Fearing inflation, inflating fears: the end of full employment and the rise of the carceral state

PDF

Download

Open document

Transcript (if available)

Content

FEARING INFLATION, INFLATING FEARS: THE END OF FULL EMPLOYMENT AND
THE RISE OF THE CARCERAL STATE

by

David P. Stein

________________________________________________________________________

A Dissertation Presented to the
FACULTY OF THE GRADUATE SCHOOL
UNIVERSITY OF SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA
In Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree
DOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHY
(AMERICAN STUDIES AND ETHNICITY)

August 2014

Copyright 2014 David P. Stein

i
Acknowledgements
I have benefitted from an unbelievable amount of support in writing this dissertation. I am
tremendously grateful for having been able to spend the past seven years thinking systematically
about politics and history. Many teachers, colleagues, and friends have influenced this project in
indelible ways. There are many more whose labor has gone into this project whose names I do not
know—librarians, people who refined oil, cleaned classrooms, and built computers—thank you.
Most importantly, to the people who struggled for a better world, whose stories I have tried to
recount: I hope this history can stir others to achieve your unfinished goals. Two of those people—
Rachelle Horowitz and Andrew Levison—took the time to speak with me about their efforts; their
insights were invaluable.
My advisor, Ruth Wilson Gilmore, inspired me to go to graduate school when I saw how
organizers within California’s anti-imprisonment movement were utilizing her scholarship and
research to support their efforts and understand what they were confronting. Since then Ruthie has
modeled how to think and act as a scholar and activist. Her commitment to freedom struggles is
unwavering. Her rigorous questions and insistence on ‘getting it right’ fueled this project
throughout. I am honored to be one of the many people whose heart and mind she has shaped.
Like Ruthie, my dissertation committee is a dream team of intellectuals whose commitments
to praxis are unrivaled. Shana Redmond has been a fierce ally and mentor whose steady dedication
to me as a scholar and person continues to amaze. I am unable to thank her enough for her faithful
advocacy and consistent support; amongst much else, she provides a blueprint for me to follow as a
young scholar. Laura Pulido has shaped how I think in deep ways. She has consistently challenged
me to hone my questions and provide evidence for my claims. Robin D.G. Kelley’s teaching is
renowned for good reason. Few days went by when I did not hear his voice in my ear guiding me to

ii
‘explain the choices people make, and the context in which they made them.’ Neetu Khanna joined
the project late, but has left her mark on how I think about narrative and structure.
Over the years, I was taught and nurtured by so many other professors. My undergraduate
mentors, Demetrius Eudell, Ann duCille, and Charles Lemert, were consistent advocates for me, and
I am forever grateful for their teachings. Being in consistent conversation with Professor Eudell’s
mentor, Sylvia Wynter, has been a dream. She is a paragon of intellectual and political commitment
whose thinking about the “question of the human” is at the heart of this project.
When I started my graduate studies at Yale, I had the privilege of learning from Lisa Lowe,
whose mentorship is rightfully legendary. I do not know where I would be without her faith in my
own research and thinking. Also during my years at Yale, I was able to take courses with Matt
Jacobson, Hazel Carby, Saidiya Hartman, Neferti Tadiar, and Michael Denning; each posed
questions during those courses that has molded this project in key ways. Michael’s shepherding of
the Working Group on Globalization and Culture continues to provide a touchstone for the best
elements of collaborative research.
I was greeted at USC by a wonderful group of teachers. The insights of Sarah Banet-Weiser
and Dorrine Kondo into how culture shapes the social world has molded my thinking in profound
ways. Jane Iwamura provided a sturdy base of support when I was considering some of the key
initial questions for the dissertation. Her guidance during a critical moment was monumental.
Likewise, David Lloyd, a member of my qualifying exam committee, was a faithful advocate
throughout his time at USC. Peggy Kamuf welcomed me into her Mellon Foundation “Essential
Humanities” Seminar and provided important insights into how the project could inform current
humanities scholarship. Angela Y. Davis allowed me to join her seminar at UC-Irvine and helped
fashion my thinking on abolition democracy and the dialectics of history and social movements. Her

iii
insistence on thinking about ‘what has changed, and what has not,’ provides a guide that I
continually return to.
The broader community of American Studies and Ethnicity (ASE) faculty and staff has been
critical to this project. Jujuana Preston, Kitty Lai, and Sonia Rodriguez all keep the department
humming in the most incredible way. Their assistance has been essential. Likewise, John Carlos
Rowe’s work planning the 2013 Mauricio Mazon Seminar occasioned a highlight of my graduate
career: George Lipsitz’s feedback on Chapter 1 provided a steady path from which the subsequent
chapters emerged.
A few friends played key roles in thinking through the critical questions for this project.
Sarah Haley has been there since day one. She has challenged me politically and intellectually and
seen this project evolve throughout. Her abiding love and friendship, no less than her political
commitments, inspire me to be a better thinker, organizer, and person. Jake Peters read and gave
feedback on almost every page of this dissertation and listened to countless monologues as it
developed. His love of learning and thinking, and endless encouragement nourished this project.
Likewise, I relied on his compassion, humor, and wisdom at key junctures. Dan Berger is known for
his encyclopedic knowledge of social movements, but it is his deep kindness and faithfulness to
those he loves that I admire most about him. He was always there to motivate, inspire, and talk late
into the night.
I have been blessed with many brilliant friends and comrades along the way. At Yale, and in
GESO, I found some of the best comrades I am ever likely to have: Sarah Haley, Stephanie
Greenlea, Ariana Paulson, Eli Jelly-Schapiro, Madeleine Lipshie-Williams, Nicole Ivy, Jeffrey Boyd,
Susan Valentine, Mary Reynolds, Suzy Newbury, Sarah Egan, Jamicia Lackey, Drew Hannon,
Alejandro Delgado, and many others, all showed me that another university is possible, and how we
can get there. Likewise, at Yale, Simeon Man, Anna Kesson, Hugh Kesson, Monica Martinez, Aaron

iv
Carico, Mike Amezcua, Van Truong, Andi Voellmy, Kathleen Belew, Gerry Cadava, Dan Gilbert,
Amanda Ciafone, Julianne Prescop, and James Tang, all enlivened my brief time in New Haven.
Working in the African American Studies office with Geneva Melvin and Janet Giarratano was a joy.
Organizing briefly with People Against Injustice showed me firsthand the importace of grassroots
organizations at the local level to challenge entrenched systems of power.
At USC, I found a stunning cohort of scholars and activists to consider urgent questions
alongside. Treva Ellison, Jessi Quizar, Christina Heatherton, Sharon Luk, Anthony Rodriguez, and
Tasneem Siddiqui were all critical interlocutors and good friends. Likewise, Jolie Chea, Adam Bush,
Umayyah Cable, Nic Ramos, Kai Green, Analena Hassberg, Araceli Esparza, and Laura Fugikawa all
made ASE a dynamic and hospitable place to think and learn.
The History of Capitalism Summer Camp was a stunning experience and proved generative
for many parts of this project. Louis Hyman’s work organizing it, and helping me think through the
Jim Crow elements in the Federal Reserve, was crucial. Likewise, Betsy Beasley and my joint venture,
Who Makes Cents?: A History of Capitalism Podcast, grew from conversations at the camp. As I have
approached the end of this dissertation, initiating Who Makes Cents? with Betsy has been
phenomenal. I could not ask for a better friend to embark on such a project with. Likewise, my time
in Ithaca nourished friendships with Amanda Ciafone and Jon Free for which I am grateful.
A number of other colleagues and friends played key roles. Tony Platt welcomed me into the
course he co-taught with Jonathan Simon, and soon we were teaching together as well. His
commitment across decades to political and intellectual struggles is an inspiration. Zoe Hammer was
always available to bounce ideas around with and talk about Arizona. Dylan Rodriguez and Setsu
Shigematsu were always present for encouraging words along the way. Peter Rachleff was a buoyant
voice of vitality and faith throughout.

v
A number of other friends and colleagues were foundations of support. Ari Wohlfeiler was
always present with a warm hug and endless excitement for the project. Robin Ellis and Lisa
Gallegos are dear friends whose daily work evokes the best social values this world has. Both
Robin’s and Ari’s sharp political insights and consistent encouragement vibrate in the background of
the dissertation. I could always count on Jenna Loyd to think through key questions and provide
keen insight. Craig Gilmore has been a consistent presence, from conference calls to meals in
conference halls, his willing smile and critical insight are unrivaled. Nick Mitchell has also seen the
entirety of the project develop and has always been a faithful friend and brilliant interlocutor. Thea
Tagle was an indispensible writing buddy for our respective dissertations and job letters. Isaac Lev
Szmonko helped copyedit and was always available to think through critical issues. Liz Samuels was
a consistent source of cheer and encouragement, as was Curtis Acosta. Christiana Heatherton,
Jordan Camp, Stuart Schrader, Lydia Pelot-Hobbs, Rachel Herzing, Evan Bissell, Treva Ellison, Eric
Romann, Sam Han, Jessi Quizar, and Betsy Beasley all helped me think through important elements
of the project at key junctures.
California’s anti-imprisonment movement inspired the project and taught me about the
dialectics of social movement struggle. My comrades in Critical Resistance and Californians United
for a Responsible Budget continuously motivate me to work harder and struggle longer. In these
efforts, I am grateful to have worked alongside Rachel Herzing, Rose Braz, Isaac Ontiveros, Isaac
Lev Szmonko, Craig Gilmore, Treva Ellison, Emily Harris, Jolie Chea, Mary Sutton, Kevin Michael
Key, David Chavez, Hans Kuzmich, Andrea Salinas, Kai Barrow, Erica Meiners, and many others.
A number of other friends provided support in many more ways. Elana Bauer, Zoe Cohen,
Liz Samuels, Matt Osborn, Ari Wohlfeiler, Gabe Freiman, Annie Mathews, Cait Petre, Ari Brand,
Brenden Beck, Mari Crabtree, Benjy Stein, and Annie Stein all provided couches and beds that made
doing the archival research for this project feasible.

vi
Lastly, my family provided a firm base of support upon which this dissertation rests. My
parents, Terry Holpert and Alan Stein, taught me how to listen with kindness and compassion, and it
is the skill I rely on most as a historian. Their commitment to a better world and to the “public
good” gives me faith. My grandmother Betty, and late grandfather Merrill Holpert are two of the
kindest people I have ever met. Their support and encouragement can be detected in every letter in
this project. My grandmother Annie Stein’s commitment to her family and those she loves is without
parallel. My brother and sister-in-law, Benjy and Annie Stein, and their wonderful children Max,
Naomi, and Emmy provided joy at every turn. My partner, Rebecca Popuch’s commitment to justice
is matched only by the ferocity of her love. Sharing a life with her these past few years has been a
consistent joy. Her abiding faith in me and this project carried me through.

vii
Abstract

“Fearing Inflation” is about the politics and economics of unemployment from the 1930s-
1970s. It blends social, political, labor, and economic history with the interdisciplinary fields of
feminist economic theory, radical criminology, and African American Studies in order to reveal the
centrality of full employment demands to Black freedom politics. This study investigates racial
justice movements that sought to eradicate structural unemployment and examines contests over
governmental responses to people who were disemployed due to automation and globalization.
Drawing upon archives of activists, politicians, economists, and the Federal Reserve, I uncover the
relationship between the rise and decline of the political program for governmental guarantees to
jobs or income, and the increased federal governmental focus on criminalization.
“Fearing Inflation” highlights how Jim Crow political power, organized business interests,
and the Federal Reserve helped prevent the success of civil rights struggles for full employment. In
so doing, my project shows that unemployment after the 1940s was not a technical problem of
market inefficiencies, but a political problem of vying social forces. Postwar unemployment was
more than a personal affliction; it was an essential component of public policy that emphasized a
low inflation rate. With currencies tied to the U.S. dollar after the1944 Bretton Woods Agreement,
inflation of the dollar imperiled this entire arrangement. This resulted in the maintenance of a
surplus labor force to temper the power of workers to increase their wages (and inflate prices). By
highlighting these relations, my study locates unemployed people (and movements on their behalf)
as a central force in the history of twentieth-century capitalism and social policy.
“Fearing Inflation” investigates the social movements and government actors of the 1930s-40s
that established an ethos that it was the federal government's responsibility to provide jobs or
income for those whom the private market abandoned. I emphasize how—due to fear on behalf of
capital of wage-push inflation—government and the Federal Reserve participated in actions to

viii
inhibit working-class power from the 1950s-70s, and unmade a consensus about the need for full
employment planning. In the midst of these contests, I describe the evolution of two key efforts to
win legislation for guaranteed jobs: the Bayard Rustin-designed “Freedom Budget for All
Americans,” of the 1960s, and the subsequent efforts led by Coretta Scott King of the Full
Employment Action Council in the 1970s. In so doing, I argue that the history of wealth and power
is shaped by both the “failure” of campaigns like the Freedom Budget, and the “success” of those
that preceded it like the March on Washington. As such, I suggest that one can see the making of
neoliberalism in Keynesianism’s uneven development (through which Keynesianism harmonized
with existent white supremacist and patriarchal practices). And since many of these problems of
structural unemployment and economic precarity have deepened with the rise of neoliberalism, I
follow E.P. Thompson's argument that by looking at “lost causes” of prior organizers and activists
“we may discover insights into social evils we have yet to cure.”

ix
Table of Contents

1. Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………i

2. Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………...vii

3. Abbreviations………………………………………………………………………………x

4. Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1

5. Chapter 1: Keynesianism and Class Struggle: Racial Violence and the Struggle for Full
Employment in Depression and War.……………………………………………………..12

6. Chapter 2: “Inflation is the Devil”: Unemployment, Cold War Power Struggles, and Federal
Reserve Independence, 1946-1955………………………………………………………...63

7. Chapter 3: The Making of Structural Unemployment: Automation, the Federal Reserve, and
the Civil Rights Response, 1955-1963……………………………………………………101

8. Chapter 4: “Civil Rights Plus Full Employment Equals Freedom”: From the March on
Washington to the Freedom Budget……………………………………………………..140

9. Chapter 5: “You’re Not Unemployed Anyway—You’re Fighting Inflation”: The Struggle for
Full Employment in the 1970s…………………………………………………………...204

10. Conclusion: The End of Full Employment and the Consolidation of the Carceral State in
the 1980s………………………………………………………………………………....245

11. References……………………………………………………………………………….253

12. Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………..324

x
Abbreviations

• ACWA Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America
• ADA Americans for Democratic Action
• AFL American Federation of Labor
• AFL-CIO American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations
• AFSCME American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
• BPP Black Panther Party for Self Defense
• BLFE Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen
• BSCP Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
• CBC Congressional Black Caucus
• CIO Congress of Industrial Organizations
• CIO-PAC Congress of Industrial Organizations’ Political Action Committee
• CEA Council of Economic Advisors
• CORE Congress of Racial Equality
• CRC Civil Rights Congress
• FEAC Full Employment Action Council
• FEPC Fair Employment Practices Commission
• FOMC Federal Open Markets Committee
• FOR Fellowship of Reconciliation
• FTA Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers of America
• GAW Guaranteed Annual Wage
• IBM International Business Machines Corporation
• ILWU International Longshore and Warehouse Union
• ISL Independent Socialist League
• IWW International Workers of the World
• JEC Joint Economic Committee of the Congress
• LCCR Leadership Conference on Civil Rights
• LID League of Industrial Democracy
• MCS Marine, Cooks, and Stewards Union
• NAACP National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
• NALC Negro American Labor Council

xi
• NCFE National Committee for Full Employment
• NLRA National Labor Relations Act
• NLRB National Labor Relations Board
• NNC National Negro Congress
• NNLC National Negro Labor Council
• NWRO National Welfare Rights Organization
• MFDP Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party
• OPEC Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries
• PPMA Pullman Porters and Maids Protective Association
• REA Rural Electrification Act
• SCLC Southern Christian Leadership Conference
• SDS Students for a Democratic Society
• SNCC Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee
• SOC Southern Organizing Committee
• SP Socialist Party
• TULC Trade Union Leadership Council
• TVA Tennessee Valley Authority
• TWUA Textile Workers Union of American
• UAW United Auto Workers
• USWA United Steelworkers of America
• YPSL Young People’s Socialist League

1
Introduction
“But in order that the owner of money may find labour-power on the market as a commodity,
various conditions must first be fulfilled…nature does not produce on the one hand owners of
money or commodities, and on the other hand men possessing nothing but their own labour-
power.” – Karl Marx, 1867
1

“The task has been to study the historical relationship between criminal law and economics, the
history of class struggle, and to utilize these interrelationships to analyze the present prison system.”
– Georg Rusche, 1933
2

Unemployment is not natural. Nor is the desire for waged employment—to have one’s labor
power exploited by capital—determined by natural phenomena. But unemployment, and the need
for waged labor are sewn into the current social fabric as intertwined historical facts. Likewise, each
identify circumstances that have been struggled over in different ways throughout historical
moments including: people seeking to prevent enclosures of common lands and resources,
attempting to create income supports for unemployed people, and proposals to reduce the power of
the market to commodify the means of subsistence. When Karl Marx wrote the above lines, he did
so in order to insist that “economic categories…bear a historical imprint.”
3
This dissertation follows
such lessons to reveal the contest over unemployment from the 1930s-1970s. Throughout this
period, people across the U.S. argued that it was a governmental responsibility to create “full
employment”—a guarantee to a job or income—with the goal of negating the misery that
accompanies unemployment. Through detailing these efforts, and how they were restrained, this
dissertation shows how unemployment was sustained and enabled by power struggles related to
public policy and political economy.
Before my grandfather joined the navy during World War II, he worked as an elevator
operator in New York City. By the time the war ended, his economic prospects had shifted
dramatically as Jews began to receive the privileges of white supremacy.
4
Within a few decades this
job no longer existed. Employers had chosen to divest humans of the responsibility for such a task.

2
In July 1963, in the midst of organizing March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, A. Philip
Randolph, the leader of the Negro American Labor Council, warned of this trend within the
industry. He called for a governmental guarantee to a job, which, he noted, was especially necessary
for Black workers, “because most Negro workers are still in un and semi-skilled trades, more of
them will be displaced each year.” To highlight his point, he commented, “within four years, 30,000
elevator operators in New York City were displaced by self-service elevators. Within a few years, this
job category will have disappeared completely. Nearly all of these operators are Negroes and Puerto
Ricans.”
5
One of the key elements that led to the economic advances for my grandfather, and others
like him, was the 1944 GI Bill of Rights, the $95 billion in governmental expenditures, which were
mainly able to be utilized by white veterans to assist in buying homes and going to college.
6
Such
legislation, not unlike the 1862 Homestead Act, proved epoch-making for the accumulation of
wealth and power by those, mainly white people, who were able to take advantage of these
government-sponsored programs.
7
In the mid-1960s, after the failure of the March on Washington
to achieve its central economic demands, Randolph and other trusted comrades continued their
efforts to craft a comparably ambitious economic plan for governmental expenditures: the $100
billion Freedom Budget for All Americans (which sought, amongst much else, to pay some form of
recompense to the Black veterans of white supremacy’s daily warfare). Despite a vibrant coalition,
the Freedom Budget, which promised to abolish poverty within a decade, was unsuccessful in its
legislative efforts. This dissertation argues that the history of wealth and power is shaped by both the
“failure” of campaigns like the Freedom Budget, and the “success” of those like the March on
Washington. Following historians like Linda Gordon, I suggest that to comprehend historical
contingency, scholars must attend to the defeated efforts like the Freedom Budget;
8
for, as this
dissertation explores, the political production of unemployment, and the stifling of movements for
guaranteed jobs, was an essential element of postwar political economic policy that emphasized a

3
low inflation rate. Just as my grandfather’s history was influenced by public policy changes that
enabled him to leave employment as an elevator operator before such jobs were made extinct, for
the millions of people unable to find waged work in the subsequent decades, public policy choices
were also fundamental to their experience.
Not only did postwar public policy fail to ameliorate the plight of unemployed people, the
rise of the system of mass imprisonment was a partial geographic solution to this politically
produced crisis. Following the work of scholars like Georg Rusche, Tony Platt, and Ruth Wilson
Gilmore, I locate the policing-prison relation as a key force to forestall potential and actual social
upheaval by those Karl Marx identified as the “relative surplus population.”
9
The analysis of these
scholars is rooted not in economic determinism, but historical materialism—the study of concrete
power relations at work in a given political geography. Rusche explored a method that inquired into
how during times of labor shortage, policing and imprisonment could be utilized to extract labor
from a captive population; and alternatively, during a moment of labor surplus, policing and
imprisonment could be utilized to control those rendered redundant to capital as waged labor.
10
But,
as Rusche insisted, “important peculiarities in the…criminal law cannot be explained without a
historical framework.”
11
Fearing Inflation follows the lead of these scholars, and others like Peter
Linebaugh, who suggest that an “analysis of capitalist organization and planning of labor markets” is
an essential element in the historical production of criminality.
12
It is from this framework that I
have presented a history of struggles surrounding the political creation and control of the relative
surplus population, to which the rise of carceral state in the late 20
th
century would respond.
The “carceral state” is a vexed term, meant to encapsulate the historically unprecedented
increase in imprisonment of people after the 1970s, as well as the large-scale growth of
infrastructure for policing and surveillance.
13
This project seeks to access a pre-history of the carceral
state by studying how a surplus labor force came to be politically accepted amidst a host of

4
alternatives, especially the struggle for a governmental guarantee to a job. In so doing, I present
unemployed people, and their advocates, as a central element in macroeconomic relations.
Fearing Inflation is about the politics and economics of unemployment from the 1930s-1970s.
As such, I argue that the question of whether to sustain or alleviate unemployment had crucial
effects on a host of political struggles throughout this five-decade period. Marx argued that that “the
general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the
industrial reserve army.”
14
Consequently, Fearing Inflation maintains that unemployed, surplus laborers
are pivotal to political economy. Attention to the politics of monetary policy, the meeting minutes of
the Federal Reserve, and societal concerns with the rate of inflation has confirmed this assessment.
Throughout the postwar period those who owned money were perpetually anxious about
how long that money would maintain its relative, real value. As historian Meg Jacobs has noted,
“concern over inflation” was a terrain upon which “battles of class formation” played out.
15
Elites
worried perpetually about how a low unemployment rate contributed to the strength of workers,
which thereby provoked wage increases, and then price increases by employers; to speak about
inflation meant speaking, simultaneously, about the politics of unemployment. And to speak about
the politics of unemployment meant speaking, simultaneously, about the role of racism and
patriarchy in political economy. When members of the Federal Reserve made choices that they knew
would increase the unemployment rate, they did so from within their own subject formations that
understood the misery of some—those who would become unemployed and their families—to be
an appropriate cost of containing inflation. Despite their crucial role in politics and economics,
historians of the postwar period have been remarkably inattentive to the role of the Federal Reserve,
especially prior to the 1970s.
16
Following the understanding that investment is a key element in
capitalist relations, the political decisions to make such investments more or less costly demands
greater attention. Likewise, the role of race and gender in monetary policy operations should prove a

5
fruitful avenue of inquiry for future studies, as the scholarship on race, gender, and fiscal policy has.
From this analytic perspective, Fearing Inflation contributes to scholarship in Black Studies, working-
class history, and policy history, by showing how unemployment is not a solely personal affliction;
but instead, unemployment is dependent on a set of policies that are struggled over by vying social
forces. All of the post-1951 decisions of the Fed rest on public policy granting its relative
independence from government during that year. When Federal Reserve independence, and the
power emanating from such an institutional arrangement, is taken as a matter of natural procedure,
rather than a political production, what in actuality is a contentious melee surrounding whose
interests the wealth of society should be put, instead appears as a mundane listing of numbers on a
spreadsheet. In fact, the letters of Federal Reserve policy are written—as Marx put it in the context
of the enclosure of the means of subsistence—in “letters of blood and fire.”
17
Peoples’ homes, food,
and working days—in short, the content and context of their lives—are shaped by these numbers.
18

Historians of the 19
th
Century and prior have noted how unemployment is a perpetually
unstable category. The word itself, as historian John Garraty has commented, was not commonly
used until the 1890s.
19
It took at least two great transformations to establish such a state of affairs:
(1) perpetual enclosure of the means of subsistence and thus proletarianization—compelling people
to work for wages or face starvation; and (2) the naturalization of waged labor to the extent that it
would be construed as so normal a phenomenon that a term was needed to identify its absence. In
this sense, the making of wagelessness, not only its perpetuation, is a result of government policy
authorizing original accumulation of capital: theft of land, genocide, colonialism, the property
relation.
20
Fearing Inflation traces this story into the twentieth century to reveal the persistence of
public policy decisions that produce unemployment and immiseration.
***

6
For many people in the U.S., the so-called golden age of capitalism—the period of relative
macroeconomic stability and growth after World War II until the recession of the early 1970s—felt
rather gilded. Each cyclical downturn or economic contraction provoked fears of a return to the
Great Depression. The conditions of economic precarity experienced by some during this economic
moment would eventually become more commonplace in the decades after the 1970s; these
circumstances, especially perpetual unemployment, have become identified as key features of
neoliberalism; but they were present as well in the Keynesian era. The scholar Mike Davis has
argued that “each major cycle of class struggle, economic crisis, and social restructuring in American
history has finally been resolved through epochal tests of strength between capital and labor.”
21

Following this, I suggest that the political responses to surplus workers, specifically Black workers
who were becoming structurally unemployed in the period after the 1957-58 recession, was one of
these tests that undergirded the eventual consolidation of the neoliberal era. In this sense, one can
observe the making of neoliberalism in Keynesianism’s uneven development (through which
Keynesianism harmonized with existent white supremacist and patriarchal practices). In the years
after the recession, many social movement forces continued their pursuit of governmental
guarantees to a job or income—a demand supported by groupings such as the AFL-CIO, the
Socialist Party, the Black Panther Party for Self Defense, and the National Welfare Rights
Organization. At the heart of this demand was the effort to expand the social wage across the color
line. But the alternative governmental response—the construction of a carceral state with
tremendous financial and political support from the federal government after 1965—became the
twin epoch-making governmental action; it has undermined working-class power at all scales, from
the shop and kitchen floor to capitol hill.
22
And these defeats have been essential to the movement
and restructuring of global capitalism in the subsequent decades.

7
To elucidate contingency of the neoliberal era, I investigate the history leading to 1970s to
understand how, during that decade, the federal government entertained two key policy decisions of
importance to marginalized people who had precarious ties to jobs; Congress could have passed the
ambitious proposals for governmentally guaranteed jobs to fulfill social needs, create green energy,
and entitle everyone to housing and healthcare; but rather than a revamped social welfare state to
respond to the problems of unemployment and inadequate housing (which undergirded the urban
uprisings of the 1960s), Congress invested heavily in federal funding for the criminal legal system via
the Law Enforcement Assistance Administration (and other ensuing federal appropriations).
23
While
these two paths were not debated as alternative policy solutions, many at the time considered them
to be.
24
During this period and then in the next decade, boundless ink was spent trying to address
the problems of the so-called “underclass.” One of the many missing elements in this analysis of
those whom capital did not seek to exploit as waged labor, however, was that those unable to find
waged work in the formal sector were disciplining those who had work, thus ensuring that workers
remained insecure and disempowered. In this sense, they helped moderate wage-push inflation.
During this period, right wing thinkers were clear about how full employment imperiled the
prerogatives of the wealthy. These were fundamentally questions of power. The University of
Chicago economist Harry G. Johnson explained very well the conflict of the period between full
employment and inflation. “The rate of inflation and the rate of unemployment…are not strictly
comparable objects of choice which can be rationally evaluated,” Johnson noted in 1968. Instead,
“the avoidance of inflation and the maintenance of full employment can be most usefully regarded
as conflicting class interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, respectively, the conflict being
resolvable only by the test of relative political power in the society.”
25
It was this conflict of relative
political power in the 1970s, and the budgetary decisions that emerged from it, that would become
of great import to people working with and without wages in the subsequent decades. The failures

8
and inadequacies of social welfare policy were rooted in the power relations of the forces pursuing
their expansion on the one hand, and those seeking to curtail them on the other. It is crucial that
historians understand the failures of social policy as a key element in the contingent history of
discreet events. As I highlight throughout this project, ubiquitous legal and extra-legal violence
undergirded each set of policy contests—whether the brutal force that maintained a Jim Crow
Congress, or the fear of wagelessness and starvation that pushed down quit rates and compelled
people to suffer workplace injuries, sexual harassment, and occupational illness. U.S. social welfare
policy is not inadequate due to a “founding mythos of individualism,” (as two leading historians
have suggested) but due to concrete historical struggles and murderous violence on the part of
powerful elites.
26

In Reading Capital Politically, economist Harry Cleaver describes the practices of class
“composition” and “decomposition”: how groups of people come together for a political project
historically and geographically, and how they do not. In this understanding, “working-class”
describes those who work in a structural relationship against capital—waged and unwaged workers.
27

However, this structural antagonism does not determine political alliance within either the working-
classes or capital. These political alliances (and lack thereof) are something that happen historically
through the actions of social movements confronting the already-existent and exacerbated divisions
that capital utilizes. There is tremendous effort necessary in order to effect a “political
recomposition” that can tilt the balance of forces away from capital. And in contrast, capitalist
innovations—whether new technology or two-tier wage agreements—attempt to break apart, or
“decompose,” potential or actual working-class cohesion. As Cleaver puts it, “at each stage of class
composition, the appropriate form of organization changes.”
28
This can take decades, if it is to occur
at all.
29
Looking at the unsuccessful struggles for full employment in the context of the growth of the
carceral state of the 1970s can give insight into what types of organizational forms are necessary for

9
the neoliberal period. Whether or not the carceral state was designed to enforce speed-ups on the
assembly line and in the household, or class discipline in a moment of wide-spread rank and file
insurgency of the early 1970s, it had this effect.
30
Randolph, Coretta Scott King, and other activists
saw full employment as a potential way to expand the absolute base upon which social movements
could be built and sustained. In their mind, eliminating and undermining job competition amongst
Black and white workers would help create a political economy upon which large-scale, anti-racist
movements could have a better chance of success. In their mind, this would not negate the power of
white supremacy, but could create more advantageous “objective conditions” for such efforts to
“politically recompose” a working-class.
While there has been much recent attention amongst the left on the need for governmental
guarantees to a job or income, much of these analyses neglect the historical efforts that also pursued
these goals.
31
To this end, Black freedom movements have been the most consistent and insistent
movements promoting the right to a job or income as fundamental to any political struggle.
32
It was
rooted in this “abolitionist democratic” common sense that the Freedom Budget was pushed
forward.
33
In seeking to portray “class interests” and “race interests” as divergent threads, however,
some analysts have been confused by such movements. Following this trend, in April 1975, as she
was in the midst of building the National Committee for Full Employment and the Full
Employment Action Council, a reporter asked Coretta Scott King about the changes underway
whereby the civil rights movement was “taking on a larger economic role.” Scott King, however,
respectfully clarified, stating, “the civil rights movement indirectly spoke to this question all along.”
34

The late scholar Manning Marable has explained similarly that, “it cannot be overemphasized that
the Civil Rights and Black Power Movements were fundamentally working class and poor people’s
movements.”
35
To this end, Fearing Inflation adds to the growing scholarship on the economic justice

10
agenda of Black freedom movements by focusing on the programmatic efforts at social reform that
were “indissolubly tied” with more far-reaching, revolutionary visions.
36

While government guarantees to a job or income in the 1970s would not have ended
imprisonment, they would have negated labor surpluses and strengthened the position of working
people in respect to capital. And for these key reasons and others—most especially, trepidation of
wage-push inflationary pressure, rooted in working-class power—organized capital (including the
Business Roundtable newly born in 1973, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the
Federal Reserve) fought off the push for full employment policy in the 1970s.
37
These budgetary
contests over governmental priorities during this period enclosed the possibilities of another route
to the present. By exploring the contingent histories of political struggle to sustain structural
unemployment, and the contemporaneous growth of the carceral state, contemporary analysts can
refuse any presumption that the current situation arises due to the banalities of crime rates or the
supposed deviance of the criminalized. Rather, the problems, and the solutions, are located in the
sphere of politics and social struggle.
Fearing Inflation describes how these social struggles over unemployment influenced political
and economic relations across the twentieth century. In Chapter 1, I explore how a governmental
commitment to full employment arose as a dominant moral value during the economic turbulence
of the Great Depression and the economic recovery during World War II. And I highlight how A.
Philip Randolph came to embrace the concept during this period as part of a broader strategy of
social movement struggle. In addition, I investigate how, amidst popular support for full
employment, legislative efforts to affirm such policies were constrained. Chapter 2 addresses the
power struggles that followed the decade after the war, with both capital and labor having emerged
with unprecedented strength. For the most part, capital won each of these conflicts. This chapter
investigates how this occurred and the role that government played in impeding working-class

11
power. Likewise, Chapter 2 pays particular attention to the role of inflation in postwar political
economy, and how the Federal Reserve won its relative independence from government during this
period. In Chapter 3, I detail how Federal Reserve power was then utilized to weaken the power of
workers in the late 1950s. Federal Reserve action to constrain the economy enabled the 1957-58
recession, which had particularly dire consequences for the employment prospects of Black workers.
I argue that this recession helped catalyze A. Philip Randolph and other Black trade unionists to
increase their advocacy of full employment in the wake of the recession.
The subsequent chapters detail how Randolph and the civil rights movement took up the
fight for full employment in the 1960s and after. Chapter 4 examines the proposals for full
employment in the March on Washington, and elucidates why they were unsuccessful. I also address
how Randolph and his close comrade in the March’s planning, Bayard Rustin, further pursued these
goals by collaborating with longtime proponent of full employment, the economist Leon Keyserling,
to create the Freedom Budget. Chapter 5 highlights the efforts to continue the Freedom Budget
campaign into the 1970s by pushing forward the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act.
Continuing the civil rights struggles for guaranteed jobs, Coretta Scott King was a central figure in
the group that tried to create legislation for full employment during this period. Like the previous
chapters, Chapter 5 details how vying social forces sparred over the unemployment rate, and how,
yet again, the promise of guaranteed jobs was encumbered by fears over the rate of inflation.
Through describing this chronology of class conflict around those whom capital did not seek to
exploit as waged labor, Fearing Inflation shows that unemployment, and the misery that accompanies
it, can be eradicated; but, it will take vibrant movements of greater force than Randolph and his
milieu were able to marshal to approach this goal.

12
Chapter 1: Keynesianism and Class Struggle: Racial Violence and the Struggle for Full
Employment in Depression and War

“Social forces which lose out in any particular historical period do not thereby disappear from the
terrain of struggle; nor is struggle in such circumstances suspended.” – Stuart Hall
1

“The becalmed and beleaguered trade unions … had made their peace with a most undemocratic
America…When working-class activists sought a path out of the depression in the 1930s, they
revoked that settlement, reopened controversy over what had been considered accomplished, and
began to organize anew on the basis of the ways America’s heterogeneous working people actually
experienced industrial life.” – David Montgomery
2

“We are creators of history, for every historical epoch has its roots in a preceding epoch…we stood
upon the shoulders of the civil rights fighters of the Reconstruction era, and they stood upon the
shoulders of the black abolitionists. These are the interconnections of history and they play their role
in the course of development.” – A. Philip Randolph
3

Rail enlivened the imagination unlike any other transformation of the Industrial Revolution
and this was as true for the United States as for Britain.
4
In the U.S., the transcontinental railroad
was more than a feat of engineering and labor, but a crucial means by which the U.S. was actively
knit together by federal governmental support after the Civil War, and a forum for the making of
race and nation in this turbulent moment.
5
As the scholars Sam Gindin and Leo Panitch have
argued, the 19
th
Century U.S. state, “though often characterized as particularly weak and ‘laissez-
faire,’ its activism sustained the conditions for the successes of U.S. capitalism, and imprinted those
successes with its distinct characteristics.”
6
Few industries affirm their point as much as the railroad
system. Likewise, the railroads and the struggles that developed around them are noteworthy
because they were sites of innovation and transformation for the relations between race, labor,
capital, and governance.
During the construction of the transcontinental railroad in the early 1860s, the wartime
project faced crucial problems of scarce capital and labor. The federal government (embedded in the
economy in a number of critical ways) helped solve the first problem by supporting the project with
land grants (which were later sold to settlers) and providing government bonds as payment for the
construction of the tracks. The question of where to find workers presented a more significant

13
challenge. Historian Alexander Saxton noted that some of the solutions that were developed during
the “endless discussions of their paralyzing labor problem” amongst Central Pacific Railroad
President and California Governor Leland Stanford and his associates included two labor sources
created by the Civil War. They proposed using either Confederate prisoners or formerly enslaved
people to do the arduous work of clearing the land and laying the track for the railroad.
7
Eventually
though, these ideas were scuttled as a new solution to the labor shortage emerged: Chinese workers
would eventually take on the bulk of the work to build the railroad.
The debates and discussions about who would build the railroad reveal the importance of
managers to the role of the workplace as a racial institution.
8
Initially, the Chinese workers were
introduced to the labor force at the suggestion of former California Supreme Court Justice E.B.
Crocker, who served as the railroad’s lawyer. Crocker brought in the original group of fifty Chinese
workers in 1865 as a tactic to scare white workers who were considering a strike.
9
Such moments
clarify how labor—as it is lived by workers themselves, and viewed by capital—is never abstract, but
rather both structured by and structuring of multiple identities—gender, race, ethnicity, nationality,
religion, age, skill, region and more.
10

Following Crocker’s “successful” experiment in racialized labor management, Chinese
workers would eventually become the dominant labor force building the railroads (four-fifths of the
workforce) for a number of reasons. They could be paid less than comparable workers—about two-
thirds that of the white workers—while also being easier to manage due to the layered management
and pay structure. The railroad company hired Chinese workers in gangs of about fifty and paid one
English-speaking “agent” a lump sum for the wages of the group of workers. This externalized some
of the company’s costs and responsibilities of management and discipline in a way akin to the
subcontracting seen in many contemporary corporations.
11
In addition, the Chinese workers’ lives
were thought to be even more expendable than those of white workers both because of the racist

14
logic of the railroad’s planners, and because they did not have nearby family that could create
trouble for the company in case of death or injury due to the dangerous working conditions.
12

In tandem with shaping the development of race and labor relations, the railroad brought to
the fore the importance of coal. As coal scholar Barbara Freese explains, the “trains were not yet
burning coal, but they ran on rails formed with coal, were pulled by engines made with coal, and
were financed by empires built on coal.”
13
In this sense, coal must be considered of primary
importance in the so-called primitive accumulation of capital (“conquest, enslavement, robbery,
murder”) in the U.S.
14
Coal, after all, is a storage container for years and years of solar energy, one
that Native American occupants of the U.S. prior to colonization did not seek to exploit. So, in
another more essential way, the foundation for the railroad industry rested upon the federal
governmental regimes of conquest and accumulation of land under which great reserves of coal
slept. Native American genocide and land theft were fundamental for the creation of the railroad
system.
15
After the governmentally facilitated conquest and enclosures of land, W.E.B. DuBois
explained the second step of governmentally supported capital accumulation: “it was only after the
railroad was built…by public funds, that private interests monopolized it.”
16
The many moments of
governmentally organized and sanctioned theft reveal that the railroad industry leaders were the
original, robbing highwaymen.
With this history of financing and support, the railroads then became a site for innovation of
governmental responses to labor unrest in the subsequent decades as the army was deployed as a
strikebreaker during the rail strikes of the 1877 and the 1894 strike against the Pullman Company.
17

Such actions by the government were supplemental to the private agencies that specialized in
strikebreaking; the Pinkerton Detective Agency, being the largest and most prominent, had a force
of 2,000 agents and 30,000 reserves—a force greater than the U.S. army at the time.
18
While in 1877
the federal government was called in by the states themselves to protect the laws of private property,

15
in 1894, the federal government took the lead to break the strike.
19
As historian Jerry Cooper has
explained, in 1894,
“the states played only a minor part in the suppression of disorder while the administration
of President Grover Cleveland acted mostly on its own initiative and did so vigorously.
Using a variety of federal laws, especially those granting protection of the mails and railroads
designated as military routes, ensuring the flow of interstate commerce, and rendering aid to
railroads in federal receivership, Attorney General Richard Olney deliberately by-passed the
states to make certain the federal government dominated efforts to destroy a well organized
strike.”
20

Indeed, in such a moment of crisis, the federal government acted to consolidate governmental
power in response to the wide-ranging national sentiment in support of the strike, exemplified by
newsboys who were known to drop newspapers that included articles against the strike down the
sewers rather than sell them.
21
The railroad owners enthusiastically pursued violent governmental
actions in an effort to turn what many thought of as a struggle between capital and labor into a
struggle of rebel workers disobeying the law, and the government.
22
In this way, the development of
policing (as well as constitutional law) should be contextualized within this history of struggle
between capital and labor on the rails, as the military was compelled to scale up and strengthen its
“infrastructural power” to respond to the pressure of the workers.
23

It was during the 1894 struggle that Olney, who had spent thirty-five years as a railroad
lawyer, developed the federal governmental capacity and relations to push against the striking
workers: federal injunctions (first used in 1877), U.S. Marshalls, and eventually, the army. All this
was necessary to halt the many movements of unemployed people (most famously, Coxey’s Army)
who took such innovative actions as stealing trains to ride to Washington to protest for relief during
this period of economic crisis.
24
In Chicago, the center of the strike, where American Railway Union
President Eugene Debs was located, there were 14,000 armed forces in control of the city. As
soldiers often do, they brought violence to what had been a relatively peaceful strike, killing thirteen
people and injuring fifty-three.
25
As Debs would later put it, “in the gleam of every bayonet and the

16
flash of every rifle the class struggle was revealed…an army of detectives, thugs and murderers was
equipped with badge and bludgeon and turned loose.”
26
Indeed, during this struggle Lt. Arthur
Wagner noted an important development: the army, he said “has come to be regarded by military
men…as a national police force for the maintenance of order.”
27
While the argument was made that
this was in the national interest of protecting law and order, in practice some military commanders
took leadership from railroad company officials rather than their military superiors when it came to
questions of when to remove troops.
28
Such actions indicate most clearly, that even when the law
was stacked in favor of private property and against the workers, the decisive factor in the use of the
army in response to this labor struggle was ultimately political pressure from the corporate or state
figures who were involved as “autonomous organizational actor[s].” In this sense, this struggle
reflects the “organizational-realist” theory of the capitalist state that identifies how elite agents
struggle to actualize their goals upon a given political situation.
29
However, the government was by
no means a univocal institution, merely operating as the militarized executive committee of the
bourgeoisie. In Hammond, IN, the mayor was furious when troops shot their guns into a gathering
of workers; he demanded to know “by what authority U.S. troops come in here and shoot our
citizens without the slightest warning.”
30

In addition to their role in knitting together national capitalism and being innovative sites of
governmental strikebreaking, the railroads were some of the key places where Taylorist strategies
and work speed-ups via piece rates of pay were experimented with by management and struggled
against by workers in 1880s and 1890s.
31
Piece rates—a management strategy developed to provoke
a work speed-up by paying each worker for each widget they produced—were a central issue of
conflict during the 1894 strike.
32
Such managerial attacks on the conditions of work and the craft of
being a railroad worker (particularly for machinists) sought to unmake both the skill of the worker
and the collective and felt sense of solidarity in a shop. The economic crisis of the period also

