Author

Publication

1996-10-18 - Twayne Publishers

Language

English

Word Count

44,000 words, Guess

Page Count

176 pages

Physical Format

Board book

Identifiers

  • Open LibraryOL7936106M
  • ISBN-139780805791204
  • ISBN-100805791205
  • OCLC Control Number34973968
  • Library of Congress Control Number96025096
and 1 more
  • Goodreads3894141

Classifications

  • LCCHD8039.P152 U54 1996

Description

Contains primary source material.

Description

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.

Subjects

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