Top 10 Examples of Racism in History of the American Labor Movement

8. All White Unions

Though the original principles of the AFL, fought hard against racial discrimination, they had trouble forming any interracial charters, especially early on. In 1895, the International Association of Machinists, an all white charter began to set the precedent for this practice. In 1902, W.E.B. Du Bois was said to have documented that 43 unions had zero African-America members and 27 unions expressly prohibited African-American members. In that same year it was said that only 3 percent of labor membership was represented by African-Americans.