17
undermined resistance to these shop-floor changes as broad economic calamity made the prospect
of getting a new job dim. Nevertheless, the strikers did respond during the great upheaval of the
Pullman strike, and such struggles around piece rates reflected a more fundamental challenge to the
authority of management. George Pullman, for example, located the essential matter of the strike as
to whether or not the boss “should have the power to manage his own property” as opposed to
workers themselves controlling the labor process.
33
Even after the strike was crushed, the railroad
companies sought to eradicate memories of the upsurge. Three-fourths of the striking workers lost
their jobs and the railroad companies subsequently developed an elaborate blacklist involving coded
messages to prevent workers from moving from town to town in search of a new job in the same
industry.
34

Still, Debs asserted that the lasting legacy of the strike was more than a crushing defeat. “The
spirit of organization…this spirit of resistance to wrong,” he argued “is growing stronger constantly
and it finds its outlet in labor disturbances, in strikes of various kinds.”
35
The legacies reverberated;
Debs’ socialism had been midwifed through this railroad struggle; he had first read Marx, Kautsky,
and other leading figures of socialist thought during his time imprisoned for the strike and it was
there at the Woodstock, IL prison, in the process of political struggle during one of the country’s
most dramatic moments of working-class upheaval, that he “became a socialist.”
36
“The American
Railway Union,” Debs argued about this monumental effort at industrial unionism and working class
re-composition, “was defeated but not conquered—overwhelmed but not destroyed. It lives and
pulsates in the socialist movement, and its defeat but blazed the way to economic freedom and
hastened the dawn of human brotherhood.”
37

***

18
Both scholars Cedric Robinson and Sylvia Federici have shown how capitalism, to be
effective, has peppered societies with hierarchical divisions of difference. These divisions have often
exacerbated and enabled already existent hierarchies of race, ethnicity, and gender (though their
analysis can be important to understand divisions of region, age, skill, wage rate, employment
classification, immigration status, and more).
38
Capitalism has required the exploitation of such
difference designation and it is imperative to elucidate the specificity of such differences—how they
are actualized and articulated in specific moments. As the scholar Stuart Hall has put it, one must
always “comprehend the dense, opaque integument of capitalist societies.”
39
These theorizations
suggest that how capital operates is contingent—that of a “law of tendency—which can be
countermanded by counteracting tendencies.”
40
Building on the analysis of these scholars, I suggest
that specific variant forms of capitalism, for example Keynesianism, neoliberalism, and so on, share
these qualities of hierarchical difference designation.
41
For example, the creation of industrial
capitalism in the U.S. had specific racial-gendered-regional relations.
42
Or, as I argue in this chapter,
the “Keynesian” capitalism that would take hold through contestations for social power—from
“below” and “above”—in the 1930s and 40s was a decidedly racialized and gendered Keynesianism.
Keynes himself, as historian Stephen Bailey has suggested, is “a symbol for an intellectual
movement”;
43
the political articulations of this movement manifest through the struggle of social
forces in particular conjunctures. But most importantly, as the Keynesian era solidified the “much
more active roles that states might henceforth play in maintaining growth and employment in
advanced industrial-capitalist democracies,” government itself—and the federal government in
particular—became an essential site of contestation for economic and social power.
44
Of the many
forces struggling to actualize their goals during this period were Southern politicians who exercised
their veto power as a bloc and made political dealings that sought to, as historian Ira Katzenlson has
noted, “enhance national state capacity to aid Southern economic development, and protect white

19
supremacy.”
45
On the other hand some activists on the left struggled throughout this period to
‘democratize’ Keynesian capitalism, not with the goal of institutionalizing capitalist relations, but
rather to negate some of its racist, patriarchal, and otherwise deleterious elements, and thereby create
more advantageous conditions for further efforts.
46
Throughout the period, these social movement
actors confronted the tension between what sociologists Margaret Weir and Theda Skocpol
identified as “social Keynesianism” in opposition to “commercial Keynesianism.” And through
these conflicts, a qualitatively different political economy arose after World War II from the one that
had begun the 1930s.
47

Drawing on Marx, C.L.R James insisted, “economic relations…produce certain kinds of
people, and it is the class struggle of those people that make history move.”
48
After the Civil War, as
the transcontinental railroad knit together the nation, Eugene Debs learned this lesson. As capital
became better organized, so too must workers; but this would not happen naturally or
automatically—only through deliberate organizing. The history of class struggles on the railroads
thus forms the ground upon which such efforts at class recomposition would re-emerge. Forty years
after the great strikes of the 1890s, during the economic crisis of the Great Depression, the
accumulations of these struggles and defeats would resurface and burst open as the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and their leader, A. Philip Randolph, would confront the relations built
during this earlier period: the socialist lessons Eugene Debs learned in the Woodstock prison for the
massive 1894 Pullman strike; the hardening of anti-Chinese and anti-Black racism after the failure of
the American Railway Union to recompose a political strategy for railroad organizations beyond the
racist railway brotherhoods; and the advanced federal infrastructure for labor repression.
49
Randolph
and the BSCP faced all of these forces as they further shifted the relations of race, labor, and
government in the 1930s and 40s. Throughout these struggles, the role of unemployment—itself a
word coined during the economic crisis of the 1870s-90s—would become a crucial component to

20
how Randolph thought about the role of government and the form of class struggle.
50
And, like
many others, Randolph would become a proponent of “full employment”—governmental
guarantees to a job.
51

The Depression and the Exacerbation of Racial Capitalist Contradictions
Life was hard for all workers during the Depression. From the spring of 1929 to August
1931, Ford Motors reduced their labor force from 128,000 to 37,000. In 1933 about 15 million
workers (between one-forth and one-third of the labor force) needed jobs.
52
Between Roosevelt’s’
Election on November 8, 1932 and his inauguration March 4, 1933, almost two million more people
lost jobs.
53
Nevertheless, the New Deal emerged within the context of the Great Depression’s
devastation, but not due to it. Relief for poor people at the time was primarily a local issue.
54
Massive
social movement organizing for labor rights and economic relief, as well as the twin political
movements across the globe—fascism and Communism—were what compelled the federal
government to re-envision its role and create the New Deal as a new political “temperament.”
55

Though the federal government was the sole institution capable of administering the necessary
responses to the Depression, such a response, was not predetermined.
56

Working and workless people made the New Deal in the context of an economic calamity
they did not create; elites crafted the New Deal as a reaction to the upsurge of movement, not a
response to the deprivation.
57
As social movement scholar and historian George Lipsitz argues,
“structural forces do not create movements for social change—people do.”
58
1932 saw the famed
“Bonus Army” when 20,000 veterans of World War I marched on Washington D.C. demanding
bonus payments for their service only to have the army burn and destroy their encampment.
59

Building off work done by Communists, A.J. Muste (a pacifist and socialist, and former Secretary of
the Amalgamated Textile Workers of America) organized unemployed people throughout Ohio,
West Virginia, Kentucky, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania in the early 30s.
60
In addition to general

21
strikes in Toledo, San Francisco and Minneapolis, 1934 saw 1,800 work stoppages involving 1.4
million workers and many more actions amongst unemployed people and radicals both within and
outside trade unions.
61
When elected president in 1932, Roosevelt had run on a platform of creating
a balanced budget, but once in power the aforementioned forces changed his agenda and social
security, food stamps, unemployment insurance, and welfare benefits were all established in the
period from 1933-1938. In the process of the these transformations and struggles, the new industrial
unions that would become the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) burst forth from strikes
and “working class self-activity.”
62
As Detroit-based autoworker and socialist activist James Boggs
observed about these transformations, “revolutions in the mode of production have been
accompanied by changes in the composition and the status of classes.” The CIO became the most
durable organizational response to these changing conditions.
63

But for Black workers, the New Deal was not necessarily the salve they needed, as Southern
Democrats ensured the new policies would fortify the era’s racist regime.
64
During the Thirties,
shared experiences of economic deprivation and did not unite workers across the color line. Rather,
in Northern cities Black workers saw unemployment rates twice that of white workers—ratios that
would continue for the subsequent decades.
65
Times were hard as well in the South and the west for
Black men and women as farm workers and domestic workers (70% of Black workers at the time)
were excluded from labor rights protections under the National Labor Relations Act and the Fair
Labor Standards Act.
66
Nor was the New Deal the economic support needed for Mexican workers
who were often disqualified from benefits by job categories and citizenship status.
67
At the same
time, the 1920s and 30s provided opportunities for incorporation into whiteness for newer
European immigrants; the color line, as historian Mae Ngai argued, became redrawn “around
Europe instead of through it.”
68

22
The mix of government institutions created in this period and the ways in which elite actors
could utilize these newly formed state capacities meant that the New Deal, on the whole, had
conflicting effects. This was most lucid in the South as the impact of both the Depression and the
New Deal were more deleterious for workers. In many cases the New Deal exacerbated, rather than
eased, the crisis of survival for Black workers. In 1933, through the Agricultural Adjustment Act,
elite planters in the Mississippi Delta received subsidies to reduce their cotton acreage by up to 30
percent. As the scholar Clyde Woods has explained, this facilitated a federally funded enclosure
movement and “led to the eviction of sharecroppers and tenants from the most fertile lands which
were then cultivated using machines and chemicals.” In this sense, the federal government helped
the Delta transition from “capital-scarce, labor-intensive plantation production to capital-intensive,
labor-surplus neo-plantation production.”
69
These types of relationships—of direct or indirect
governmental support for mechanization of production and reductions in employment—would
continue to hurt Black workers over the subsequent decades.
70
While scholars have debated whether
such financial supports for industries qualify as “Keynesianism,” many activists saw such
government action and sought to pull it to their side and to serve their interests.

23

Figure 1: Photo by Dorothea Lange working on behalf of the New Deal’s Farm Security
Administration. She depicts a cotton plantation near Greenville, MS that has been abandoned by the
former occupants who “were displaced by power farming.”
71
The photo, displays the contradictions
of the New Deal’s government capacities; as one agency was funding Lange to take photos to show
people in urban cities the plight of rural poverty, another was funneling money to planters to
mechanize cotton production and push tenant farmers off the land. Twenty-five years later,
Greenville would be one of the cities in Mississippi where the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee would organize for voting rights and more.
72

Race War on the Rails
Racist violence also saw an uptick during this period as lynching spiked during the
Depression after having briefly declined.
73
The Depression brought to the fore the violent
underpinnings of racist labor relations. While the New Deal would end up assisting Black service
workers on railroads, the same could not be said for the brakemen (who applied the brakes on rail
cars) and firemen (who fed coal into the engines). Enslaved people had done this work on Southern
railroads, and in certain states like Georgia, Black workers formed the majority until the early
Thirties.
74
However, the trend of pushing Black workers out of these jobs did not begin with the
1929 crash. Between 1910 and 1930 the percentage of Black firemen fell from 41.3% to 33.1%; and

24
for brakemen, as the conditions of work became safer and less arduous with the introduction of air
brakes, the proportion of Black brakemen fell even further from 29.8% to 16.3%. During World
War I, the federal government had taken responsibility for the railroads and equalized pay amongst
Black and white workers. And as these jobs became more desired by white workers, Black firemen
had great difficulty remaining in them.
75

With the onset of the Depression the conditions of work for Black brakemen and firemen
became more dangerous, with the outbreak of what one observer understood as a “war” waged
from 1931-1934 by workers in Mississippi and throughout the South who were affiliated with the
Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen (the BLFE, one of the “Big Four,”
exclusively white male brotherhoods of railroad workers). Beginning in August 1931, what turned
out to be a contingent of the BLFE workers began targeted attacks and assassinations on Black
workers. After surviving the first attack—being shot on the job in August—Frank Kincaid was shot
and killed on his way to work in November. “White Terrorists Murder Another Railway Worker,”
read the Chicago Defender headline. Over the subsequent months, there were a number of other
attacks on Black brakemen and firemen. On July 17, 1932, Edgar Scott was beaten and killed with a
lead pipe inside his coal car in Macon, GA. Grant Johnson, a longtime railroad worker, and his son,
Frank Johnson, the president of his union, were both killed; the elder Johnson had already survived
an earlier shooting which also injured white engineer John Tusson.
76
All told, at least ten people
were assassinated in the course of twenty-one attacks. A journalist reporting at the time commented
in The Nation that white Mississippians “had begun to deal with the unemployment problem [as] Ku
Klux practices were being resumed in the certainty that dead men not only tell no tales but create
vacancies.”
77
Such actions did indeed recall Klan practices in the Twenties. As historian Nancy
MacLean explains: “resistance to laboring on white’s terms—referred to by the Klan as ‘failure to
work’—could also result in persecution… other African Americans suffered Klan vengeance for

25
offering economic competition.”
78
These attacks, the Defender noted were “a concerted effort by
white unemployed to intimidate and drive from employment Race brakemen and firemen
…throughout Mississippi, Georgia, Texas, South Carolina, and other Southern states.”
79
The
dialectic of racism and capitalism in this moment and region—far from creating shared identification
via experiences of mutual dispossession—rather, encouraged competition for jobs that some sought
to resolve through violence. But these were not the only political choices available. As the Defender
also highlighted, “a number of mixed working class organizations fought with vigor against both
lynchings and lynch frame-ups by the courts…preventing many lynchings…in at least two cases
organized groups of whites and Race people stopped a lynching as it was about to take place.”
80
The
Thirties, indeed, held many possibilities for the reconfiguration of class struggle, but any successful
movements would have to emerge within such contexts of white supremacy and patriarchal terror.
81

In concert with longer histories of responding to political and economic problems with
racist brutality, these acts of intra-worker violence were part of a strategy to erode seniority rights for
Black firemen and brakemen and bolster the power of the BLFE during a time when many other
labor sectors fought for the expansion of seniority rights for workers and other innovations to
protect workers from economic calamity.
82
The Chicago Defender, in noting that almost 20% of the
recorded lynchings in 1932 (seven out of thirty-two) were Black railroad workers, reported that “an
organized murder ring was discovered which paid whites to murder race railway workers at the rate
of from $25 to $125 per lynching.”
83
In response to this “war,” historian Eric Arnesen concluded
that “if the BLFE did not participate or organize the violence, it certainly sympathized with and
supported those who carried it out.”
84
And it certainly benefitted from these attacks; the 1934
Amended Railway Labor Act ensured that only one union could represent a category of workers.
Arnesen explains that because white workers were in the majority of most job categories, they could
win a majority of votes and then be recognized as the sole bargaining agents. In kind, they voted for

26
all white brotherhoods, thus denying Black workers any means of adequate representation. In this
sense, these struggles that pitted Black workers against white workers, the company, and the
government display the formidable challenges that Black workers faced in the period to develop
working-class strategy and cohesion. The potential to negate any one of these opposing forces could
thereby enable much more advantageous circumstances to pursue further ameliorative reforms and
beyond.
The major civil rights organizations of the period confronted these connections between
racist violence and the conditions of work. However, how their voices of protest were frequently
unheard. In 1937 Walter White, executive secretary of the National Association for the
Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) wrote a letter to Ohio Congressman Don Harter
encouraging the passage of legislation outlawing discrimination in wages and hours. However, rather
than respond to this request, White received a reply stating that Harter supported anti-lynching
legislation. The problem, of course, was that White’s initial letter was not in the pursuit of such
legislation. As White replied to the Congressman, “after all, I can write about other matters.”
85

Indeed, throughout these years the major Civil Rights organizations were forced to respond to the
changing economic conditions, which yoked together the fight against lynching with the fight for
economic welfare.
Birth of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
The context of the 1930s transformations of life and work deeply impacted A. Philip
Randolph’s thinking and action. Living in New York in 1917, the 28 year-old Randolph founded the
socialist magazine The Messenger alongside his friend Chandler Owen. He was inspired by the pre-
World War I socialism he had been exposed to as a night student at City College of New York from
1912-1916: Hubert Harrison’s soapbox oratory, and the vision of industrial union formation
proposed by International Workers of the World (IWW) leaders like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Big

27
Bill Haywood (in the context of the great textile strikes in Lawrence, MA and Paterson, NJ).
Randolph was especially taken by the “eloquent humanism” of Eugene Debs of the Socialist Party
(SP), who opposed the way that capitalist production demanded that the “human must be reduced
to a hand.”
86
The socialism of this period, however, remained “a series of ethnically and linguistically
segmented socialisms.”
87
And Randolph fought to shift this; he believed that improvements in the
lives of Black people needed to come from their organization as workers and that if not organized,
Black or white workers would be utilized as scabs.
88
He contended that Black people should join the
IWW and assert their power through direct action as their most “effective weapon.”
89
In certain
ways, Randolph’s political position during this period was that “workers should unite against their
‘common enemy,’ exploitative capitalism” because, “capitalism knows no color line.”
90
Randolph
argued that “lynching, jim-crowism [and] segregation [are] used to widen the chasm between the
races” and that Black people could “strike a death blow to lynching by voting for Socialism.”
91
The
struggles of the Thirties, however, would shift his political analysis in subtle but significant ways as
he saw how issues of job scarcity exacerbated racist violence. He emerged from the Depression with
a commitment to fighting for full and fair employment as a key transitional demand for anti-racist
socialist struggle.
In June 1925, Randolph was asked by three longtime Porters with the Pullman company—
Roy Lancaster, Ashley Totten, and William Des Verney—to help lead the formation of their union.
Randolph had risen to prominence via his journalism to the extent that notoriously repressive
Attorney General Mitchell Palmer had called him the ”most dangerous Negro in America.”
92
Totten
had been reading The Messenger for several years and had heard Randolph speak on a soapbox in
Harlem. In The Messenger, Randolph had focused significant attention to the problems of the railroad
industry.
93
However skilled Randolph was as a political thinker, orator, and writer, the task of
confronting the powerful Pullman company in the Twenties was too difficult for him and the

28
nascent Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. This was not for lack of trying; leading organizer
Milton Webster (who’d been fired as a porter for his attempts) noted that porters had been
attempting to unionize since at least 1900.
94

George Pullman, as a manager of race and labor relations, employed Black men as porters
on Pullman trains due to his desire for layered systems of labor repression.
95
He had hired formerly
enslaved people in 1867 for the jobs because he believed that slavery had trained a docile workforce
uniquely qualified for work that was arduous, long, and poorly compensated.
96
Porters were subject
to degradation and referred to as “George.” As one porter explained, “it meant that you were just
George Pullman’s boy, same as in the slave days.”
97
E.D. Nixon, a porter who would later go on to
be one of the leaders of the famed Montgomery bus boycott, described how porters could only
sleep four hours per night at the most, and often worked upwards of 400 hours per month since
work was calculated by miles traveled not by time.
98
Indeed, struggles over sleep—in many ways
quantitative fights for more freedom—were at the heart BCSP unionizing effort.
99
But the attempt
to unionize in the Twenties was fought by the usual ruthless panoply of anti-union tactics of the day:
spies, firings, and other forms of repression, but also a propaganda campaign in the Black Church
and the Black press.
100
Building off the techniques created during the tumult of the late 19
th
century,
the law was also deployed against the porters. In 1927, after being fired for his organizing, Bennie
Smith was arrested in Jacksonville for “preaching social equality in the South,” before escaping to
Detroit.
101
Ultimately, the challenge of organizing in the Twenties proved too great as a threatened
and aborted strike in 1928 failed to compel the Pullman Company to bargain.
102
The Mediation
Board, empowered by the 1926 Railway Labor Act to adjudicate disputes, voted against the
porters—a decision many of the porter organizers like Totten attributed to the racism of the board
who had ruled in favor of the other white railroad unions.
103

29
The broad working-class upsurge after 1932, and the new labor legislation this helped create,
changed the playing field dramatically for the Brotherhood’s efforts at unionization. The union had
experienced a number of tremendous setbacks over the intervening years following the failed strike;
they saw their membership dwindle from 4,632 just prior to the strike, to 2,368 less than a year later
in 1929, to 771 in 1932, before hitting its nadir with 658 members in 1933.
104
Buoyed by the passage
of the National Industrial Recovery Act in June 1933, which “enabled” workers to fight for the right
to form unions of their choosing and compelled employers to abide by maximum hours and
minimum wage laws, the BSCP then had a dynamic resurrection in 1934 with their membership
growing to 2,627.
105
The BSCP, eager for advantageous conditions after years of near-impossible
organizing circumstances (firings, economic distress, beatings), made the most of the opportunities
presented.
106

Invigorated by their growing membership, the BSCP both partnered with the exclusionary
craft unionists in the American Federation of Labor (AFL) from the inside, and pressured them
from the outside to strengthen the position of the porters. Between 1933 and 1934, the BSCP
worked with the AFL to fight for the porters to be included in labor protections as railroad workers
under the federal labor guidelines established by the Emergency Transportation Act. The BSCP’s
efforts lobbying congress and the president for legislation to diminish the power of company unions
and affirm the rights of porters resulted in the Amended Railway Labor Act of 1934.
107
Building off
this momentum and the new urgency of the NAACP to address economic issues, Randolph
encouraged the NAACP leadership to picket the AFL convention due to the AFL’s support of racist
unions. The October 1934 AFL convention, held in San Francisco on the heels of the general strike
that had just rocked the city five months prior, revealed the cleavages within the house of labor and
the inability of the AFL to represent the interests of the broad working-class. With the NAACP
picketing on the outside and Randolph on the inside demanding the expulsion of racist unions, the

30
AFL was also being pushed from its left flank by the debates about craft versus industrial
unionization. John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers, who (along with David Dubinsky of the
International Ladies Garment Workers) supported Randolph’s call for expulsion of the racist unions,
came to the convention with specific interest in winning an assurance from the AFL to support
industrial organizing in the mass production industries.
108
While Randolph failed to win the
resolution, Lewis left the convention with a shallow and tentative affirmation of industrial unionism;
Walter White of the NAACP suggested the conference spelled the end for Black workers’ faith in
the AFL, but opened doors for a relationship with the CIO, which Lewis would help form in the
subsequent years.
109

While the BSCP were on much stronger footing, there remained a number of obstacles in
their way, as they still had to win recognition against what effectively was a company union, and then
win a contract with the Pullman Company. In the first step, they had a tremendous victory, 5,931 to
1,422, in the election authorizing the BSCP as the legitimate bargaining agent against the Pullman
Porters and Maids Protective Association (PPMPA) which had evolved from the older company
union and still played the favored role in the eyes of the Pullman company.
110
A year after the
convention in San Francisco, now with a huge electoral victory behind them, the BSCP won their
charter from the AFL, further confirming the Brotherhood as the appropriate bargaining agent for
the porters. The charter made them the first all-Black union to be affiliated with the AFL and added
significantly to their power as they began contract negotiations with Pullman. The Pullman
Company dragged on the contract negotiations as they waited for the Supreme Court challenge to
the Amended Railway Labor Act of 1934 and hoped the porters would turn their favor to the
PPMPA.
111
Eventually, after almost two years of contract negotiations, the Pullman Company
acquiesced to the demands of the BSCP after a threatened strike by the Porters coincided with a
threat of a nationwide strike by the other railroad unions in August 1937.
112
After over 12 years of

31
struggle the victory was momentous; it raised the porters’ wages over 15% with twenty hours less
work per month.
113
Even this achievement over wages and hours—a quantitative expansion in
workers’ daily freedom—meant more than that.
114
For the victory was not reserved for the workers
alone. Writing in The New York Amsterdam News following the contract victory, G. James Fleming
argued that the “race also benefits” broadly from the acknowledgment of the tremendous obstacles
the workers faced and their perseverance. For Fleming, the victory refuted the condescending
tendency to see Black workers as ill-equipped for leadership and trade union struggle and in need of
philanthropy. As Ashley Totten highlighted, “not a cent came from any source but the porters.”
115

To this end, Fleming noted the importance of BSCP’s grounding in the leadership of Randolph and
the porters and the need to build off the strength and success of the BSCP.
While his union benefitted from the New Deal legislation supporting service workers on the
railroads, as a socialist interested in bringing working people together beyond trade unionism,
Randolph could also understand how fraught the situation was on the rails as the brakemen and
firemen were being terrorized and facing the erosion of their jobs. Though exhausted and sick,
Randolph saw the need to utilize the victory for the Porters as a toehold to reach for greater
victories.
116
The formation of the National Negro Congress (NNC) would give Randolph just such
an opportunity.
But just prior to the formation of the NNC in March 1935, an uprising in Harlem gave
Randolph the opportunity to think through questions of race and class struggle in relation to the role
of government. On March 19
th
, in response to the credible rumors that the police had killed a young
African American man accused of shoplifting, the people of Harlem protested any attempts to
“bring lynch spirit to Harlem.” Though the rumors turned out to be false, the response indicated
much about popular perceptions of justice for the people of Harlem; as the commission charged
with studying the uprising noted: “the distinguishing feature of this outbreak was that it was an

32
attack upon property and not upon persons.”
117
Randolph was part of this riot commission to
analyze the causes and appropriate responses to the uprising. The report—the entirety of which was
not released at the time—indicates the direction of Randolph’s thinking. The report argued that the
rebellion emerged from a moral and political outcry against conditions of unemployment, job
discrimination, police brutality, and housing segregation. Notably, it highlighted how the protesters
sought out to destroy property of employers, which was viewed as a “symbol of racial discrimination
and exploitation.” The report also suggested that these actions displayed resentment towards
employers who “count upon competition between black and white workers as a means of holding
the unemployed and dependent black and white masses in check.” In turn, the report called for a
number of ameliorative reforms and actions that the City should take, such as: banning contracts
with firms that discriminate; expanding rights to picket; creating a housing plan for the people of
Harlem; increasing the number of teachers in Harlem schools; and much more. Randolph’s time on
the Commission presented the opportunity to consider what sorts of demands to make on the
government; but the ineffectiveness of the Commissions’ recommendations also affirmed his
knowledge that it would take large-scale organizing and vibrant movements to achieve these goals.
118

The National Negro Congress fights to Democratize Keynesianism
The National Negro Congress (NNC) formed out of a 1935 Howard University conference
on the “Position of the Negro in Our National Economic Crisis,” which was meant to facilitate
greater cohesion and social movement strength amongst existing Black peoples’ organizations and
institutions.
119
The architects of the NNC demonstrated the finest Popular Front coalition building:
John P. Davis (who was close with the Communist Party), sociologist Ralph Bunche, and Randolph,
the socialist all played leadership roles.
120
Helping to round out this nascent “Black Popular Front,”
they were joined at the conference by other leading figures like W.E.B. DuBois (in the midst of
finishing his classic Black Reconstruction).
121
Also in attendance at the conference were foremost

33
members of the Socialist and Communist Parties, Norman Thomas and James Ford, as well as
administrator of the National Recovery Administration, Howard Myers. The attendees decided to
begin organizing to build the NNC as a coalition to cohere and articulate the conjoined interests of
Black and white working-classes.
122
The NNC took the stance that if Black and white workers were
not organized, “employers will pay them as little and work them as long as human endurance will
allow.” Refuting the suggestion by some white unions that Black workers were “only fit to be a
scab,” they argued that Black and white workers must join together in “a union which demands
higher wages, shorter hours, and better working conditions.”
123

Begun as a critique of the New Deal, the inaugural conference in Chicago in 1936 boasted
817 delegates from 750 organizations, who came from 28 states, plus an additional 5,000 conference
attendees.
124
Partially because it arose during the antifascist, Popular Front period, the NNC was able
Figure 2: Pamphlet authored by John P.
Davis, Executive Secretary of the Joint
Committee on National Recovery, to support
the organizing for the initial February meeting
of the NNC following the Howard
Conference, which had been co-sponsored by
Davis’s organization. The document opens
with bold analysis and power: “In this
deepening crisis of monopoly capitalism, of
which the existing industrial depression…is an
acute manifestation, the Negro in politics,
industry, education and his entire social life is
faced with a decisive and imperative challenge,
to develop and fashion a new and powerful
instrumentality with which, not only to arouse
and fire the broad masses to action in their
own defense, but attack the forces of reaction
that seek to throttle Black America with
increasing Jim-Crowism, segregation and
discrimination.”

34
to avoid sectarian disputes between Communists, socialists, and liberals in this early formation.
125

Indeed, the period between 1935-1937 was uniquely fertile for left movements and unity and the
early NNC reflected this strategic alliance.
126
Though too sick to attend in person, A. Philip
Randolph was appointed the first president of the NNC and in his address to the Congress he
argued for the importance of: (1) organizing Black workers into the unions of the newly formed
CIO, and (2) the need to uphold and strengthen democratic institutions in the face of Hitlerism and
fascism.
127
According to some, Randolph was mostly a titular head of the coalition, selected for his
prominence coming off the victory of BSCP and his political position as a non-Communist.
128

However, others suggest that he was active and very important in the first years of the NNC and in
fact nurtured a structure whereby NNC local councils used the base built by the BSCP organizers
for their own organizing.
129

In seeking to counter the fortification of “Jim Crowism” in the Depression and its many
expressions, the NNC compiled an innovative platform of demands that responded to many of the
most urgent grievances of the time. Especially noteworthy is their analysis of the racialized and
gendered effects of the New Deal and the impacts on Black women employed as domestic workers
(two-thirds of Black women workers). Decrying what they called “household slavery,” the NNC
argued that, “the ‘New Deal’ has meant an indirect wage cut for domestic workers” since they could
be denied relief payments if they refused to accept work at whatever wages were offered. The NNC
also criticized the exclusion of domestic workers from the benefits of the Social Security Act. This
analysis is noteworthy for its insights, but also its timing. It was published a month prior to the most
famous analysis of the exploitation of domestic workers of the era—Ella Baker and Marvel Cooke’s
article “The Bronx Slave Market” from the November 1935 issue of the NAACP’s Crisis
Magazine.
130

35
Baker and Cooke’s article is deservedly well known for its incisive analysis of the racist and
sexist form of the period’s economic relations. For Baker and Cooke, the market for domestic
workers was a “miniature mirror of our economic battlefront.” They describe the urgent need to
build an institution that can cohere class interests across hierarchical divisions of race and gender.
“The exploiters,” they wrote of those employing Black women as domestic workers, “are the wives
and mothers of artisans and tradesmen who militantly battle against being exploited themselves, but
who apparently have no scruples against exploiting others.” Rather than bringing women together
along class lines, “the crash of 1929 brought to the domestic labor market a new employer class. The
lower middle-class housewife…found opportunity staring her in the face in the form of Negro
women pressed to the wall by poverty, starvation and discrimination.” They root this problem in,
amongst other things, “organized labor’s limited concept of exploitation.” In the end, Baker and
Cooke argue for the necessity of drawing strength from the “embryonic labor union” and worker
self-activity that currently exists in the “slave market” whereby women would chase off those who
undermine their wages by being willing to work for less.
131
While the NNC is not discussed in their
article, it’s noteworthy that a coalition capable of responding to their most important critique was in
the process of forming, and Baker and Cooke were deeply connected to those people and
movements invigorating the NNC.
132
Baker and Cooke open their article with the question: “the
Bronx Slave Market…What forces are at work to counteract it.”
133
The National Negro Congress, at
least for a time, tried to be that force.
The National Negro Congress did not seek to supplant already existing organizations, but
rather draw strength from them, and therefore they fashioned demands that touched a host of areas.
Their coalition sought to cohere groups interested in “civil and political liberties, labor, social
service, politics, fraternal and church interests” into a mass movement to respond to the
“magnitude, complexity, and danger” of everyday life for Black people at the time.
134
They presented

36
a vision for a right to safety from economic and political violence. At the end of Davis’s pamphlet,
after spending much time analyzing the problems, the NNC presented its key objectives:
“1. For the right of the Negroes to jobs at decent living wages and against discrimination in
trade unions and elsewhere where Negroes are kept from getting work at equal wages and
under equal labor conditions with other workers, for the organization of Negro workers with
their white fellow workers into democratically-controlled trade unions.
2. For relief and social security for every needy Negro family, and for genuine social and
unemployment insurance.
3. For aid to the Negro farm population, to ease the burden of debts and taxation, for the
right of poor farmers, tenants and sharecroppers to organize and bargain collectively.
4. For fight against mob-violence, lynching and police brutality; for the right to vote, serve
on juries and enjoy complete civil liberties.
5. For complete equality for Negro women; for the right of Negro youth to equal
opportunity (sic).”
135

These objectives indicate how the NNC saw racism, as historian Erik Gellman has put it, “less a
moral issue than a material one and less a Southern problem than a national one.”
136
Created by
many who saw themselves as revolutionaries, the NNC enlivened the robust dialectic between
reform and revolution that the German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg had explained thirty-six years prior
as ‘indissolubly tied’ together.
137
In these demands, political and economic rights are conjoined; daily
survival is a prerequisite for more far-reaching social transformations.
Though their demands mainly focused on the most crucial ameliorative reforms
domestically, their analysis and strategy also looked internationally to growing fascist and right-wing
populist movements. “What Hitler’s Germany is today for the Jews this country promises to be for
Negroes in every part of the nation, even greater than now.”
138
They were also catalyzed by the
Italian invasion of Ethiopia. In this sense, the slogan popularized in the subsequent years—Double
V for Victory: against fascism abroad and racism at home—for many was understood as not solely
applying to Nazi Germany. But rather, the NNC saw the invasion of Ethiopia as “a problem for
Negroes just as much as hunger is a problem.”
139
The final of the six objectives detailed in their
organizing pamphlet highlighted this point. Their goals were: “to oppose war and fascism, the

37
attempted subjugation of Negro people in Ethiopia, the oppression of colonial national throughout
the world; for the independence of Ethiopia.”
140

In the subsequent years, the NNC’s organizing was innovative and lived up to the best
potential of the Popular Front to fuse movements, create new strategies, and scale up organizational
capacities. Historian Beth Bates argues that, “the most important thing the NNC did at the local
level was provide an organizational base, bringing together various efforts and interests that had
often worked through independent networks.”
141
In addition to forming local chapters throughout
the U.S., the NNC also created the Southern Negro Youth Congress (SNYC), which had its first
conference in February 1937, bringing 500 Black youth to Richmond, VA to build the
organization.
142
Pushed by Randolph and Davis, the NNC supported the efforts of the Steel
Workers Organizing Committee and the CIO to organize Black workers. These actions were
instrumental to lay the foundation in Black communities for the CIO’s efforts.
143

The NNC should be interpreted as part of the Popular Front’s structure of feeling;
144
this
can explain how even when coalitions dissolved or people left their given party or organization, their
political and moral values did not necessarily shift dramatically, though their expression and tactics
may have. The NNC agreed with Davis’ argument at the Howard conference that mass movements
were needed to change the government from one supporting the interests of “private property to
human interests.”
145
These changes in values speak to historian E.P. Thompson’s important thinking
on the nature of revolutionary changes and moments of transition; Thompson argued that a
“historical transition between two ways of life cannot be effected by an entry in a ledger,” but rather
through the “the dislodgement… of entrenched institutions, customs, superstitions, and moral
codes.”
146
In this fundamental sense, the NNC would have a durable and far-reaching impact
supporting this transition.

38
After this dynamic start, however, with the Hitler-Stalin pact in 1939 (and thus the
suspension of the Popular Front as a Communist strategy) the question of the war effort loomed
large at the 1940 NNC convention in Washington D.C. During his speech at the convention,
Randolph argued that if there was a war with the USSR, African Americans should support the U.S.;
but many of the Communist members of the NNC disagreed, and many other attendees supported
John L. Lewis’s position that the U.S. should not get involved in the war and instead should focus
on expanding the New Deal.
147
The dispute that ensued led Randolph to resign from the NNC after
a speech, which, according to Ralph Ellison, reporting in the leftist magazine New Masses, “sounded
unmistakable notes of Red-baiting…a leader…killing his leadership”
148
While Randolph was accused
of sectarianism, to him, the decision supported autonomy for Black activists and organizers to
determine their course of political action, and also expressed opposition to the path Stalinism was
taking.
149

Randolph’s vexed relationship to Stalinism and commitment to democratic socialism would
continue to be an issue of debate and struggle throughout his life.
150
He said that he was against the
NNC “depending upon the Communists or the CIO” (as both had supported the NNC financially)
because he feared the dominance of the group by either.
151
As he argued at the time, “I am not in
agreement with tieing the National Negro Congress with the CIO, and I am not in agreement with
tieing the National Negro Congress with the AF of L.”
152
But his anti-Stalinism went deeper than
this. “I quit the Congress,” he said, “because I was opposed to it …expressing sympathy of the
Soviet Union…where shocking ‘blood purges’ wipe out any and all persons who express any
dissenting opinions from Dictator Stalin.”
153
As a socialist, Randolph had previously not trusted
Communists, but his opinion about the role of Communists in the U.S. had softened during the
Popular Front period.
154
However, after the Hitler-Stalin pact, and the internal disagreements within
the NNC, he felt he couldn’t trust those who still remained committed to Stalin; in Randolph’s eyes

39
he could not abide those devoted to the man responsible for the killings “of the old Bolsheviks,
Bukarin, Zinoviev, Radeck, et al. [those who] had the courage and misfortune to dissent from the
pontifical decrees of Stalin.”
155
On the other hand, Randolph’s analyses do not necessarily capture
the strands of ambivalence that people in the U.S. who joined the CP had toward Stalinism, and
certainly not Black people. As longtime civil rights activists Jack O’Dell put it, “I never met a Black
person who was in the Communist Party because of the Soviet Union. We joined the Communist
Party because they fought against racism and they were dependable in that fight.”
156
Nevertheless,
such changes in political context did much to unmake the Black Popular Front. While the NNC
continued as an organization, especially in its local chapters, often led by women, its ability to stand
as a national organization was severely hampered by the resignation of their president and the
ideological fracturing of their coalition; and most importantly, their ability to become the force to
democratize Keynesianism was irreparably weakened.
Opportunities and Danger During Wartime
Job prospects were bleak for many Black workers during the late Thirties as private industry
(especially defense) began to grow alongside dramatic and violent actions against workers as police
crushed the Little Steel strike, while Roosevelt cut spending to the Works Progress Administration
and other New Deal agencies, thereby creating the “Roosevelt Recession,” and heaving working
people back into the Depression.
157
An editorial in Opportunity, the journal of the National Urban
League, explained that while a business upswing may create jobs for white workers, “if it follows
traditional methods, [it] will be slow to open to Negroes except at the lowest levels.”
158
As the New
Deal was cut back even further in 1940, 8 million people remained unemployed and Civil Rights
organizations argued that a permanent public works program was most urgently needed to respond
to this crisis.
159

40
However, the Keynesianism that developed in the subsequent years was not the “public
works” program these activists had in mind. Rather, it was a decidedly militarist Keynesianism. John
Lewis had tried to push against militarism as the solution to economic difficulty and attempted to
put forward a left wing alternative to Roosevelt’s 1940 presidential bid, but without success.
Following the 1940 election, historian Nelson Lichtenstein notes, “the battleground for labor’s
struggles [were] as much within the apparatus of state policy formulation and administration in
Washington as on the factory picket line.”
160
With the Nazi defeat of France and the birth of the
Vichy regime, the so-called “isolationist” wing of the CIO, that Lewis had testified to a month prior
at the 1940 NNC Convention, became a much less tenable political position thereafter. And in turn
the CIO, the broader trade union movement, and the political economy as a whole became
increasingly reliant on the government and the war for economic stability.
161

Through the acceleration of the war, in the subsequent months after Randolph’s resignation
from the NNC, U.S. defense industries surged as U.S. factories sought to produce an “arsenal of
democracy” for the Allied forces, and Randolph saw an opening. He understood the massive
transformation of the economy in order to serve the war effort as an opportunity to shift the
relations of the racist Keynesian political economy. 1940 saw $10.5 billion in defense spending
allocated by Congress, much of which went to ships, steel, and aircraft industries.
162
By 1941, 75% of
defense contracts were going to 56 companies.
163
As such, these companies’ fortunes were closely
tied to the federal government, making them uniquely dependent on the government’s desires.
Randolph suggested that this was an opportunity to achieve the “unfinished task of emancipation,”
by taking advantage of the new administrative relations to force the government to compel industry
to employ Black workers who had previously been denied entry to such positions.
164

The problem of unemployment for Black workers still loomed large even as production
grew. The 1940 Bureau of the Census located the problem in both skill mismatch (elaborating from

41
underlying racist relations of the era) and the naked racism of employers: “the reserves of nonwhite
labor cannot be fully utilized unless extensive training and retraining is undertaken, and the prejudice
against them is reduced or eliminated.”
165
Due to this assessment of the conditions at the time,
Randolph began a push for the Keynesian military investments to support workers across the color
line. In the spring of 1941 Randolph initiated local actions across the U.S. to make such demands.
The March on Washington Movement emerged out of these local rallies as Randolph called for
10,000 Black Americans to march to the capitol to demand jobs in war industries to respond to the
large scale unemployment of Black people, as well as the creation of a Fair Employment Practices
Commission to adjudicate issues of job discrimination.
Between fall 1939 and spring of 1940, Randolph decided to change tactics regarding how he
pursued political change on the national level. In the fall, Randolph had visited the White House
along with Walter White from the NAACP and T. Arnold Hill from the National Urban League to
hold discussions regarding the rights of African Americans in the military and if there would be
segregated regiments. Randolph had been frustrated with the process and the ultimate decision to
keep the armed forces segregated. He suggested a recalibration of tactics away from “public
statements, strongly worded telegrams to Washington, and conferences with White House officials.”
As he told his chief partner within his union, Milton Webster, “calling on the President and holding
all those conferences are not going to get us anywhere… I think we ought to get 10,000 Negroes to
march on Washington in protest.”
166
Randolph then spent the next few months during the winter of
1940-1941 traveling from Savannah to Jacksonville to Tampa to Miami talking up the march and
building support for it. When he returned to New York in January 1941 he issued the following
declaration to the media:
“Power and pressure are at the foundation of the march of social justice and reform…power
and pressure do not reside in the few, the intelligentsia, they lie in and flow from the
masses…Power is the active principle of only the organized masses, the masses united for a
definite purpose. Hence, Negro America must bring its power and pressure to bear upon the

42
agencies and representatives of the Federal Government to exact their rights in National
Defense employment and the armed forces of the country…if Negroes are going to get
anything out of this National Defense…WE MUST FIGHT FOR IT AND FIGHT FOR
IT WITH GLOVES OFF.”
167

He spent with next few months continuing grassroots organizing for the March and building up
pressure on Washington. Once, when he noticed that he was being followed by the FBI, he decided
to spend even more time than usual walking all over Harlem doing grassroots organizing and street
speaking in pool rooms and bars, so as to give the FBI the impression that the march had even more
support than it did. He then decided to raise the projections of the march’s attendance from 10,000
to 100,000.
168
Indeed, there is some debate about whether or not the organizers could have achieved
a march of even 10,000 people, let alone 100,000.
169

