Preface : Black history as labor history -- Introduction : The power of remembering -- 1. Segregation, racial violence, and black workers. Fannie Henderson witnesses Southern lynch law ; William Glover recounts his frame-up by the Memphis police ; Longshore leader Thomas Watkins escapes assassination -- 2. From country to city : Jim Crow at work. Hillie and Laura Pride move to Memphis ; Matthew Davis describes heavy industrial work ; George Holloway remembers the Crump era ; Clarence Coe recalls the pressures of white supremacy -- 3. Making a way out of no way : black women factory workers. Irene Branch does double duty as a domestic and factory worker ; Evelyn Bates reflects on her lifetime of factory work ; Susie Wade tells how she built a life around work ; Rebecca McKinley remembers the strike at Memphis Furniture Company -- Interlude : Not what we seem -- 4. Freedom struggles at the point of production. Clarence Coe fights for equality ; Lonnie Rolland and other black workers implement the Brown decision on the factory floor ; George Holloway's struggle against white worker racism -- 5. Organizing and surviving in the Cold War. Leroy Clark follows the pragmatic road to survival in the Jim Crow South ; Leroy Boyd battles white supremacy in the era of the red scare rights unionism -- Interlude : Arts of resistance -- 6. Civil rights unionism. Leroy Boyd tells how black workers used the movement for civil rights to revive local ; Factory worker Matthew Davis becomes a community leader ; Edward Lindsey recall black union politics ; Alzada and Leroy fight for unionism and civil rights ; Alzada Clark organizes black women workers in Mississippi -- 7. "I am a man" : unionism and the black working poor. Taylor Rogers relive Memphis sanitation strike ; James Robinson describes the worst job he ever had -- Leroy Boyd and Clarence Coe recall a strike and the death of Martin Luther KWilliamilliam Lucy reflects on the strike's meaning and outcome -- 8. The fate of the black working class : the global economy, racism, and union organizing. Confronting deindustrialization ;Ida Leachman tells how her union continues to organize low-wage workers -- George Holloway and Clarence Coe reflect on the importance of unions and the struggle against racism. Epilogue : Scars of memory.
