Chapter 4: Turning Points: Biracial Unions in the Age of Segregation

The economic collapse of the early 1890s created conditions of severe competition for scarce employment and declining wages, prompting white screwmen unions to abandon earlier agreements with Black workers and resort to organized violence to exclude them from desirable positions. These exclusionary tactics culminated in the devastating waterfront riots of 1894-1895, which destroyed established labor institutions like the Cotton Men's Executive Council and claimed several lives. Simultaneously, employers exploited racial antagonisms as a deliberate strategy to weaken collective labor power, systematically enforcing wage reductions and expanding employment of low-wage Black labor in segregated work enclaves controlled by firms such as Stoddart and Sanders. Black workers faced an impossible dilemma: they responded through various survival strategies including independent union formation, tactical alliances with employers, and the creation of breakaway worker associations designed to counter systematic exclusion. The broader political landscape of the 1890s reinforced these workplace conflicts through formal disenfranchisement measures and expanding Jim Crow legislation that consolidated white supremacy across southern society. Despite overwhelming pressure and violence, Black workers demonstrated remarkable resilience by rebuilding autonomous organizational structures rooted in community solidarity and persistent political advocacy. By 1900-1901, labor leaders including James Porter and emerging longshoremen organizations began reconstructing biracial cooperation, ultimately establishing the Dock and Cotton Council in 1901 as evidence of renewed solidarity. This chapter reveals how the 1890s represented a pivotal transformation in American labor history, marked by cycles of betrayal and cooperation, employer manipulation of racial divisions, systematic violence, and the persistent struggle for both racial dignity and economic justice among working people of different backgrounds.