gal," and "Jody's Got My Wife and Gone" are like no other folk music forms: they are distinctly African in heritage, diminished in power and meaning outside their prison context, and used exclusively by Black convicts.
M 1977 .C55 J2

Article written by Robert Clifton Weaver, who served as the chief of the Negro Employment and Training Branch, discussing labor in the African-American community.
PAM 1548