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Black Power at Work: Community Control, Affirmative Action, and the Construction Industry
Black Power at Work Community Control Affirmative Action and the Construction Industry Author:David Goldberg, Trevor Griffey To realize the urban redevelopment programs of the 1960s, cities employed exclusively white union locals to rebuild predominantly black inner-city neighborhoods. African American activists across the country, who had been fighting for local community control of inner-city economies, protested these decisions and forced politicians to use affirma... more »tive action as a way to desegregate the construction industry. Black Power at Work chronicles the efforts of the Black Power movement to open up the construction industry to African Americans between 1963 and 1969, a landmark struggle that gave rise to the affirmative action policies that have since helped diversify the American workplace. Through case studies of local movements in Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle, this book shows how racism in the building trades unions became a flashpoint for activism by the Black Power movement and community control organizers during the 1960s. It also speaks directly to much more recent debates about job training and placement for unemployed, underemployed, and underrepresented workers. The Black Power movement's demands for community control of construction, access to decent-paying jobs, and union inclusion remain, four decades later, equally relevant today, as does the books focus on the synergy between labor activism and community organizing.« less