Labour repression in the American South: corporation, state, and race in Alabama's coal fields, 1917–1921

Abstract

ABSTRACT This article is a case study of labour strife in the Alabama coal fields from 1917 to 1921. It speaks to the broader issue of labour repression in the American South by examining the patterns of repression in one industry and in one state. Several revisionist works have been written recently refuting the alleged distinctiveness of the South on the labour issue. This article supplies evidence for a surprising degree of labour militancy; the type of militancy that has been used to buttress revisionist interpretations of the similarity of southern labour to that of other American regions. In this study, however, labour militancy is understood more as a function of the desperation of southern workers confronted with distinctive issues and degrees of racial acrimony, communal antipathy toward labour, and the advantageous position of southern coal operators vis-a-vis their northern counterparts. In the face of overwhelming odds of governmental, business, press, religious, communal, and legal opposition, Alabama coal miners mounted a militant, prolonged, and biracial protest against what have been described as the worst conditions in the United States at that time.

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