Figure 3: The organizing for the MOWM continued after Executive Order 8802. What efficacy the
FEPC was able to have during this period was due to this organizing. This rally was the largest of
local actions in St. Louis, Chicago, and Detroit in the years after 8802—and perhaps the largest
political mobilization of Black people since the Garvey movement. Between 18,000-23,500 people
came out to hear Mary McLeod Bethune, Adam Clayton Powell, Frank Crosswaith, Walter White,
Lester Granger, Milton Webster and more people address the crowd. Newspapers at the time
declared: “20,000 Storm Madison Square Garden to Help Bury Race’s ‘Uncle Toms.’”
170

Nevertheless, the organizing of the MOWM was building up steam throughout the summer
of 1941 and the White House was under increasing pressure to respond; Roosevelt finally did by
issuing Executive Order 8802. In exchange for the postponement of the march, 8802 banned
discrimination in defense industries and government employment and established a Fair
Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
171
However, there still remained a need for vigorous

43
organizing to ensure the executive order achieved its promise as many industries and shops were
slow to respond to its edict. In Michigan, for example, in 1942, only 18% of job vacancies in war-
related industries were available to Black workers and the conditions were even worse in nearby
states Ohio and Indiana. While things were slightly better in New York—one-third of jobs had a
“white required” policy and an additional one-third had a “white preferred policy.” Likewise, Black
workers were not always the group most well served by the FEPC; 43% of the cases heard by the
New York City FEPC were on behalf of Jewish workers.
172

The need for consistent organizing after 8802 was a lesson learned by more people than
Randolph. Historian Beth Bates notes that the rank and file activists of Detroit also learned this
lesson from the MOWM victory. The March movement “taught black community activists the
importance of using mass demonstrations as a tool to challenge existing power relations.”
173
Just
after the victory of the executive order, there were wildcat strikes of Black workers throughout the
summer, as they demanded transfers to defense jobs.
174
To this end, the victory of 8802 was given
“teeth” both through the more high profile administrative struggles of Randolph and the everyday
actions of workers.
At the time of the MOWM’s formation, however, others disagreed with Randolph’s
assessment and strategy. Affirming the Hitler-Stalin Pact, Black Communists like William Patterson
opposed the March’s program, characterizing it as “Social-Democratic surrender.”
175
Patterson—
who would gain later fame in his efforts alongside the Civil Rights Congress (1946-1956, which grew
out of the remnants of the NNC) to charge the U.S. with anti-Black genocide and many other
important mass defense struggles—suggested that the reform tactics of Randolph amounted to an
appeasement of imperialist forces.
176
He argued, nine months before the Pearl Harbor bombing that
Randolph’s “Negro reformism…is a right bower for imperialism.”
177
Patterson denounced
Randolph’s resignation from the NNC as red-baiting in the “Martin Dies style.” For Patterson, the

44
political and intellectual betrayal was ultimately in that “Mr. Randolph could see only a victory for
Hitler or for Churchill.” Patterson argued that “the fight against war must be the very essence of
every struggle in which Negro America is involved.” While Patterson’s charges were rooted in the
Communist analysis and support for the Hitler-Stalin pact, his critique also illuminates a debate
between Randolph and those to his left politically, on what could be considered Randolph’s
“reformist” or Fabian socialist tendencies, that would continue throughout his life as he sought
tangible and durable large-scale victories that often entailed compromises with liberals and social
democrats.
178

Patterson, though, should not be categorized as one who did not care for substantive
ameliorative reforms. He spent countless hours on picket lines in support of workers and defending
unjust prosecutions—from Sacco and Vanzetti to the “Scottsboro Boys” to Willie McGee.
179
He was
also highly attuned to the need for durable solutions rooted in daily organizing and the arduous,
disciplined work of movement building. As leader of the CRC, he once chastised another chapter
leader, “your stencils (should) be cut with greater care.” In one of the most intense periods of
political repression in U.S history, Patterson helped bring together what remained of the National
Negro Congress, International Labor Defense, and the National Federation for Constitutional
Liberties to build the Civil Rights Congress into an almost 10,000 person organization that
conjoined movement organizing and judicial challenges, popularized the term “civil rights” as a
synonym for justice, and innovated important tactics for organizing on behalf of imprisoned
people.
180

As a young Black pacifist, Bayard Rustin chose a different tact to respond to the War, both
seeing it as an opportunity for struggles and changes like Randolph, but also, refusing to be a part of
the military machine. Rustin had worked with Young Communist League in New York during the
Popular Front period, but like Randolph, broke relations with the CP due to political shifts after the

45
Hitler-Stalin Pact. By 1941, Rustin surrounded himself with older socialists, organizing with both
Randolph and the MOWM, but spending even more time working with A.J. Muste and the pacifist
organization, Fellowship of Reconciliation (FOR), and committing himself to nonviolence.
181
While
Rustin had registered as a conscientious objector in 1940, when he was called upon in November
1943 to report for a physical exam, he refused. In a letter to the draft board, he explained his stance
with an analysis connecting his personal Quaker pacifism to the larger political circumstances. “War
is wrong,” Rustin wrote, “conscription is a concomitant of modern war. Thus conscription for so
vast an evil as war is wrong.”
182

While in many ways Rustin’s decisions differ from Randolph’s response to the war, their
attitudes were not irreconcilable. Just as Randolph used the war as an opportunity to challenge
segregation in the military institutions and the labor force, Rustin challenged segregation inside the
Kentucky Federal prison where he was locked up.
183
Like many imprisoned people, Rustin also
received support from those on the “outside” who did the labor of social reproduction to buoy the
spirits of those “inside.”
184
He received a card from his grandmother who raised him, Julia Rustin,
featuring the poem by Kenneth Boulding, “Sonnet for the First Christmas of an Atomic Age” which
indicated her admiration for his decision to choose peace over bombs in the wake of the destruction
of Hiroshima and Nagasaki; and he received a different card (a FOR Christmas card) featuring the
same poem from Muste.
185
But perhaps most noteworthy is a letter from Randolph which affirms
their relationship as well as Rustin’s strategic choice, even if Randolph might not have agreed with it.
“Your action will give heart and spirit even to those who may disagree with your philosophy and
enable them to stand firm on the ideals they profess to possess even when they are alone. I hope I
may have the pleasure of keeping in touch with you and getting a word from you now and then.”
186

These three divergent decisions by Randolph, Patterson, and Rustin reveal the ideological
and political divisions that war can enable in times of heightened political and organization conflict;

46
all three Black anti-capitalist men who approached racism and capitalism with mutual enmity, who
could have co-existed and admired each others’ political decisions a few years prior, could no longer
support certain tactics that the others chose. While Rustin and Randolph were able to agree with
each other enough about strategy, tactics, and socialism, the partition between Randolph and Rustin
on the one hand, and Communists on the other would retain its power and grow over the next four
decades.
Reconversion Fears from Above and Below
The U.S. had been at war for less than a year before fears began about a postwar return to
the Depression, and concern for how the economy would handle “reconversion” to peace.
187

Though their perspective and actions differed, these fears were widespread throughout the war and
felt acutely by industry, government actors, and workers alike. Some leading figures in steel and
household durables foresaw, and sought to promote, a future in home-building and construction.
188

The National Association of Manufacturers—the most prominent grouping of anti-New Dealers—
began demanding reductions in the public debt barely a few months after the war.
189
Brigadier
General Philip Flemming, an administrator with the Federal Works Agency argued in October 1942
that postwar public works was “perhaps the best way for the Government to provide jobs,” in
addition to other forms of postwar economic planning.
190
Workers, for their part, displayed perhaps
some of the most profound contradictions; as historian and activist Martin Glaberman has noted,
autoworkers during the war both voted to sustain a no-strike pledge and engaged in frequent wildcat
strikes.
191
And as large a percentage of workers struck in 1944 as did during the climax of the 1937
sit-down strikes.
192

Those in industry were primarily interested in figuring out ways to ensure their rates of
profit. As early as February 1943, there were public reports that industry groups were meeting and
planning ways to convert their new technology, developed for military uses, to peacetime activities;

47
though they attempted to promulgate the notion that they were focused on war production only, air
industries were rumored to be developing designs for car production.
193
For Packard Motors, the site
of some of the most intense labor conflicts of the period, “industrial discipline” must have been on
the minds of their administrators. During the spring and summer of 1943 there were dueling wildcat
strikes between Black workers displaying “march behavior”—fighting their way into jobs—while
white workers engaged in hate strikes to try to ensure a racist Keynesian regime. To protest the
hiring of three Black women to work drill presses, a number of white women refused to work on
several occasions. Over the course of a few months at the Packard plant, 25,000 white workers had
walked out, shuttering the entire plant; and Christopher Alston (a Black union steward and veteran
of the Southern Negro Youth Congress) who had called for a walkout in opposition to such
practices, was retaliated against by being drafted into the military.
194
A few weeks after the
culmination of these incidents, Packard President George Christopher boasted about how their new
technology was going to allow the company to displace workers while producing more cars as soon
as the war ended. After the war, Christopher said, 30% more Packard workers would be able to
manufacture 50% more cars than they had prior to the war.
195

Christopher typified most manufacturers, as the desire to mechanize production was
predicated on a need for managerial control of the production process and the decreased cost of
electricity.
196
The prospects for increasing the use of technology in the production process also
rested on the increased capacity for generating of electricity, which had skyrocketed since the
Depression via federal governmental support, most notably due to the construction of the
Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA), the cascading effects of the Rural Electrification Act (REA), and
the completion of the Hoover and Grand Coulee Dams.
197
Between 1932-1945 total electricity
production jumped 173% while its real price decreased 59% as the government’s share of electricity
market grew by more than 300%, from 4.9% to 15.3% of the total produced.
198
Authority over

48
workers lay at the heart of how at least some of its proponents imagined electrification; when
Mississippi Congressman John Rankin argued in support (like he would for the REA) of the TVA in
front of the House of Representatives, he declared that the TVA would provide “hydroelectric
power that will exceed in amount the amount of physical strength of all the slaves freed by the Civil
War.”
199
In this sense, the evolution of technology should be contextualized within the contests
surrounding the managerial impulses towards control over workers, and in a dialectical relationship
with problems of shop floor discipline, and, for proponents like Rankin, a nostalgic yearning for a
slavery-like system of labor control.
It was not only factories in the north that saw problems with workplace control and sought
federal governmental support for managerial innovations in response. As historian Cindy
Hahamovich has shown, in Florida leading figures in the agricultural industry were terrified of the
“seismic shift in the balance of power between growers and farm laborers” enabled by the war and a
shrunken labor supply.
200
With the war being fought in the name of democracy, the years of protests
against companies like U.S. Sugar were finally met with governmental action. U.S. Sugar had been
utilizing slavery-like conditions whereby Black workers were prohibited from leaving the sugar
plantations by managers armed with guns and blackjacks. With support from Eleanor Roosevelt, in
1942 the Justice Department brought cases against the company for kidnapping, imprisonment, and
other techniques of violent labor management, including shooting workers.
201
As a response to the
refusal of Black workers to abide such degrading, coercive, and poorly paid labor conditions, the
growers lobbied intensely, and—eventually—successfully to import workers from the Bahamas
(which was dealing with its own serious unemployment problems). The growers’ pursuit of
“deportable labor” was not due to objective necessity; as Hahamovitch notes, “domestic farmers
were militant, not missing.”
202
But rather, like the desire to use new technology at the Packard plant,

49
it was due to the managerial requirements for domination over workers, which were undermined in
times of a shrunken labor supply.
Like the conflicts at the Packard plant, 1943 saw uprisings rooted in race and class tensions
as civil unrest exploded across the U.S.: in Detroit, Los Angeles, Beaumont, Mobile, and—most
notably for Randolph—Harlem. Police brutality was the catalytic element for what Randolph
dubbed the “social-racial explosion” in Harlem; like 1935, it was based on a credible rumor of police
killing—this time of a Black soldier—Robert Bandy—attempting to intervene in the arrest of a
young Black woman for alleged disorderly conduct. This uprising though was of greater magnitude
than the prior one: one-third of the city’s 18,000 police officers were deployed; police collaborated
with Army intelligence officers; 8,000 National Guard were held on standby; at least 400 people
were wounded; between 500-1000 people were arrested; and, affirming the fears of the “lynch
spirit’s” northward migration, expressed in the 1935 uprising, 6 Black people were killed by both
police officers and shop proprietors.
203
Randolph, drawing on his experience with the 1935
commission, helped organize the Citizens Committee for Better Race Relations, which, (in
contradistinction to Mayor LaGuardia who suggested the uprising was merely “criminal acts of
hoodlums”) argued that the actions were rooted in a “long series of social, economic, and political
injustices heaped upon the Negro people.”
204
The Committee put forward a ten point program
calling for governmental responses at multiple scales: the abolition of “jim crowism in the armed
forces and in the government everywhere”; that the mayor prevent merchants in Harlem from price
gauging; and the city build more playgrounds, skating rinks, and places for indoor concerts and
dancing in Harlem. Randolph located the underlying problems of urban civil unrest in the racialized
political economy: the problem of unemployment, and intra-class but inter-racial job competition. In
a speech following the a number of riots in 1943, Randolph declared: “the struggle for jobs is the
most fertile soil for inter-group irritations and clash...as a rule they fight each other over the question

50
of jobs and job promotion.”

By this point, Randolph saw race and class as wholly intertwined. He
argued that racism must be confronted, “if we are to do anything about solving the problem of jobs
in the postwar world.” It is from these political circumstances that Randolph pursued social policy
that sought to negate the effects of racism (and occasionally patriarchy). He proposed: authorizing
the National Labor Relations Board to investigate racist, closed-shop contracts; eradicating housing
discrimination in order to open the locations where Black workers could pursue jobs; and
challenging employers’ associations to “stop some personnel managers from artificially fostering and
promoting troubles between racial, religious and nationality groups to prevent labor unity and
increase …exploitation.”
205
Randolph put forward these policies with an insight into how they were
both substantive reforms, but also created beneficial circumstances for more effective working-class
cohesion across hierarchical differences. In Randolph’s assessment, compelling the government to
challenge the infrastructure that undergirded racist hierarchies bought greater power to the working-
class as a whole.
With the beginning of 1944, Randolph was hardly alone in imagining governmental
guarantees to jobs as the next step in the struggles of working people. The January 15-16 convention
of the CIO’s recently organized Political Action Committee (CIO-PAC) put full employment at the
center of their policy horizon.
206
Later that year at the CIO’s national convention, with Eleanor
Roosevelt in attendance, the organization passed a resolution affirming this political stance. They
issued a pamphlet by President Philip Murray and designed by the artist Abraham Joel Tobias that
spelled out the need for full employment, or else “competition for existing jobs would bring new
tensions” and “race riots would follow.” Likewise, they called for women to be entitled to
“democratic employment opportunities” and “receive equal pay for equal work.” In addition, their
vision of full employment emphasized the need for adequate housing for all and better education
and heath care for working people.
207
For District 65 (one of New York City’s most dynamic unions,

51
which organized low-wage garment industry workers across lines of race, ethnicity, and gender), they
hoped the success of the CIO-PAC’s proposals could to cushion their membership from the
postwar economic shocks, especially for Black workers. Like, Randolph, the leadership of District 65
argued that full employment was essential to a postwar period free from racist violence, and argued
for support for the CIO-PAC’s proposals.
208

As a governmental response to fears about reconversion, President Roosevelt’s “Economic
Bill of Rights,” (promoted in his 1944 State of the Union Address) spoke to the anxieties facing the
country and the powerful effect of social movements to change the sentiments and feelings of
government. Within twelve years, Roosevelt had shifted from emphasizing balanced budgets to
arguing that the people of the U.S. “cannot be content, no matter how high that general standard of
living may be, if some fraction of our people—whether it be one-third or one-fifth or one-tenth is
ill-fed, ill-clothed, ill housed, and insecure.”
209
This speech promoted values and ideals that had been
established by the Popular Front’s structure of feeling.
210
Roosevelt declared a new set of economic
rights to be affirmed as “self-evident”:
“The right to a useful and remunerative job in the industries or shops or farms or mines of
the Nation; The right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation;
the right of every farmer to raise and sell his products at a return which will give him and his
family a decent living; The right of every businessman, large and small, to trade in an
atmosphere of freedom from unfair competition and domination by monopolies at home or
abroad; The right of every family to a decent home; The right to adequate medical care and
the opportunity to achieve and enjoy good health; The right to adequate protection from the
economic fears of old age, sickness, accident, and unemployment; The right to a good
education.”
211

These new rights were not self-evident however. They were vigorously opposed—as was the New
Deal—by the business right wing who became an organized force in response to the New Deal
temperament.
212
But such was the strength of the “laboring of American culture” that these values
had begun to achieve institutionalization up through the highest levels of executive power. In 1943,
75% of people favored central governmental planning to respond to unemployment and a year later,

52
68% said the federal government should provide work for anyone who needed it.
213
Even
Roosevelt’s Republican challenger in the 1944 race for the presidency was compelled to endorse full
employment; in his speech accepting his party’s nomination Thomas Dewey declared, “Republicans
are agreed that full employment shall be a first objective of national policy.”
214

The belief in full employment was not only a U.S. phenomenon. Rather, it was part of a
broader constellation of thinking about welfare state development and social and economic policy
that has, over the subsequent decades, frequently been homogenized under the term
“Keynesianism.” However, at the time, Keynes was not the only British influence on such proposals;
William Beveridge’s “Beveridge Plan” was similarly influential in the North Atlantic policy milieu.
Deriving from the Ministry of Labour’s call to coordinate social insurance, the Beveridge Plan
recommended governmental assurances of full employment combined with a robust system of
supports for elderly, sick, and unemployed people. It quickly captured the minds of the British
people as the report sold out of its 100,000 copies in its first month. As historian Daniel Rodgers
notes, the British people’s enthusiasm for the Beveridge plan transformed it from a “technical
document to a postwar promise.”
215
But on his Rockefeller Foundation sponsored tour of the U.S.
in 1943 (during which he met with President Roosevelt, and other leading public officials)
Beveridge’s vision for the U.S. evinced proposals that would not have sat well with Randolph or the
leaders of District 65. While giving a speech to planters and business elites in Mississippi,
Beveridge’s views harmonized with the sentiments of his audience. He argued that “the Negro is
peculiarly suited to Southern Agriculture, and particularly to the Mississippi Delta, and should be
kept here rather than permitted to migrate to Detroit, Harlem, and others of the nations industrial
centers.”
216

Like Beveridge’s suggestions in Mississippi, there were a number of important contradictions
for Roosevelt’s vision of economic abundance to be shared by all. As historian George Lipsitz has

53
noted, much of the legislative achievements of this period were in effect “systematic subsidies to
white males at the expense of people of color and women.”
217
And further, the notorious
imprisonment of Japanese-Americans and theft of their wealth and property via Roosevelt’s
Executive Order 9066 (which utilized the administrative capacities of the Works Progress
Association) undercuts the notion that he might have desired a democratic Keynesianism for all.
218

So too there were exclusions from the privileges within the much celebrated G.I. Bill. Historian
Margot Canaday has shown how a “1945 Veterans Administration (VA) ruling…denied G.I. Bill
benefits to any soldier with an undesirable discharge ‘issued because of homosexual acts or
tendencies,’” and thereby established the inaugural exclusion of gay and lesbian people from the
welfare state benefits.
219
To this end, while Roosevelt’s lofty rhetoric and vision must be understood
as an important affirmation of the social movements of the period, it should be clear that the effects
of such policies were not equitably apportioned or in concert with the ones those social movements
may have desired. Rhetoric and changes in social values were one important step, but overcoming
political and legislative obstacles were another.
The Struggle over Full Employment Policy
Leon Keyserling would become one of the most important governmental actors of the
period who sought to connect changes in values with legislative action; he responded to Popular
Front movements and trepidation around reconversion by crafting affirmative federal full
employment policy as the solution to unemployment. The South Carolina native had been a
legislative staffer under New York Senator Robert Wagner and was one of the chief legal architects
of the National Labor Relations Act (NLRA), and specifically the most important section, 7A, which
empowered workers to form unions.
220
He had also been a central figure in drafting the Social
Security Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the U.S. Housing Act.
221
He was married to
Mary Dublin Keyserling, a prominent “labor feminist” and former student of Keynes, who like her

54
husband left doctoral study in economics to participate in more politically engaged work.
222
While he
had spent his time during the mid-late Thirties crafting policy, she had spent the years pressuring
people like he and his boss as part of Popular Front organizations like the League of Women
Shoppers, of which she was New York chapter director, and which would be labeled by Martin Dies
as a Communist front organization a few years later.
223
As part of the National Consumers League
she had even protested the exclusions of domestic workers under the NLRA, which Leon had
written.
224

After meeting in 1938 when she traveled to Washington to testify on behalf of the National
Consumer League, Leon and Mary Dublin Keyserling married in 1940 and subsequently used their
unique skills to respond to the crisis of reconversion.
225
Such was the ambient fear of the
Depression’s resurrection that in December 1943 the Pabst Brewing Company sponsored an essay
writing contest dealing with the question of what should be done to sustain employment after the
war; with awards totaling $50,000 in bonds, the winning essays would then be turned over to
government officials.
226
Pabst received 35,767 enthusiastic entries by the deadline nine weeks later,
many of which were from high level government officials who won 10 of the 17 prizes.
227

Though written by both Leon and Mary Dublin Keyserling, their essay won second place
(good for a $10,000 prize) and bore his name, but the imprint of both their politics.
228
The essay laid
out the stakes and ambition for the postwar years and presaged Roosevelt’s Economic Bill of Rights:
“we shall have the chance to abolish poverty…‘conversion’ to peace does not mean…privation, and
millions unemployed. The American economy should enable all the people to enjoy material
comfort, good education, jobs, and creative leisure.” They argued that it is necessary for the
government to be the employer of last resort should private industry fail to fully employ people,
even with the provided state incentives, and that such action is a “bedrock civilized responsibility.”
And further, perhaps revealing the same thinking that had encouraged Mary to vote for Socialist

55
Party Candidate Norman Thomas in 1932, they wrote, “we should continue measures to prevent
exploitation, establish decent standards of work and pay, set up systematic protection against old
age, accident and illness, and maintain community services.”
229
But the most lasting institutional
innovation of the essay was its call for the congressional establishment of an “American Economic
Committee” to help policy makers define and actualize an “American Economic Goal” for which
they proposed full employment of all who want jobs to be the foundation. This call for such an
economic committee would be actualized as the Council of Economic Advisors as established by the
Employment Act of 1946, which Leon would be a central figure in crafting.
While the proposal for a committee of economic advisors received the most recognition and
institutionalization of the essay’s recommendations, perhaps the most innovative was their call for
something akin to “green jobs.” Leon Keyserling was most interested in consumption and demand
as the key to supply, so full employment for him did not mean merely flooding the market with
widgets. He believed in economic planning for ensuring the supply of goods best suited to a
particular need. This is why he took so much interest during the war in planning public housing
policy with the National Housing Agency; and why he eschewed right-wing fear of inflationary
spirals.
230
The two economists, in their Pabst essay wrote “public works should be planned to enrich
our environment instead of just ‘making jobs,’ and avoid new manpower maladjustments by
sporadic overexpansion of construction. The harnessing of water power, conservation of natural
resources, improvement of public facilities for communication, are all dramatic aspects of the
American economic goal.”
231
However innovative this proposal was, it would not grow legislative
legs.
Nevertheless, one writer commented in the magazine New Masses on the important changes
that the Pabst awards signified and the role of popular movements to shift even elite consciousness.
“During the last war this would have been unthinkable and even ten years ago it would have created

56
a sensation…This important departure from the laissez faire school of thought is supplemented by
various measures to overcome the hesitations, uncertainties, and fears of the employers, investors,
and owners of idle capital,” wrote Ralph Bowman.
232
Indeed, Bowman articulated the significance of
the political transformations of economic thought that would, in discreet and uneven ways, become
formalized as the Employment Act of 1946.
The Employment Act of 1946 was built ruins of the far more ambitious Full Employment
Bill of 1945. The 1945 Bill, proposed by Keyserling’s former boss Robert Wagner, had declared:
“all Americans able to work and seeking work have the right to useful, remunerative, regular
and full-time employment. And it is the policy of the United States to assure the existence at
all times of sufficient employment opportunities to enable all Americans…to freely exercise
this right.”
233

The Bill passed the Senate 71-10 before being met with stern opposition in the House, where it
ultimately faltered. As sociologist Margaret Weir notes, organized capital (the Chamber of
Commerce, the National Association of Manufacturers, and the American Farm Bureau) played a
leading role in pushing congressional representatives to oppose the bill. Those who contested the
bill were the heart of the commercial Keynesian bloc: Midwestern Republicans and Dixiecrats. They
opposed on the grounds that full employment would result in deficit spending, economic planning,
and the strengthening of labor.
234
The power of these politicians (most notably, Clayton Buck,
Robert Taft, Clare Hoffman, Cater Manasco, and William Whittington) to derail the proposed Full
Employment Act of 1945 was premised on their support by some of the most powerful business
interests in the U.S., as well as Jim Crow voting exclusions that had enhanced the power of the
former Confederacy in Congress. Whittington, a Mississippi Congressman, exemplified how the
anti-democratic accumulations of wealth and power could be utilized to fight the full employment
proposals. Whittington’s social power emanated from his membership in the Delta Council—the
aristocratic political organization of the planter bloc; and his political power rested on the

57
foundation of white supremacy: a Jim Crow electorate put him in office without opposition with a
mere 4,000 votes to a district with 435,000 people.
235

Nevertheless, in spite of the ways that the 1945 Bill had its the most transformative elements
removed, the 1946 Act remained landmark legislation for establishment of more coherent economic
planning. It created Council of Economic Advisors (CEA) to support the federal government’s
responsibility to ensure “maximum” (but not necessarily full) employment.
236
Leon Keyserling would
serve as both Vice Chair and Chair of the CEA until Eisenhower took office. As President Truman
described in his signing statement, “the Act declares that it is ‘the continuing policy and
responsibility of the federal Government...to coordinate and utilize all its plans, functions, and
resources for the purpose of creating and maintaining…conditions under which there will be
afforded useful employment opportunities, including self-employment, for those able, willing, and
seeking to work.”
237
While the Act designated this as a crucial moral and political responsibility of
government, the form that such full employment would take was still to be determined.
Though the goal of full employment emerged with dominance in the 1946 Act (especially
after the legislative assault on the 1945 Bill) it certainly was not hegemonic; and even if it could be
implemented, the question of military Keynesian-full employment versus “green jobs”-full employment
remained unresolved. Allies and enemies alike imperiled the green jobs vision. On one end, the Act
had been fully supported by Washington state congressperson Henry “Scoop” Jackson, who would
later come to be known as the “senator from Boeing” due to his enthusiastic support of military
Keynesian policy and his role at the center of the “most nationalist and protectionist wing of the
Democratic Party.”
238
Jackson replied to a letter-writer who opposed his support for full
employment in the more robust 1945 Full Employment Act: “we must insure full employment to all
who are able to work…in an effort to raise the standard of living for all the American people
(sic).”
239
But on the other hand, the business right-wing stood in staunch opposition to full

58
employment policy as the letter writer, an insurance executive, argued that the bill “can be exercised
only under a dictatorship…and its passage [is the] final push toward a totalitarian economy.”
240

These were common tactics for the growing business right wing, which would use these types of
struggles and letter writing campaigns to fight against ameliorative social democratic reforms,
especially those that pertained to full employment.
241
The insurance executive’s comments reflected
similar talking points developed by the National Association of Manufacturers and mailed to their
16,000 members.
242
In addition to these tactics, the politicians who opposed the Full Employment
Act and the principal figures of the business right wing were closely aligned. Delaware’s Republican
Senator, Clayton Buck, among the staunchest opponents of the 1945 Bill, was wed to Alice Du
Pont, the daughter of T. Coleman Du Pont—one of the leading families of ruling class right-wing
political action.
243

Why Full Employment Scares Capital
A few years before this struggle the great Polish economist Michal Kalecki had explained
why full employment policy drew such ire from capital. In his classic essay on the “Political Aspects
of Full Employment,” he argued that:
“the maintenance of full employment would cause social and political changes which would
give a new impetus to the opposition of the business leaders. Indeed, under a regime of
permanent full employment, the ‘sack’ would cease to play its role as a disciplinary
measure. The social position of the boss would be undermined, and the self-assurance and
class-consciousness of the working class would grow. Strikes for wage increases and
improvements in conditions of work would create political tension. It is true that profits
would be higher under a regime of full employment than they are on the average under
laissez-faire, and even the rise in wage rates resulting from the stronger bargaining power of
the workers is less likely to reduce profits than to increase prices, and thus adversely affects
only the rentier interests. But ‘discipline in the factories’ and ‘political stability’ are more
appreciated than profits by business leaders. Their class instinct tells them that lasting full
employment is unsound from their point of view, and that unemployment is an integral part
of the ‘normal’ capitalist system.”
244

Kalecki crystallized the tension that would emerge from the war. On the one hand, capital anxiously
sought continued support from government in fear of falling rates of profit. But they also were

59
terrified by the new consensus that had been built demanding economic rights for workers and
questioned how they would maintain discipline on the shop floor considering workers were
wildcatting during a time with a no-strike pledge in effect. As historian Nelson Lichtenstein explains,
it was the “personal security [and] prosperity” of near full employment that “laid the basis for the
restless militancy that characterized so many highly paid, steadily employed war workers.”
245
What
would the workers do if they had full employment without such a pledge?
But just as the business class was getting organized to fight the New Deal and the labor
militancy that birthed it, labor was continuing its vibrant organizing and was determined not to
return to the days prior to 1935. Clark Johnson, Chairman of the Legislative Committee for the
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, wrote Scoop Jackson describing the
sentiments of those rejoicing as the war wound down, but demanding government action to address
reconversion. “The specter of the Depression days was haunting the celebrants…the government
must immediately take all necessary action to supply employment for all the people unable to obtain
jobs with private industry.”
246
While many of the union administrators pursued legislative fixes like
full employment, they were also being pushed by their rank and file members whose fears about
postwar reconversion were articulated with militant actions during 1945-46, causing concern
amongst union leaders.
247
In this sense, many of the leading figures of organized labor—those the
sociologist C. Wright Mills called the “new men of power”—were afraid of their rank and file
members’ militancy, and remained reliant on government.
248

Building on the energy from the wartime strikes against the no-strike pledge, workers took
action to ensure that they “would not go back to the old days” as one sign read at the Stamford, CT
general strike.
249
In the year after the end of the war with Japan, more strikes broke out than any
other time in U.S. history.
250
And in many cases such as in Detroit, where there were ninety wildcat
strikes in August and September of 1945, neither the labor leaders nor management (whom some

60
considered two different kinds of bosses) were able to exert control over the workers.
251
One
journalist described the strike at General Motors in November 1946 as “deeply disturbing” for it
indicated a “terrifying malady” of “government impotence” due to their inability to crush the strike
in the interests of the car company.
252
As in the case of late 19
th
century labor upsurges, the
government did, however, innovate responses to impose discipline. In response to strikes at oil
refineries across 14 states that involved 37,000 workers (and crystallizing what would later be called
the “work/energy crisis,”) President Truman took over the oil refineries and demanded all the
workers return to their jobs.
253
These political decisions to undermine the power of the rank and file
workers in the name of postwar prosperity would begin to set the course for the postwar era as
government, industry, and some union leaders all sought to curtail worker militancy.
254

However, such actions were not imposed without massive resistance as indicated by the
wave of general strikes that swept the country in 1946. While much of the postwar accords that
capital and organized labor pursued emphasized partnership and shared agreements regarding raising
both wages and productivity for union members alone, the general strikes reveal the potential for an
alternative collective with which capital would have to bargain. The general strikes in Stamford, CT,
Lancaster, PA, Rochester, NY, Pittsburgh, PA, and Oakland, CA were brief, lasting a few days, and
the culmination of struggles that had been building up pressure at smaller scales (often contract
disputes).
255
But these struggles forced new socialites into being and compelled people to make
choices about which side they were on. During the Lancaster, PA general strike, the county sheriff
eschewed the role traditionally played by police to act at the behest of the company and refused to
call in the state police who would have violently dispersed the protesters.
256
Stan Weir, a participant
in the Oakland strike and a leading intellectual of labor and culture in the postwar period recalled,
“never before or since had Oakland been so alive and happy for the majority of the
population…strangers passed each other on the street and did not have fear, but the opposite.”
257

61
But the general strikes also inspired people beyond the cities in which they occurred. In
Philadelphia, workers threatened a general strike in response the police beatings of picketers after a
court-ban on mass demonstrations.
258
A. Philip Randolph also hinted at threats of a general strike in
solidarity with John L. Lewis of the United Mine Workers whose strike—though not a general
one—was thought by Philip Hauser, the Assistant to the Secretary of Commerce to be even more
threatening than a localized general strike because of the central importance of coal to so many
other industries. As Hauser aptly noted, “the long chain of supply by which raw materials are
converted into finished goods is only as strong as the weakest link…and bituminous coal is one of
the fundamental links of the chain.” Indeed, coal accounted for 43% of the energy used for
industrial production and Randolph and other trade unionists recognized the centrality of the
mineworkers’ struggle.
259
In response to the immense threats and court orders that Lewis and the
mineworkers were facing from the government, Randolph declared, “it may come to the point
where it will be necessary for organized labor to back the United Mine Workers with a general
strike.”
260
However, declaring the mineworkers’ strike threats to be “economic insurrection,”
Truman used every tool he had to pressure Lewis to call off the strike and in turn enhanced his own
power and prestige in the eyes of capital.
261

This tremendous loss of energy and potential closed 1946, but the future prospects for
workers at the start of 1947 remained open. The conditions in which they had struggled fifteen years
prior had been remarkably transformed. While there were many potentials lost as 1946 came to a
close, the ameliorative reforms working-class people had fought for and won over the prior years
meant they were surviving in a whole new way as life expectancy for white people rose by four years
during the 1940s and by eight years for Black people.
262

***

62
What can the contradictions of U.S. Keynesianism explain to us? They reveal how the theory
and practice of the New Deal temperament in the U.S. undermined Keynes' actual arguments
emphasizing the promotion of full employment;
263
this was most lucid when applied to those the
census called at the time “reserves of nonwhite labor.”
264
Keynes, after all, made a case that ensuring
full employment was the government’s most important strategy to promote aggregate demand. But
his policies also encouraged, in his words, the “euthanasia of the rentier.”
265
But since, “Keynes” is
more symbol than person, the import and application of “Keynesian” ideas in the U.S. were forced
to move through a thicket of contradictions on their road to policy. Rather than euthanizing the
rentier interests, U.S. Keynesianism served instead to empower and enrich rentier interests in their
effort to make living labor (Black sharecroppers) subservient to dead labor (tractors) for the purpose
of accruing evermore profit for the planter class. But this was the struggle at the heart of the era:
what type of Keynesianism would take hold—commercial or social? In whose service would the
newly created federal governmental capacities be put? The battle, however, was far from settled as
the postwar era began. Both sides instead finished the war significantly strengthened. On the one
hand those who spent the years prior to and during the war "laboring American culture" took
tremendous steps to establishing the conditions of a political culture and a “social warrant”—a
feeling—that understood maintenance of full employment was a fundamental responsibility of the
federal government.
266
While on the other hand, with the enormous government investments in
technology, U.S. capital was able to begin automating production and left the war with their intra-
class adversaries of Europe significantly weakened, but also with the nascent structural power for the
promotion of global capitalism established.
267

63
Chapter 2: “Inflation is the Devil”: Unemployment, Cold War Power Struggles, and
Federal Reserve Independence, 1946-1955

“Inflation is the Devil” – Life magazine, 1951
1

“[Bankers’] anxiety about the inflationary implications of full employment was by no means idle
concern and would indeed prove to be…the central contradiction of Keynesianism in the postwar
era.” – Leo Panitch and Sam Gindin, 2012
2

With the war over and both labor and capital strengthened, a series of conflicts ensued over
the subsequent decade as both groupings sought to further their political power. Throughout these
conflicts, governmental action and inaction, as seen through four overlapping vectors, would prove
crucial. The power struggles of this period must be understood through: (1) governmental action to
contain Communism, and the ascendance of Cold War McCarthyism; (2) governmental action and
inaction that upheld white supremacy and its localized, totalitarian, anti-democratic effects; (3)
governmental action to grant the Federal Reserve its relative independence, and thereby the ability to
create the interest rates it saw fit; and (4) the inability of social movements to expand the strengths
of the 1946 Employment Act and fulfill the ambitions of the Full Employment Bill of 1945 (and
thus the furtherance of sustained unemployment and its attendant social anxieties). These four
elements would be fundamental in the struggles for postwar power. Throughout this period,
“inflation” would emerge as a point through which all of these vectors would pass. In addition to
other factors that will be explored in this chapter, inflation imperiled the dominance of U.S. (and
global) capitalism since, after the 1944 Bretton Woods Agreement, Allied nations tied their
currencies to the dollar standard.
3
Thus, the consequences of a rising rate of inflation were more far-
reaching than higher grocery bills. And since labor shortages indicated the likelihood of worker
strength and thus wage-push inflation, unemployed people should be considered one of the most
significant forces in postwar capitalism. Although their lives were not valued, their subjugation was.
Amongst many factors, price stability relied upon the suppression of unemployed people, and

64
movements on their behalf. By analyzing these dynamics, one can see how unemployment was not a
private affliction or a result of personal failings; instead unemployment in the postwar period was
sustained by actions and inactions in the sphere of public policy.
Inflation Suppression is Worker Suppression: Red-baiting, Race-baiting, and
Unemployment in Postwar Power Struggles

As the war ended, both capital and labor were greatly strengthened from their prior situation
and they sought to use such positions in the subsequent years to shore up their weaknesses. The
ability of business to fight off the Full Employment Bill of 1945 was a significant victory, but they
still faced a union movement much larger (10 million members in the AFL and 4.5 million in the
CIO) and stronger than anyone could have imagined fifteen years prior.
4
General Electric President
Charles E. Wilson, declared that the two major problems confronting the U.S. after the War were:
“Russia abroad [and] labor at home.”
5
The relative labor scarcity during World War II revealed
contentious power struggles over the “right to manage” the shop floor; workers were determined to
continue this contestation, and during the strike wave of 1946, more than one out of every seven
workers went on strike at some point.
6
But as labor sought to advance their strength, the ripple
effects of unemployment (both in fact and as a persistent threat) contributed to the weakening of
the CIO’s efforts to organize in the South and the strengthening of the Red Scare.
In many ways, the union movement’s chief weaknesses were wholly intertwined in the
South; Dixiecrat political opposition to social democratic legislation relied on the anti-democracy of
Jim Crow. In July 1945, during the height of the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency’s
debates about the Full Employment Bill, the Executive Board of the CIO declared their “mission in
life” was to “organize the vote…and to get voters to the polls.”
7
The need for political organizing
must have seemed all the more urgent after the failure of the Bill despite such widespread support
across different sectors. Business owner Harry Golden of New York spoke to the broad
perspectives in favor of full employment in front of the Senate Committee on Banking and

65
Currency. “The responsibility for unemployment can’t very well be placed on the employee. He
can’t create jobs…no one but the Federal Government can assume the prime responsibility for
relief,” Golden declared.
8
But for the CIO, and the interests of working people, Congress had been
particularly frustrating that term, as a February 1946 Southern filibuster squandered hopes for a
permanent Fair Employment Practices Commission (FEPC).
9
The CIO Secretary-Treasurer
described the 79
th
Congress as giving them a “kick in the teeth.”
10
And the efforts at political
organizing would have appeared even more critical after the disappointing mid-term election in
November 1946. One journalist, evaluating the results, observed: “the left wing of the Democratic
party crumbled badly in the storm of ballots which blew the Republicans into complete control of
both the Senate and the House.”
11
In November 1946, for the CIO—with their political hopes
undermined, and their Southern organizing program floundering—formulating a response to the
rightward shift in postwar politics would have seemed daunting, but nonetheless, essential.
By the end of the war, it was hardly a secret that the Southeast—and thus acute and violent
racism, supplemented by the localized, totalitarian organization of many company towns—would be
a crucial element in the subsequent struggle for power between working people and business
interests. In 1939, the CIO noted this distinctly, arguing that, “as long as the south remains
unorganized, it constitutes the nation’s Number One economic problem and is also a menace to our
organized movement in the north and likewise to northern industries.”
12
The South, having doubled
its highway road mileage between 1930-1943 and greatly increased its production of electricity over
the same time, was a burgeoning site for industry growth. Building off of these federal investments
that “modernized” the South, Sears opened stores throughout the region and suppliers followed
suit.
13
As the South was becoming an increasingly attractive location for employers, the CIO needed
to prevent it from becoming haven for union industries to flee towards in search of lower wages and
greater shop floor control. Approved at the CIO’s March 1946 Executive Board meeting, the CIO’s

66
Southern Organizing Committee (SOC) determined to sponsor a multi-union attempt to organize
across divisions of skill and craft in twelve states throughout the Southeast—Operation Dixie.
14

But in the planning stages of Operation Dixie, the leaders of the CIO made a choice to limit
the scope of their project by selecting to focus on what they considered ‘bread and butter’ issues of
white (and male) workers. They made this choice despite (or perhaps in concert with) the previous
month’s failure win a permanent FEPC at the hands of a Jim Crow Congress. The CIO leadership
discussed this as a “purely organizational campaign,” with “no extracurricular activities—no
politics—no PAC [Political Action Committee]—no FEPC, ect.”
15
But in many of the locations that
Operation Dixie organizers were hoping to build union struggles, such as at R.J. Reynolds tobacco
plants, workers “were relationally defined and organized as ‘blacks’ and ‘whites’ and as ‘women’ and
‘men’ as well as ‘workers.’”
16
Under this racial and gendered regime “class-first” and “no politics”
had little bearing on how people interpreted their experience. Even if Operation Dixie organizers
came to the conclusion that organizing white workers was an initial step before organizing Black
workers, issues like a pursuit of the FEPC would need to be addressed eventually. One organizer
optimistically explained this approach: “once we could get among the whites and get them
organized, [we could] begin to do a little education work…that ‘you can’t win here unless you get
the black people too.’”
17
But this strategy would come with ramifications.
The strategy to limit the scope of Operation Dixie to the workplace (as opposed to the
workplace and the community) reflected the industries the CIO had determined to emphasize in
their organizing. Rather than focus on Black workers in the tobacco industry, wood products, or
packinghouses, Operation Dixie instead put the bulk of its energy into organizing textile workers.
18

The decision to focus on textile workers had sound rationale from the perspective of the CIO. As
Operation Dixie historian Barbara Griffith notes, “textiles constituted the preeminent ‘runaway’
industry.”
19
Unionized shops in the north were closing their plants and moving South to take

67
advantage of lower labor costs. By the end of the war, 80% of textile jobs were in the South, yet the
Textile Workers Union of American (TWUA) only represented 20% of those workers.
20
And
further, textiles were the dominant industry in the region, employing one in four industrial workers.
21

