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Author Halpern, Rick.

Title Meatpackers : an oral history of Black packinghouse workers and their struggle for racial and economic equality / Rick Halpern, Roger Horowitz.

Imprint New York : Twayne Publishers ; London : Prentice Hall International, ©1996.

Copies

Location Call No. OPAC Message Status
 Axe Special Collections Rosen  331.6396 H163m 1996    ---  Lib Use Only
Description xvii, 176 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm.
text txt rdacontent
unmediated n rdamedia
volume nc rdacarrier
Series Twayne's oral history series ; no. 25
Twayne's oral history series ; no. 25.
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 167-170) and index.
Contents Preface: The United Packinghouse Workers of America Oral History Project -- 1. "The Strength of the Black Community": African American Workers, Unionism, and the Meatpacking Industry -- 2. "We Made a Religion of Unity": Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses -- 3. "It Was the Only Way to Get the Job Done": Unionism and Race Relations in Kansas City -- 4. "I've Been Ahead of My Time": Rowena Moore and Black Women's Activism in Omaha -- 5. "Instead of Crumbs We Wanted Us a Slice of the Pie": The Struggle for Black Equality in Fort Worth -- 6. "Looking for the Promised Land": Labor and Civil Rights in Waterloo, Iowa.
Summary The hope of securing gainful employment in America's meatpacking industry fired the dreams and imaginations of southern blacks seeking to escape the limits imposed by rural poverty, sharecropping, and Jim Crow segregation. Despite terrible working conditions, the packinghouse provided jobs in urban centers where other doors remained closed. Using oral history interviews drawn from the massive United Packinghouse Workers of America Oral History Project (underwritten by the National Endowment for the Humanities), Halpern and Horowitz trace the impact of the packinghouse on race relations, the civil rights movement, and African American communities from Chicago to Fort Worth. The interviewees speak for themselves with power, intelligence, and emotion. They reveal the importance of the packinghouse employment to midwestern black communities, and offer insights into the work experience and family relationships of African Americans. They relate the remarkable representation of interracial cooperation within a labor union - the United Packinghouse Workers of America - and the positive role this organization played in the promotion of social change, racial equality, and tolerance.
Subject African American packing-house workers -- Interviews.
African American packing-house workers -- History -- Sources.
Packing-houses -- United States -- History -- Sources.
African American packing-house workers. (OCoLC)fst00799288
Packing-houses. (OCoLC)fst01050253
United States. (OCoLC)fst01204155
Genre/Form History. (OCoLC)fst01411628
Interviews. (OCoLC)fst01423832
Sources. (OCoLC)fst01423900
Added Author Horowitz, Roger.
Added Title Meat packers
ISBN 0805791205 (cloth : alk. paper)
9780805791204 (cloth : alk. paper)

 
    
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