Interviews with more than 70 retired black steelworkers who tell of struggles with the company, the union and white co-workers to break out of the black job ghetto. Film traces a century of black industrial history--the use of blacks as strikebreakers against the all-white union during the 1892 Homestead Strike, the Great Migration of fieldworkers to the North in World War I, the racial divisions between workers during the Great Steel Strike of 1919 and the ultimate success of the CIO organizing drives of the 1930s. When black vets returned to the mills after WWII, they were still locked into the worst jobs with no rights to bid on better-paying, higher-skilled work. The steelworkers recount how they finally won agreement in 1974 compelling the company and the union to set hiring and promotion goals for women and minorities.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.