Additionally, a good deal of the $1 million of funding for Operation Dixie came from the
Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA, $200,000) and the TWUA ($125,000).
22
And
the main director of Operation Dixie, George Baldanzi, came from the TWUA. In addition,
Baldanzi (like the other chief director of the project, Van Bittner) was not associated with the CIO’s
Communists or leftists, which they hoped would help undercut the inevitable charges of red-baiting
(from the AFL and business leaders alike) that trailed the CIO.
23
But this also meant that the
organizers had a shorter horizon of social change than others within the labor federation.
The decision to focus on textiles had consequences for the political tenor and racial
composition of the organizing campaign, as textile workers were predominantly white. Depending
on the state, Black workers were only 2-6% of people employed in textile plants and they were often
confined to positions as sweepers and janitors.
24
With this in mind, the strategy of anti-radicalism
and emphasis on recruiting organizers who were white and from the region had strong reasons but
carried deep repercussions.
25
Managers still used the specter of Black workers “taking” the jobs of
white workers to argue against the union, suggesting that integrating the mills would undermine the
job security of white workers.
26
As one organizer in South Carolina reflected, “employers stated that
if the union won [an election], a certain percentage of employed workers would be black as required
by the FEPC.”
27
It was this precise problem of job insecurity and exacerbated racist polarization that
Randolph and other socialists of his ilk had sought to negate when they pursued full employment
policy.
But the choices to avoid facing racism head-on did not weaken the power of white
supremacy to derail organizing. Instead, white supremacy ruptured organizing potentials in a host of

68
differing ways. Attempts to organize a plant in Elizabethton, TN were undermined when the Ku
Klux Klan, which had been reasonably dormant for years, began burning crosses on the homes of
workers considered “sexually immoral” a week after the union organizing started. The drive failed
because of the successful portrayal of the CIO as “not respectable.”
28
But white supremacist
practices were not solely external to Operation Dixie either. Memphis’s only Black organizer was
paid $100 less per month than his white counterparts.
29
The choice to avoid left-wing organizers and
focus on hiring non-leftist, white Southern men played on the worst assumptions about the white
workers whom the organizers would encounter; likewise, it weakened the organizers’ ability to speak
to the broad constituencies of working people they encountered; this philosophy assumed shared
identity would indicate shared politics and values. But even in the predominantly white textile
industry such decisions were built on unsteady logic, since so many textile workers were women and
the assumption that these types of conservative choices around staffing would translate into swift
organizing gains proved incorrect. According to the longtime leftist political educator, Myles Horton
of the Highlander Folk Center, such “hiring policies saddled [Operation Dixie] with a number of
organizers who lacked the nerve and know how-needed for Southern organizing.”
30
For Horton, the
choice to avoid addressing the role of white supremacy in the Southern labor market was a crucial
political error.
Such strategic errors could not be afforded in the context of the difficulties that Operation
Dixie organizers were confronting. These types of missteps made the challenge of organizing the
South all the more difficult since there were so many textile plants throughout the region; North
Carolina itself had more than 1000 plants whereas Operation Dixie as a whole had 200 organizers.
31

Seeking a big victory to generate further energy and resources, the organizers set their sights on
Kannapolis, NC—where 24,000 out of the town’s 50,000 people were employed by Charles Cannon
of Cannon Mills—the biggest such mill operations in the U.S.
32
Kannapolis epitomized the

69
totalitarianism that could be practiced in company towns, where the owner had tremendous control
over workers’ lives. As Griffith relates, Cannon “could not only fire a worker, or elect not to fire
him for ‘runnin’ around on his wife’; he could cause people to lose their jobs for other
transgressions including, but extending beyond, a ‘disrespectful attitude.’”
33
All arrest records for the
town were forwarded on to Cannon. He employed a systematic regime of spies and informants. And
most workers lived in company housing below cost. Such an atmosphere made the fears of
unemployment and a lost home too great an obstacle for Operation Dixie organizers to overcome.
34

Under these circumstances Operation Dixie’s ten organizers in Kannapolis could not even find
housing in town, let alone an in-shop committee capable of challenging a textile titan like Cannon
Mills, which made almost $33 million that year.
35

In contrast to the efforts to organize textile workers under the banner of Operation Dixie,
Black workers in the tobacco industry found great success in North Carolina. The Food, Tobacco,
Agricultural, and Allied Workers of America (FTA) had already been successfully organizing tobacco
factories in North Carolina at the start of Operation Dixie. But still they decided to become a part of
the broader Operation Dixie campaign, partly due to fear of AFL unions coming in to make
sweetheart deal with employers and thus undercut FTA and CIO efforts.
36
As historian Robert
Korstad notes, these organizing campaigns spread rapidly throughout the North Carolina tobacco
plants, as Black women and men united workplace and community organizing, often holding initial,
secret meetings in peoples’ homes and, after building a large enough following, holding rallies in
church. As one worker involved in such struggles, John Pease, noted, “it wasn’t just wages we
wanted, but freedom.”
37
Such strategies, Korstad argues, enabled the FTA’s push in North Carolina
to be “among the most successful of Operation Dixie’s endeavors.” By November 1946, the FTA
had won twenty-five elections representing 8,000 workers throughout North Carolina.
38

However, at the same time such victories were being celebrated in North Carolina,

70
elsewhere, forces were mounting against these efforts to expand freedom and democracy in the
workplace and the community. The 1946 election results were a big blow to left-reform forces
seeking to continue the fight for full and fair employment. At the end of the year CIO convention,
the union federation decided to cut the budget for Operation Dixie in half.
39
And on November
25
th
, President Truman created the Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty; acting on the
advice of the House Civil Service Committee (dominated by Jim Crow-elected Democrats like
Robert Ramspeck of Georgia), Truman authorized the creation of a body to investigate and fire any
“disloyal or subversive person” employed by the government.
40
Historian Landon Storrs suggests
that this was an attempt by Truman to forestall even more significant repressive policy;
41
but
nonetheless, it helped set in motion a cascade of Cold War policies that would restrict the ambitions
of organized labor, civil rights, and left movements.
A few months afterwards, in the summer of 1947, the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act over
President Truman’s veto, further constrained the capacities of working people to oppose the
rightward shift in U.S. politics. The law outlawed secondary sympathy boycotts, thus breaking a key
tool to utilize for uniting working people across craft, industry, and workplace;
42
it authorized
employers to file for decertification of unions with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) and
intimidate their workers from joining unions; and it granted firms greater power to pursue court
injunctions against unions.
43
The Act outlawed the closed shop—a system of labor control whereby
unions had a greater role of hiring practices—which enabled states to pass right to work laws,
further weakening union power. In addition to other provisions, Taft-Hartley required unionists to
declare that they were not Communists. As historian Robert Zieger notes, the “anti-Communist
affidavit was particularly offensive because it implied that unionists were uniquely suspect.”
44
This
sought to chip away at the “laboring of American culture” that had taken place under the auspices of
the Popular Front.
45
While Taft-Hartley was drafted and promoted by business organizations like the

71
National Association of Manufacturers and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, it was the way in which
an assault on unions strengthened white supremacy that brought forth crucial votes needed for its
passage from Southern legislators.
46
As historian Ira Katzenelson argues, “had southern Democratic
voting patterned like that of other Democrats, Taft-Hartley would not have been passed into law.”
47

Taft-Hartley, should therefore be understood as an essential component of the broad panoply of Jim
Crow policies of the period. Anti-democracy in the South thus imperiled the livelihood and
democratic ambitions of a tremendous swath of people outside the former confederacy, as well as in
it.
While Senator Taft had attempted to exploit the racist and exclusionary policies of unions to
argue that Taft-Hartley amounted to FEPC legislation, few civil rights activists believed such
misinformation. Revealing the intra-racial class cleavages, the Negro Newspaper Publishing
Association supported the bill, bringing forth the ire of Roy Wilkins, A. Philip Randolph and other
civil rights activists. Wilkins, hardly a leftist, wrote forcefully that the publishers “were acting as
businessmen…not as spokesmen for the great mass of their readers who are workers,” who will be
harmed by Taft-Hartley.
48
Randolph argued that the “remedy for discrimination in trade unions and
industry is not legislation such as Taft-Hartley which robs labor of its gains and rights but the
…FEPC Bill…now pending in Congress.”
49
But it was those affiliated with the Communist
movement who described most deeply the poisonous impacts that Taft-Hartley foreshadowed for
Black people. William Patterson explained how the bill was part of a “failure to safeguard the lives,
property, and social rights” of Black people, as exemplified by the refusal to devote resources to
flood control, the weakening of rent control, and a general atmosphere where “the anti-Communists
are anti-everything progressive.”
50
The Congress of American Women (the short-lived, but
influential left-feminist organization, that boasted 250,000 members before being destroyed under
Cold War pressure) spoke out strongly on the impact of Taft-Hartley on Black women. The

72
organization, which had leadership from Communists like Elizabeth Gurley Flynn and Claudia Jones
(and some scholars have suggested had more “black women in leadership positions than any other
feminist movement in U.S. history”) argued that because Black women were already discriminated
against, they would be especially harmed by the law.
51

As could be expected, there were sharp divergences amongst working people’s responses to
the law. Phil Singer, a socialist worker at General Motors in Detroit, described the sentiments of his
co-workers: “One fellow says: ‘Those guys are really out to put chains on us.’ Another says: ‘Labor
all over the country should walk out.’ A third says: ‘This will fix those union leaders.’”
52
While the
CIO-PAC had tried to rally rank and file opposition to the bill back in April through June, hoping
for millions to take to the streets; but they were unable to marshal such numbers.
53
Although
100,000 workers protested in Detroit, holding signs reading, “Down with Jim Crow Legislation” and
“Fight Repeal of the Wagner Act,” and another 140,000 people protested in New York, in the end
these protests had as much impact than Truman’s veto.
54

Initially within the CIO, there was strident resistance to the law. CIO General Counsel Lee
Pressman considered Taft-Hartley to be an effective “repeal” of the Wagner Act. Replacing what
many had called, “labor’s Magna Charta,” Pressman described “a government instrument conceived,
designed, and intended to be an instrument of oppression against the trade unionists and workers.”
55

SOC coordinator Bittner declared it to be, “fascism in its ultimate form.”
56
It is difficult to fathom
though that Bittner, took his own analysis with the seriousness it deserved. Rather than encouraging
workers to strike following Taft-Hartley, the leadership of the CIO turned to political maneuvering
to register their protest. CIO historian Robert Zieger has suggested their “angry rhetoric was
conscious hyperbole.“
57
While the CIO debated opposing the law by calling a general strike, in the
end they decided to try to fight it in the courts.
58
Unfortunately for many of the workers in the
South, whom Bittner was tasked with organizing, “fascism” resembled their quotidian reality in

73
company towns where government and private sector collaboration elicited an array of
undemocratic practices.
Despite such extremely difficult circumstances for organizing, in the years after the war,
Local 22 of the FTA was one of the strongest and best hopes to lead a democratic movement in the
region. Its members in Winston Salem built up a strong biracial union led by Black women and men
who, recognizing how the government and private sector relied on each other, made demands on
both. Since mechanization was decreasing the labor force needed to make R.J. Reynolds’ Camel
cigarettes, they argued for 30 hours of work for 40 hours of pay; they maintained that
unemployment was the “responsibility of the whole community,” and thus should be responded to
with public jobs and progressive taxation. But Local 22 was enmeshed in consistent battles at a host
of scales; as historian Robert Korstad explained, following a successful strike, “Reynolds exercised a
loophole in the 1947 revision of the state’s unemployment compensation law (which it had
undoubtedly helped to write) to deprive seasonal workers of its benefits.” Such action was taken,
Korstad suggests, primarily as a “way of demonstrating Reynolds’ power.”
59
Indeed, the $25,000
they saved from the change amounted to less than .1% of their almost $26 million in paid taxes that
year.
60
In these ways, just as Local 22 sought to expand the bounds of trade union struggle, elite
actors, recognizing the importance of unemployment as a threat, countered by moving decisions
from the hands of elected officials into the hands of administrative bodies, and gerrymandering
districts to restrict the power Black working-class voters to use government to ameliorate the harms
of mechanization.
61

Adding weight to Bittner’s provocative rhetoric about fascism were the ways that police were
frequently utilized to uphold the power of employers on both local and national levels across
divergent regions; and the rise of the Red Scare supplemented this. Labor organizers in the South
were race-baited and red-baited. As historian Horace Huntley explains, in the case of Birmingham

74
Alabama, “communism, labor questions and race were inextricably bound together…when [a white
person] was suspected of being a Communist or possessing ‘inflammatory literature,’ a ‘liquor
warrant’ ordinarily was issued…to allow a search of that person’s premises…police rarely bothered
to obtain a warrant when Black homes were to be searched.”
62
Such practices, however, were not
solely consolidated in the South. Racist, patriarchal, homophobic, and anti-Communist ideas
provided a vernacular to delineate those whose safety and lives were deemed valued by police and
government and those whose lives were not. A few months after Taft-Hartley, when FBI chief J.
Edgar Hoover was urged to investigate the assassination attempt on UAW President Walter Reuther
in Detroit, he refused, stating that he would not “send the FBI in every time some nigger woman
gets raped.”
63
Along the West Coast, Revels Cayton, leader of the Marine, Cooks, and Stewards
Union (MCS) and the National Negro Congress described the need to understand the intimacies
between these types of divisive tactics: “If you let them red bait, they’ll race bait. If your let them
race bait, they’ll queen bait,” he declared.
64
Empowered by the Port Security Act, so-called, “commie
queers” of MCS were hauled off ships “in leg irons and handcuffs and…[paraded]…through the
streets.” As the union described, “the Coast Guard and shipowners are trying to take us back to the
days before [the big union victory in the strike of] ’34.”
65
While these practices could not be
considered fascism per se, taken together, they reveal something far short of any purported liberal
democracy, and show how throughout this period, repressive governmental power was utilized to
augment the vicious power of employers.
Nevertheless, even before Taft-Hartley, Operation-Dixie was flailing. But the added weight
of nationally repressive labor legislation (and the federation’s response to it) weakened the CIO too
much to mount another significant challenge. Local 22 was beaten back by a ferocious onslaught of
forces they faced in 1948-49; when the leaders of FTA refused to sign statements declaring
themselves not to be Communists (thus depriving the union of status before the NLRB) raids from

75
competing AFL and CIO unions soon ensued; and Reynolds utilized the opportunity to neglect
negotiating a new contract.
66
By scrutinizing the patriotism of unions, Taft-Hartley provoked a
response from the majority of CIO unions to tear their own fragile house apart by deciding to expel
Communist affiliated unions from the federation. Utilized by some as an opportunity to oust rivals
within the labor movement, the choice to collaborate with the governmental assault had disastrous
consequences for the most marginalized working people. By ejecting a number of the most effective
unions in the South, the FTA and the International Union of Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers,
Operation Dixie shredded its best hopes of success.
67
Though it continued on until 1953, by 1949 a
TWUA organizer lamented, “since the enactment of the Taft-Hartley law we have been unable to
organize many non-union plants.”
68
Building worker solidarity and achieving a union is difficult in
any circumstances, but the addition of repressive federal legislation, inadequate organizing resources,
and the failure to build off the strengths of unions like Local 22 (in addition to the constant
violences of Jim Crow) doomed Operation Dixie.
Taft-Hartley and the rise of McCarthyism (which were both premised on Jim Crow
totalitarianism) brutalized more than Operation Dixie. The repression of McCarthyism took a toll on
a broad constellation of democratic ambitions, beyond just those affiliated with the Communist
Party and its fellow travelers. Few on the left were untouched. FTA Local 22 included Communists,
but the organization was bigger than that. Rather, as Korstad notes, Local 22’s “institutional
flowering and political expansion flowed directly from the efforts of local people…[in the] process
of collective action…[it] was a workers’ invention…the product of their sentiments and
aspirations.”
69
Likewise historian Nancy MacLean argues, “the Red Scare halted much of U.S.
women’s progress by equating work for social justice and disarmament with Communist
subversion.”
70
McCarthyism exacerbated divisions within civil rights organizations and encouraged
anti-Stalinist socialists like A. Philip Randolph to mistrust Communists even more than they already

76
did.
71
As historian Landon Storrs has shown, the repression “stunted the development of the welfare
state” by targeting those governmental employees who pursued left solutions to problems in many
political spheres—scientists, health professionals, public power experts, public housing specialists
and economists.
72
Loyalty investigations placed socialists, social democrats, and left-Keynesians
under added scrutiny and often compelled them to represent their politics in more narrow ways,
resign from jobs, and more. Key proponents of full employment and expanding the purchasing
power and rights of consumers, Leon and Mary Dublin Keyserling were hounded with loyalty
investigations throughout the late 1940s and early 1950s. As Storrs states, such policies “guaranteed
the defeat of more democratic policy alternatives by removing or crippling their government
advocates.”
73
To this end, many of the most significant humanitarian struggles emerging from the
immediate postwar period were unsuccessful as a result of extreme and brutal governmental and
extra-governmental repression.

Political losses, like victories, accumulate. When a given reform is achieved, it lays the
foundation for further struggles. In the case of the postwar contests for power, the threat of
unemployment (and thus the failure of the Full Employment Bill of 1945) should not be
underestimated. One will never know how bold Kannapolis’ textile workers might have been
without the threat of loosing their jobs and homes by challenging Charles Cannon’s dictatorial rule.
But we do know that Kannapolis’ workers were haunted by memories of the 1934 Southern general
strike, when, as Cannon Mills worker Bessie Shankle put it, her family “nearly starved to death.”
74

Communist affiliated unions were some of the most innovative in crafting rank-and-file solutions to
unemployment problems in their industry. The International Longshore and Warehouse Union
(ILWU) developed the “low-man-out” system to ensure that workers, not employers, controlled
how work was dispatched and that it was offered first to those who had the worked the least hours.
75

77
The Marine, Cooks, and Stewards Union developed something similar, with workers sharing jobs
during the recession of 1949 to ensure that Black workers were not fired.
76
For those suspected of
be being Communists, loss of a job was one of the most prevalent consequences one was likely to
be faced with. As historian of McCarthyism Ellen Schrecker puts it, “the punishments were
primarily economic. People lost their jobs…without the participation of…private sector
[punishments], McCarthyism would not have affected rank-and-file members of the Communist
movement nor so effectively stifled political dissent.”
77
An estimated 10,000 people lost jobs. And
this approximation does not include a broader swath of people whose applications were rejected, or,
like Mary Dublin Keyserling, “resigned under duress… [or] were ostensibly dismissed for other
reasons.”
78
Had the efforts to guarantee employment been successful, the impacts of such repression
would have softened. In this sense, the argument that Jim Crow politics helped “limit liberalism”
becomes all the more forceful.
79
The history of inadequate welfare state provisions, and specifically
the dearth of governmental supports for unemployed people, is thus wholly intertwined with the
counterrevolutionary “success” of Jim Crow and Red Scare violence. In the turbulent postwar
world, the prevention of unions from achieving their goals of organizing the South, and the
continued consolidation of racist power were tremendous setbacks for social movements. And, for
those concerned with the real value of the dollar and maintaining a low inflation rate, they were
quite beneficial. The absence of unions in the South weakened unions in the North. If workers’
wage demands rose too high, the company could threaten to move production to non-union plants
in the South. And in many cases, companies did take such action over the subsequent years.
80

Capital's Quiet Victory: The 1951 Treasury-Federal Reserve Accord
The Federal Reserve is one key component for capital’s victories in the 1950s, but it should
not be isolated from the role of the Taft-Hartley Act, McCarthyism, increased postwar automation,
and the CIO’s failure of Operation Dixie to organize in the South. Nevertheless, the Federal

78
Reserve’s actions after 1951 played a crucial role in curtailing working-class power, and ensuring that
the promises of full employment were undermined. But in order to take such action, the Federal
Reserve needed to wrench free from its situation following the war whereby its policy actions were
encumbered by the governmental demands to keep interest rates low. Through gaining so-called
‘independence from government,’ monetary policy (control over the money supply) became de-
democratized at the same time that fiscal policy (governmental use of taxation and expenditures) was
increasingly under the influence of people who had, up to that point, been politically marginalized;
the extension of the franchise to women in 1919, the organization of the CIO’s PAC, and the rising
power of the civil rights movement, all warned of the specter of a democratized fiscal policy; with
non-elites growing their power in the political process, and the government escalating its power in
the economic sphere, the question of who controlled the money supply was an urgent one. As a
result, an anti-democratic, Jim Crow-esque monetary policy regime would soon supplement
Dixiecrat power to undermine efforts at full employment policy.
81
This proved vital, as faith in price
stability of the dollar was so important to the success of postwar global political economic relations.
But as with most political transformations, it took immense efforts in order for the Fed to achieve
their victory.
The Employment Act of 1946 established a dual mandate for the Federal Reserve to
promote maximum employment and price stability with a low inflation rate.
82
For almost a decade
prior to the act, the Fed had acted with relative moderation (after a choice in 1936-1937 to increase
the reserve requirements for commercial banks, thus slowing the economy and coalescing with
President Roosevelt’s spending cutbacks to help elicit the short but deep recession of 1937-1938).
83

Famed economist John Kenneth Galbraith considered this decision to be the to be “last error of the
Federal Reserve for a long time” since it was “its last action of any moment for fifteen years.”
84

While Galbraith was correct in his assessment of the relative passivity of the Fed after 1937, this

79
should not be confused with inaction. Rather, from 1937-1951, monetary policy, under the direction
of Mariner Eccles, took a back seat for fiscal policy. As Eccles put it, the primary role of the Fed is
to “supplement fiscal policy.”
85

After 1937 and during the war, the Federal Reserve, under pressure from government,
agreed to keep interest rates low so as to prevent even larger deficits than were necessary to finance
the war effort (despite being partial to higher interest rates).
86
Such actions were not trivial since
almost sixty-percent of the federal governmental spending was paid for by borrowing. Eccles, for his
part, had argued for Roosevelt to tax more and borrow less to finance the war.
87

In the subsequent years following the war, the Fed fought with ferocious intensity to act
independently and create the interest rates they saw fit. As former Fed Chair Ben Bernancke recently
noted, “after the war, the Fed sought to resume an independent monetary policy, fearing the
inflationary consequences of continued political control.”
88
Another former Fed Chair, Paul Volcker,
would have agreed with this assessment of the situation, whereby the Treasury Department
pressured the Fed to keep interest rates low so as to contain debt costs and stimulate the economy.
Frustrated with the ambiguous power dynamic of this arrangement, Volcker wrote in his 1949
Princeton senior thesis, “there must be some better method for assigning responsibility for
monetary control.” “Either the monetary authority should be located entirely in the Federal Reserve
System or [the] Treasury [Department] and the Reserve System should be combined in one
[governmental] agency,” he argued.
89
For Volcker, if the Fed was going to be under such a system of
indirect control by the Treasury Department, there was little use in having them as separate bodies.
And if not, the Fed should be able to operate with independence.
Similarly, Leon Keyserling considered the relationship between the Treasury and the Fed
“intolerable,” and in many ways would have agreed with Volcker (who, thirty-years later, would
menace Keyserling’s attempts at full employment policy).
90
Keyserling had, in late 1948, replaced

80
Edwin Nourse as the head of the Council of Economic Advisors (CEA). Serving as the Chairman of
the newly created group that was still deciphering its role in the governmental apparatus, Nourse had
been uncomfortable with the notion that the CEA would act towards political ends and resisted
speaking before congressional bodies and otherwise exerting political influence. Nourse would go on
to resign as a result of these growing pains and debates over what the Council could be. He wrote of
the Chairmanship, in a draft of his resignation letter to President Truman, “if it is in any way to be
assigned a political role or to be allowed to stray over into political activities or lay itself open to
political influences, you would want an entirely different kind of chairman.”
91
With Keyserling’s
appointment as Chair of the Council, Truman got precisely that—a Chairman who insisted on
arguing strongly for a political vision. Whereas Nourse would allow for the Fed to create monetary
policy independent of political influence, Keyserling opposed such a stance.
92
Keyserling felt
strongly that low interest rates were essential to a sound economy in order to spur investment,
increase economic output, and enable maximum employment.
93

For Keyserling, issues of monetary policy were always decidedly political problems
masquerading as technical problems; and he wanted a voice in those political debates. Keyserling, as
one scholar put it, “would not hesitate to try to involve the Council in any issues that he thought
would lead to economic expansion.”
94
Such an attitude not only distinguished him from his
predecessor, but also put him in the room with officials charged with responding to the Soviet
Union’s newfound ability to detonate atomic weapons after August 1949.
Members of the Keyserling Council were instrumental in the shaping of the “NSC-68”
document that outlined the strategic “moral, psychological, and political problems” for confronting
the Soviet power.
95
NSC-68 was a bold proposal, written with the intention of creating a
comprehensive plan for national security policy.
96
But it did even more than that. Historian Thomas
McCormick has argued it was “one of the most pivotal policy documents in American history.”

81
NSC-68 proposed solutions to the U.S. government’s “tripartite crisis”: (1) the nuclear armament of
the USSR, (2) the Communist revolution in China, and (3) the “dollar gap” (Europe and Japan’s
shortage of U.S. dollars to buy needed imports of capital goods and food from the U.S.).
97
The
Keyserling Council supported the military strategists in their ambitious estimates of what types of
funding was necessary for U.S. military spending to achieve the goal of rearming Europe (while also
providing an injection of U.S. dollars via military aid so as to override any political constraints of the
Marshall Plan, and because of the belief that the stability of European capitalism was indispensible
to U.S. capitalism).
98
Keyserling’s Keynesian thinking played an important role in affirming the view
of the State Department (in contrast to that of the Defense Department) that running budgetary
deficits was hardly the biggest worry. He discussed these matters often with Paul Nitze, the leading
architect of NSC-68 and the Director of Policy Planning for the State Department. Going into the
discussions of NSC-68, the military budget was around $12.5 billion, and Keyserling’s predecessor,
Nourse, had believed anything above $15 billion would be an untenable drain on the economy, while
the Defense Department envisioned spending about $17-18 billion. But Nourse was no longer in the
picture, and equipped with Keyserling’s economic thinking, Nitze and the State Department officials
proposed greatly expanded military spending in the range between $35-50 billion.
99
As Nitze
recalled, “though [Keyserling] wanted to spend the money on other programs, he was convinced
that the country could afford $40 billion for defense if necessary.”
100
The ripples of the Red Scare
were also felt here; during this time Keyserling and his wife began to utilize increasingly anti-
Communist personas in an attempt to prevent suspicion about their own politics.
101

Although this level of defense spending was hypothetical and unnecessary during the
drafting of NSC-68 in spring 1950, such proposals quickly became crucial for creating the conditions
for the political acceptance of what many have called “military Keynesianism.” Under this doctrine,
military spending and rearmament would ensure that conditions akin to the Great Depression would

82
not threaten the mass of people in the event of a cyclical economic downturn.
102
The fact that both
factories and workers were idled at the time made such a policy quite politically expedient as well.
103

These political and technical ideas about military and economic potentials were then established two
months after Truman received NSC-68 due to the outbreak of the Korean War. The Korean War
provided the needed political justification for the military spending, which otherwise would have
been quite difficult to pass through the conservative Congress. As news of NSC-68 was leaking to
the press in April 1950, Business Week noted, “don’t be surprised is the Administration resorts to
phony war crises to get its way in Congress on foreign policy legislation. A real enough crisis exists.
But it isn’t a war crisis now.”
104
Secretary of State Dean Acheson confirmed the difficulty of gaining
approval for the principles of NSC-68 without a war, when he announced years later that “Korea
came along and saved us,” and solidified the policy proposals of NSC-68.
105

The eruption of the Korean War less than two months after the completion of NSC-68
helped enact a new doctrine of Cold War economic policy. The Korean War brought with it a
rapidly accelerating military budget as “defense and international” spending shot up from $18 billion
in 1950, to $27 billion in 1951, to $49 billion in 1952, to $55 billion in 1953.
106
Such spending
increases brought with them rising inflation between 1950-1951.
107
Soon Keyserling’s economic
thinking and his insistence on the need for fixed and low interest rates came into heightened conflict
with the Federal Reserve, which was seeking to assert its power to enact any rates it saw fit. Indeed,
this was the conflict that Volcker had considered in his senior thesis; under such circumstances,
whose power would hold out?
The clash reached a breaking point in January-February of 1951 with open disagreement
between President Truman and the Fed. In the end of January, Truman called the Federal Open
Markets Committee (FOMC, the policy making group of the Fed) to the White House for a
meeting. At the meeting, he thought the FOMC had agreed to keep rates low to finance the war. But

83
a few days later, Board Chairman Thomas McCabe disagreed with Truman’s understanding of the
discussion. The FOMC continued to adhere to their insistence that maintaining the value of the
dollar was of primary importance.
108
On February 7
th
, Keyserling, on behalf of Truman, drafted a
stern rebuttal of this policy prescription. In it he drew on the Employment Act of 1946 to argue that
monetary policy should be acquiescent to the President. “The Congress has far more recent than the
establishment of the Federal Reserve System, recognized and imposed upon the President broad
responsibility for integrating national economic policies, for reconciling conflicts, and for developing
a unified program to stabilize and protect our economy,” he wrote.
109
Keyserling was asserting that
the Employment Act of 1946 (which he had authored) granted the executive branch the power to
plan and set forth economic policy. In addition, Keyserling suggested that the 1946 law should
supersede powers granted to the Fed under the 1913 Federal Reserve Act.
A few weeks later, on February 26
th
, Truman put in motion a strategy to create an agreement
on the controversy. He asked Keyserling and McCabe to work with John Snyder (Secretary of the
Treasury) and Charles E. Wilson (the aforementioned anti-labor General Electric executive, who had
been appointed director of the newly-created Office of Defense Mobilization) to create a plan to
alleviate the impasse. But Secretary Snyder was sick at the time, and so it was left to Treasury
Department staffers Edward Foley and William McChesney Martin, to represent the interests of the
Treasury Department. At the meeting, McCabe spoke enthusiastically of negotiations that were
underway between Martin and Win Riefler (a leading economist at the Fed). McCabe (attempting to
speed up the process and perhaps express support for Martin) insisted that the issue could not
afford to wait the two weeks for Snyder to recover from his eye surgery.
110

But Truman’s plans to reconcile the differences between Keyserling and the other power
brokers were soon derailed, and McCabe and the Fed got their way and established their
“independence.” Before Truman’s selected committee had a serious chance to do any work together,

84
an agreement was announced that Riefler and Martin had arranged what came to be known as the
Federal Reserve-Treasury Accord. During these negotiations, Keyserling had been noticeably absent.
One scholar has suggested that “in all probability, the threat of his involvement did its bit to force an
accord.”
111
Martin, while formally working for the Treasury, had family lineage with the Fed, since
his father had been President of the St. Louis Federal Reserve Bank; Keyserling, for his part,
suspected that Martin’s role in bringing the accord into being was less-than-honest, and that he
“double-crossed” Truman.
112
Truman expressed similar sentiments; years after he’d left the White
House, Truman saw Martin on a street in New York City and walked by him uttering only one word
as he passed, “traitor.”
113
Indeed, it is easy to imagine that Martin’s sympathies were divided; less
than three weeks after the announcement of the accord on March 4, Martin was nominated to
replace McCabe (following his resignation) as the Chairman of the Fed.
114
During Martin’s
acceptance speech, he alleviated any concerns amongst those in the Fed that his alliance was to full
employment or the Treasury Department. He declared, “unless inflation is controlled, it could prove
to be an even more serious threat to the vitality of our country than the more spectacular
aggressions of enemies outside our borders.”
115
Such a statement clarified to the Fed staff that he
was not inclined towards the Keyserling-Truman camp.
The efforts of Keyserling to use the 1946 Employment Act as justification for presidential
control over monetary policy were of great import at the time and even more so in hindsight.
Describing the moment almost thirty years later, Allan Sproul (who in 1951 was the Vice-Chairman
of FOMC) recalled this moment as “one of the most serious attacks ever made by the executive
branch of our government on the ‘independence within the government’ of the Federal Reserve
System.”
116
Sproul would claim that the Accord was needed “so that [the Fed] could assist in
carrying out the anti-inflation policies …not fighting for a higher level of interest rates per se.”
117
In
effect though, higher interest rates than those Keyserling would have desired became the future

85
course for the post-Accord Fed. This power struggle articulated the key tension that Volcker hit on
in his senior thesis: would the elected government control monetary policy, or would the “market”
in the form of central bankers?
118
And this power struggle revealed the political contradictions of the
dual mandate: if only one element could be contained, unemployment or inflation, which would be the
premier objective?
With the Accord, the Federal Reserve System achieved a tremendous victory for its banking
constituency by gaining its relative independence from governmental administration and the Council
of Economic Advisors.
119
The Accord thereby established the Fed’s relative subservience to banking
interests and forged the essential elements for the success postwar global capitalism; as economists
Juliet Schor and Gerald Epstein argue:
“at stake was…the whole structure of postwar monetary and credit policy. Would monetary
policy be controlled by the Administration with the goal of maintaining full
employment…with inflation controlled by government-directed quantitative measures? Or
would monetary policy emphasize inflation control, using a minimum of quantitative
restrictions and relying on changes in interest rates?”
120

Ensuring a low rate of inflation and maintaining a stable dollar, for the Fed, was a job too vital to be
left to the whims of politicians susceptible to social movement forces and election cycles. These
questions were of great concern to business interests as they fought for control of the shop floor
and the right to mechanize and automate production as they saw fit following the wildcat strikes of
the war years. For employers and bankers, this indicated how much of a problem labor scarcity
could be. Although Fed autonomy was not always a positive arrangement for employers seeking to
borrow money at the lowest possible rate, they shared a common enmity for a full employment
economy, and the worker empowerment that accompanied it. In addition, although the Fed
occasionally sung rhetorical notes to the contrary, their trepidation about inflation was not due to
concern for the elderly or those on fixed incomes; rather, elites feared inflationary spirals because, in
the case of wage-push inflation, it indicated to them that workers were winning the class struggle by

86
forcing higher wages, thereby pushing up prices across the board; likewise, for the money-owning
and bond-holding class, inflation created fears over how long that money will maintain its relative,
real value; if profit margins were usually construed as sacrosanct in U.S. society, and even to a
greater degree during a war against Communism, then the necessary political response to address
inflation was to create conditions that squeezed workers rather than cut into profits.
121
Charles E.
Wilson, explained the urgency of the situation starkly in a July 1951 speech: “if inflation gains on us
during this period, Stalin will have won a tremendous victory…without firing a single shot.” And
further he explained, “we would be easier prey if we squandered our economic strength through the
process of inflation and the ultimate destruction of the dollar.”
122
Life magazine affirmed this stance;
their editorial upheld the principles of Wilson’s speech in no uncertain terms: “Inflation is the
Devil,” read the headline. And it closed with the pronouncement: “we’ll go to church with Charlie
Wilson.”
123
This church embraced the perpetual maintenance of a group of unemployed people who
served as a human sacrifice to keep the powers of inflation in abeyance.
The Accord—and the conflicts surrounding it—reveals the central contradictions of postwar
capitalism. Scrutiny into the history of the Accord shows that the concern, described in Bernanke’s
mundane language of “fearing inflationary consequences” implicated the entire Bretton Woods
system, since so many currencies were now tied to the dollar (in addition to apprehensions about
inflation’s contributions to the rise of Hitler). As a result, for those interested in sustaining
capitalism, inflation fighting had to take precedence. Full employment, and the worker power
accompanying it, provoked an immense fear of a wave of wage-push inflation—the result of which
could imperil even more than the savings of the wealthy. These events moved the Fed from an
ambiguous role to one decidedly on the side of capital, and outside the sphere of democratic
challenge. Such decisions would become of crucial importance in the subsequent decades for Black
freedom struggles as they responded to and sought to overturn Fed policy that undermined a full

87
employment economy. Although the lives of marginalized working people were not valued, their
subordination was. Consequently, the methods of maintaining the subordination of the unemployed,
surplus labor force proved to be of global significance. To this end, the quotidian violence of Jim
Crow life represented an ‘old mode’ of political strength undergirding the prevention of a full
employment economy though the congressional power of Jim Crow politicians. By 1951, however,
the Fed won the ability to supplement and augment the task of preventing William Beveridge’s
vision of full employment from taking hold. Beveridge’s understanding of full employment (one that
empowered workers in the labor market) was judged as incompatible with the Fed’s
conceptualization of their edict to establish ‘maximum employment’ and price stability. Although it
would face a number of challenges over the coming decades, the Fed’s power of independence,
which it first achieved in this conflict, would prove to be a durable structure whose consequences
would be most acutely shouldered by those whose lives were sacrificed for a low inflation rate.
Confronting Unemployment in the Early-Mid 1950s
Economic statistics about the postwar period, and especially the booming years of the 1950s,
tell a story of rising abundance and prosperity. Common stereotypes of the period present it as a
time of social cohesion with the ascendance of middle-class domesticity. But far from solely a period
of stasis or the calm before the storm of the 1960s, during the 50s, working people held pervasive
fears of a return to the Depression, even when the economy was growing, and even more so during
downturns in 1953-54 and 1957-58. In 1950, almost one of three people polled considered a
“serious depression,” with accompanying unemployment, to be on the horizon within the next two
years.
124
Likewise, the 1950s were anything but steady as the Civil Rights movement shook the
ideological, political, and economic foundations of the nation with iconic victories in the Brown vs.
Board Education Supreme Court decision and the Montgomery Bus Boycott. In sum, the 50s were a
period of immense political conflict and turbulence along lines of class, race, and gender.
125

88
In addition to solidifying NSC-68’s Cold War containment policy, the Korean War brought
to the surface a host of domestic contradictions of the period. For Black men, the Korean War
presented a unique opportunity to join the military with more dignity than they had previously
experienced. In 1948, on the heels of rejected Civil Rights legislation from Congress, President
Truman issued Executive Order 9981 calling for the desegregation of the military. He’d taken such
steps in response to multiple points of pressure leading up to the November election. Facing a tight
race with challengers from the left (Henry Wallace) and the right (Thomas Dewey), Truman knew
that African Americans were an essential voting constituency he could not afford to lose. A. Philip
Randolph utilized the opportunity to continue demands from the March on Washington Movement
by bringing together the League for Non-Violent Civil Disobedience Against Military Segregation in
order to, as he put it, take “militant action” against the “government sponsored program of Jim
Crow.”
126
Working with Bayard Rustin and A.J. Muste from the Fellowship of Reconciliation,
Randolph argued for draft resistance—a labor strike against segregated soldiering—as a tactic to win
the reforms (which he hoped would then spread to other branches of government). In late July,
Truman caved in and issued the Order, which would become of great importance with the decision
to enter the Korean War less than two years later.
127

Executive Order 9881 was crucial to the desegregation of the military during the Korean
War, but just as essential was the combination of labor surplus at home and a labor shortage for
soldiers. As historian Kimberley Phillips argues, “the army …integrated the battlefield…out of [a]
need for critical combat labor, not any clear commitment to bring about equality in American life or
within its ranks.”
128
Phillips notes that Black men disproportionally joined the military during the
Korean War—accounting for 25% of the soldiers, while representing 11% of the U.S. population.
129

During what seemed to be a booming military economy in 1952 and 1953—years with the lowest
overall unemployment rates (3.1% and 2.9% overall) of the entire postwar period—at least 5,000

89
Black workers went without jobs in January 1952, as unemployment hit the normally bustling
Detroit auto plants.
130
As a result, what appeared as “choices” to enter the military were predicated
on a cruel labor market (with Black workers bearing the brunt of job cuts via mechanization and
automation in the South and North) and a draft system (after 1952) that discriminated against poor
and working-class people.
131
Therefore, when the Chairman of the Board of General Electric
proudly declared, “technological progress is necessary in order to maintain our national security,” his
statement had more layers than he knew.
132
In this way, despite all-time low rates of unemployment
for Black workers (4.4% for men), automation was an essential facet of cold war militarism—both
to build the weapons technology and the guns, and to create the economic conditions that coerced
the soldiers to push the buttons and pull the triggers.
133

The Korean War also coalesced with other forces to refashion the industrial geography of
the country. Two-thirds of defense contracts flowed directly to about 100 major corporations.
134

Since the rise of aerial bombing during World War II, siting a plant became a matter of national
security and firms were asked to disperse plant construction away from industrial centers.
135
But
there were additional reasons for industry to move; seeking to flee from a growing labor upsurge
(more than 5,000 strikes in 1952 and 1953) and concerns with a lack of shop floor control, many
companies began building plants in new areas across the South and West.
136
Companies knew to
systematically avoid Michigan, Ohio, New York and Pennsylvania, which made up for over half of
the CIO’s members (in contrast to the South and Southwest which held only 14% of their
members).
137
Such regional developments, as the scholar Mike Davis argues, were “‘tax-led’ because
federal fiscal transfers were the prime movers in the creation of the Sunbelt.”
138
Between 1950-1960,
non-agricultural employment boomed in the South and West, with California, Florida, Arizona, New
Mexico, and Nevada being prime beneficiaries of such changes (See Figure 4). As the scholar Ann
Markusen confirmed, “the Pentagon [went] out of its way to aid and encourage contractors to move

90
away from unions, to engage in union-busting, and to automate their production processes to rid
themselves of blue collar labour.”
139

Figure 4: State Rates of change in employment 1950-1960. Federal governmental activity was key in
shaping these this industrial geography.
140

Federal Reserve policy during the Korean War also supported such changes in industrial
geography, and decisions to move production outside of union strongholds. Soon after William
McChesney Martin took over as head of the Fed, he chose to dampen any inflationary pressures, not
by restricting bank credit (which could be loaned to firms for new plant construction) but by
utilizing its Regulations “W” and “X.” Such anti-inflation policies unevenly impacted working-class
people by increasing down payments and shortening the length of loans for items like cars and
homes.
141
When Walter Reuther questioned Martin about the unfairness of such action, he replied
with amusement “bankers simply would not tolerate such control.”
142
With the Accord now in place,
working people had few places in which they could register their displeasure with the Fed’s control
over their lives.

