Race against Liberalism
Cloth: 06/02/2008
About the Book
Race against Liberalism examines how black worker activism in Detroit shaped the racial politics of the labor movement and the white working class. David M. Lewis-Colman traces the substantive, long-standing disagreements between liberals and the black workers who embraced autonomous race-based action. As he shows, black autoworkers placed themselves at the center of Detroit's working-class politics and sought to forge a kind of working class unity that accommodated their interests as African Americans. The book covers the independent caucuses in the 1940s and the Trade Union Leadership Council in the 1950s; the black power movement and Revolutionary Union Movements of the mid-1960s; and the independent race-based activism of the 1970s that resulted in Coleman Young's 1973 election as the city's first black mayor.About the Author
David M. Lewis-Colman is an assistant professor of African American history at Ramapo College.Reviews
“Race against Liberalism is a well-written narrative that provides readers with a greater sense of the complexities of racial politics within the labor movement in postwar Detroit. Lewis-Colman’s book is a welcome addition to the literature on the UAW, but it also has broader significance for the study of Detroit, race, and race relations generally within the twentieth-century United States.”--Michigan Historical Review“Lewis-Colman's book sheds light on just how entrenched racism was in American society and suggests that any glimmer of interracial liberalism may have been fool's gold.”--The Journal of American History
"Compelling. . . . An important piece of scholarship."--The Journal of African American History.
"Shines a much-needed-light on the politics of racial liberalism, the elephant occupying at least one room of the House of Labor. This well-researched study deserves a prominent place on the reading lists of courses of American labor, urban, political, and racial history."--American Studies
Blurbs
"Lewis-Colman's careful history of the politics of racial liberalism is the most detailed study to date of race and black workers in the UAW from 1941 to 1973 and is a compelling contribution to labor studies, black studies, race relations, sociology, and social history."--Richard W. Thomas, author of Understanding Interracial Unity: A Study of U.S. Race Relations
"Much more than a simple institutional history of the UAW and its black members, this work deftly moves beyond this theme to other crucial issues connected to the workplace, the Detroit community, the Cold War against labor, and to the civil rights and Black Nationalist movements."--Stephen Meyer, author of "Stalin over Wisconsin": The Making and Unmaking of Militant Unionism, 1900-1950
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