Negro and White, Unite and Fight!: A Social History of Industria

"Horowitz, coauthor (with Rick Halpern) of an oral history of African Americans in this industry (Meatpackers ), is currently associate director of Hagley Museum and Library's Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society in Delaware. The United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) is notable among U.S. unions for democracy, diversity, and a strong commitment to civil rights. Although African American workers often entered the industry as "scabs," company brutality convinced blacks and whites they needed to work together. Horowitz traces the roots of the UPWA; the struggle to form an international union; tactics adopted by UPWA on both shop floors and city streets; and the decline of the UPWA since the '50s and the consequences of that decline for the workers who put meat on our tables. Where labor history holds more than a tiny fraction of the shelf space devoted to business history, this cogent study of unionism in meatpacking from the Depression to the '90s is worth considering."
--Mary Carroll, Booklist