91
With the U.S. economy increasingly reliant on military spending, the end of the Korean War
brought with it a recession. Leading Black trade unionist Willard Townsend had warned of such
circumstances, stating in 1952 that “the threat of large scale joblessness hangs like a dark cloud over
all peace-time planning…if we fail to provide sufficient jobs to go around, the Negro will be the first
to suffer.”
143
Townsend proved correct as unemployment spiked to above 6% and continued to be
higher amongst African Americans. With workers undermined, the recession plunged the CIO into
debt and solidified the road they had begun traveling along after the death of President Phillip
Murray in November 1952. Though the subsequent CIO president Walter Reuther was further to
the left than the other major force in the CIO (the United Steelworkers of America, USWA), dislike
between Reuther and USWA President David McDonald ensured that the CIO would be unable to
provide an adequate response to meet the post-Korean War organizing challenge.
144

Auto workers and steelworkers had been successful in bargaining during the war, but rather
than lifting up the standards and wages of all workers with them, it brought into relief the ways in
which inflation can segment workers. In May 1950, at the urging of General Motors (which was
seeking greater stability in shop floor operations) the UAW signed the “Treaty of Detroit”—a five-
year long contract that granted big wage increases to workers over the subsequent years. The
contract solidified the acceptance of “escalator” raises that linked wages to cost of living adjustments
(what two-years prior UAW President Walter Reuther had been skeptical about). Reuther feared—
correctly—that such an arrangement would protect UAW workers from inflationary pressures while
more marginalized workers, and people on fixed incomes, suffered under declining real wages.
Daniel Bell, writing in Fortune, described the impact of the contract as one that “accepts the existing
distribution of income between wages and profits as ‘normal’ if not ‘fair’.”
145
Uncomfortable with
such an arrangement in 1948 due to it broader political implications, Reuther accepted the “treaty”
in 1950.
146

92
But the Treaty of Detroit arrangement was hardly an armistice for the auto companies. As
the UAW increased its power, it motivated employers to utilize techniques to weaken the union’s
strength. Like many companies, GM invested significant sums of money—$3.4 billion between
1946-1954—in new technology and building plants outside union strongholds.
147
The subsequent
years saw the growth of what historian David Brody has called “workplace contractualism,” whereby
shop floor conflict over workplace norms were adjudicated not at the point of production between
workers and managers, but through a contractually negotiated grievance procedure between union
officials higher-level management.
148
Amongst much else, this bound union officials to enforce
contract provisions in ways that sometimes ran counter to the daily interests of the union members.
James Boggs, a Black socialist intellectual and Chrysler worker in Detroit, described how in the
subsequent years after the contract, “workers used …wildcat [strikes] as a defensive weapon to fight
off encroachment on their control at the point of production, while the companies gradually wore
them down with the help of the union.
149
These contracts, with their acceptance of “productivity
deals” (granting workers wage increases in accordance with productivity gains) weakened the power
of unions to represent the interests of workers at the point of production.
With their power declining on the shop floor, the CIO’s leadership increasingly concentrated
their efforts in the political realm, seeking to create more advantageous conditions for organizing. In
the midst of the recession after the Korean War, with union dues rapidly decreasing and putting the
federation in the red, the CIO’s Committee on Economic Policy tried to rally support behind a 10-
point program on unemployment to rekindle the social democratic vision of the 1940s.
150
In that
year’s CIO-PAC Handbook they reiterated these points and warned of a coming crisis of
underconsumption, which they described as “prosperity from the top down…has meant recession
from the bottom up.”
151
They excoriated the Eisenhower Administration’s plans for cutting taxes on
corporations, stating that such proposals were “based on the old trickle down theory of economic

93
life which failed to maintain prosperity in the past.” And they argued forcefully for legislation that:
(1) strengthened bargaining rights for workers and confronted the injustice of Taft-Hartley; (2)
advocated for increased unemployment compensation and expanded social security; (3) provided for
more construction of public housing; (4) created public works programs to build schools and
hospitals. They also encouraged all CIO State Councils to establish statewide “Full Employment
Committees” to pressure legislators.
152
However, these ambitious political initiatives were
accompanied with reductions in organizing resources, as projects like Operation Dixie (which had
limped along after Taft-Hartley) were shuttered, and the CIO’s ability to act as an vehicle for
organizing unorganized workers on the job collapsed.
153
In hindsight, without a huge effort at rank
and file popular education, it is difficult to imagine such bold proposals could have captured the
imaginations of the mass of working people. General public opinion polling data from this time
indicates as much. When asked about the CIO’s plans for expanded unemployment compensation
for laid off workers paid for by the company, 55% of people said it would not be practical versus
23% who said it would.
154
And when asked if the Eisenhower Administration should initiate a public
works program, 58% of people disagreed, while 33% said such proposals would be a good idea.
155

While these proposals were urgently needed, these attitudes suggest that it would take a significant
mass movement to gain traction on them.

94
Figure 5: This cartoon from the CIO’s 1954 pamphlet on unemployment shows how they were
concentrating their energy in the political sphere.
156

For women in the labor movement, the post-Korean War recession, and issues of
unemployment, significantly damaged feminist advances women had been making to equalize pay
with men and dismantle discriminatory hiring practices. As Lillian Hatcher, Assistant Director of the
UAW’s Women’s Bureau described, during the early 1950s “we were really [getting] down to the
serious business of eliminating discrimination…in [job] contracts.”
157
But the recession stunted such
efforts. As historian Nancy Gabin explained, the Women’s Bureau “found itself engaged in a
defensive battle to save women’s jobs rather than an offensive attack on sexually discriminatory
practices.”
158
Women soon began being attacked in the press and scapegoated for the jobs crisis.
159

The upsurge in unemployment negatively impacted women in more profound ways. One
facet of the effort to push women out of the workforce entailed the construction during this time of
the belief that working mothers were responsible for juvenile delinquency.
160
And anxieties about
juvenile delinquency soon became of greater importance as a problem to be politically addressed; in
1955 President Eisenhower highlighted the concerns about youth crime in his State of the Union
speech and allocated additional federal funding to states to bolster their crime control apparatus.
161

95
Tennessee Senator Estes Kefauver held hearings on juvenile delinquency, eventually arguing that
(amongst other causes) the lack of jobs was the key problem.
162
But many increasingly argued that
the family was the source of juvenile delinquency; 1955 saw Rebel Without a Cause become a hit movie
and affirmed broader anxieties about youth crime and the family.
163
The New York State
Commission on Youth and Delinquency stressed parental responsibility for child neglect leading to
delinquency and emphasized punitive actions towards parents as the appropriate response.
164
In
Cleveland, a judge threatened a mother with one year in a workhouse if she refused to leave her job
and “raise her son properly.”
165
At that year’s UAW Convention a delegate used the specter of
juvenile delinquency to argue against a resolution to oppose employment discrimination by sex and
marital status. But Emma Murphy, another UAW delegate, responded by describing how her
husband, who had twenty-two years of experience, was laid off and if not for her work, their “family
would be going hungry.”
166
Likewise, Joyce Cowley, an activist with the Socialist Workers Party at
the time, analyzed the crisis of daily survival undergirding the situation, noting that some “working
mothers…would be glad to stay home if someone would take care of their bills.”
167
Looked at from
this angle, the tensions articulated by these conflicts are an earlier round of what historian Robert
Self has identified as the inadequacies of “breadwinner liberalism” to respond to the economic
necessity for working families of having two wage earners in the household.
168
And in this sense, the
insufficient resolution of these racialized and gendered political economic contradictions of the
Keynesian 1950s set the stage for the crisis of liberalism and social democracy after the 1970s.
169

The employer offensive brought forth joblessness and further confirmed the need to pursue
full employment policy as an initial step in a broader strategy. In the Women’s Bureau report to the
1955 UAW convention, Director Caroline Davis described “mass layoffs of women.” The future
founder of the National Organization for Women argued: “when jobs are scarce management
invents varied and devious methods to create confusion and disunity among our

96
members…employers seek to divide us and divert our attention from the real issue at hand—full
employment.”
170
To this end, like Randolph, Davis argued that a guaranteed job was not a panacea
to eradicate racism or end patriarchy, but it was a goal that could make such tasks easier.

Unemployment, however, even if it was a persistent threat, did not always stifle organizing
during the early-mid 50s. During the initial organizing for the Montgomery Bus Boycott, Jo Ann
Gibson Robinson (a faculty member at Alabama State College and one of the leaders of the
Women’s Political Council that organized the protest) used the university’s mimeograph machine to
produce 52,500 leaflets about the protest. When confronted by the college president about her
actions, buoyed by the group of organizers and the urgency of the struggle, such trepidations were
overcome. As she put it, “I felt that he might fire me. But at that moment, I did not care if he did!”
Indeed, so compelling was the urgency of the growing civil rights movement, and Robinson’s skill as
an organizer, that she both disregarded his threats and convinced the school’s president to support
the boycott and he soon became ally of their struggle and donated money to support those who
were fired for their participation in the boycott.
171
But unemployment also structured many people’s
reactions to the boycott. For some white people, the protests served to metastasize racist power as
bus drivers who were laid off became deputized as police officers; while a young white librarian who
had written into the newspaper to express solidarity with the protest was threatened with firing, and
was so harassed and ostracized that she committed suicide.
172
On the whole though, unemployment
(in addition to other forces) helped constrain working peoples’ militancy in the early-mid 50s, as
1954 saw the fewest number of strikes since 1942.
173

But throughout 1955, as the CIO negotiated the terms of their merger with the AFL, wildcat
strikes indicated a gulf between the unions’ leaders and its rank and file members, and the
inadequacy of increased wages to assuage working people’s displeasure. President Eisenhower hailed

97
the merger declaring that Marx’s understanding class struggle did not apply to the U.S. due to the
“American labor philosophy” which promulgated the idea that “the economic interest of employer
and employee is … mutual prosperity.”
174
Eisenhower was not alone in this assessment as many of
the speakers at the unity conference of the labor federations spoke similar rhetorical notes.
175
But for
frustrated workers and their opponents, the class war raged on. As the Chamber of Commerce’s
magazine Nation’s Business ominously remarked in response to the merger, a determining factor in
subsequent struggles would be “the character of local law enforcement.”
176
Nation’s Business,
attempting to undermine the half-life of Popular Front sentiments, suggested that unions should be
considered simply another private interest group vying for power.
177
And for some workers, the
indictment would have rung true as the unions were not vibrant democratic organizations reflecting
their needs and desires. Across the country, over 40,000 UAW workers participated in unauthorized
strikes, which displayed, as James Boggs put it, that “a contract between the union and the company
is not necessarily a contract between the workers and the company.”
178
At issue in these strikes were
“local issues” and grievances—the quotidian management of the plant.
179
As another Detroit
autoworker and socialist, Martin Glaberman, explained, the wildcat strikes of 1955 “implie[d] a total
collapse of the union as representative of the workers in the day-to-day life in the plants.”
180
While
one should not be romantic about the democratic nature of unions during the previous decades, the
accretion of political losses that were rooted in public policy (Operation Dixie, McCarthyism, shifts
of jobs to the South and West) were important contributing factors to the unions’ uncertain status as
an adequate representative for workers in their daily struggles at the point of production.
The merger, though aimed at concentrating the power of organized labor in the realm of
politics and legislation, further weakened the prospects for a renewed campaign to organize
unorganized workers.
181
These efforts did not have to be mutually exclusive, and a strengthened
political program was necessary since business interests had won many of the postwar struggles for

98
governmental power in decisive fashion. And, as Gordon Haskell, writing in the socialist journal,
New International observed, “having experienced what can be done to unions under [Taft-Hartley]
even in good times, thoughtful workers and labor leaders shudder at the thought of what they will
face if the country is once again subjected to a serious siege of depression and unemployment.”
182

Indeed, the merger was rooted in “defensive motives” on multiple accounts. First, for the CIO,
having expelled and weakened their left wing, there were no longer significant ideological barriers
between the labor federations.
183
Furthermore, on their own, neither the AFL nor the CIO were
strong enough to combat Taft-Hartley.
184
And while 1955 was a year that saw renewed strike activity,
for much of the union leadership, the answers to mechanization and automation, like themselves,
increasingly were located away from the shop floor. As Haskell noted, “there has obviously been a
thickening and hardening of the bureaucratic crust in the CIO unions over the seething rank and file
democracy which won the great battles of the '30s.”
185
While few denied that solutions to
automation should be sought in the political realm, shop floor conflict provoked by speed-ups and
automation needed shop floor responses as well.
The merger presaged key dilemmas for Black workers. For leading Black trade unionists, A.
Philip Randolph and Willard Townsend, both of whom were named members of the Executive
Council of the conjoined labor federation, they saw their attempts to exclude the racist unions
undermined in the merger as local unions were granted autonomy in addressing discrimination.
186

During the merger discussions, Randolph had attempted to block the inclusion of the “Big Four,”
racist Railroad Brotherhoods that had so menaced his union, but with little success.
187
But after the
merger, Randolph argued that such a consolidation of forces was necessary. In a November 1955
speech before the National Trade Union Committee for Racial Justice, he argued that “While a
division of labor in 1935, which resulted in two labor movements, the A.F. of L. and C.I.O., may
have created a desirable and valuable and creative dynamism of organization which increased the

99
numerical strength and progressive militancy of organized labor, labor division has reached the point
of diminishing returns and now serves as a source of weakness, chaos and confusion, which now
shackles labor’s hands and impairs its ability effectively to oppose its enemies.” Randolph noted that
the now united labor movement needed to establish the means to “grapple with problems [of]
Communism, Corruption and Civil Rights.”
188
But over the subsequent years, the labor federation
would continue to focus its attention on eradicating communism and, to a certain extent, on
corruption, but continued to neglect addressing white supremacy in the union movement or in
society at large.
While new AFL-CIO President George Meany spoke about the need to combat racist
discrimination within unions, and declared support for the Brown vs. Board of Education decision,
there was little reason to be optimistic about his leadership.
189
Meany was a former plumber whose
union did more policing of their craft than organizing. He was uninterested in organizing non-union
workers and scornful towards unemployed people. He was proud of declaring that he never walked
a picket line or went on strike. While he supported governmental proposals for full employment and
found Taft-Hartley to be odious, his leadership could not be counted on to inspire rank and file
workers to eradicate unemployment or overturn Taft-Hartley.
190
The plagues of repressive public
policy had ravaged the CIO and driven it to consolidate with the AFL. With the trade union
movement having been weakened in so many severe ways, the prospects for a revitalized labor
movement leading to the way for ameliorative social reform, was dim.
Conclusion
The postwar period through the 1960s is often remembered as a time of abundance, with
scholars calling it, accurately, the “great compression,” for the ways in which economic inequality
was reduced.
191
However, such experiences were unevenly developed and experienced along lines of
race, gender, and region. It is important that scholars not solely focus on the relative economic

100
stability to the neglect of working people who were met with difficult circumstances during this time
of plenty. Indeed, investigating the problems of economic precarity during the era of the great
compression provides insight into problems of that would afflict a much greater number of people
in the coming decades.
While both business and labor had closed the war in a place of strength, the subsequent
years saw a maelstrom of political conflicts surrounding the use of governmental power in the
political and economic realm. By and large, business interests won the majority of these
confrontations. These victories, the product of vying social forces, not circumstance or market
decisions, provided the conditions for the unemployment afflicting working people, even during the
most robust economic times. As the AFL-CIO conjoined with the hopeful intention of marshalling
their force in the political realm, the civil rights movement was developing greater strength. As the
decade grew on and employers sought out new ways to shed workers, continuing the struggle for
full employment would become even more urgent; and the civil rights and labor movements would
be forced to confront these problems together.

101
Chapter 3: The Making of Structural Unemployment: Automation, the Federal Reserve, and
the Civil Rights Response, 1955-1963

“In the factory and in the office…progress toward greater automation is nothing new; only the
expression ‘automation’ is new.” – Ralph J. Cordiner, Chairman of the Board of General Electric,
1959
1

“The crisis confronting the Negro worker today can be summed up in one word: Automation.” – A.
Philip Randolph, 1962
2

In April 1957, the death of the 1945 Full Employment Act haunted the life a young Black
pianist and composer. At age 33 and blind, Calvin Love did not like rock and roll music, but found
himself playing it nonetheless; rock and roll was more lucrative than the Beethoven compositions he
preferred. Love feared joblessness for himself and other blind people, declaring, “the problem of
blindness is much greater than believed because automation is cutting in on the employment of
many blind persons who have no professional training.” Like the blindness that afflicted the war
veterans whom Love had spent years teaching in Scranton, PA, the joblessness of the late fifties was
not natural, but caused by human action and inaction. It was a political problem.
The failure of Full Employment Act—the product of Jim Crow political power rooted in the
persistent and murderous violence of white supremacist action—is one of many vectors to
understand Calvin Love’s trepidations through. The problem Love expressed, of uncertain wages for
the most marginalized working people, rested on a number of factors: the persistence of white
supremacist political power; the prior decades’ governmental assault on left movements in many
spheres of social life; the success of the Federal Reserve in 1951 to wrest control over monetary
policy from the elected sphere of government; and Love correctly highlighted the threat posed by
the increased “automation” of production.
3
“Automation,” was the recently-coined word to describe
the newest expression of the phenomenon of displacing human, living labor, with the dead, “prior
labor” of machines.
4
All of these, and other, factors were the context for the spike in unemployment
that Love feared; in the subsequent year after his comments, unemployment shot up from 3.9% of

102
workers in April 1957 to 7.4% in April 1958—its highest point since one out of every thirteen
workers searched for jobs in October 1949, and the highest rate of unemployment that would be
seen for until 1976.
5

The spike in unemployment helped spur A. Phillip Randolph to reignite his advocacy of
governmental guarantees to a job. With automation increasing and unskilled work diminishing in
importance, Randolph argued that Black workers needed to fight their way into the skilled and
professional jobs, which he estimated employed only 12% of Black workers in 1955; these jobs, he
reasoned were less susceptible to technological obsolescence.
6
But he also feared that “competition
for decreasing jobs…is certain…to eventuate in racial tensions.”
7
As a result, Randolph and a
leading group of Black trade unionists sought to unite the civil rights and labor movements to
pursue full employment policy. The result of this organizing was the historic March on Washington
for Jobs and Freedom and its central demand: full employment.
Machines Neither Revolt Nor Buy Cars: Unemployment and Automation after 1955
By 1955, it was clear to even casual observers that manufacturing life was in the process of
changing dramatically due to the increased utilization of automated production. Automation, like
mechanized farming in the 1930s, would undermine the working lives of Black workers most
assertively; but the workplace cultures for people employed in automobile production, on the docks,
in coal mines, in steel mills and (most importantly for A. Philip Randolph) along the railroads, were
also casualties of the political and economic transformations of the 1950s. Longtime New York Times
labor reporter A.H. Raskin characterized this period as the time when “the boss fought to reassert
the right to be boss.”
8
By the mid-1960s these contentious dramas over the question of
unemployment (of which the increased use of machines in the productive process—automated and
otherwise—was adjoined) had softened slightly as the newness of the new technology achieved
greater normalcy, and the war mobilization for Vietnam cushioned working people with the wages

103
of militarism. But in the mid-late 50s the role of automated technology in the workplace was subject
to intense deliberations and provoked questions about who would benefit from the transformations
underway. The debate was so widespread that throughout October 1955 a Congressional
Subcommittee on Economic Stabilization held hearings on Automation and Technological Change
in an attempt to understand what the impacts were of what many were calling a “second industrial
revolution.”
9

Figure 6: In the middle part of the decade, “automation” became the watchword for the changes in
industrial life and provoked rampant fears about unemployment. A Gallup poll reported that during
the late 50s, anxieties about automation were second only to fears of the Soviet Union.
10

Few people in positions to defy the development of automated production were as aware of
the challenges posed by it than United Auto Workers (UAW) President Walter Reuther.
11
In 1949,
Reuther received, what historian of technology, David Noble, called “one of the most remarkable
letters in the annals of twentieth-century science.”
12
The letter, written to Reuther by Massachusetts

104
Institute of Technology Professor Norbert Wiener—one of the leading figures credited with helping
to create “cybernetics”—was an uncompromising indictment of the dangers of such technology for
working people.
13
Wiener, who had been politicized around labor issues when, as a young journalist
he wrote about the iconic textile strikes in Lawrence, Massachusetts, had engaged in his own
workplace self-activity by refusing attempts to assist corporations who desired his research for labor
displacing technology or military uses.
14
And like other workers who took similar action, Wiener was
met with repression, in this case, FBI surveillance for possible Communist subversion.
15
Wiener
warned Reuther of the coming “factory without workers,” and advised that Wiener’s own
“passiveness” with regard to selling his research would not, he was sure, prevent other researchers
from selling theirs to General Electric, Boeing, or any other firm seeking to use the new technology
to serve military or managerial interests.
16
Wiener felt an immense urgency, arguing in 1949 that “this
thing will come like an earthquake.”
17
Wiener maintained that “any labor which is in competition
with slave labor whether the slaves are human of mechanical, must accept the conditions of work of
slave labor.”
18
The solution for Wiener, was not to destroy the machines, but to help build “a society
based on human values other than buying or selling.”
19
But awareness of the problem, and a vision
for a solution, does not give one the power to enact it. Therefore, Wiener and Reuther, after they
were able to sit down together and speak in 1950, laid out plans for a joint Council of Labor and
Science so as to fight to ensure that any elimination in the drudgery of industrial production served
the needs of workers as well as business.
Though Reuther and Wiener were both aware that (in Wiener’s words) “a good deal of
planning and a good deal of struggle” were necessary to succeed in any of their reform efforts, they
were stymied in their eventual goals throughout the subsequent years. For Reuther the advance of
automated production raised the stakes of the UAW’s fight for a Guaranteed Annual Wage (GAW)
to protect workers from layoffs due to the cyclical economic turbulence that constituted much auto

105
work.
20
Likewise, the added attention to automation provided a supplementary tool to his political
repertoire in the 1955 negotiations with the auto manufacturers; in the negotiations Reuther argued
that economic savings from labor displacing technology should be shared amongst workers as well
as the auto companies. Reuther viewed the fight for an employer supported GAW as a means to get
the powerful corporate leaders to champion working-class governmental reforms. In this schema,
after the UAW won a GAW, General Motors, Ford, and the other auto companies would help lobby
government for a broadened social welfare state so as to externalize their costs of unemployment
provision. But such ambitions were not achieved with the 1955 contract. While the UAW won a
highly modified version of the GAW, in reality it provided workers with supplemental
unemployment benefits—a tremendous victory—but a far cry from a guaranteed wage that one
could survive on.
But in the subsequent years, the GAW proved insufficient to the challenge of cushioning
workers from the consequences of technological unemployment and the trickery of employer
practices with regard to classification of certain work processes (in addition to the further
exacerbation of cyclical unemployment problems provoked via the 1957-58 recession).
21
And here is
where Reuther’s optimistic ambitions were dashed: the UAW’s loss of power at the point of
production amidst a slowing economy and increased Cold War anxieties (provoked by the launch of
Sputnik) put the UAW in a defensive position as they faced accusations of bargaining toward
socialism.
22
And further derailing Reuther’s agenda for convincing the auto-companies to fight for
social democracy was that, rather than comply with his hopeful forecast, they simply included the
new costs of the supplemental unemployment benefits in the price of their cars, thus contributing to
the fears of wage-push inflation.
23
By January 1958, Reuther had begun to back away from the
ambitious proposal of a four-day, 32-hour workweek, telling television audiences on the show, The
Mike Wallace Interview that “we never had such a demand.”
24
By this time, Reuther was placed in the

106
difficult circumstances of attempting to walk a tightrope between arguing for the necessity of the
government to employ the unemployed, and the need to compel the auto companies to do so via a
shorter workweek.
25
In the end, both proved unsuccessful and in the 1958 contract negotiations,
Reuther backed off the proposals for a shorter workweek; bargaining during the summer with
unemployment above 7% meant that such ambitious plans, though never more necessary, were
scuttled. The contracts were draws rather than advances. The contract fight included many collateral
losses as well, as managers clamped down on shop steward power, particularly at Chrysler who used
their weak position in the market as an excuse to ask for concessions from the union.
26

For longshore workers on the docks, technological transformations of the fifties put their
long-standing tradition of labor control under duress. Won during the bloody 1934 West Coast
longshoremen’s strike, the aforementioned low-man-out system (that did its best to ensure that no
workers went without adequate hours) became imperiled by the increasing use of containers, cranes,
and other mechanized technology to more quickly move goods from port to ship and vice-versa.
27

Like much of the technological innovations of the period, the government played a role; in 1952, the
Pentagon and the National Academy of Sciences began research that would facilitate the
mechanization of shipping.
28
Workers, however, resisted the changes that were on the horizon. But,
like many other union leaders at the time, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union’s
(ILWU) President Harry Bridges had difficulties both understanding the threat and how to respond.
As he put it, “those guys who think we can go on holding back mechanization are still back in the
thirties.”
29
Bridges was under tremendous pressure during this period. He and his powerful union
had been expelled from the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) labor federation for their
affiliations with the Communist Party, and he feared that unions from the newly-formed AFL-CIO
would raid his union. As a result of these and other factors, Bridges began joint conversations with
the shipping companies’ alliance, the Pacific Maritime Association (PMA); these discussions resulted

107
in the 1956 shared “Statement of Principles,” which ominously declared, “there shall be no
requirement for employment of unnecessary men.”
30
Acceptance by Bridges of this outlook signaled
that employers were winning the debate about the shape and nature of employment on the docks;
such an attitude indicated an assent that mass unemployment was, at best, regrettable but of little
immediate consequence to either the union (which represents the employed) or the shippers, for
whom unemployment operated as a check on the employed. This also signaled a significant
ideological break from the beliefs held by economists like Leon and Mary Dublin Keyserling; they
would have argued that make-work plans ensuring employment were sound macroeconomics since
they spurred consumption (in addition to being morally just). While technological efficiency was
being praised, it remained unclear what was to be done with the workers dubbed “unnecessary.”
In the subsequent years, Bridges’ actions increasingly served the interests of his older
members, as he sought to enhance their wages and job stability at the expense of younger workers.
When the economy picked up after the 1957-58 recession, more dockworkers were needed; in 1958-
59 the union began an experiment with a tiered wage system. After sifting through 14,000
applications, the union brought in about 750 new members into a second-class status as “B-men” (in
contrast to the A-men—the workers hired before 1948 who had full membership rights in the
ILWU).
31
The B-men came to work the docks just as the infamous “Agreement on Mechanization
and Modernization,” (the ILWU’s 1960 contract) was going into effect. The contract had been so
vigorously protested by the ILWU’s Los Angeles local that the county Board of Supervisors
intervened and classified port workers as civil servants so as to outlaw their rights to strike. As with
the choice to solidify the privileges of the A-men, the Agreement on Mechanization affirmed the
position that the appropriate means to handle an employer offensive was to consolidate power and
to hold tightly to past victories. The Agreement established what had been promulgated in the
ILWU-PMA Statement of Principles: “working and dispatching rules shall not be construed so as to

108
require the hiring of unnecessary men.” The statement needed no qualification concerning for
whom these people were “unnecessary.”
32

However, for the people doing the arduous work of loading and unloading break bulk cargo,
their co-workers were hardly unnecessary. While one recent historian of the container has dubbed
the negotiations surrounding the question of mechanization between the shipping industry and
dockworkers’ unions as “histrionics,” the reality could not be further from the truth.
33
Rather, the
workers quite rightly understood that the work culture and job security, which they had fought for
(and others had died for) was under a direct attack, as the workers themselves were being deemed
redundant. At the time, the journalist Harvey Swados, reflecting on the docks, described the recently
adopted “cold gray impersonality of the containerized shipping”:
“One man, alone on his tractor, drives the cube to the gantry; a second man, alone at the
controls one hundred fifty feet above the pier apron, picks up the 46,000-pound cube and
guides it on to the trolley; a third man, alone at the hatch, wiggles his fingers to indicate that
it is being properly lowered into the rack that will hold it rigid until it is discharged in the
same way some days later.”
34

This new regime, described by one worker as “ulcerating” and another as “inhuman” was posed
against the former condition whereby workers did their jobs together in partnerships. As longshore
worker Stan Weir described, the partnership was “a total social institution” that was “respected by
longshoremen at least as much as marriage partnerships… ‘How long you two guys been working
together now?’ was … an often asked question.”
35
In addition to much else, the rise of
containerization destroyed this work culture. As Weir noted, “the disappearance of an audience of
fellow workers robs the job of self-respect and socialization.”
36
In this way, there were no
“unnecessary men.” Working in a group was as essential to the health and happiness of the
stevedores as rules limiting the weights they could lift. Ironically, weight limits also grew from 2,100
pounds to the 4,000 pound “Bridges loads” as the shipping companies, now with the right to

109
automate, used their power over workers to elicit a speed-up the “old-fashioned” way: through sheer
coercion (which was cheaper than new investment).
37

Few people played the role of miner’s canary for the deleterious impacts of automation like
coal miners themselves. By the 1950s, coal faced ever-increasing competition from oil and gas; even
railroads began to use diesel engines.
38
Seeking to support the coal industry as a whole, the United
Mine Workers’ (UMW) leader John L. Lewis (who fashioned himself an economic realist) supported
the mechanization of mining and the technological displacement of hundreds of thousands of coal
miners.
39
Lewis, even went so far as to lend money from the UMW-led bank to coal industry titans
to support their mechanization efforts. Kentucky miner and community activist Buck Maggard
protested Lewis’ decision stating, “not one dime of that money was ever put into training miners to
do something, equip them for other jobs or helping other industries come there. They just sort of
forgot about these people was going to be laid-off (sic).”
40
Lewis maintained that “from a policy
standpoint, it is immaterial if the union has a million or a half million members.”
41
Pronouncements
and actions such as these led Fortune magazine to declare Lewis “the best salesman the machinery
industry ever had.”
42
The Boston Globe praised him, writing, “so efficient are American mines that
coal can be mined here at one-quarter to one-third of the costs in Europe…and [one] can thank for
that none other than Mr. John L. Lewis, who was once the terror of the country club set.”
43
Lewis’s
actions terrorized wealthy people no longer, and instead, unemployment ravaged coal country.
For coal miners and their families in the 1950s, the unemployment they were experiencing
felt like a return to the Depression, but in many ways their problems belonged not to the past, but
the future. Instead of going without work due to a global economic catastrophe, the coal miners
were victims of “successful” technological innovation. As mechanization allowed companies to shed
miners, the miners still needed to survive and many began working “dog-hole mines” where larger
coal operators would lease land to an individual who would mine it by themselves or with a few

110
other people or family. As Maggard described “whereas back in the early 50s we had…300-1,000
men mining one seam of coal under a union, you [then] had dozens and dozens of family operations
mining the same seam of coal…same people getting the profits that they’d always gotten…but [in
the late 50s] they were doing it without any overhead whatsoever.”
44
John Mays, a seventh grade
teacher in Harlan County, KY described how “even on mornings when there was frost on the
ground some kids came to school barefoot.” Maggard noted, “we had a really great depression here
during the Eisenhower administration, almost as bad as Hoover days.”
45
In 1948 Harlan County had
employed 12,500 people as miners, but by 1959, only 5,087 people were mining coal.
46
Nationally,
between 1948-1958 coal output doubled while the number of miners were cut in half, and smaller
mines were forced to shut down because they could not compete with the larger, mechanized
mines.
47
This is what efficiency looked like. The technology that made the dangerous and arduous
work easier, displaced many of the workers in the process.
The changes in the coal industry rippled and ripped through whole regions. Journalist
Harvey Swados described the impact of the mine closures in St. Michael, PA. “The first item to stop
moving at the general store was dog food. After the dog food gathered dust, it was bottled baby
food in the little glass jars that stayed on the shelves. A while after that, the shopkeeper himself gave
up and locked his doors forever.”
48
Swados was also clear that “only a romantic fool…would bewail
the loss of backbreaking, torturous, dangerous, poisonous drudgery, and its replacement by
impersonally effective machinery.” But it was not without reason that John L. Lewis excluded rank
and file miners from his negotiations leading to the mechanization of the mines. The miners had
been the backbone of the CIO and what was being destroyed was not only drudgery. In Swados’
estimation the “loss of fraternity, solidarity and the comradeship of courageous accomplishment”
should be lamented.
49
The social values that lived within this group of coal miners were being
crushed.

111
Likewise, the impacts of these changes in the labor process influenced the economic
geography and social life of entire regions. In his testimony before the Congressional Joint
Committee on the Economic Report on Automation and Technological Change, Walter Reuther
noted that since many industrial sites were strategically located near coal and other energy sources,
whole regions would be impacted by the changes in fuel usage. He likewise added that “corporations
frequently seem to prefer to employ on automated processes workers who have had no experience
with older methods.”
50
To this end, the changes underway during this period impacted not only
workers as individuals but entire communities and ways of life.
In 1947 the National Steel Corporation announced proudly to their shareholders that “the
Taft-Hartley Law…has resulted in a better relationship between business and labor as is evidenced
by the decline in the number of strikes.”
51
Such good relations, if they ever existed, did not hold for
the subsequent decade as major strikes amongst steel workers punctuated the decade, with workers
walking off the job in 1952, 1955, 1956, and 1959. Management had been obstinate in its opposition
to a Guaranteed Annual Wage in 1955. But the month-long 1956 strike was a breakthrough as
workers picketed Pittsburgh plants in 93-degree heat to demand better unemployment benefits and
higher wages. The victory was hard won though. Steve Jones, Vice President of United Steel
Workers’ Local in Alquippa, PA declared during the strike that it felt more like a lock-out.
52
As with
the UAW, after World War II unions were increasingly creating what resembled a private social
welfare state, since achieving a public one for all people was stymied in Washington D.C. by
business and Jim Crow political strength.
53
The 1956 steel contract followed this pattern; workers
achieved a cushion from unemployment and inflation with the steel companies agreeing to provide
supplementary unemployment benefits and cost of living adjustments.
54
However, the realization of
wage increases and added unemployment benefits could not halt the layoffs and staffing reductions

112
plaguing working people during the late fifties, thus setting the stage for the decade’s massive
confrontation in the steel industry in 1959.
55

One of the key issues throughout the period was section 2-B in the 1947 contract that
encompassed local workplace conditions and the rights of management to change work
requirements and speed-up the work process.
56
Though the steel companies were allowed by the
contract to automate production and introduce new technology to displace workers, this was not
always feasible at older steel mills; 2-B prevented managers from speeding up the work process by
utilizing the timeworn practice of management bullying. In 1959, erasing section 2-B to expand the
rights of management stood as the most important controversy during contract negotiations. But for
the steel workers, who had seen huge layoffs during the recessions of 1953-54 (189,334 unemployed
workers) and 1957-58 (some plants saw 40% of their workers unemployed), 2-B symbolized the
protection from capricious firings, if not from unemployment as a whole.
57
As one worker from the
a Duquesne, PA steel mill explained during the strike, “I don't want an increase in wages…I'd like a
guarantee of four days work week for the next five years so the kids can get balanced meals, decent
clothes and a little recreation.”
58
Despite its inadequacies at preventing technological unemployment,
workers knew that if they lost 2-B their ability to fight future lay-offs would be small. As a result,
workers and management dug in for a long strike. Likewise, the companies that relied on steel
prepared for a work stoppage as well; they began to import steel from outside the U.S. to
compensate for the halt in U.S. production during the 116-day strike. Though President Eisenhower
broke the strike with Taft-Hartley, declaring it a threat to national interest, the workers eventually
prevailed in retaining 2-B. However, any happiness that would have followed proved short-lived.
With each recession of the fifties staffing levels decreased, and the combination of new technology
and increased usage of imported steel following the 1959 strike meant that the fewer and fewer steel
workers had the stable job that they had gone on strike to maintain.
59

113
For A. Philip Randolph, the technological and economic changes of the 1950s provoked
challenges for how he conceptualized the role of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP).
For him, the responsibility of the BSCP needed to be two-fold: both fighting for economic benefits
and dignity on the job, and a power base for a broader freedom agenda for the civil rights struggle.
60

The best ambitions of this interrelationship between BSCP empowerment, and leadership helping to
facilitate community organizing and activism were displayed by former BSCP leader E.D. Nixon.
When Nixon was a porter in 1928, he’d heard Randolph speak and, as he recalled, “from that day
on, I was determined that I was gonna fight for freedom until I was able to get some of it myself.”
61

When, in 1955 the Women’s Political Council (WPC) of Montgomery, AL began to organize what
would become the famed bus boycott, Nixon was one of the key leaders whose skills the WPC drew
on.
62
But as the Civil Rights movement rose in power throughout the fifties, the BSCP saw its
strength diluted as a result of many forces, but centrally because of declines in passengers on the
railroads and automated staff reductions.
Like Walter Reuther and Norbert Wiener, Randolph saw the changes coming for the
workers in his union even during what appeared to be the relatively robust economic climate during
the Korean War. At the 1952 Regional Conference in San Antonio, TX, Randolph explained to the
membership the challenges that lay ahead when the military Keynesian economy slowed. “You are
hauling these soldiers [all over the country] from day to day, but when the tension of the world has
eased up, when the Korean war is over, railroads and the Pullman Company will no longer be
hauling soldiers to the extent they are hauling soldiers today.” Randolph asked the members of
BSCP to consider and strategize ahead of the changes coming to the economy when the war
economy cooled: “you’ll have nationwide unemployment,” he warned. Likewise, he also asked his
union to recognize, the “technological revolution” beginning to hit the railroad industry and the
increasing use of “labor saving devices taking the places of hand labor.” Randolph’s response to this

114
problem was that the porters needed to “build our organization strong enough so that we may be
able to protect the job of the porter” through fighting for a reduction in the “hours of work so that
we may be able to get more rest and also make more jobs.”
63
To respond to these conditions, like
others at the time, Randolph called for a shorter workweek, in addition to other proposals that he
and others had been pursuing for two decades. “In light of advancing automation,” he declared in
1958 to the Los Angeles Central Labor Council, organized labor must “move vigorously for the
establishment of the 4 hour day and 5 day week, social security coverage of domestic and agricultural
workers and a minimum wage consistent with decency, comfort and health, education and recreation
for all American families.”
64
Randolph, as one of the most astute analysts of the period, understood
the urgency to respond to these changing conditions with farsighted plans that attempted to forestall
the ravages to working people that the first industrial revolution had enabled.
Nevertheless, Randolph had to confront similar challenges as Reuther and Wiener:
understanding the problem is one step to crafting a solution, but it does not in itself shift the balance
of forces necessary to achieve a goal. And in the years after the Korean War, unemployment
proceeded to devastate the BSCP (as Randolph had warned). However unlike the other industries
mentioned, automation was not the chief culprit (although it was one). Rather, the decline in
employment for porters was a result of the collapsing ridership, amidst the rise of car, bus, and
airline travel. Just as the railroad had risen to prominence on governmental support, its decline
rested on governmental support for the automobile and airline industries. The construction of the
interstate highway system provided the means by which people—now able to travel by car or bus—
no longer relied on railroads as they once did. The “National System of Interstate and Defense
Highways” rested on Cold War cultures as President Eisenhower argued for the highway to protect
the U.S. from nuclear attack, declaring that a “modern highway system” was necessary to
“strengthen the nation’s security”
65
As a result, backed by 90% federal funding ($25 billion), the

115
Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956 began the course for the subsequent two decades of construction
of 42,000 miles of interstate road.
66
By the end of the 1950s, 90% of people chose personal cars
when they moved from city to city, with the remaining 10% of people split between buses (which
also benefitted from the highway construction), planes, and trains.
67
Between 1950 and 1955,
ridership plummeted by 31% on the Pullman cars, down from 16 million people to 11 million. In
1957, the company registered a $35 million operating deficit.
68
By the end of the decade, there were
less than 3,000 working porters, having climbed steadily down since 1939 when 7,500 porters
worked the rails.
As a result of these changes in the mid-late 50s, workers’ capacity to consume via their wages
was weakened; and in the wake of the 1957-58 recession, the relatively moderate labor-management
accord began to fracture.
69
Both Randolph and Reuther were acutely aware of how the changes
underway served to misalign the links between consumption and production. As Randolph
explained in 1955, “although automation may create a machine which can repair a machine without
the touch of a human hand, there is no machine which can produce a machine or which can
purchase a machine or consume the products of a machine.”
70
Reuther expressed similar sentiments
in a famed exchange with a Ford executive after visiting a new engine plant in 1952. “Not one of
these machines pays union dues,” the official from Ford quipped. “And not one of them buys new
Ford cars, either,” was Reuther’s retort, highlighting that these employer-directed transformations
would also create turbulence in the Fordist ideal of the prior decades.
71
He reiterated this point on
television in 1958 to Mike Wallace arguing that, “something has got to be done to correct the
imbalance, between productive power and the lack of purchasing power.”
72
One result of these
shifts was an ever-increasing reliance on borrowing to fill the gap created by insufficient wages. As
historian Louis Hyman has explained, in the postwar period, buoyed by tax policy that allowed for
people to deduct the interest from their consumer debt on their taxes, as well as their housing debt,

116
“consumer debt moved to the center of American life.”
73
By 1958, 54% of households took on debt
(up from 38% in 1949).
74
Alongside these shifts, companies began to develop more means to accrue
profit from these transformations; for example, the late 50s saw the birth of the “option account”
whereby retailers began charging increasing fees and interest rates to accommodate granting credit to
their customers.
75

From this vantage point, one can locate the political economic conjuncture of the late 1950s
as an embryonic establishment of the relations that would determine so much in the coming
decades: precarious employment for workers marginalized by race, gender, region, or industry,
supplemented with debt-financed survival mechanisms. The late 50s were a period of contest and
instability; during this time: social movements shook the foundations of the U.S. apartheid system;
unemployment jumped to its highest postwar point; technology increasingly encroached on shop
floor practices; and novel forms of credit developed to address both new consumer desires and the
needs of daily subsistence. Amidst these changes to the political economic circumstances, the
Federal Reserve began to experiment its “independence” (the power it won in the 1951 Accord with
the Treasury Department) and the Fed’s influence during the aforementioned contests would prove
pivotal.
Jim Crow Monetary Policy, Class Power, and the 1957-58 Recession
While the UAW’s partial victory of a Guaranteed Annual Wage did not steer the U.S.
towards creeping social democracy, let alone socialism, it did provoke such fears from the titans of
industry and their bankers. After 1955, the policy actions to de-democratize the Federal Reserve
System would be of increased significance as the Federal Open Markets Committee (FOMC)
supplemented the politicians of the former Confederacy as a key power bloc seeking to arrest the
possibility of the economy achieving William Beveridge’s conception of full employment—“always
more vacant jobs than unemployed men.”
76
Politically insulated by the pain wrought by

117
unemployment of workers throughout the country, in the latter half of the 1950s the Fed took
innovative actions to curb the inflationary pressures emanating from workers’ wage demands. In the
process of doing so, they sustained and exacerbated the 1957-58 recession.
77
The recession—which
occurred during critical moments for many of the aforementioned industries that were undergoing
technological and other transformations—served to further limit the already-slim chances that
unions had of successfully addressing the problems of unemployment. Considered in this light, one
can see that the tremendous setbacks dealt to workers via introduction of new technology and
altered work processes in the late 1950s were not natural, inevitable, or circumstantial; but rather,
these hurdles were politically produced at the highest level of elite political and economic power. As
in all historically concrete events, the conditions leading to these circumstances constitute what Marx
described as a “rich totality of many determinations and relations.”
78
Of these determining relations,
the role of the Fed’s relative autonomy to make decisions apart from government was crucial.
Additionally, far from acting in any rote or deterministic way, the Fed confronted a number of
political tensions as they faced pressure from the Eisenhower administration and knew their choices
would provoke anger from segments of the business community. Likewise, certain members of the
Fed questioned the judgment of taking such bold steps. But through these conflicts of the late 50s,
the Fed strengthened its power and the power of U.S. capitalism as a whole by sufficiently inhibiting
the strength of workers to push up wages and prices.
In the late 50s, the Fed crafted a form of Jim Crow monetary policy—anti-democratic decisions
about interest rates that undermined the power of the most marginalized working-class people, and
in particular, but not only, Black people. Under the auspices of their commitment to fighting
inflation, after 1951 the Fed would enhance and eventually supersede the Jim Crow political bloc as
the most significant impediment to full employment policy. In the postwar period, fiscal policy was
being gradually more democratized through the destruction of Jim Crow policies and the rising

118
political empowerment of organized labor (buttressed by its increasing role in Democratic Party
politics through the CIO-PAC, and after the merger with the AFL, the Committee on Political
Education). As a result, protecting the 1951 Accord—and the hard-won dominion of monetary
policy from the influence of populist pressures—proved to be an essential ingredient for the success
of postwar capitalism.
79

Although the Fed had a legal responsibility to promote “maximum employment,” after 1951,
now armed with their “independence,” they instead obsessed over preventing inflation. While some
members worried about the political ramifications of giving less priority to employment policy, none
had any moral qualms about putting the interests of bankers and bondholders above those of
unemployed people. Fed action during this period was both compelled by political sensibility and an
analysis of industry trends. Economists Christina Romer and David Romer have shown that the Fed
acted aggressively throughout the fifties to clamp down on inflation based on the persistent
“conviction that inflation was about to rise.”
80
Indeed, Romer and Romer remark that “one
periodically has to double-check the data on inflation [because] discussion [in the FOMC] was often
so fervent and the predictions so dire.”
81
Based on this inclination, the FOMC created circumstances
that, in many ways, abrogated their legal responsibility under the 1946 Employment Act.
Inquiries into FOMC policy during this periods shows that unemployment during the late
50s was not simply a result of autonomous businesses’ weak investment, or cyclical economic
downturns, but rather a decisive policy action by the Federal Reserve aimed at weakening the power
of working people to win wage gains, and thus push up prices, and thereby weaken the real value of
the future dollars. The Fed’s aggressive anti-inflation policy began in the wake of the expiration of
the UAW’s 1950-1955 “treaty of Detroit” contract and the signing of their GAW contract in the
summer of 1955.
82
As the ink dried on the contract on June 22
nd
General Motors announced plans
for $500 million in capital expenditures to upgrade machine tools and facilities (putting the total

119
announced capital expenditures at $2 billion over the prior two years).
83
Two weeks after this
announcement, the GM stock jumped 15 points in a day as they announced a three-for-one stock
split.
84
One result of these events was a strenuous policy debate in the subsequent meetings of the
FOMC. At the August 2 meeting, Chairman William McChesney Martin read a statement from the
previous meeting by FOMC Vice-Chairman and New York Fed President (and one of the most
powerful people on the committee) Allan Sproul cautioning against restrictive Fed action. “We are
not at a point where the dangers of inflationary developments clearly outweigh all other
considerations,” Sproul had said at the July meeting. Instead of revisiting these comments to affirm
this view, Martin quoted them so as to contrast his sentiments. Martin declared:

“I would like to go back now to Mr. Sproul's statement which I read earlier. I think
personally that all the danger signals he mentions are now flashing red. Inflation is a thief in
the night and if we don't act promptly and decisively we will always be behind. All of us
know that it sometimes takes a long time for seeds to germinate, but when they flower, they
do so with explosive force. A move such as we had in General Motors of fifteen points in
one day would be disastrous if it developed over the whole price level, and once such action
has occurred, neither monetary policy nor anything else could effectively restore the
purchasing power of the dollar without creating such distress as to preclude its usefulness.”
85

These were the types of dire predictions about runaway inflation induced the FOMC members to
move from Sproul’s more hesitant position to Martin’s assertive one. On Martin’s urging, the group
responded. The FOMC agreed unanimously to change the stated instructions for the Federal
Reserve Bank of New York. Instead of “fostering growth and stability in the economy by
maintaining conditions in the money market that would avoid the development of unsustainable
expansion,” the Fed now understood its role as “restraining inflationary developments in the interest
of sustainable economic growth.”
86
While this action was less forceful than an interest rate hike, in
hindsight we can see the importance of the decision, as interest rate raises would soon follow. This
change from past emphasis crystallized the reasons that the FOMC would continue to be more

120
assertive in its efforts to constrict the economy over the subsequent months—inflation fighting had
ascended to the prime objective for the group.
Ten weeks later, at the Waldorf Astoria hotel in New York, standing before the New York
Group of the Investment Bankers Association of America, Martin would revisit this policy plan in
what has since become an often-quoted description about the Fed’s role in the economy. “In the
field of monetary and credit policy, precautionary action to prevent inflationary excesses is bound to
have some onerous effects—if it did not it would be ineffective and futile…The Federal Reserve…is
in the position of the chaperone who has ordered the punch bowl removed just when the party was
really warming up.”
87
To add weight to his line of reasoning, he quoted Sproul, who (as President of
the New York Fed) was one of the world’s most respected central bankers; and though they had
been in conflict during the previous months, Martin’s audience would welcome the mention of his
name. “Those who would seek to promote ‘full employment’ by creeping inflation, induced by credit
policy, are trying to correct structural maladjustments, which are inevitable in a highly dynamic
economy, by debasing the savings of the people,” Martin quoted Sproul as saying. And further, as
Martin insisted, such a policy promoting full employment and thus inflationary pressures, amounted
to “robbing the saver.”
88

These bold declarations that put the interests of those who owned money above the
unemployed became even more controversial during debates at the FOMC’s March 27, 1956
meeting. The FOMC members continued to argue about raising the federal funds (discount) interest
rates as a means of restricting the power of firms from settling generous contracts with workers and
thus enabling a wage-price inflationary spiral.
89
At the March meeting, Vice-Chairman Sproul warned
of a “cost-price spiral—growing out of increased wages and other costs which producers attempt to
pass on to consumers.” Sproul was concerned, however, about what alternative action the FOMC
could take in response. He agreed with the ends, but had anxiety over the consequences of such

121
audacious means. His fellow members wanted action to restrict credit and production, but he,
having helped lead the Fed to its narrowly achieved independence from government, feared taking
action that would be considered too aggressive and thereby provoke “the philosophy of the
Employment Act of 1946”—government direction for full employment.
90
(And he may have also
been alluding to Keyserling’s attempts to put the Fed under control of the executive branch.) Sproul
feared such a response, stating that if the Fed was going to “raise questions as to whether the central
banking system should make credit so dear and difficult to obtain as to cause a decline in production
and employment as the lesser of two evils…[then] we are going to have to have a real knockdown-
and-drag out fight as to whether monetary policy is to be so severe as to bring on substantial
unemployment and reduced income with all that that implies.”
91
Sproul’s anxieties were not
unfounded.
In the buildup to upcoming November election, the Eisenhower administration had
trepidations about economic stagnation and during the months prior to the March meeting, they
were encouraging the Fed to hold off an interest rate hike. Both Eisenhower’s Council of Economic
Advisors (CEA) Chair and his Treasury Secretary had put in calls to Martin during January and
February raising their concerns that economic growth was slowing.
92
FOMC member James K.
Vardaman Jr. (the son the arch-white supremacist, lynching supporting Mississippi Governor and
Senator) was also worried about the audacious inflation-fighting action, stating, “if the [Federal
Reserve] System moved to such a degree as would be necessary to stop a wage-cost spiral, it could
easily result in the destruction of the System.”
93
Sproul agreed, suggesting that such risky action by
the Fed would provoke a response from organized labor and others about the need to democratize
monetary policy. But in contrast to the arguments from his colleagues and pressures from the
Eisenhower administration, Martin held firm at the March meeting; it appeared he was willing to risk
his job to maintain the Fed’s independence and his commitment to inflation fighting.

122
Martin’s other colleagues affirmed this stance and put Sproul and Vardaman in the minority
as other members argued for the need to constrain the inflationary pressures. Sproul and Vardaman,
however, had no questions as to the goals of the inflation-fighting efforts; they questioned the
means and the repercussions of taking such aggressive action. For what was being debated was not
the act of ‘taking away the punch bowl’ that Martin had alluded to; instead, this amounted to hearing
rumors of a party involving punch and smashing all the house’s glassware as a precautionary
measure. But other members were keen on the need to take this type of forceful action. C. Canby
Balderston agued that “action should be taken decisive enough to cause businessmen to realize the
danger of a wage-price spiral and not abdicate when they face wage negotiations…if they felt they
could simply increase their prices and continue to sell the goods.”
94
Charles Noah Shepardson—
who, like Balderston, joined the Fed after the 1951 accord—affirmed this sentiment stating: “some
definite action on the part of the System would strengthen the hands of industry in wage
negotiations coming up.”
95
Martin concurred, arguing that, “the threat of a wage-price spiral was so
strong today that the System would be derelict in its duty and obligation if it did not do all that it
could do.”
96
By the subsequent meeting on April 17, all but one of the regional banks that comprised
the Federal Reserve System had raised their discount rate by at least ¼ of a percent and the other
bank followed suit raising their discount rate three days later.
97

The Eisenhower administration was furious, but Martin had made it clear to them that he
was prepared to resign if they put the autonomy of the Fed into question. And the Eisenhower
administration was unwilling to go that far. As the Treasury Secretary explained to the rest of the
rest of the President’s cabinet, “Martin’s response was so strong that we had to back off.”
98
His
quip, that “we Republicans have been talking so much about the Fed’s independence that if we keep
it up the fellows over there may start believing it,” had come full circle.
99
Through this
confrontation, the Fed’s independence became affirmed. Challenging Martin was a lose-lose

123
proposition for Eisenhower. By taking such a stern position, Martin was able to make the issue of an
interest rate increase into a referendum on the autonomy of the Fed, which President Eisenhower
staunchly believed in. As he told his later CEA Chair, “this is an independent agency and it’s going
to stay that way.”
100
But, the mere fact that this needed to be affirmed with such insistence reveals
the tenuous place of the Accord as an institutional assumption in the late 50s. As a result, this
contest proved to be a pivotal experiment in what type of leniency the Fed could expect from the
elected branches.
Over the subsequent months the FOMC made dramatic use of their power. From February
1955-October 1957 the FOMC would raise the Federal Funds Rate over 250% from 1.29% to 3.5%,
thus encouraging the August 1957 - April 1958 recession.
101
At the time the Fed’s economists
believed that any action to contain inflation would have approximately a one-year lag time between
action and effect (what economists Christina Romer and David Romer have characterized as
forward looking Taylor rule).
102
Weighed against this consideration, one can see (Figure 8) that their
policy had its desired impact by constraining the economy to the degree that unemployment shot up
in concert with their restrictive policy, and thereby made workers more insecure in the coming wage
negotiations toward the end of the decade—especially in the industries they were most attentive to:
auto and steel.
103

124
Figure 7: Federal Funds Rate vs. Unemployment Rate, 1955-58.

As the FOMC desired, their choice to raise the federal funds rate helped bring up the
unemployment rate. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Board of Governors of the Federal
Reserve System).
Figure 8: Key Interest Rates, 1955-58 (Time constant) vs. Unemployment Rate (1 year lag)

Here, one can see the relationships between the rise in the federal funds rate in interrelation with
the prime rate and the unemployment rate (at a one year lag time, as the Fed’s economists
predicted). Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics, Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System.

125

Throughout this time, the Fed continued to take bold action against the interests of workers
and the President alike. In opposition to the advice of CEA Chair Raymond Sauliner, who saw the
recession brewing during the summer of 1957, the Fed proceeded to tighten the money supply.
104

The August 1957 rate increase was controversial even amongst the usually conciliatory FOMC; but
Chairman Martin forced it through, bringing the prime rate to a shocking 4.5%—the highest rate
since 1931.
105
The prime rate remained stubbornly above 4% until March, as one in every fifteen
workers searched for a job. Even as the Fed tried to get the economy growing again in May 1958,
bringing the federal funds rate all the way down to .63%, the prime rate remained obstinately high at
3.5%—a rate it would not again drop below until the most recent financial crisis provoked banks to
bring down the prime rate to 3.25% in January 2009. In this sense, Martin’s aggressive anti-inflation
policy during this period set a floor for the cost of borrowing money. It would take another six
decades for borrowing money to cost as little as it did when the UAW was pursuing a guaranteed
wage in 1955. Not until the trade union movement was so weakened and the economic
circumstances so dire would the Fed bring the cost of money so low.
Despite the mandate for maximum employment and price stability, the political
confrontations during this period showed that inflation fighting was the true ruling directive of the
Fed, even if it compromised the concerns of the president or leading business interests. The effects
of such policies on workers would have to be tolerated so that, as Sproul had put it, “structural
maladjustments” could be corrected. For the Fed, these “maladjustments” were the ability to win
wage gains ahead of productivity. To do its part to root out what the FOMC repeatedly called
“inflationary psychology,” rather than seeing the 1957-58 recession as an economic problem, the
FOMC greeted it with open arms, since it pushed unemployment high enough to effectively put
auto and steel workers on their heels in the coming contract negotiations.
106
As the UAW’s contract
expired in the summer of 1958, unemployment stood steady above 7% and spiked to a postwar high

126
of 7.5% in July (See Figure 7). As unemployment surged to 7.4% in August, Vardaman argued that
anti-inflationary “shock treatment was going to be advisable” and that “there should be a retreat
from anything like ease [on the money supply] and a tendency toward tightness.”
107
This strategy has
drawn praise by influential contemporary economists Romer and Romer, who write that this was the
“essence of sensible policy,” and comment that the social costs were minimal since unemployment
in 1958 was “just 6.8%.”
108
But this rate of unemployment was the highest that would be seen
between 1941-1976;
109
and its significance is magnified when weighed against the transformational
technological changes of the period and the historic importance of the 1958 autoworkers’ contract
and the 1959 steel strike. Furthermore, how can the social costs be calculated for the workers who
lost hands and fingers due to automated punch presses?
110
Likewise, while UAW deserves internal
blame for its practices of workplace contractualism and taking away power from their shop stewards
in the late 1940s, laying the 11,000 unresolved grievances brought by their workers between 1955-
1958 solely at the feet of their leadership is unsound.
111

Viewed in this light, the Fed’s deployment of aggressive anti-inflation policy to prevent
private industry from approaching full employment in the late 1950s is particularly important.
Amongst many other things, unemployment drove wedges between working people and those
without work, and younger workers and older workers (with the accompanying impacts on the racial
and gendered composition of the workforce). During the recession, autoworkers in Detroit needed
17 years of seniority to prevent layoffs.
112
By November 1958, frustrated unemployed Chrysler
workers picketed both the factory (who was having workers do overtime shifts) and the UAW
(which was not doing enough to support the idled workers) claiming that the union lacked
“authority…to influence the company’s scheduling of work.”
113
Many workers were militant (wildcat
strikes punctuated the summer and fall), but many more were scared. Quit rates—a strong indicator
of worker attitudes and empowerment—were at their lowest point between 1947-1972.
114
Though

127
we can now see that workers were living in a moment of relative prosperity and economic stability, it
did not feel like it. In 1957 5.5% of people moonlighted, working multiple jobs due to inadequate
wages and fear of a layoff. As Harvey Swados described in 1958 in The Nation, “it is the men who
remember the depression who apparently comprise the bulk of the two-jobbers—they and the
young men with wives and children who have concurrent payments to meet (sometimes of
staggering amounts) on house, car, TV, furniture and appliances.”
115
Those whose working days
were increasingly stretched, finding themselves soliciting overtime, were compelled by the
combination of fear of worklessness and onerous debt.
116

Likewise, Eisenhower did little to curtail the pain caused by the recession. Although he was
frustrated with the Fed’s handling of the interest rate hikes in the buildup to his 1956 election, as
unemployment stood at 7.4% in April 1958, he vetoed a bill authorizing appropriations for rivers,
harbors, and flood control, and geared towards getting people back to work.
117
In 1960 he vetoed
another bill that pursued area redevelopment, especially in rural communities.
118
Instead, he focused
on fighting inflation and stamping out government deficits under the principle that these “could
easily erode international confidence in the dollar.”
119
His action and inaction lead one scholar at the
time to question “whether the President fulfilled his executive responsibility under the
[Employment] Act [of 1946].”
120
Indeed, not only did this period see the Fed cast aside their legal
mandate under the Employment Act, but business leaders put the Act in their crosshairs. In
November 1958, with unemployment standing at 6.2%, a Du Pont executive argued in front of the
Congressional Joint Economic Committee that the Act should be rewritten to promote “reasonably
full employment” (instead of “maximum employment”) and that price stability should be the chief
goal of the Act; the proposal that would have effectively legalized the illegal action that the Fed was
already taking.
121
As would become ever more true in the years after the 1957-58 recession, buoyed
by the contemporaneous birth of the Phillips Curve to justify high unemployment rates as necessary

128
for a low inflation rate, workless and working people would bear the brunt of the costs of these
policy preferences. Of these people—as Calvin Love, the blind musician whose analysis opened this
chapter, feared—Black workers and other workers who faced the hardships of discrimination would
be those most acutely harmed by these actions and inactions of elite actors exercising their power in
the political and economic arena.
The Civil Rights Response: The Negro American Labor Council and the Fight for Full
Employment

As unemployment surged across the country in the late 1950s, Black workers were
particularly disadvantaged. As the 1957-58 recession set a floor below which interest rates would not
dip below again, it did the same with the unemployment rate (See Figure 9). Over the subsequent
decades, the only time unemployment would dip below four percent was from 1966-70, when the
economy was hot with military spending for the Vietnam War, and as a result the Fed was politically
unable to cool it down.
122
But even during those years, as the next chapter explores, Black workers
and other marginalized workers still found daily survival difficult in a cruel economy.
Figure 9: Unemployment Rate by Racial Classification, 1955-62.
123

129
It was not only the economic circumstances that proclaimed tough times for Black workers
during the late 1950s, but in addition, some of their most forceful advocates had their strength
compromised during this period. In April 1956, the National Negro Labor Council (NNLC)—one
of the staunchest critics of racist political and economic relations in the first part of the decade—
disbanded. The decision to dissolve at this time reflected an accumulation of Cold War pressures.
The most significant of which was a HUAC investigation demanding the NNLC register as a
Communist front organization.
124
Founded in 1950, the NNLC did maintain a relationship with the
Communist Party, but included a wide variety of trade unionists and fellow travelers. At its strongest
point, the NNLC had 5,000 members who pushed forward a national boycott of Sears, promoted
fair employment, and asserted that the abolition of Jim Crow needed to be at the heart of the
struggle on behalf of workers.
125
As historian Dayo Gore notes, the women of the NNLC articulated
a “more expansive labor politics…[that] insisted that trade unions should view the political struggles
for African American civil rights and women’s equality as key labor issues.”
126
While many scholars
have noted the ways in which Cold War politics helped facilitate civil rights reforms, as historian
Clarence Lang argues, this political climate foreclosed many options as well. Instead of viewing this
period solely though the prism of its inspiring victories, Lang highlights how this period
“represented a nadir of black radicalism in the mid-twentieth century.”
127
Cold War politics
undermined many of the staunchest critics of the role of racism in the U.S. political economy.
Nonetheless, one complicated and contradictory legacy of the NNLC was the birth of the
Negro American Labor Council. A. Philip Randolph and his grouping of anti-Stalinists did their part
to facilitate this nadir through their ardent anti-Communism. But they were also forced to respond
to the political criticisms being put forward by the NNLC. Two years after the NNLC’s founding,
Randolph and others formed the National Negro Labor Committee in 1952 in order to “fight red
influence” amongst Black workers. As the Chicago Defender noted, the committee was “set up in direct

130
opposition to the [National] Negro Labor Council.”
128
The pressure to compete organizationally
with the NNLC may have compelled Randolph to speak more forcefully to issues of greater
international breadth than he often did stating, “Negro workers and peoples and their democratic
allies [must]…fight to throw off the yoke of imperialistic colonialism on the one hand, and to avoid
the dangerous quicksands of Russian world communism on the other.”
129
The anti-Stalinist Committee
was not nearly as strong as the Council during the early 50s. But by the end of the decade (with the
NNLC disbanded and the U.S. Communist left in disarray due to the combined weight of
McCarthyism and disillusionment after the 1956 invasion of Hungary) Randolph and others
recreated a national organization dedicated to fighting for civil rights and labor rights. In the early
stages of their organizing, they even adopted the name of the NNLC before changing it to prevent
confusion with the disbanded organization.
130
During their formative period they alternated names
from the “National Negro Labor Council” to the “Negro Labor Committee,” before settling on the
“Negro American Labor Council” (NALC). Randolph suggested that their chief inspiration was not
the NNLC of 1950-1956, but instead their formation was “comparable with the Jewish Labor
Committee.”
131
While this might have been so in terms of how Randolph foresaw the organizational
structure, for the thousands who would join the NALC seeking to fulfill its goals—to fight racism
within and outside of the labor unions—the resonance with the objectives of the earlier NNLC is
noteworthy.
132

In contradistinction to the NNLC, the organizations Randolph was a part of building at least
nominally had support from the AFL and the CIO; but the reality left much to be desired. As John
Thorton, a representative of the steelworker’s union and leading member of the NALC noted in
1959, “since the merger of the AFL-CIO there has been not only a stalemate of progress on civil
rights within the unions…but retrogression has set in.”
133
While few of the problems that Randolph
and the NALC would enumerate were altogether new, due to the rising unemployment in the wake

131
of the recent recession, and the harsh bargaining attitude of the steel companies, these conditions
added urgency to the struggle ahead.
134
In this way, the Fed’s aggressive action that enabled the
1957-58 recession, and the dire economic consequences it provoked for Black workers, helped
catalyze Randolph and other Black trade unionists to organize to alleviate the growing structural
unemployment.
For years, since the merger of the AFL and the CIO, Randolph had argued that if
Communism and corruption should be transgressions fit for aggressive punishment by the labor
federation, then certainly racism should be as well.
135
Randolph insisted that the existing penalties for
unions were unacceptable, “since it does not provide sanctions against racism upon the same
grounds that sanctions are provided against communism and corruption.”
136
Such internal problems
were hardly secrets. Mike Quill, President of the Transport Workers Union had famously protested
the merger, suggesting it was a capitulation to the AFL’s time-worn practices of “racism,
racketeering, and raiding,” and argued—unsuccessfully—that eliminating racist unions should be a
condition of the merger.
137
While publicly, much of Randolph’s statements around the merger
affirmed the strength of AFL-CIO President Meany’s commitment to civil rights, Meany’s decision
to place George Harrison of the racist Brotherhood of Railway Clerks in charge of civil rights for
the labor federation would have been a particular affront to Randolph.
138
In the years since the
merger, Quill and Randolph’s misgivings about the internal unwillingness of the union federation to
challenge their affiliates proved well founded.
After 1955, as Thorton alluded to, the problems of racist discrimination had been
exacerbated as the economic conditions worsened, the Cold War continued to pummel left social
movements, and the civil rights movement increased in prominence and provoked backlash from
White Citizen Councils.
139
An infamous confrontation concerning the AFL-CIO’s accommodation
of racist unions erupted between Randolph and Meany at the 1959 AFL-CIO convention. In

132
response to Randolph’s proposals to sanction the racist unions, Meany snapped, “who the hell
appointed you as the guardian of all the Negroes in America?”
140
As the decade came to a close the
intransigence of the union federation had reached an impasse for Randolph and others. As NAACP
labor secretary and one of the most persistent critics of racist union practices, Herbert Hill stated,
the anti-discrimination pronouncements coming from the labor federation amounted to “more
pious platitudes in a long list of pious platitudes.”
141
It was out of the confluence of these
circumstances that the NALC needed to be created and enlivened.
For Randolph, the issue of trade union racism needed to be conjoined with an analysis of the
changing industrial geography of the country. “Labor has failed to learn the lesson of unity,”
Randolph argued. “The price organized labor pays for the failure to learn this lesson of the unity of
workers, regardless of race, color, religion or national origin, is evident by the present labor situation
in the South.” Furthermore, “the failure” in the fight to organize the South via Operation Dixie,
“was due to a compromise with racialism as a policy of trade union opportunism,” he announced
before the 1959 NAACP Convention.
142
From this standpoint, an anti-racist union movement was
vital for a strong union movement. No amount of opportunism or expedient shortcuts could avoid
that fact. But this was not solely an issue narrowly confined to the South. As he explained to
members of Detroit’s Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC, a caucus founded by Black activists
working in the UAW’s Local 600 to confront racism of the bosses and the union) the “movement
must become national because the problem is national.”
143
For Randolph, this thinking was sober
analysis of the predicament. “Labor gets what labor takes and labor can only take what it has the
power to take, and power is the product of organization,” he had argued a few years prior.
144

National scale problems required national scale organizations. A divided, racist labor movement
would lose. In addition to being morally repugnant, being hospitable to racist unionists was an ill-
formed strategy. As a result of this analysis, Randolph argued that the NALC’s role was to confront

133
the “institutions of the country …[that] are encrusted with the dogma of white supremacy,”—which
included the labor movement.
145

At the 1960 founding convention (hosted in Detroit by the leaders of TULC, Horace
Sheffield and Robert “Buddy” Battle) Randolph echoed themes from his speech a year prior; he
reiterated the problems before them, why the NALC was so urgently necessary, and what some
goals could be. Amongst others, the NALC needed to challenge:
• color bars in [union] constitutions, rituals, or by tacit consent
• color line job ceiling in apprenticeship training
• segregated lines of job progression that lead to blind-alley, unskilled job
classifications
• discrimination in hiring and firing; inadequate representation in conventions of
national and international unions and the conventions of the AFL-CIO
• [the] revolution of automation and [its impact on] unskilled workers
• [the] economic cost of racial bias to the country

The AFL-CIO, he explained, “will not voluntarily move…unless it is caused to move.”
146
And so, to
confront and alleviate the panoply of racist practices, a national organization was necessary and the
NALC set out to facilitate that endeavor.
In creating the NALC, Randolph considered what he dubbed the “Civil Rights Revolution in
the labor movement” to be a fundamental question of working-class organization and composition
akin to the debates between craft and industrial workers that split the AFL and the CIO. It was both
morally necessary, and a result of shifts in the global political economy that were twofold:
technological unemployment and competition with the Soviet Union. He highlighted how the
exclusion of Black workers from avenues for job advancement coalesced with automation to
foreshadow particular dangers for younger workers. “Perhaps the greatest threat to the survival and
progress of Negro workers in the face of the rapidly developing revolution of automation is the
almost complete exclusion of Negro workers from apprenticeship programs,” he told the NALC. As
a result of increased introduction of new technology, fighting racial exclusions from craft unions
became even more pressing. Randolph also attempted to use Cold War competition about economic

134
growth, and its relationship with purchasing power Keynesiansim, to his advantage, noting that the
U.S., “because of racial bias, limits the rate of economic growth [since] it fails to bring into the
productive process the manpower of one its largest segments of the workforce—the Negro, who
represents on out of every ten workers.”
147

In the coming years the local chapters of the NALC began to take action, as they sought to
actualize the organization’s goals. In Los Angeles, members protested the West Coast dockworkers
union, the ILWU, and the shippers’ organization, for their decades of racist employment practices.
In response, the union made a commitment that when the hiring was made for 300 new “B-men,”
two-thirds would be Black workers.
148
Up the coast in San Francisco, the local NALC chapter also
picketed the ILWU’s rival, the Sailor’s Union of the Pacific.”
149
In Pittsburgh, the NALC members
demanded that a new arena being built employ Black workers and claimed their rights to jobs in
concessions and for the parking facilities. The leader of the NALC chapter made the case that since
“the new Civic Auditorium was made possible largely through the general use of city and Federal
funds [and] all citizens made their contributions,” assurances should be made so that the jobs that
the broad polity paid taxes towards would not exclusively go to support white workers.
150
It was
actions such as these that united broad goals with the fight for quotidian reforms of racist practices
that made the NALC a meaningful social force and allowed its membership to swell from 5,000 to
10,000 at various points in the early 60s.
151

In 1961, the situation on the West Coast ports resembled that of the East Coast, as
Randolph investigated racism amongst the International Longshore Association in Brooklyn and
Manhattan. Upon scrutiny he found that “a climate of racial terror, nepotism in the acquisition of
jobs, and exclusion and discrimination because of race have created a highly dangerous and
explosive situation.”
152
Black workers received less pay and worse jobs. Over a recent three-month
span, white workers attacked five Black workers. In a letter to George Meany, Randolph highlighted

135
the how racism and automation were leading to perilous conditions for waterfront workers. “The
plight of black longshoremen is further intensified by containerization and other forms of
automation which are displacing black workers who are denied their seniority rights and opportunity
to acquire the skills and experience for better jobs on the docks,” Randolph wrote.
153
As with the
situation of the 30s, Randolph worried that racist violence would continue to accompany job
shortages and limit the force of anti-racist movements.
But despite Randolph’s appeal, Meany took little ameliorative action as Randolph and the
NALC were met with persistent intransigence from the AFL-CIO. By the end of 1961, there was a
significant rift between the NALC and the AFL-CIO’s leadership. In keeping with the tradition of
offering the “pious platitudes” that Herbert Hill had excoriated, in February the AFL-CIO’s
Executive Council released a declaration on civil rights that, read out of context, would seem to
affirm the work of the NALC. On the heels of President Kennedy’s inauguration, it demanded
enactment of an FEPC, called for Kennedy to issue executive orders for non-discrimination
amongst government contractors, and many other significant governmental reforms.
154
However, in
light of the vocal protests against racism both within and outside the house of labor—absent
meaningful action within the AFL-CIO’s own sphere—the statement seemed like more of what Hill
had described. The AFL-CIO’s unwillingness to cast a critical glance inside their union was then
confirmed by their response to Randolph’s June memorandum to the Council on the status of civil
rights within the 133 unions comprising the federation.
The Executive Council responded with ferocity to Randolph’s 70-page report, which
described how “Negroes are second-class citizens in the house of labor.” The report cautioned the
Council to heed the anti-racist rank and file energy that would develop in the subsequent decade
(and would be much less amiable to the rituals of labor’s figureheads than Randolph himself was).
Randolph’s memo warned that “the Negro community has practically lost faith in [Randolph’s]

136
declarations about labor’s opposition to racial discrimination.” And, amongst other evidence citing
the need for the AFL-CIO to advocate more forcefully on behalf of civil rights, Randolph included a
report from the Urban League highlighting the harsh impact of unemployment on Black workers—
10.2% for “nonwhite” workers in 1960 and 12.5% in 1961.
155
Instead of being chastened by the
accumulated evidence, the Executive Council characterized the report as Randolph’s “attack on the
trade union movement.” The Council even went so far as to suggest that “the major share of the
responsibility for the ‘gap’ that has developed between organized labor and the Negro, therefore
falls upon Mr. Randolph himself.” They claimed that Randolph’s arguments, that the unions which
were perpetuating white supremacy should be reprimanded, simply amounted to Randolph’s desire
for “the AFL-CIO program to a be a punitive program.” The Executive Council’s response
questioned the efficacy of the NALC stating, “NALC has performed no tangible, concrete service to
date.” The Executive Council was disgusted that Randolph’s memorandum “devotes three times as
much space to race bias by trade unions as it does to…bias by employers.”
156
Astute labor observer
B.J. Widick and former member of UAW’s Detroit Local 7, considered this rebuttal as one facet of
the “intense pressure by the AFL-CIO hierarchy to dissolve the NALC.”
157

The situation would intensify over the coming months as the Executive Council continued
to argue that Randolph himself was the problem and chose to censure him in October. As Meany
told the New York Times, “we can only get moving on civil rights if he comes over to our side and
stops throwing stones and bricks at us.”
158
For Randolph, the response represented “the spirit of
revanche” and he considered their attitude “moral suicidal folly.”
159
Many, however, came to
Randolph’s defense. A bricklayer from St. Albans, New York implored Meany to correct the “great
injustice … to save further embarrassment to organized labor.”
160
The president of UAW’s Chicago
based Local 1003, declared that “we intend to support [Randolph] 100%” against “your savage
attack.”
161
One of the most forceful responses came from the leaders of the NALC. Members of the

137
NALC executive council like Horace Sheffield of the UAW and Cleveland Robinson of District 65
organized a delegation to confront Meany at the December AFL-CIO convention in Miami.
162
At
their meeting, they sought to reaffirm their backing behind Randolph. As they explained, “far more
preferable to castigating A. Philip Randolph, the AFL-CIO Executive Council … should embark
immediately upon an earnest campaign calculated to bring its structure and policies in line with the
oft-repeated democratic statements of its leaders.”
163
“We say to you, Brother Meany,” they
implored, “as sincerely and as emphatically as we know how that the major responsibility for this
gap rests with those within the House of Labor who engage in, acquiesce in, and cover up practices
of racial discrimination and exclusion.”
164
Convincing Meany and the Executive Council to change
their stance was no small effort; Widick, reporting on the convention in The Nation, commented that
“outside the State Department and Washington, no one pays more attention to protocol than the
top leaders of labor.”
165
But with Martin Luther King brought in to give the closing address and
Freedom Rides taking place throughout the South, the Executive Council, rather than dig in their
heels, instead softened their stance; they passed a unanimous civil rights resolution (the first time
since Randolph joined the AFL in 1929)—one he considered to be unsurpassed in the federation’s
history.
166
Considering that a few months prior the NALC was under attack and Randolph was
facing expulsion from the Executive Council, this significantly pushed back the revanche that
Randolph had worried was taking place.
Although the conflicts with the AFL-CIO had been somewhat alleviated, in 1962, for rank
and file Black workers, life remained arduous as unemployment persisted to ravage lives, pushing up
to 12.6% for “nonwhite” workers in March 1962.
167
During this time the NALC argued that “jobs,
more jobs, and better jobs is the pressing, No. 1 issue with Negro America,” as well as for Puerto
Rican workers.
168
Randolph worried that automation without gains by labor would provoke a crisis
of underconsumption, stating that “science and technology can produce more goods and services

138
than purchasing power can buy back.” Based on his experience with the Pullman Porters achieving
reductions in hours, he continued to argue that shrinking the working day was a necessary strategy
for the labor movement as a whole. Rooted in their success over the years, bargaining their work
week from 75 hours to 51 hours, he suggested that the BSCP “stands now in forefront of [a] historic
struggle of trade union labor…to meet the challenge of automation by reducing the worktime of the
worker.”
169
Randolph was not alone in seeing how the tremendous increases in technological
productivity of the period created the need to rethink questions of work and time. During the
House of Representatives Committee’s 1961 hearings on unemployment and automation (chaired by
Adam Clayton Powell) the necessity for a shorter workweek was one of the most frequent
suggestions to solve the problem of chronic labor surpluses.
170

However, Randolph, was acutely aware that moral suasion of political elites was of limited
utility. “Power is the only thing a politician, Democrat or Republican, can understand,” he told
students at Central State College a few weeks after Kennedy’s election.
171
As a result, having
neutralized many of their adversaries within the AFL-CIO, but with the problem of persistent
unemployment still threatening, the NALC would devote its energy to continuing the fight for a
guaranteed job. As 1962 came to a close, Randolph identified that “Black America has been thrust
into a job rights and civil rights struggle,” bringing with it, “danger and opportunity.” Buoyed by the
belief that “resolutions are not enough,” Randolph and the other thousands of members of the
NALC would turn in the new year to uniting these struggles: the March on Washington for Jobs and
Freedom.
Conclusion
On the heels of the AFL-CIO merger, mechanization and automation were reshaping lives
of working people, but it was not too late to slow the pace or craft political proposals to soften the
impact on workers whose way of life and means of surviving were being obliterated. But the chances

139
of mounting the type of effort as would have been necessary were severely hampered when the
1957-58 recession pushed unemployment to its highest point since 1941. Crucial in this matter was
the Fed’s ability to enact policies they saw fit after the 1951 Accord, and their controversial choices
pursue harsh anti-labor measures. One of the reasons that the Fed was so effective in taking
advantage of anxieties about inflation is that it keyed in to real concerns for working people. Indeed,
inflation could serve to partition workers along lines of power. A. Philip Randolph had highlighted
this problem years before when he noted how “labor, through trade unions, may win decent wages
at the point of production and lose them at the point of consumption.”
172
The wages of union
members were outpacing inflation, and the burden of these costs did fall on the bulk of working
people who were without strong unions and could not keep pace with rising costs. However,
the AFL-CIO was not entirely asleep at the wheel in this regard. They called for price reductions and
challenged the efficacy of the Federal Reserve to represent the interests of non-elites.
173
They argued
that the Fed needed to be expanded to include those who could advocate for the interests of labor,
consumers, and small businesses, instead of bankers alone.
174
But they were unsuccessful in these
appeals. And as 1963 began, the full employment demands of the 40s seemed more and more
necessary, but further and further away.

140
Chapter 4: “Civil Rights Plus Full Employment Equals Freedom”: From the March on
Washington to the Freedom Budget
“Here is the real labor problem…Out of the exploitation of the dark proletariat comes the Surplus
Value filched from human beasts, which in cultured lands, the Machine and harnessed Power veil
and conceal. The emancipation of man is the emancipation of labor and the emancipation of labor is
the freeing of that basic majority of workers who are yellow, brown and black.” – W.E.B. DuBois
Black Reconstruction, 1935, (Quoted by A. Philip Randolph, 1964)
1

“The urgency of accelerating pressure for Equality Now can best be understood against the
background of past defeats.” – A. Philip Randolph, 1963
2

Inflation was global capitalism’s Achilles heel during the years after World War II.
3
Thus the
specter of worker empowerment being utilized to push up wages and prices brought forth
significant anxieties during this period. As a result, the dual problems that the March on Washington
sought to solve—persistent unemployment and ferocious anti-democracy, especially in the South—
posed a fundamental challenge to the postwar economic order on a host of levels, since the success
of these objectives would have had the effect of strengthening labor. As I have shown in the
previous chapters, these problems that the March confronted were politically produced at the
highest levels of elite economic and political power. Accordingly, when 250,000 people took buses
and trains from all over the country in the end of August 1963, few believed their goals would be
achieved immediately. Although the March is remembered as a tremendous success, and by most
accounts it was, when looked at from the perspective its central demand—a guaranteed job—it failed.
But A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, Tom Kahn, Rachelle Horowitz, and the other organizers of
the March knew that the struggle must and would continue over the subsequent years. As Horowitz,
a protégé of Rustin’s and the coordinator of travel for the March, commented about the general
sensibility of her coterie of activists, “it was never enough.”
4
This grouping of socialists understood
that they would struggle for reforms, win them, and that would put them in more advantageous
positions to achieve their ultimate goals. They knew well what Randolph reiterated a few months
before the March: “no social order surrenders power, control and status without a struggle.”
5
But

141
buoyed by the strength of the March, they set out to fashion the means to continue the effort to
ameliorate the plagues of unemployment and push back against the continued enclosures over the
means of subsistence. This group of activists was empowered by the long fetch of Black freedom
struggles for abolition democracy: a simultaneous process of negating violence and oppression, and
winning transitional, concrete gains that expanded the boundaries of freedom and democracy.
Rooted in the principles of abolition democracy, after the March, they developed The Freedom
Budget for All Americans, a visionary $100 billion social spending program to abolish unemployment
and poverty. It aimed to achieve the unfulfilled objectives of the March (after the historic Civil
Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965). Equipped with these newly won rights,
those who fought for the Freedom Budget hoped that the prior success of Jim Crow political power
to stifle full employment would finally be overcome. Likewise, although the Federal Reserve
continued to be aggressive in their anti-inflation policies, they were hesitant to be as forceful as they
would have preferred (due to fear of undermining the Vietnam War effort and the still tenuous place
of their independence).
6
However, the Fed’s relative passivity was the only thing about the war that
provided advantageous conditions for the Freedom Budget. In more significant ways, the war
drained needed governmental revenues away from the social spending, since President Johnson was
reluctant to pursue a tax increase to fund the war. Likewise, the war splintered left movements in a
way akin to the break up of the Socialists and Communists after the Hitler-Stalin pact. Such were the
challenges of pursuing left legislative action between 1965-68. When social movements determine to
pursue legislation, their struggles are always constrained by the crude pragmatism and accompanying
chicanery of elected leaders. In such circumstances, large-scale social movements are essential. The
inability to consolidate a united left coalition to push the Freedom Budget full bore meant that
Congress was too great an obstacle to overcome. While the Freedom Budget was able to achieve

142
broad social consensus, like the earlier attempts at full employment legislation, the legislative efforts
would be unsuccessful.
Abolition Democracy and March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom
The March on Washington was an urgent action to enlarge the sphere of freedom and the
boundaries of citizenship. While the historian C. Vann Woodward is often credited with coining the
term “Second Reconstruction” to indentify the civil rights revolution underway, contemporaneously
to Woodward, A. Philip Randolph expressed similar analysis about the struggle to execute the
unfulfilled tasks of the first reconstruction.
7
In October 1955, and in the great majority of his
subsequent speeches, Randolph would delve into the politics of the demise of Reconstruction.
Drawing on W.E.B. DuBois’ classic Black Reconstruction, Randolph would explain to countless
audiences how “the Civil War revolution was never completed.”
8
For Randolph, the Civil War
revolution, which he likened to the bourgeois revolutions of England in 1688 and France in 1789,
was “never fully completed because the new industrial and financial circles of America no longer
needed to complete the Revolution in order to consolidate their forces as the economic masters of a
new nation.”
9
As DuBois described how the relations elaborating from the post-1877 period
crystallized a “new capitalism and a new enslavement of labor,” Randolph agreed with this
assessment of the “growth of capitalist power” in this period.
10
For Randolph, the revolution that
the Civil War (and the general strike of enslaved people) helped usher in remained to be achieved
due to the twin predicaments created by what he and others described as the “counterrevolution.”
“It failed to give [former slaves] land,” and instantiated the effective “nullification” of the 13
th
, 14
th
,
and 15
th
Amendments to the Constitution.
11
As a result Randolph argued that the “historic mission”
in front of civil rights and labor activists was to build the movements that could respond to the
contradictions of economic and political rights, which the withered liberalism (deriving from the
demise of Reconstruction) was unresponsive to. Just as DuBois had argued that, “the rebuilding,

143
whether it comes now or a century later, must go back to the basic principles of Reconstruction …
Land, Light, and Leading for slaves black, brown, yellow and white, under the dictatorship of the
proletariat,” Randolph maintained that this was the task in front of civil rights activists.
12

Following this assessment, Randolph invoked the “spirit of Abolition democracy” to argue
that the Negro American Labor Council (NALC) must confront the “major historical mission” of
expanding the bounds of liberalism. Liberalism, he suggested, was “in collapse…its voice is timid
and too afraid”
13
Randolph noted that the dual mission was to affirm and actualize the bourgeois
revolutions for political rights, and simultaneously “prepare the way for the revolutions in economic
rights.”
14
Abolition democracy, as DuBois, and scholars following him, such as Angela Y. Davis and
George Lipsitz, have suggested is about the struggle for infrastructure and institution that are, in
DuBois’ words, “based on freedom, intelligence and power for all.”
15
Such a mode of thinking poses
abolition in a dialectical relationship with construction and creation. Thus, as slavery needs to be
negatively abolished through the destruction of the legal regime upon which it relies, it must also be
positively abolished, as Davis would argue, though creation of “new democratic institutions.”
16

Insofar as Randolph understood it, the political revolution of the civil rights movement was about
creating new political horizons premised on this principle.
Randolph maintained that Black workers had a special role to play in this revolutionary
struggle. “No other social force in American life has the spiritual preparation to lead the forces of
the Civil Rights Revolution, which is only born in social suffering, sacrifice and struggle, economic
oppression and political persecution, except the Negro, the chief victim of this adversity,” he said.
17

Randolph suggested that the experience of enslavement—being construed and treated as property—
prepared Black people to pose an elemental question of the period: property rights or human rights?
As he put it in his March on Washington speech, “the sanctity of private property takes second place
to the sanctity of human personality.”
18
Randolph drew on the history of the abolition of slavery to

144
display how the “principle and laws of private property” could be overturned.
19
In this struggle,
Randolph argued that what he referred to as the “Negro-Labor alliance” was fundamental to
achieving the goals. But this alliance could not be formed unless the racism of the labor unions was
eradicated. As Randolph put it, “unity without equality is an illusion.”
20

For the achievement of the civil rights-labor alliance to be consolidated, labor would need to
expand the boundaries of what it considered working-class struggle and also reverse its drift toward
unionism that was more interested in stability and pleasing employers than class conflict or rank and
file militancy. This perspective struck to the core of the problems confronting the labor movement.
“Business unionism,” Randolph argued, “ceases to recognize the conflict of interests between labor
and business…when labor ceases to struggle for Labor and humanity it will cease to be.” Indeed,
Randolph worried, rightfully, that the “high command of organized labor doesn’t have the
power…to organize the unorganized.”

And if this were to be allowed to calcify, not only would the
labor movement terminate its status as a movement, but also the power to counteract the type of big
business “totalitarian state” (that he argued was in the process of being created) would be severely
damaged.
21
For Randolph, as the early 60s unfolded, it was towards the NALC and the civil rights
movement that labor must look for reinvigoration. The NALC, as Randolph explained, “strives for
the liberation of black and therefore, white labor, for the white working class can never be free
unless the black working class is free.”
22
It was from this framework and this task that Randolph
began to organize the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom.
In early 1963, Randolph enlisted his longtime comrade Bayard Rustin to set about
coordinating the March. Over the subsequent months Rustin, Randolph and others began to craft
the demands and vision for what they initially named—in order to highlight the centennial
anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation, and the need to continue the struggle to abolition
democracy—“The Emancipation March for Jobs.” An early call for the march echoed Randolph’s

145
themes over the prior years. It emphasized: “not only are Negro workers looking for jobs they
cannot find but they find jobs they cannot perform because of a lack of skills and training, due
largely to racial barriers to apprenticeship training courses.”
23
It highlighted the importance of
grassroots demonstration to shift the balance of forces in society stating, “leadership, however
sound, without mass struggles is inadequate.” The grouping of organizations, led by the NALC and
buttressed by the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE), the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference (SCLC), and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), stressed that
joblessness was the key problem they were seeking to address. As the announcement explained, “We
call upon Negroes, churches, fraternal societies, labor unions, civic fraternities, sororities, youth
groups and parent-teacher associations to join the Emancipation March on Washington for Jobs—
by railroad, bus, airplane, automobile, and by foot—to bring the Negro jobs' crisis into national
focus and emphasize upon the Administration, Congress, labor unions and industry a deeper sense
of urgency in developing a solution of the problem of racial joblessness.” The March, thus sought to
wholly intertwine the struggle for political and economic rights.

146
Figure 10: This flyer from the early organizing for the March on Washington highlights the role of
automation and unemployment in the genesis of the March.
24

Accompanying Rustin in the organizing of the March were a young and talented group of
socialist activists whom he had been working with at the time in the civil rights movement. These
activists, such as Tom Kahn and Rachelle Horowitz, both Jewish New Yorkers, had met Rustin
when they were 18 in 1956 through Michael Harrington and Max Shachtman. Shachtman was a
central figure in left since the 1920s, who led the anti-Stalinist Independent Socialist League (ISL,
formerly the Workers Party) into the Socialist Party in 1958.
25
As members of the Young Socialists
League (led by Harrington, later the Young People’s Socialist League, YPSL) Kahn and Horowitz,
by 1963, had been won over to a position supporting the “realignment” of the Democratic Party
through the initiative of the civil rights movement.
26
One of the first appearances of this thinking
amongst socialists appeared in 1956 in the ISL’s newspaper Labor Action. Responding to the Brown
vs. Board of Education decision and Montgomery Bus Boycott, Gordon Haskell argued that the
civil rights movement “can split the Democratic Party wide open; can force a realignment in our

147
politics which becomes much more far-reaching than the issue of the struggle for racial justice.” He
hypothesized about the potentials for “a mass March on Washington, organized by Negro and labor
movements,” and suggested that this could “endanger the integrity of the Democratic Party.”
27
This
rough sketch described what would come to be known as the “realignment strategy”—a plan to
force the Dixiecrats out of the Democratic Party through the rise of the civil rights movement,
which would result in the Democrats being able to be taken over by left-liberal and socialist forces
and to create something akin to a labor party. However, Kahn was not initially in favor of such a
strategy, preferring the creation of a labor party itself. Looking forward to the coming year’s
election, he wrote to Rustin in 1959, “just keep repeating the formula: 1960 Project!increased
tension within Democratic Party!Split Democratic Party!formation of Labor Party!Labor Party,
under influence of mass socialist left.”
28
But, as Horowitz explained, through their involvement in
the civil rights movement, they “got hit in the head with…two realities…that, one, the labor
movement was not about to split to form a labor party.” And secondly, most Black people voted for
democrats, and “so over months of debate and argument…[we] came to a different point of view
that there should be a political realignment.”
29
From this perspective, the civil rights movement was
a fundamental struggle to reshape every facet of U.S. political and economic life. As Kahn explained
in his widely read 1960 pamphlet, Unfinished Revolution:
“In the South segregation and disenfranchisement are the bases of political rule; and for Big
Business, the economic and political suppression of the Negro serves to maintain a cheap
labor market and a lucrative status quo…therefore it is clear that the fight for civil rights
cannot be limited to one or two spheres. A fight for the end of segregation in schools
necessarily becomes involved with the fight for democracy itself…here we have the makings
of a great new democratic party in the United States, a party of labor, liberals and farmers, a
party representing the vast majority of American people…the civil rights movement remains
the great catalytic agent in the process of political realignment.”
30

By 1963, a version of this perspective was shared by many of those organizing the March. The civil
rights movement should lead the way, to be followed by the labor movement, in the continued
struggle for a new political configuration.

148
While the march’s early circular had exclaimed, “let the black laboring masses speak,” Black
women were persistently sidelined throughout the organizing.
31
Although 11.3% of “nonwhite”
women were unemployed at the time, and 3.3 million Black women worked for wages, the March
did not seek to highlight the problems faced by Black women workers.
32
When Dorothy Height of
the National Council of Negro Women and Anna Arnold Hedgeman, both longtime civil rights
activists who were working on organizing the March approached Rustin to ask for greater
involvement of women, they were rebuffed. Rustin responded that since “every group has women in
it, labor, church,” and so forth, women were sufficiently well represented.
33
Rather than have a
speaker at the March, the March’s lead organizers positioned a number of seats on the platform for
some of the leading women of the civil rights movement such as Daisy Bates and Rosa Parks, as
well as the civil rights leaders’ wives. Such a response was particularly disappointing to Height since
“women were the backbone of the movement,” and of course, since Black women were more likely
to unemployed than Black men.
34

Likewise, as many of the male leaders of the “Big Six,” major civil rights organization
overlooked the importance of women to the questions of the racist political economy, the trade
unions remained slow to recognize the significance of the March to the goals of the labor
movement. Although the AFL-CIO Executive Council issued a resolution on unemployment
amongst Black workers in the buildup to the March on May 16, they continued to drag their heels
when it came to meaningful action. “No worker is secure in a job until all workers are secure,” they
declared. Ironically, they noted the difficulty in “awakening” people to the “special economic and
social dangers in today’s unbelievable high unemployment rate amongst Negro workers.”
35

However, unsurprisingly, when it came time to actually supporting the march, the Executive Council
backed away, holding to its well-rehearsed tradition of moderately affirmative statements and
complacent practices.
36
When asked about the program for the march, the federation stated that it

149
was “neither condemning nor endorsing” the proposals put forward.
37
In opposition to this attitude,
the March’s two strongest supporters amongst the Executive Council, Randolph, and the UAW’s
President Walter Reuther voted against this display of reticence.
The March’s key proposals continued much of the social democratic demands that Randolph
and Reuther had put forward for over a decade. In this case, however the conditions had shifted,
with deepening unemployment, the continued growth and strength of the Southern civil rights
movement, and the decision of President Kennedy in 1962 to attempt to jump start consumer
demand with an investment tax cut, instead of Keynesian programs directed toward public
employment.
38
On the heels of the tax cut and throughout 1962-1963, Randolph, the March’s
organizers, and others sharing their political sensibilities began to speak more openly and
forthrightly about structural unemployment. In his popular, 1962 book The Other America, the socialist
(and colleague of Horowitz, Kahn, and Rustin) Michael Harrington described the group of people
subject to technological unemployment. “Their jobs have been destroyed and their skills rendered
useless…[they] are the rejects of the affluent society,” he wrote, alluding to the title of President
Kennedy’s adviser, John Kenneth Galbraith’s 1958 book, The Affluent Society. Likewise, the Black
socialist intellectual James Boggs depicted a similar state of affairs in his classic 1963 book The
American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook. Adjacent to those Harrington called “the
rejects,” Boggs highlighted younger workers whom he called “the outsiders.” Based out of Detroit,
he observed, “a growing army of unemployed…millions [that] have never been and never can be
absorbed into our present society.”
39
Boggs characterized these circumstances as “the ultimate crisis
of the American bourgeoisie.”
40
In response to this state of affairs, the initial draft proposal for the
March declared, “the current crisis is overwhelmingly the result of structural unemployment.
Thousands of workers have been displaced by automation, rendered economically functionless in
modern industrial society.”
41
The result of this analytic framework of the problems they were

150
confronting led them to propose into a robust vision of abolitionist democratic demands for
political and economic freedom.
It cannot be overstated that from its earliest days challenging the problem of automation and
unemployment was central to the March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Indeed, in many
ways, if anything, it was the “freedom” portion was placed second in the early organizing until
Martin Luther King became involved in June after having considered planning a separate March to
support the organizing he was a part of in Birmingham, AL.
42
By the time the official announcement
of the March was issued on July 12, the demands for jobs and freedom were melded. As the March’s
initial organizing manual explained:
“The Civil Rights demands include:
• Passage by the Congress of effective and meaningful civil rights legislation in
the present session, without filibuster.
• Immediate desegregation of the nation’s schools.
• An end to police brutality directed at citizens using their broad constitutional
right of peaceful demonstration.
The Job demands include:
• A massive Federal Public Works Program to provide jobs for all the
unemployed, and Federal legislation to promote an expanding economy.
• A Federal Fair Employment Practices Act to bar job discrimination by
Federal, State, and Municipal governments, and by private employers,
contractors, employment agencies and trade unions.
• Broadening the federal Fair Labor Standards Act to include the uncovered
areas of employment where Negroes and other minorities work at slave
wages; and establishment of a national minimum wage of not less than $2.00
per hour.”
43

These demands both spoke specifically to the urgency of the moment, and were the accumulation of
decades of struggle. Randolph himself had been pursuing a number of them since the 1930s with the
National Negro Congress. Likewise, recalling the ferment of that period, the manual emphasized the
need to organize unemployed people for the March. “It will serve no purpose to hold a March for
Jobs and Freedom if unemployed people are not able to come and add their voices and presence to
the demonstration,” the manual noted. Written by Rustin and, most likely, Cleveland Robinson (a
leading member of the NALC from the innovative union District 65 in New York), it went on to

151
maintain that, “organizations must make it a main task to get the news of the March to the
unemployed.” Rustin and Robinson called on people doing local coordinating for the March to raise
money and put aside space on buses and trains specifically to support the transportation of
unemployed people. They asked for groups to set as their goal sending three unemployed people for
every one person who had a job.
44

Energy built for the March throughout the summer and bubbled up beyond those doing the
daily coordinating for it. Through the work of the layers of movement tacticians like Rustin,
Robinson, and Hedgeman, and the young but experienced activists like Kahn, Horowitz, and SNCC
member Joyce Ladner, the aggregate power of so many who had been organizing for the prior
decade and beyond was finding expression. Reporting on daily preparations in The Nation, Harvey
Swados described Hedgeman’s belief that “in a revolution a new leadership emerges…and cannot be
contained by the decisions of any ten men such as those who issued the call for the March.”
Furthermore, Swados noted that, invigorated by “the fervor of the young,” the March “would have
to call not only for the Kennedy civil-rights bill, not only for more jobs in general terms, but for
total civil-rights legislation and total economic demands surpassing anything conceived of by white
liberals and well-intentioned officialdom, and involving a dislocation…of the warfare-welfare state
and its present power structure.” However, Swados also pointed to a general misunderstanding
amongst many journalists covering the March and worried “what chance the American people had
of getting an understanding…of the new American revolution.”
45
Indeed, the March would go on to
be misinterpreted and misremembered despite all efforts to the contrary.
Not wanting the clarity of vision to be lost amongst the hundreds of thousand people
attending, Rustin circulated a memo a week prior to the March in an attempt to consolidate
messaging. The memo asked that all signs should be prefaced with “We March for…” or “We
Demand…” And the memo highlighted what they wanted the messages to emphasize:

152
• Jobs for All Now
• Decent Housing Now
• An End to Police Brutality Now
• Voting Rights Now
• No U.S. Dough to Help Jim Crow
However few captured the abolitionist democratic vision going back to Reconstruction like one
Randolph suggested himself, “Civil Rights Plus Full Employment Equals Freedom.”
46
Likewise,
Randolph’s speech made certain to focus attention on the urgency of the question of
unemployment. The movement must not leave people behind. “We want a Fair Employment
Practices Act, but what good will it do if profit-geared automation destroys the jobs of millions of
workers, black and white,” he questioned.
47
Nevertheless, the media and others seemed to
misapprehend the message. As Swados commented in response to the March specifically (as well as
the general coverage of the civil rights movement) it was the “best reported” but the “worst
understood” movement in modern times.
48
For both Congress and one of the most important
observers, President Kennedy, the jobs demands were overlooked.
49
In a meeting with the March’s
leaders just after the event to discuss recently introduced civil rights legislation, when Randolph
pressed Kennedy about automation and joblessness, Kennedy skirted the issues of the racist political
economy. Instead he drew on the “immigrant analogy” and told the activists to focus on what “the
Jewish community has done, on educating their children, on making them stay in school and all the
rest.”
50
But unemployment was at 5.7% across the board and 10.7% for “non-white” workers; no
amount of commitment to education could solve this problem.
51
However, immediately after the
March those in the socialist movement organized to ensure that their efforts would ensure greater
cohesion and strength.

153
Figure 11: The messaging for the March on Washington was carefully selected and designed to
emphasize the need to achieve both economic and political freedom.
52

The day after the March, the Socialist Party, whose members and allies had been so central
to the March organized their national conference on the “civil rights revolution” in order to develop
plans for subsequent action. Like the March they highlighted the need for unemployed people to be
a significant presence, waving the $.50 registration fee for unemployed people.
53
The goal for the
meeting was to build stronger relations between the socialist movement and the civil rights
movement and to elicit “increased participation of Party members” in the civil rights movement. As
the announcement to the members of the Party emphasized, “we actually hope that non-members
will outnumber members!”
54
The famed journalist I.F. Stone considered that event “far superior to
anything I heard at the Monument.” Panels included Socialist Party leader Norman Thomas
alongside Randolph and Manhattan Congressional Representative William Fitts Ryan; another panel,
on the topic of a “A Political Strategy for Civil Rights,” featured YPSL member Eleanor Holmes

154
Norton (who had also worked closely organizing the March and spent parts of the summer working
with SNCC) alongside Max Shachtman who explored the realignment strategy in his talk.
55
SNCC’s
Bob Moses and Kahn joined Rustin on his panel where he argued that “neither tax cuts nor public
works nor job training (for what jobs?) would solve the [unemployment] problem while
automation…made so many workers obsolete.”
56
He noted that even fighting for apprenticeships
was not enough, and viewed such efforts (as they were being considered a solution to the
unemployment problem) as a “gimmick,” since with “not more than three hundred thousand people
in apprenticeship training…complete integration of the existing program wouldn’t even take care of
the Negroes in Harlem.” As a result, Rustin argued that more large-scale political visions and plans
were needed. The civil rights movement he maintained “has to go deeper into the economic and
social questions.” He then advocated for a renewed alliance with labor to force the federal
government to become the employer of last resort, or else there would be simply rounds and rounds
of job training with not enough jobs to go around. He closed his talk by forcefully promoting an
economic “master plan” around which the civil rights movement will mobilize direct actions to
support.
57
Over the subsequent years it was this vision of a “master plan” that Rustin, Randolph, and
others would pursue, based on the abolitionist democratic principles that had guided them through
the March on Washington.
After the March: Reactionary Violence, Reactionary Keynesianism, and an
Inadequate War on Poverty
The energy from the March also brought forth vicious reactionaries. Less than three weeks
after the momentous day, six Black children were killed in Birmingham, AL. With attention focused
on violence in the South, Rustin and others continued to insist that the problem was national in
scope and needed solutions of similar magnitude. As James Baldwin maintained the day after the
devastating attacks, “the crimes committed in Birmingham yesterday must be considered as one of
the American answers to the March on Washington…the status of Birmingham will be the status of

155
the country.”
58
Baldwin went on to warn, “Birmingham, for America, may prove to be exactly what
the Reichstag fire was for Germany,” a pivotal turning point in racist reactionary behavior. Rustin
affirmed Baldwin’s sentiments; a few days later he joined Baldwin at an event where Rustin told the
1,000 people gathered at the Community Church in New York City what many of them undoubtedly
knew, “some of the most Fa[s]cist behavior is emerging on Long Island.”
59
Rustin’s speech that
night, entitled “What Follows the March” is one of his most remarkable in a lifetime of remarkable
speeches. He implored the audience to recognize that history rarely gives second chances. “We
cannot afford to be sloppy in our analysis,” he said. He asked his audience to beware of “what we
are up against and what we have to do to get freedom now…it is the simplest thing…to scream
…‘freedom now’…it is a far different thing to know how to get it, and to know how one is related
to a concrete program for its realization.” He then tacked to a common analytic frame from which
he was thinking at the time: how could a group of 10% of the population fundamentally reshape
society? On the heels of his greatest success in almost three decades of consistent organizing, Rustin
told the audience: “We are loosing the fight my friends, quickly…Where have we gained? Where
have we made progress? This is a revolution which is succeeding? It is not.” The answer for him lay
in the cultivation of alliances to build something resembling a majority, or a larger grouping than
Black people alone could provide. “There comes a time when no minority can move beyond a
certain point without numbers of allies.”
60
For Rustin, the movement needed to be sufficiently
planned and sufficiently ambitious to suit the large-scale problems within and beyond Birmingham.
To do this, it would need the entire March on Washington grouping to work together as a
coalition.
61

Although daunted, by the challenge, Rustin was also excited for the future course. There
needed to be a mass movement response. He argued that the movement’s “next stage must be
thoroughly created.” Such a movement, he suggested can be enlivened by bringing together “the

156
creative ones from SNCC, CORE, street corners, and anywhere else…to create something simply
called The Movement.” But this Movement, Rustin stressed, would need to confront the problem of
automation squarely and propose concrete solutions instead of “outlandish projects.” Furthermore,
he insisted that it was this quality that made the March on Washington organizing successful in
Harlem. “They came with a program,” he emphasized. This was the achievement of the March. It
expressed the long history of abolitionist democratic vision in contemporary, programmatic
objectives; this quality ensured that the organizing was relevant. Rustin underlined that such a
practice was essential to enlivening the potential for a mass movement of marginalized people
beyond the activist layers of society. “People talking about the rats in their apartments, and the
roaches, and the fact that they are paying $25 for a room which ought to cost $10” he noted, “[they]
can be brought into a Movement, where you are dealing with their problems.” He then proceeded to
highlight a number of plans he was enthusiastic about, including SNCC organizer Diane Nash
Bevel’s proposal to generate national involvement through asking people to mail millions of letters
and thus disrupt the economic system by flooding the postal service. But, he cautioned, “plans do
not take wings like birds and fly. There needs to be a Movement to whom they can come.”
62
It was
to this dual task, clarifying the goals and building a national movement that Rustin would turn his
attention in the coming years.
The subsequent year after the March highlighted the turbulence and power struggles with
which the decade is so often identified. Less than two months after Rustin’s speech, President
Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. Four days afterwards, President Johnson upheld Kennedy’s
policies towards Vietnam by issuing National Security Action Memorandum No. 273 (NSC-273),
which began the process of authorizing secret military operations against North Vietnam.
63
Few
knew how the former Texas Senator would behave regarding the civil rights bill. But in his first
address as President the day after NSC-273, he confirmed that he intended to further the Kennedy

157
agenda in more areas than Vietnam, but civil rights as well. To Congress he argued that “there could
be no greater source of strength to this Nation both at home and abroad…[than] to enact a civil
rights law so that we can move forward to eliminate from this Nation every trace of discrimination
and oppression.”
64
Unfortunately for those pursuing full employment policy, the third facet of
Kennedy’s legacy that Johnson chose to advance were his tax policies.
As highlighted by his 1962 tax cut, Kennedy favored reductions in the tax burden to
stimulate consumer demand instead of the direct governmental support for job creation of the sort
that was innovated in the 1930s. Instead, Kennedy was partial the notion—relatively new at the
time, under the name “new economics”— that fiscal policy could be utilized to produce indirect
stimulative economic results through reductions in the tax burden, and thus more purchasing power.
While the Chair of Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisors, Walter Heller, had promoted the
economic thinking undergirding this tactic, the policy was guided by Wilbur Mills, the Arkansas-
based Chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee.
65
Mills, who ran unopposed for decades
from the Jim Crow state, had sat in Congress since 1938 and had amassed such power over tax
policy that he was regarded by the New York Times and others as “the most important man on
Capitol Hill.” In the negotiations over the 1962 tax reduction, Mills had coerced Kennedy into
building an missile base in Arkansas and demanded that Kennedy dedicate it himself.
66
But Kennedy
and many of his economic staffers like Heller also supported this type of “Keynesian” tax policy.
Heller had been pursuing such a policy course since Kennedy was running for President. While at
one point they might have considered other options to boost the economy, as Heller put it, “the tax
cut was decided after we saw that we weren’t getting to first base on the spending side. They didn’t
have the votes.”
67
Disgusted with this decision, Leon Keyserling commented, “when the Kennedy-
Johnson economists found that it was politically a little bit easier to get tax reductions, which was no
great finding—nobody is against Santa Claus—they went that way.”
68
Indeed, for this reason it is

158
unsurprising that Kennedy found the jobs demands of the March uninspiring; he had been pushing
Congress all year for a tax cut, and had already decided that direct job creation like the March’s
leaders had called for was not the direction he wanted to proceed with.
When Johnson took office, he followed suit. In his speech before Congress upon assuming
the Presidency he declared, “no act of ours could more fittingly continue the work of President
Kennedy than the early passage of the tax bill for which he fought all this long year.”
69
And so,
Johnson set out to shepherd the tax bill through the congress. But first he had to agree to limit
spending in order to overcome what Heller called “the terrible obstacle of Harry Byrd.”
70
Thus, one
of Johnson’s first acts as President was inviting the powerful Dixiecrat Virginian, who was Chair of
the Senate Finance Committee, to the White House for breakfast to discuss the tax cut. During the
same State of the Union speech where Johnson announced his commitment to an “unconditional
war on poverty,” he indicated his assent to Byrd and other fiscal conservatives by stating his intent
to put forward “the smallest budget since 1951.”
71
From both Mills in the House and Byrd in the
Senate, Dixiecrat power was vital toward passing the tax bill. As a result, Johnson was careful to
pursue it prior to pushing forward the civil rights legislation (since he was fearful of the filibuster he
knew would accompany it).
72
Passed into law in late February, the Revenue Act of 1964 cut federal
tax receipts by 9%.
73
While it reduced tax rates for everyone across the board, for the wealthy, the
savings were tremendous. The top income earners saw their rates drop from 91% to 70%. For
corporations (who in 1962 had already achieved a long lobbied for change in the depreciation
schedules dropping their tax bill by an estimated 10%) their tax rate fell from 52% to 48% via the
1964 Act.
74
While Kennedy had envisioned a spending program to follow the tax cut—telling Heller
“first we’ll have your tax cut; then we’ll have my expenditures program”—instead the tax cutting
undermined the potential to truly address the issues that Rustin, Randolph and others were pursuing
through the March.
75

159
During the Kennedy administration, and henceforth, a new discourse (rooted in old
patterns) began to emerge about the politics of unemployment and full employment. In
contradistinction to the qualitative dimension of how William Beveridge had defined full employment
as, “always more vacant jobs than unemployed men…jobs are at fair wages, of such a kind, and so
located that the unemployed men can reasonably be expected to take them,” (a definition shared by
the March on Washington organizers), instead, full employment began to be understood in quantitative
terms. As Heller boasted, “all during the Eisenhower administration we talked about full
employment but never defined it. We [the Council of Economic Advisors] got Kennedy to accept 4
percent as our full employment goal.” Indifferent to the lives of those consigned to that four
percent, Heller described the reaction of the advocates of unemployed people as merely another
interest group. “We were condemned by some as being heartless for having such a high
unemployment goal—using unemployment to beat inflation. We were condemned by others for
being so dumb as to think that you could ever get down to 4 percent unemployment with all that
structural unemployment around,” he said.
76
However, one problem with such a policies was that it
did not heed the uneven articulations of unemployment by sector and region (with its racialized and
gendered implications). Instead of targeting policy to address the ravages of unemployment amongst
coal miners in Pennsylvania or Kentucky, or growing unemployment amongst young Black men in
Oakland who, fifteen years prior might have sought work as stevedores or Pullman porters, this
understanding homogenized these specific sectoral and regional crises and overlooked the uneven
development of capital. Furthermore, alongside this new quantitative understanding of
unemployment arose heightened political and intellectual attention to the problem of poverty, which
was often coupled with innovations in conceptualizations of how to pathologize poor people;
77
this
group of people, who were consigned to the bottom of the economy below that of the working-
class, was variously understood, with racial overtones, as the “hard-core unemployed,” “the slum-

160
proletariat,” “the underclass,” or the “lumpenproletariat.” According to many of the explanatory
paradigms, this group of people supposedly lacked adequate skills, determination, or education, to
be suited for exploitation as waged labor. While they were considered a social problem to be solved,
the ideological ascription of their lack of some quality or another put the onus for their employability
not in the sphere of macroeconomic policy, but instead located the problems in smaller scale units
of analysis—autonomous decisions of industry or technological changes (the decline of coal or the
rise of the container ship), deficient neighborhood dynamics (“blight”), inadequate (female-headed)
“family structure,” or individual idleness. All of these assessments overlooked the history of struggle
and contest over the politics of unemployment—the rounds of accumulation and dispossession that
elicited the political and economic circumstances of the early 1960s.
78
And most importantly, it
missed the essential work unemployed people were doing for global capitalism: their status as a
surplus labor force helped inhibit the strength of working people to win wage gains and inflate
prices. As I argued in Chapter Two, their lives were not valued but their subordination was.
For those who held Beveridge’s understanding of unemployment, that any amount was too
much, the Revenue Act of 1964 had big implications. It provided policy proscriptions that were
slightly attentive to working-class and middle-class people, but ignored the problems experienced by
marginalized working and workless people, subject to racism, patriarchy, and other hardships of
discrimination and oppression. Leon Keyserling, in 1969, called the act, “the most egregious error of
economic policy ever made by this great nation since World War II.”
79
For Keyserling the problem
was that the country “had enormous unmet needs: in public housing…in air and water pollution; in
transportation; in social security payments to the old people, three quarters of whom were poor.”
Instead of a tax cut, he maintained, the people of the U.S. “needed tremendously increased public
investments in the public sectors.” Indeed, Keyserling hated the decision and its implications. He
argued that a tax cut prevented the government from getting money where it was needed. And

161
furthermore, noted that a “general tax reduction almost by definition tends to be regressive.”
80
He
was not alone amongst influential economists. John Kenneth Galbraith, who had been in Kennedy’s
inner circle, excoriated the impulse behind the law, calling it “reactionary Keynesianism.” Reflecting
on the law in testimony in front of Congress a year afterwards, Galbraith commented, “I believe in
being fair to the rich, including the idle rich. But I am still attracted to the ancient liberal notion that
one should have an eye out for the average man.” Galbraith worried that “conservatives, once
introduced to the delights of tax reduction, would like it too much.” And as a result, Galbraith
accurately predicted the future course of such practices of ‘spending through the tax code.’ Tax rates
would, indeed, continue to plummet over the subsequent decades. Foreseeing this, Galbraith
worried about whether a “tax reduction would then become a substitute for increased outlays on
urgent social needs.” Like Keyserling, Galbraith puzzled over what utility extra money could provide
if the environment was ravaged: “air to dirty to breathe, water too polluted to drink.” Additionally,
like Keyserling, he emphasized that increased aggregate demand will not be able to solve the
unemployment problem, and to the extent it could, “they will be lousy jobs and those who hold
them will be the first to be discharged when a machine comes along that can do the work better.”
81

Aside from Galbraith, the major antagonist towards this “reactionary Keynesian” thinking within the
administration was Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz, who also worried about the implications of a
tax cut while so many went unemployed, but Wirtz had little power to shift the decisions in this
regard.
82

In 1964, when Johnson set out to fulfill another Kennedy vision to fight the War on
Poverty, the policy proposals were hamstrung by the tax cut and the acquiescence to Byrd’s fiscal
conservatism. As one of the War on Poverty planners Adam Yarmolinsky described, in the initial
phase, they had to make a choice: “whether to concentrate on creating jobs for people, preparing
jobs for people, or preparing people for jobs.” “We decided for the latter,” he continued, “partly

162
because we didn’t see where we’d get the money for the jobs part.”
83
As a result, as political scientist
Judith Russell and others have shown, an emphasis on job training, Head Start, and other programs
that focused on the deficiencies of poor people, came to be the central element of the War on
Poverty due to its status as a much more inexpensive alternative proposal than putting people to
work through government programs.
84
During the planning of the War on Poverty in the February
1964, Wirtz had vociferously held that jobs programs were the key, however, the sort he was
proposing would have cost at least $5 billion. Wirtz was joined in this effort by Michael Harrington,
whose prominent book, The Other America (along with Galbraith’s The Affluent Society), was credited
with helping generate Kennedy’s interest in addressing impoverishment.
85
Harrington—an adherent
to the Socialist Party’s realignment strategy like Kahn and Horowitz—argued that to seriously
address the issue of poverty—unemployment (and capitalism itself)—would need to be confronted.
Like Wirtz, Harrington noted that significant governmental outlays—something in the range of $10
billion per year for a decade—were necessary to apprehend the problem.
86
However, such proposals
were politically unfeasible after the tax cut. Yarmolinsky recalled that Wirtz tried to argue for jobs
programs, financed by a tax on the tobacco industry, in a meeting with Johnson; But the president
“didn't even bother to respond; he just went on to the next item on the agenda.”
87
That Southern
Congressional power continued to stymie social welfare advances and hem in the range of
possibilities for political outcomes, further crystallized the importance of the jobs and freedom
analysis of the March. They were dialectically intertwined. Kahn noted this in his widely read
pamphlet (published contemporaneously to the War on Poverty planning in early 1964) The
Economics of Equality. “Inherent in the [congressional] seniority system is a profound repudiation of
political democracy,” he argued.
88
As long as one-party rule was perpetuated in the South, unlocking
the social wealth controlled by the Congress, and putting it towards social democratic ends,
remained a task of formidable proportions.

163
Signed into law as the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964, the War on Poverty’s stirring
rhetoric did open up new direction to pull government towards. Like President Roosevelt’s
“Economic Bill of Rights, it announced a set of principles from which activists could draw on to
utilize for their own ends. However, rhetoric could only go so far to solving the key structural
problems of political economy: there were too few jobs for the people who needed them and those
that were available paid too little. The War on Poverty authorized funding levels in the range of just
less than $1 billion, whereby (as Wirtz and Harrington had noted) much more was necessary for the
task. Nevertheless, even while focusing on the behaviors and characteristics of poor people, the
legislation still opened up many important avenues and advanced a host of democratic experiments.
It provided legal assistance and preschool to poor people and their children, and funded more than
one thousand community action agencies, which, under the principle of “maximum feasible
participation” of poor people themselves, helped elicit grassroots participation in how funds would
be used. As historian Annelise Orleck notes, “perhaps most challenging to existing power structures,
poor people began to educate themselves about their rights, under federal law, to income support,
medical care, and social services and about how government works.”
89
The War on Poverty, like the
Civil Rights Act of 1964, which was passed the same summer against a historic filibuster, were
historic breakthroughs that activists like Rustin, would utilize to pursue greater gains.
In the midst of the debates and filibuster of the Civil Rights Act during the summer of 1964,
the immense violence that undergirded the oppressive society articulated in several prominent ways.
This was predicable. Jim Crow violence was persistent and prominent prior to the March on
Washington, especially in Mississippi, which saw the killings of civil rights activists and displayed the
brutality of police-mob repression, especially in the cases of Herbert Lee who was killed by a state
legislator in 1961, and NAACP leader Medgar Evers who was killed by a sniper two months before
the March.
90
But in the buildup to the March, Randolph had been concerned also with what might

164
happen during the summer of 1963 in the North. As Horowitz recalled, “Randolph was convinced
that…had there not been the March that summer, there would have been riots all over.”
91
Just after
the March, Randolph told a TV audience that, “the mood of the Negro today is one of impatience
and anger, frustration if not desperation.”
92
Indeed, one reason the March was timed for the end of
the summer was that Randolph believed it could provide a strategic alternative to a rebellion in the
industrial centers, which he and others saw brewing due the dire economic situation and the
ubiquitous violence of policing.
93

But through early 1964 the lack of resolution to the jobs and freedom demands coupled with
the constant police abuse portended increased social unrest. In May, Randolph reiterated the
importance of the abolitionist democratic goals of the March and continuing the fight to achieve
them. In a speech before the NALC, Randolph emphasized the importance of the March’s anti-
police brutality demand and clarified that despite the prominence of police abuse against protesters
in the South, the struggle against police violence was a national problem. This problem, he argued,
highlighted the class dimensions of the civil rights movement; police brutality was not only the way
in which police upheld the regime of white supremacy, but capitalist property relations as well. As he
put it, “the behavior of Negro and white police is the same.” And he emphasized, “the original
historical as well as present role of the police, who are recruited from the poor, was and is to protect
the rich from the poor; the propertied from the propertyless, the bosses from the workers, the haves
from the have-nots.” Rooted in this analysis, Randolph upheld the line of thinking that Rustin
agreed with: one must build an alliance beyond the civil rights movement to address the question of
joblessness since the civil rights movement “can not make new jobs…[but only] compel the
assignment of existing jobs upon the basis of equity.” As he understood it, as “a matter of simple
arithmetic,” the civil rights movement needed to grow and build alliances beyond Black people. The
‘arithmetic’ guiding his thinking was that, while Black people represented 10% of the population, a

165
larger layer of society supported the fight for civil rights. However, the challenge was how this layer
of supporters could be “galvanized into a conscious active force which will move to help translate a
fleeting feeling of racial justice into a reality.”
94
Thus he argued that focusing on working to unite
unemployed people—Black and white—and eliciting the support of organized labor, and “middle
class people moved by liberalism or radicalism, by religious and/or ethical values,” in this effort was
essential to making those who were sympathetic to the civil rights movement into a force that could
fundamentally reshape U.S. society.
95
And this reshaping would include eliminating unemployment,
and questioning the social order premised on racial subordination, and the police protection of
private property.
But in the two months after Randolph explored the urgency of concentrating attention of
the problems of lawless police violence in the North and the South, and its relationships with
regimes of private property and white supremacy, these problems would explode with violent
results. A few weeks after Randolph’s speech, three SNCC civil rights workers, Andrew Goodman,
James Chaney, and Michael Schwerner, went missing in Mississippi shortly after being arrested while
attempting to investigate a church bombing. They were later found to have been assassinated.
96

Three weeks after the SNCC workers went missing, an off duty police officer in New York shot and
killed a Black teenager, James Powell. The killing of Powell set off protests and an urban rebellion in
Harlem and Brooklyn.
97
Calling for a civilian review board and an end to police brutality, thousands
of protesters were met with extreme force to suppress the dissent. This should not have been
surprising; a few weeks earlier a New York Times profile of New York Police Commissioner Mike
Murphy described the police department as a “semimilitary organization,” and he the “civilian
commander of [its] army of 26,000.”
98
Civil rights activists argued that Murphy was akin to
Birmingham’s notorious Commissioner of Public Safety, Bull Connor. Harlem tenants rights leader
Jesse Gray also refuted an assessment that exceptionalized the South stating, “we have one of the

166
most rotten, corrupt police departments in the country.”
99
However, Murphy characterized his
attitude toward the civil rights movement as merely enforcing the law. “I simply can not allow these
people, in their eagerness to win rights for themselves, to infringe on the rights of others,” he said.
100

And in the wake of the protests, Murphy further cracked down on civil liberties, outlawing a planned
protest. Rustin responded that this choice would exacerbate political tensions and dubbed the action
“irresponsible, criminal and totalitarian.”
101
With daily lawlessness on behalf of the government itself
established as the rule of the day, Murphy’s appeal to the law’s majesty held little sway for many of
the protesters. In contradistinction to Murphy, Randolph and others held the belief that, “the goal is
not law and order, but freedom, racial and social justice.”
102
Likewise, the problem was not solely
individual police malfeasance, and hiring more Black police officers—Murphy’s proposed
solution—could not alleviate the racial-economic conditions undergirding the violent situation.
103

The Harlem protests also displayed a gulf that would grow over the coming years within
Black protest movements that often cut along age and class dimensions. At a meeting a few days
after the uprising, Black activists and artists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee met with one of Martin
Luther King’s advisors, Clarence Jones, and others to discuss the shifting circumstances during the
summer of 1964. Jones highlighted that increased frustration among young people with relentless
police brutality coupled with economic subordination, and how this combination of factors enabled
disillusionment with the contemporary civil rights leaders, and the failure to produce results that
diminished Harlem’s quotidian violences. As Jones put it, “the incidents show the importance of the
lumpenproletariat who couldn't care less about King, [James] Farmer [of CORE], and Rustin.”
104

Rustin wrote to the Executive Director of the Urban League, Whitney Young, that the uprisings left
him feeling, “terribly depressed,” but energized to discuss their “meaning and implications.”
105

Rustin and Randolph recognized this problem, and over the subsequent years sought to build an
alignment that could create a constructive situation out of these harsh political and economic

167
contradictions. Such a choice, held both tremendous potential to cohere a new democratic
movement, but also, ensured that they would be compelled to make all the disquieting comprises
that accompany struggling in for policy change in the legislative realm.
Moving from Protest to Politics: The A. Philip Randolph Institute
For Rustin and Randolph, the deepening of the economic precarity (which they saw as being
at the root of the urban rebellions that marked the summer) could only be resolved in the political
realm through large-scale federal programs. To achieve these goals, in the years after the March, with
the financial support of the trade union movement, they would create the A. Philip Randolph
Institute (APRI) to focus their energy in the political realm. As a result of this analysis, involvement
in federal governmental politics was essential towards pursuing their objectives. The decision to
adopt this perspective necessitated a number of overlapping elements that guided their actions: (1)
they would have to collaborate with elected leaders and build movements that pushed the politicians
to the left; (2) they would need to be adept at building alliances with those of more moderate
positions than their own, especially the labor movement; (3) they could not successfully achieve their
goals solely working within the orbit of civil rights movement or the Black community; and so they
were often antagonistic towards perspectives coming from the National of Islam (NOI) or others
they perceived as articulating Black Nationalist perspectives.
106
These three principles, which became
more pronounced after the March, established the context for a number of intra-left conflicts and
disagreements that would undermine the fight for a guaranteed jobs program in the coming years.
On the heels of the signing of the Civil Rights Act and the birth of the War on Poverty, the
prospects for the civil rights movement realigning the Democratic Party seemed hopeful going into
the Democratic National Convention in August 1964; but by the end of the convention those hopes,
while not broken, had severe fractures. For the months prior to the convention, in their efforts to
help democratize the South, SNCC had helped form the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party

168
(MFDP) as a challenge to the Jim Crow Democratic Party that had dominated, the politics and
people of the state for so many decades through the use of ruthless violence. Their plan was to
document the brutal repression upon which the Jim Crow delegation derived its power, and create a
parallel structure to elect their own delegation; MFDP would then challenge the authority of the Jim
Crow delegation at the Atlantic City convention. While MFDP was, as historian Barbara Ransby has
explained, a “grassroots independent initiative…the goal was to operate sufficiently within
Democratic Party rules to be able to demand recognition at the Democratic National
Convention.”
107
Indeed, when the civil rights activists who organized the March on Washington had
dispersed following their success the previous August, Rachelle Horowitz had, at the urging of
SNCC leader Bob Moses, gone to Mississippi where she spent much of her time at the Jackson
public library learning about the delegate selection process in order to prepare for the challenge.
108
In
the spring of 1964, through the work of Moses and (leading grassroots activist and mentor to
SNCC) Ella Baker, the plan had received support from leading liberals and social democrats like
Reuther of the UAW and his lawyer Joseph Rauh. Rauh was also an influential member of the
powerful liberal organization, Americans for Democratic Action (ADA). The ADA passed a
resolution supporting the effort, while Rauh agreed to serve as legal counsel for MFDP.
109
But at the
convention, MFDP and their supporters faced extreme pressure from the Democratic Party
leadership who wanted MFDP to back down in their demands. But for a group of people who had
faced years (and for many, decades) of deathly threats, beatings, and the most extreme violence of
Jim Crow in the fight for democracy, this pressure, to concede to their supposed allies after
overcoming so much from their enemies, was insulting.
Reuther, Rustin, Rauh, and Martin Luther King took on the role of trying to navigate the
impasse between the powerful liberals whose allegiance to democracy and the rule of law in
Mississippi was tenuous, and the grassroots activists seeking to make the U.S. government live up to

169
its stated rhetoric. Led by the Hubert Humphrey (a close ally of Rauh’s, who would gain the
nomination for Vice President), Rustin and the other civil rights leaders negotiated a compromise
whereby two seats out of the delegation would be granted to the MFDP amongst the Jim Crow
delegation. MFDP refused the fraught proposal and the backroom politicking from which it derived.
As one of the leaders of SNCC alongside the MFDP delegation, Stokely Carmichael, described,
“they had struggled too long and come too far to be chumped off like that.”
110
Historian Barbara
Ransby has aptly described the tightrope that Rustin and the others were trying to navigate, writing
that, “competing world views clashed in Atlantic City: a pragmatic liberalism that placed faith in the
Democratic politicians versus a principled radical vision that saw a circuitous long-term process of
movement building as the salvation for the oppressed.”
111
For Rustin, the conflict distilled a tension
between protest strategies and political strategies. As he argued to the SNCC and MFDP members,
when trying to convince them to accept the proposal, “in protest there must never be any
compromise. In politics there is always compromise.”
112
Rustin was nothing near a liberal, but he
was pragmatic. He thought in terms of concrete gains and he greatly anticipated the types of
significant victories that could be accomplished with an ally in the White House. By contrast,
Rustin’s longtime comrade, Ella Baker, took the stance that the mistreatment of MFDP expunged
“the possibility of functioning through the mainstream of the democratic party.”
113
Michael
Harrington, who was on Rustin’s side in this debate recalled, “a difference over tactics turned into a
bitter dispute over principles.”
114
And for many of the SNCC members, they shared Baker’s analysis
of the moral and political emptiness of the Democratic Party and its half-hearted commitments to
its own alleged liberalism.
115

While this disagreement would go on to be identified as emblematic of much of the intra-left
political disputes that marked the mid-60s, this was not clear at the time. A few weeks after the
convention, the leaders of MFDP wrote Rustin to thank him for his “dedicated support at the

170
convention.” They reiterated that that their “refusal to accept the decision of the Credentials
Committee was a measure of our determination to keep fighting for full justice and equality.”
Despite the harsh rebuke of justice in Atlantic City, MFDP leaders told Rustin they considered the
undertaking a “great victory, because for the first time it told our story to the country [and]
demonstrated our growing strength.”
116
Rustin felt similarly, replying that “although we disagreed on
a tactic or two, it is clear that MFDP played a revolutionary role both within the civil rights
movement and within the Democratic Party.”
117
Rustin went on to add that MFDP combined the
tricky alchemy of protest and politics in an admirable way. In the coming months he too would seek
to combine these elements to pursue further revolutionary changes.
As the November elections brought forth a landslide victory for the Democrats, Rustin and
Randolph sought to build a project that could take advantage of the rapidly changing conditions.
During the uprisings in the summer of 1964, Rustin and Randolph had fretted about the rise of
Republican Presidential Candidate Barry Goldwater and his reactionary and bellicose rhetoric about
law and order. A few weeks before the election, Randolph had told a group of workers that
“Goldwaterism is an American edition of German Hitlerism.”
118
This was not mere rhetorical
flourish for Randolph. Having voted almost all of his life for the candidates from the Socialist
Party—Eugene Debs and Norman Thomas—Randolph voted for Johnson in 1964.
119
Likewise,
Rustin explained his cautious and considered support for Johnson, because “he is for civil rights,
medicare, and the poverty program.” Rustin went on to insist that he wanted “Johnson to know that
the Negroes, liberals, intellectuals, students, and the labor movement are giving him his majority—
for I want him to be more dependent on us.” While Rustin knew that Johnson was not “anything
more than a shrewd politician,” he also knew that Goldwater was “a war-happy reactionary who aids
and abets racism.”
120
But the horror of a Goldwater presidency was averted as Johnson won forty-
four states to Goldwater’s six; and the Democrats picked up thirty-seven seats in the House of

171
Representatives and two in the Senate. Democrats were especially strong in taking positions in the
House away from Midwestern Republicans in Iowa, Ohio, and Michigan (where the sole Democrat
from the North who opposed the Civil Rights Act was routed in a primary).
121
In sum, the
momentum that had been built over the past decade and especially the past year had a good chance
to continue. But, Rustin and Randolph still needed to win the commitments of allies within the
broad movement to support their political analysis.

In certain ways the A. Philip Randolph Institute was born of the decision to break apart the
coalition that organized the March on Washington. After the March, Rustin had argued forcefully
that the groups keep the coalition intact to continue to fight for its goals. But the NAACP was
frustrated by what they perceived as a lack of credit amongst the media for their role in the March.
122

As Rustin recalled, the NAACP had put forward the bulk of the funding to carry out the historic
event.
123
And when it came time a few months after the March to finally decide if the organizations
that came together for the March would formally unite as a durable coalition, the proposal was, as
Kahn put it, “murdered” by Roy Wilkins of the NAACP.
124
As a result, Rustin was left without a
formal organizational home within the civil rights movement, and the potential for a united
movement was destabilized. Rustin worried about the prospect of a rudderless movement being
unable to take advantage of the relatively fertile political circumstances. As he wrote to Whitney
Young of the Urban League, “one of my keenest disappointments after the dissolution of the
March…was that the leadership never got to [have] an opportunity to discuss program and
tactics.”
125
To rectify this situation, Randolph proposed that Rustin use Randolph’s name and stature
to help fundraise to establish their own organization: the A. Philip Randolph Institute (APRI).
126

Throughout 1964 Rustin and Randolph worked to build the APRI and continue the
unfinished work of the March (even considering calling the Institute, the “A. Philip Randolph

172
Institute for Jobs and Freedom”).
127
As Rustin explained in the APRI prospectus, in order to take
advantage of the situation, “there is an urgent need to develop legislation and economic programs to
supplement the Civil Rights Act of 1964.” He argued that these programs “must be geared to the
achievement of full employment for all Americans through accelerated public works, shorter work-
weeks, anti-regressive taxation, and other policies aimed at the elimination of poverty and the
satisfaction of social needs.” Like Randolph and Rustin had been arguing for years, the “Negro-
labor alliance” would be pivotal in coalitions they sought to build.
128
Organized labor and George
Meany, partly in an attempt to rectify the error of refusing to endorse the March, fully supported
APRI.
129
In the first year and a half, the APRI received $25,000 from Walter Reuther and the AFL-
CIO’s Industrial Union Department (IUD), another $30,000 from the AFL-CIO, as well as $5,000
from the United Packinghouse Workers, and $1,000 from the American Federation of State, County,
and Municipal Employees.
130
And in the subsequent year, they received the bulk of their September
1966 – August 1967 budget from the AFL-CIO itself, with the IUD replicating its $25,000
contribution, and the AFL-CIO also contributing the same amount. The remaining amount of the
APRI’s $85,000 budget was brought in via smaller contributions from union locals and their
international affiliates, as well as individual contributions.
131
The funding of the APRI represented
the years of work that Randolph and the NALC, as well as many others, had devoted towards
convincing the powerful labor leaders that a labor alliance with the civil rights movement needed to
be cultivated and nourished.
The Randolph Institute’s most clarifying political call was issued in the spring of 1965. In the
February issue of Commentary magazine, Rustin outlined his thinking of where the civil rights
movement needed to go over the subsequent years. Entitled, “From Protest to Politics: The Future
of the Civil Rights Movement,” the article explored Rustin’s reflections on the fifteen months since
the March, which had seen so many historic changes. Amidst the dramatic shocks across those

173
months (the Birmingham killings, Kennedy’s assassination, the violence against SNCC’s Freedom
Summer program, the Civil Rights Act, the Harlem riot, the issuance by Congress of the Gulf of
Tonkin resolution granting the power for war in Southeast Asia, and Johnson’s reelection) Rustin
saw a heightened need to concentrate on achieving “tangible progress” in the political sphere.
132

Rustin praised the MFDP and the struggle in Mississippi, where he said, “a conscious bid for political
power is being made…and a tactical shift is being effected.”
133
He derided the “New York Times
moderates” who “see[s] nothing strange in the fact that in the last twenty-five years we have spent
nearly a trillion dollars fighting or preparing for wars, yet we throw up our hands before the need to
overhaul our schools, clear the slums, and really abolish poverty.”
134
In the wake of Johnson’s
election, Rustin proposed continuing the fight for “revolutionary” reforms: “qualitative
transformations of fundamental institutions …to the point where the social and economic
structure…can no longer be said to be same.”
135
Rustin firmly pronounced that the next phase of
the movement needed to focus on winning political power to achieve guaranteed jobs for all people.
The call for guaranteed jobs was also suited to the times. During the tumultuous 15 months
between the March and Rustin’s article, computers continued to advance in speed and power,
highlighting the urgency of the moment. In April 1964 the International Business Machines
Corporation (IBM) announced their new line of computers: IBM System 360. One commenter in
the Los Angeles Times noted that “the gradual de-emphasis of unskilled or partially skilled labor force
IS part of the computer age, and the oncoming rush of unskilled and semi-skilled teen-agers is
certain to make the transition a bumpy one.”
136
While IBM’s president claimed that “the most
important product announcement in the company’s history” would not have deleterious impacts for
those workers whose skills were being “obsoleted,” the problem of automation continued to worry
most people. For Rustin, all this implied the need for the civil rights movement to “broaden our
social vision, to develop functional programs, with concrete alternatives.” He argued, “we need to

174
propose alternatives to technological unemployment…we need to be calling for public works and
training, for national economic planning, for federal aid to education, for attractive public
housing.”
137
As a result, Rustin thoroughly endorsed the effort of MFDP in Atlantic City insofar as
“they launched a political revolution whose logic is the displacement of Dixiecrat power.”
138
For
him, these were essential preliminary steps in the realignment strategy. And it was to this next phase
that he turned the attention of the Randolph Institute.
The Growth of the Freedom Budget for All Americans
Throughout the years after the March, Rustin and Randolph developed their thinking on the
need for a systematic “grandiose plan” to eradicate unemployment and poverty. They were inspired
by the ambition of what the Urban League put forward as a “Marshall Plan” for cities. As Whitney
Young had explained, this was a call for government investment for people whose access to wealth
had been denied for years. As he argued, the investment “would pay-off—just as the Marshall Plan
paid off in a prosperous Western Europe of strong and friendly allies; just as the G.I. Bill paid off in
better-educated Americans, a revitalized housing industry, etc.”
139
Randolph echoed this call in May
1964 and would expand it further over the following years.
140
By the end of 1965, the impulse
toward such a comprehensive plan would begin to take shape under the name of the “Freedom
Budget for All Americans.”
The urban rebellions in Harlem in 1964 turned out to be a dress rehearsal for similar
uprisings the subsequent summer and in the years thereafter. In May 1965, Rustin publicly released a
telegram he had sent to Mayor Wagner of New York, deriding Wagner for his refusal to create the
reforms that Rustin, Martin Luther King, and others had called for during each of the previous
summers: governmental jobs programs and an end to police brutality. As Rustin put it, the failure to
create a “concrete economic and social plan to deal with the ghetto frustration…would place the
responsibility for future rioting squarely upon City Hall.”
141
This situation was not unique to New

175
York though. In August 1965 the Watts uprising broke out. Like most of the subsequent urban
uprisings, an incident of police brutality was the catalyst, while unemployment, poverty, and
inadequate housing were its context.
142
In the five years prior to the uprising family income in South
Los Angeles had fallen by 7.5% and the poverty rate was 42%.
143
For Rustin, the Watts rebellion was
the result of the failure to address the economic issues they had called for in the March. Coming five
days after the monumental Voting Rights Act of 1965, it confirmed the necessity of the March’s
goals linking jobs and freedom; in this sense, the uprising highlighted the problems of Kennedy’s
(and then Johnson’s) decisions to ignore the jobs proposals. As Rustin noted, the circumstances
leading to Watts were politically produced by governmental planning that saw it as appropriate for
the government to enrich big business, but cast “planning to give to the poor [as] socialism”—and
thus considered politically forbidden.
144
The antidote to these life destroying practices were to
reverse this history and struggle to ensure that government played an active role in supporting the
interests of workers. As Rustin put it, “nothing less than full and fair employment will get us out of
this problem.”
145
And in the wake of Watts, he planned to use the Randolph Institute to guide such a
program.
However, Rustin and Randolph also feared what they felt was a growing tendency amongst
younger and more militant activists to take the uprisings themselves as revolution. After Rustin
visited Watts alongside Martin Luther King in the aftermath of the rebellion, he reflected on what he
felt was a ratcheting down of ambitions amongst the protesters. For him, such a sensibility was
cultivated by despair. He recounted the story of meeting a twenty-year old Black man who suggested
that the protests were a victory by virtue of the global attention they received.
146
Likewise, Randolph
worried about this analysis, stating that “riots [are] not the revolution.” Drawing on the history of
the French Revolution, he suggested that “the lumpen proletariat, or sans-cullotes” are able to
garner attention and catalyze a response, but are unable to craft a revolutionary program.
147
And

176
such a program was necessary in order to push through the thicket of diversionary solutions being
pushed by liberals and reactionaries alike.
The hallmark of the reactionary assessments (that Rustin and Randolph refuted) cast the
rebellions as simple law breaking. As Randolph explained, the sequence of rebellions across the
country “were not expressions of any natural inner sin and criminality of the Negro but a natural
and inevitable expression of an inner sense and angry mood of rebellion and resentment against a
long night of oppression, rejection, insult and humiliation by white America.”
148
Likewise, Rustin
offered an acerbic rebuke of the results of the “McCone Report” (commissioned to analyze the
causes of the Watts uprising) for its tacit affirmation of the attitude of Los Angeles Police Chief
William Parker, that the rebellion should be treated as the “random work of a ‘criminal element.’”
149

Indeed, Rustin argued that the McCone Report, “like the liberal consensus which it embodies and
reflects [has its] imagination and political intelligence …paralyzed by the hard facts of Negro
deprivation it has unearthed, and it lacks the political will to demand that the vast resources of
contemporary America be used to build a genuinely great society that will put an end to these
deprivations.”
150
While these challenges emerged, Rustin and Randolph were thoroughly engaged in
shaping the political will necessary to overcome this moribund condition.
However, alongside the uprisings in Watts, another alternative explanation than those Rustin
and Randolph promoted began emerging around “the family.” Instead, of focusing on joblessness
and police brutality, leaked copies of a report by Assistant Secretary of the Department of Labor
Daniel Patrick Moynihan, which focused attention on the supposed “tangle of pathology” of Black
families, attempted to explain the context for the uprising as a problem of the “matriarchal
structure” of Black families.
151
The infamous report, entitled “The Negro Family—The Case for
National Action,” had been in the process of being shelved amidst criticism from civil rights
leaders.
152
But the report had been influential within the White House and President Johnson had

177
used it as his basis for his famed speech in June at Howard University. The Moynihan report pointed
towards a perverse twist of the logic by which Randolph argued for continuing the struggle for
abolition democracy. Whereas Randolph contended that the perpetuation of oppression against
Black people was rooted in the destruction of Reconstruction after 1877, and in the politics and
social struggles thereafter, the Moynihan Report suggested that (in Johnson’s words) the
“devastating heritage” of slavery was to blame. But instead of considering such an assessment as it
pertained to wealth accumulation and the social policy undergirding it, the Moynihan report looked
to slavery to understand the “breakdown of Negro family structure” and attribute causality in that
direction. Johnson did not think that sole causality lay with the years of oppression expressed in the
supposed deficiency of Black families; he also proclaimed that “jobs were part of the answer.” And
at his June speech, he had also announced that he would organize a White House conference,
dubbed, “To Fulfill these Rights,” in the fall to address the problems of centuries of oppression that
he delineated in his speech.
153
But Moynihan’s argument influenced him enough to suggest that the
family life of Black people be the guiding subject at the conference.
154

Having become relative insiders in these matters, Rustin and Randolph vociferously
protested this decision and instead wanted to highlight contemporary issues of the unemployment
and the racist political economy. In the wake of Watts, Johnson had decided to downgrade the
ambitions for the conference and instead make the fall conference a smaller planning convening
with about 200-300 people. In early October, Randolph (who was named the Honorary Chairman)
set to work with Rustin to shift the agenda away from a sole focus on family life. As Rustin wrote to
President Johnson’s assistant Lee White, the conference “should focus on the fundamental problem:
the economic instability of the Negro family head,” that results “when the head of the Negro family,
male or female, is unemployed or underemployed.”
155
And further, he argued that “the first major
step in stabilizing the Negro family—as well as combating poverty generally—would be for the

178
nation to live up to the Employment Act of 1946.” In this sense, despite its historic inadequacy at
living up to its promise, the Employment Act continued to be a touchstone of possibility and social
movement pressure. Furthermore, Rustin told Johnson’s advisors that the conference should be
utilized to craft a template for a plan that could then be mobilized into legislative action. Rustin
outlined some of the urgent topics to be addressed. These presented both a combination of the
unfinished tasks of movements over the prior thirty years, as well as expanding and solidifying
victories of the past few years. Rustin proposed: rectifying the racist and patriarchal exclusions of the
Fair Labor Standards Act; repealing Taft-Hartley; increasing the minimum wage; ensuring rigorous
enforcement of the Civil Rights Act’s non-discrimination provisions; and strengthening the
commitment of the War on Poverty to incorporate the participation of poor people themselves in
the planning and organizing of the programs.
In addition to the call for large-scale public works programs, Rustin and Randolph also
explored the need to reconceptualize work. For them, the program they promulgated of public
works and guaranteed employment was not about producing more widgets. Rather, they argued that
students should be paid to go to school. As Rustin explained in 1964:
“We have to redefine what work is now…we must recognize that the work of the young
people is to develop their minds and skills for the benefit of society. There is no more sacred
work. Therefore, I think that high school and college students who could not afford it
should have not only their books paid for and their tuition paid—if necessary, get a salary in
order to make it possible for them to consider their work school…as the machines take over
various areas [of work and] the private sector of the economy is not capable of keeping
people at work with dignity, then the public sector must come in and play a larger role.”
156

They echoed this sentiment in outlining their proposals for the White House conference arguing
that young people should be subsidized for going to school.
157
A few years later, Rustin would
further emphasize this point on the importance of “redefining new areas of work through human
services to humans that automation and cybernation cannot touch.”
158
He argued that in addition to
public works that build infrastructure like schools, hospitals, and parks, there is also the need to

179
“expand the services which people give to other humans because…there is no way to automate
babysitting.”
159

By the time the conference had arrived on November 17-18, 1965, Rustin and Randolph had
succeeded in reframing the debates. While one of the eight key topics for discussion centered on the
family, it was no longer the central element.
160
Rustin’s background paper that was issued to the
attendees focused on the need to emphasize unemployment and incorporate the Employment Act
of 1946 as one of the key rights yet to be fulfilled. Rustin reminded the attendees that while the
proposals he and the civil rights leaders were bringing forward might be construed as “so sweeping
as to be incredible,” to him, the “truly incredible fact is that America allowed Watts to happen,”
because of its obstinate refusal to address the address the underlying causes of the uprisings. Indeed,
he argued that it was an “outlandish proposal in a democracy” that the sole way for poor Black
people to “get the ear of white America is to rise up in violence.”
161
However, perhaps due to the
gulf between Rustin and Randolph (as key shapers of the convening) and the lack of enthusiasm on
the part of the White House for jobs programs, the planning session lacked the cohesion and
consensus necessary to begin pushing legislation like Randolph and Rustin had hoped.
Nevertheless, the conference established the course for how they would pursue legislative
action in the coming years. In Randolph’s speech, he called for a “vast ‘Freedom Budget’” of one
hundred billion dollars to abolish poverty.
162
As he reasoned, this “cost may be vastly less than the
chance of another Watts.”
163
Randolph was not alone in making these sorts of calculations. When
the Fortune magazine journalist who focused on race and the economy wrote a letter to White House
aide Harry McPhereson concerning the conference, he confirmed Randolph’s analysis (if not from a
position of what was moral, then weighed against what was less costly). Silberman noted:
“In the usual formulation, policy-makers have to balance the desirability of cutting the
unemployment rate against the desirability of maintaining price stability: is a one percentage
reduction in the unemployment rate, say worth a two percent rise [in the inflation
rate]?…the decision has been to try to steer some sort of middle course. The relevant

180
question, however, may no longer be, is two per cent inflation too high a price to pay to
avoid another Los Angeles riot? What I’m suggesting, in short, is that one of the inputs in
discussions about monetary and fiscal policy [should] be the implications of that policy for
Negro unemployment and employment.”
164

Leon Keyserling was amongst those in attendance at Randolph’s speech who would have agreed
with this framing: the social costs of inflation suppression were immense. Keyserling was hugely
enthusiastic about Randolph’s proposal. Since he and his wife had been coerced out of government
in the early 50s, he had continued to promote the Employment Act of 1946 and his brand of left
wing Keynesianism, under the auspices of what he called a “National Prosperity Budget.” Keyserling
had been persistently calling for such policies that guaranteed employment since the 40s, and he was
inspired by how his vision complemented Randolph’s.
165
(It is also likely that Mary Keyserling felt
similarly as she led a forceful critique of the Moynihan report from her position as the director of
the Women’s Bureau in the Department of Labor; she argued that Moynihan’s reasoning, that found
Black women to be “overemployed” vis a vis Black men, was wholly unsound since “non-white”
women were 19% more likely to be unemployed.)
166
After Randolph’s talk, Leon Keyserling stayed
up late at night the day after the convening working to ensure that Randolph’s calculations were
correct.
167
A few weeks later, Randolph wrote Leon Keyserling to express his appreciation for the
assistance and queried if he was interested in becoming a part of Randolph’s plan for “drafting a
rather more comprehensive program on the proposals concerning housing and jobs.”
168
Keyserling
agreed and they set to the task.
Almost immediately after the White House conference, the Freedom Budget proposal saw
critiques from both the right and left. As Rustin wrote to AFL-CIO staffer Nat Goldfinger in the
days after the conference, “a statement of more than 10 pages specifying exactly what [Randolph]
meant by the Freedom budget was distributed but apparently not read by many of its critics.”
169
In
the Washington Post, conservative columnists Rowland Evans and Robert Novak lamented the
sidelining of the Moynihan Report at the conference. They mocked the “ailing, aging” Randolph and

181
cast the Freedom Budget proposal and Rustin as merely expressing a “doctrinaire Socialist view.”
170

On the other hand, Marion Berry of SNCC and Floyd McKissick of CORE critiqued the conference
for its inattention to involving poor people themselves. However, even those critiquing the
conference from the left were sympathetic to the Freedom Budget; Benjamin F. Payton a Black
sociologist who worked at the Protestant Council of New York (and had been as responsible as
anyone for helping shift the agenda away from the Moynihan Report) only asked that it propose
more money.
171
Even the ADA echoed this belief that even more money was needed, but wholly
added their support. As an ADA legislative staffer wrote to Norman Hill (a staffer in the AFL-CIO’s
Civil Rights Division and close ally of Rustin): “The goals and the means of reaching them may
appear visionary but our economists argue favorably that they make good economic sense. I think
that our job in the liberal coalition—ADA, labor, civil rights—is to make good economic sense a
political reality.”
172
In response to the flurry of criticism, Rustin reflected, “this experience has made
it more clear than ever that the civil rights movement must develop a very concrete and documented
economic program.”
173
And so, the next step was to flesh out the specifics of what the Freedom
Budget would encompass.
Following up on Randolph’s inquiry to Keyserling, in late December Rustin organized a
meeting at the AFL-CIO’s Industrial Union Department’s (IUD) Washington D.C. offices to turn
the Freedom Budget into a reality. The meeting brought together the main people who would shape
the Freedom Budget. Alongside Keyserling were Rustin’s close allies from the Socialist Party milieu:
Kahn, Harrington, and Paul Feldman, as well as leading AFL-CIO staffers: Nat Goldfinger (Director
of the Economics Department), Don Slaiman (Director of the Civil Rights Department and also in
the Socialist Party orbit), and Woodrow Ginsburg (Director of Research for the IUD). Additionally,
they were also joined by academics such as Hylan Lewis (of Howard University), Vivian Henderson
(an economist and President of Clark College), and Herbert Gans (a sociologist at Columbia

182
University) as well as Gerhard Colm—a former government economist with the Bureau of the
Budget, and a colleague of Keyserling’s on Truman’s Council of Economic Advisors.
174
Keyserling
agreed to take on the bulk of the work in drafting the budget, even though, as he told Rustin, “I
have three times as many commitments as any of [the other economists at the meeting] and one-
fifth to one-tenth as much staff.”
175
Keyserling then worked throughout the spring on drafting the
Freedom Budget while Rustin began building support for it, amongst the Leadership Conference on
Civil Rights (LCCR, the grouping that coordinated the lobbying effort for the Civil Rights Act and
the Voting Rights Act) and people like Joe Rauh and others powerful figures within labor-liberal-
civil rights alliance.
176
While they had aimed to release Freedom Budget and push it forward as the
legislative demand emerging from the June 1-2 White House conference, by May 24, having just
finished the third draft, they found the timeline too close and instead planned a strategy meeting in
Randolph’s hotel room during the conference.
177

While Rustin, Kahn, and Harrington were absorbed in trying to take advantage of their
newfound accessibility to the leading figures in places of political power, there were changes
happening around them that would impede the pursuit of the Freedom Budget. Weeks after his
inauguration, in February of 1965 Johnson began the Rolling Thunder bombing campaign of North
Vietnam and soon thereafter troop levels in Vietnam reached 50,000.
178
In March, anti-war student
teach-ins began across colleges and universities. In December of 1964, Students for a Democratic
Society (SDS) had called for an anti-war protest in Washington D.C. on April 17
th
. While they had
not expected such a response, in the wake of the expansion of the bombing campaigns and the
subsequent teach-ins, 25,000 people joined them for the protest. Amongst those were Bob Moses of
SNCC who spoke about the necessity of understanding the connections between the violence in the
South and the violence in Vietnam.
179
Whereas in earlier years, Rustin and his allies would all have
been much more connected to these formations, many of the relationships with the burgeoning

183
New Left were significantly strained. Kahn, Horowitz, and Harrington had all been present at the
famed 1962 Port Huron meeting that laid out the SDS’s reason for being; and all had entered into
significant conflict with the younger activists due to what the anti-Stalinists perceived as a softness
amongst the New Left towards Communism.
180
These tensions, which had persisted in the years
following, emerged again surrounding the April 17
th
protest. SDS was formally the student wing of
the League of Industrial Democracy (LID, of which Kahn was the Executive Secretary and
Harrington the Chairman of the Board). But Kahn publicly rejected the April protest due to SDS’s
decision to welcome Communists. Other longtime socialists and anti-war activists in Kahn’s milieu
like Rustin, Norman Thomas, and A.J. Muste did the same and decried any formation of a united
front with Communists.
181
Throughout the summer of 1965, the anti-war movement continued to
gain strength as the war accelerated. While fires burned in Watts, and others burned their draft cards,
anti-war protesters self-immolated outside the Pentagon and the United Nations.
182
In the face of
these circumstances, many of those in SDS interpreted the longtime legacy of Trotskyist and left
resistance to Stalinism as McCarthyist at worst, and “old-fogeyism” at best; and likewise many in the
New Left found the sort of accommodation with the Johnson administration increasingly untoward.
By October 1965 the SDS and LID disbanded their formal relationship.
183

Similar political and generational dynamics to those of SDS and LID transpired with regard
to SNCC and Rustin and Randolph. In the time after the 1964 Democratic Convention, SNCC
leaders were increasingly skeptical of the realignment strategy (of which their work to democratize
the South was fundamental). A chief lesson emerging from Atlantic City was that Democrats could
not be trusted and that liberals rarely operated in accord with their own supposed admiration for the
law.
184
Such a lesson was forced into sharper relief over the subsequent years. After debating the
issue for almost a year, in January 1966 SNCC made the decision as an organization to denounce the
war in the Vietnam. As SNCC explained, invoking the January 3
rd
assassination of their colleague in

184
Tuskegee, AL: “Samuel Young was murdered because United States law was not being enforced.
Vietnamese are murdered because the United States is pursuing an aggressive policy in violation of
international law. The United States is no respecter of persons or law when such persons or laws run
counter to its needs or desires.”
185
Over the subsequent year, these divisions would grow further as
the Freedom Budget was accused of being a pro-war document.
Rustin and Randolph had for years denounced any inkling of violent rhetoric or “Black
separatism,” mostly deriving from the Nation of Islam; however, contemporaneous to the birth of
the Freedom Budget, “Black Power” entered the public consciousness.
186
Starting three days after
the White House Conference, on June 5, 1966, James Meredith—the student who three years prior
had integrated the University of Mississippi—began a march from Memphis to Jackson, MS in order
to encourage Black people to take advantage of the Voting Right Act and register to vote. When he
was shot en route other members of the civil rights community—including Martin Luther King,
members of SNCC, and the Deacons for Defense—continued the “March Against Fear.” While in
Greenwood, MS, after being arrested for the twenty-seventh time for his activism, leading SNCC
activist Stokely Carmichael, “in no mood to compromise with racist arrogance” announced, “we
been saying saying freedom for six years and we ain’t got nothin’. What we gonna start saying now is
Black Power.”
187
Carmichael, had been a close friend of Kahn, with whom he had organized as
students at Howard, and had been a mentee of Rustin’s. Although Carmichael had agreed to sign
onto the Freedom Budget, in the subsequent months after the March Against Fear, Rustin and
Carmichael’s relationship would become strained, as Rustin sought to distance himself from politics
that were identified with the concept of “Black Power.”
Against the backdrop of these rapid developments Rustin and his allies continued to prepare
for the release of the Freedom Budget. Keyserling did the bulk of the writing while drawing on the
research from previous publications from his organization (the Conference on Economic Progress).

185
Kahn worked with Keyserling as an editor to ensure that the prose of the document would be
intelligible to those who were not economists or policy specialists—a problem some early readers
like the scholar Herbert Gans pointed out.
188
Rustin worked throughout this time to generate
endorsers for the Freedom Budget. A July 20, 1966 preliminary list of people from whom Rustin
would solicit support for the Freedom Budget displays how he foresaw the coalition of forces from
which the Freedom Budget would generate its social consensus to help lead to policy change. His list
was broken down in the categories of: labor leaders, civil rights leaders, Jewish, Catholic, Protestant,
business, academic, economists and liberals.
189
While the project moved along, it did not, however,
move as rapidly as they would have hoped.
The Freedom Budget was unveiled to the world on October 26, 1966—four days after the
end of the legislative session for the 89
th
Congress—the Congress that had passed so many
important pieces of legislation.
190
Although they could not have known it at the time (and even if
they could have, it would have been unlikely to stop them) but their best opportunities for passing
Freedom Budget legislation had left the Capitol along with the 89
th
Congress. Over the subsequent
two years the Freedom Budget campaign moved forward, and presented a comprehensive vision of
how government could be reshaped, and the Democratic Party realigned, though the abolition of
poverty and unemployment. The campaign for a Freedom Budget was stymied in a host of places as
the coalition of forces, that Rustin had foreseen cohering, broke apart as the war escalated and the
political contradictions were exacerbated. The causes of these ruptures relate to a number of internal
dynamics and problems, and many organizing mistakes were made. But Michael Harrington put it
best when he reflected that the crucial issue was the Vietnam War: “the debate within the movement
was, however, decided for us from on high and everybody lost.”
191

186
The Struggle for the Freedom Budget
The pursuit of the Freedom Budget announced the revolutionary-reform program that
Rustin insisted was the next step for the civil rights movement. The Freedom Budget argued that
governmentally guaranteed jobs or income were the means and ending poverty was the ends.
192
It
put jobs programs at the center of its proposals both because it was the key remaining unfulfilled
task of the March, and because, in their understanding, joblessness was the central problem of
poverty. Keyserling had been doing research in this direction for years. In his February 1966
pamphlet, The Role of Wages in the Great Society, he had calculated that “about 60 percent of all the
poverty in the U.S. is quite directly attributable to full-time unemployment, part-time
unemployment, inadequate wages when employed, or a combination of these factors.”
193
For these
reasons, jobs programs took on foremost importance in the Freedom Budget; but they also noted
the need for the a guaranteed income of adequate pay for “those who cannot or should not work,”
whom they estimated comprised the remaining 40% of people living in poverty.
194

The Freedom Budget attempted to shift a politically and financially inadequate War on
Poverty into a true campaign to abolish poverty. Horowitz, who worked on the project as a staffer at
the Randolph Institute, has noted the Freedom Budget was a left critique of the War on Poverty and
its social work ethos (that highlighted the problems of poor people themselves, rather than focus on
macroeconomic causes of poverty and unemployment). But she also emphasized that it was also
more than that as well.
195
Keyserling captured such a principle in a discussion with Rustin about
what the cover design for the Freedom Budget would look like. Rustin and others had considered a
cover that featured four people, whom Keyserling described as “manifestly deprived, harassed, and
poor.” Although such a cover, for Keyserling, was “more poignant and might be preferable for
other purposes,” such as “a pamphlet on poverty or for a pamphlet designed primarily for
circulation by labor groups to labor people.” Keyserling argued that, “such pictures shrink the whole

187
concept of the ‘Freedom Budget.’” Instead, he insisted that the “core idea” of the Freedom Budget
was that it was not solely a project for Black people or poor people, “but for the benefit of all
Americans.” Keyserling was adamant that the cover should announce a “vivid one-page summary of
what the ‘Freedom Budget’ is all about and what it proposes to do…it could be used to write a
newspaper story even by those too lazy to turn the cover and read the Table of Contents.”
196
As a
result of this line of reasoning, the Randolph Institute decided to issue the Freedom Budget with a
prominent red, white, and blue cover that outlined the key objectives of the document.
Figure 12: The cover of the Freedom Budget was chosen to promote how it was a plan for broad
prosperity, not only a “poverty program.”
197

Seven Basic Objectives of the Freedom
Budget:
1. To restore full employment as rapidly as
possible and to maintain it thereafter
2. To assure adequate incomes for those
employed
3. To guarantee a minimum adequacy level
of income to all those who cannot or
should not be gainfully employed
4. To wipe out the slum ghettos and provide
a decent home for every American family,
within a decade
5. To provide, for all Americans, modern
medical care and educational opportunity
up to the limits of their abilities and
ambitions, at costs within their means
6. To overcome other manifestations of
neglect in the public sector, by purifying
our airs and waters, and bringing our
transportation systems and natural
resource development into line with the
needs of a growing population and an
expanding economy, and,
7. To unite sustained full employment with
sustained full production and high
economic growth.

188
The Freedom Budget outlined the key objectives for an effort towards reforms that would
reshape the entire U.S. political economy. As I’ve outlined in the previous chapters, unemployment
was of fundamental import to anti-inflation policy in the postwar period. But such a social policy
was camouflaged by diversionary justifications for the misery wrought by unemployment, and the
obstinate attitude of government with regard to policies sufficient to alleviate the harms of
wagelessness. Keyserling was as aware as anyone of these machinations. As a result, the Freedom
Budget made its claim forcefully that “the ‘Freedom Budget’ rejects all ‘explanations’ or extenuations
of excessive unemployment, beyond the ‘frictional’ minimum.”
198
To this end, the Freedom Budget
attempted to recalibrate discussions of full employment away from quantitative levels that were
becoming popular at the time, and back towards the qualitative understanding that William
Beveridge had explained when he helped popularize the concept in the 1940s. Building from this,
the Freedom Budget and Keyserling emphasized the importance of the Freedom Budget being seen
not only as an agenda for economic growth, but for social justice. It argued that fundamentally, the
“U.S. economic problem was a moral problem.”
199

The Freedom Budget also highlighted the uneven geographic development of capitalism, as
well as how prosperity and unemployment were wholly intertwined phenomena, and emphasized
that unemployment was not a result of solely cyclical downturns.
200
The Freedom Budget explained
how even in times of aggregate plenty or a relatively low unemployment rate, there were still
immense devastations concealed beneath aggregate statistics. The Freedom Budget noted that,
“there are wide variations in the amount of poverty and unemployment from region to region.” This
was especially important to understand what was occurring in the “so-called ‘distressed areas’” such
as Appalachia. The Freedom Budget argued that the current programs were insufficient to address
these problems of uneven development since many of the programs “merely nibble at the fringes,”
and seek solutions “by moving people from the distressed areas to other areas, or by attracting

189
industry and employment from other areas to these distressed areas.”
201
Such an analysis also
reflected how Randolph understood the urgency of full employment politics to the racist political
economy. Drawing on his experience of prior eras, Randolph warned that “the competition between
Negro and white workers for jobs will be greatly sharpened and can erupt into violent job-race riots
unless…ethnic, industrial and political democracy” are achieved. Randolph and Rustin believed that
in moments of labor surplus, Black workers could only get jobs if they pushed other workers out of
their current jobs (which they feared would elicit white reactionaries). So for them, the goal was not
to move jobs from white workers to Black workers, or from suburbs to urban or rural areas; but
instead, they sought to fight for guaranteed jobs for everyone at good wages.
Figure 13: This cartoon was reproduced in the Freedom Budget to highlight the ways in which
targeted policies were necessary to ameliorate the uneven developments of capitalism, as well as the
role of the sexual division of labor in perpetuating inequality.
202

190
Having fought against Federal Reserve independence back when it was wrested from
government in 1951, few people were more aware of the role of monetary policy in stifling full
employment than Keyserling.
203
As a result, the Freedom Budget took the Fed, and its inflation-
phobia, head on. The Freedom Budget highlighted how there would be those who would hem and
haw over how the goals of the Freedom Budget, while moral and desirable, were, nonetheless,
inflationary and thus impractical. Such sentiments point to two important elements of the prior two
decades of contestation: (1) the success of left social movements to sustain proposals for guaranteed
jobs as a dominant moral value (to such an extent that inflation hawks still had to accede to the logic
that full employment was a commendable goal); and (2) the counter-success of right wing forces that
inhibited the legislative affirmation these proposals, and stirred up fear of inflation. As the Freedom
Budget noted, “an avowed campaign against inflation has redistributed income in the wrong
direction [and] hurt those who need it most.”
204
The Freedom Budget highlighted the seesaw policy
choices over the previous years whereby the Fed used its tight monetary policy to fight inflationary
pressures, while Congress passed tax cuts intended toward stimulus by getting money back into
peoples’ wallets. The Freedom Budget calculated that interest payments transfers to bondholders
amounted to about $5.75 billion per year between 1953-65, while tax cuts reduced receipts by $9
billion. Based on these calculations, The Freedom Budget argued that such policy decisions, that
reduced receipts by $14.75 billion, showed that (as Keyserling was fond of saying) ‘the U.S. economy
is rich enough to afford justice,’ since this amount was less than it would take to per year to abolish
poverty.
205
And further, with regard to fears about inflation, the Freedom Budget stressed:
“it would be a monstrous distortion of our values as a nation and a people to argue that we
should balance the desirability of reducing unemployment (and meeting the other priorities
of our national needs) against the prospects of some increases in the price level. Nothing
could be more unjust than to ask unemployed breadwinners or the inhabitants of slum
ghettos to bear the cost of assuring the affluent against some increases in the prices they pay
for a third car in the garage, or another fur coat, or even a few more steak dinners per
week.”
206

191
Moreover, the Freedom Budget noted that if significant inflation were to occur, it could be
combated with selected targeted measures that mollified its impact on those on fixed incomes. The
Freedom Budget argued that the increased outlays to guarantee people jobs or income would be
returned in future tax revenue as a result of what they called a “growth dividend”—the economic
multiplier effect of increasing poor and working people’s spending power (who have a higher
marginal propensity to consume than the wealthy).
207
But even if their projections about such tax
revenue were to fall short, they also offered an alternative policy proposal that called for progressive
taxation through a repeal of the 1962 and 1964 tax cuts for the wealthy.
208

When the Freedom Budget was released in its full form at the end of October 1966, Rustin’s
achievement of collecting endorsers was stunning. The signatories included: civil rights activists of
all persuasions, Keynesian economists, social democrats, socialists, Jewish organizations, many trade
unions, Churches, and leading liberal power brokers. Its signatories included all the major civil rights
organizations, John Lewis, Stokely Carmichael, Dorothy Height, Thomas Kilgore, John Kenneth
Galbraith, Richard Cloward, Ruby Dee and Ossie Davis, David Dubinsky, Walter Reuther, Norman
Thomas, Reinhold Niebuhr, Pauli Murray, Cleveland Robinson, and Albert Shanker, to name a few.
James Baldwin’s endorsement arrived a few days late and was thus not included, but the Freedom
Budget, in many ways, served as a translation of his powerful moral vision into economic terms.
209

Martin Luther King wrote the foreword to a pamphlet version of the Freedom Budget and later
endorsed it in his April 1967 book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community, stating that the
Freedom Budget “provides a basis for common action” to ensure that “private affluence is not
accompanied by public squalor.”
210
These signatories represented the coalition that Rustin had
envisioned. Now, the challenge was to ensure that all of these endorsers would mobilize their
constituencies to fight to turn the Freedom Budget from an ambitious proposal into legislative
action.

192
Throughout 1967, Rustin worked diligently to try to build up grassroots support for the
Freedom Budget and to turn their ambitious plans into reality. The Randolph Institute began
distributing the 50,000 copies of the full Freedom Budget and the 80,000 additional copies of the
popular, brief version to civil rights groups, unions, churches and other supporters. By March 1967,
articles were published about it in all the major trade union newspapers such as AFL-CIO News, The
IUD Agenda, and The Federationist. The American Federation of Teachers sent copies to all their
locals and suggested they organize study sessions surrounding it. The officers of the Randolph
Institute were “flooded with requests for speakers on the Budget.” The Freedom Budget summary
had called on people who take up local organizing and voter outreach to pressure legislature and
soon after, Ad-hoc local organizing committees began to take shape in San Francisco, Boston,
Philadelphia, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Detroit.
211
Over the subsequent months, groups such as
these organized community events and conferences in Sacramento, Chicago, New York, and New
England, to support the Freedom Budget and to cultivate a movement behind the visionary plan.
212

The U.S. Youth Council—which boasted YPSL members like Penn Kemble in prominent positions
of leadership—organized and funded many of these community meetings.
213
Throughout the
summer of 1967, more groups debated endorsing the Freedom Budget. Labor Councils in San
Francisco, Minneapolis, New Hampshire, and Massachusetts all issued resolutions in its favor. The
Unitarian Universalist Association and the American Jewish Congress’s Women’s Division also put
their support behind the Freedom Budget. Cesar Chavez (the leader of the United Farm Workers
union, which had just joined the AFL-CIO, and was in the midst of their historic grape boycott)
wrote the preface to a Spanish edition of the Freedom Budget. Chavez called on the “humble
people—Mexican American, Black, and white, the prisoners of poverty” to organize together
around the Freedom Budget.
214
But all these efforts were in service, ultimately, of trying to convince
politicians to push the legislation. And this would prove a major challenge.

193
Figure 14: Flyers for Freedom Budget organizing, 1967. The flyer promoting Keyserling’s event
highlights the problems of economic growth within the context of inequality and uneven
development: “It’s not just a question of how fast the economy is moving. Your have to ask, ‘Who
is on the gravy train?’ ‘Who is sharing in this dazzling wealth?’ and ‘Where do we want it to go?’”
215

Alongside these organizing efforts, Rustin worked to convince some legislators to develop
the Freedom Budget as legislation. As Martin Luther King had suggested in his foreword to the
summary of the Freedom Budget, simply calling for the Freedom Budget was inadequate. “We must
dedicate ourselves to the legislative task to see that it is immediately and fully achieved,” he
argued.
216
During the early stages of the Freedom Budget Rustin and Randolph had tried to garner
support from the Senators from New York: the moderate Republican Jacob Javits and Bobby
Kennedy.
217
After the Republican Party’s tremendous loss in the 1964 elections, Javits had proposed
an argument to ‘realign’ the Republican Party along more liberal lines. Javits argued for a “new
platform … to redefine conservatism” and push against Goldwater’s “southern strategy” of racist
appeals.
218
Rustin thought that bringing together both Javits and Kennedy could catalyze both
parties to realign to the left. As he explained in a memo to local community leaders about his

194
ambitions for the Freedom Budget: “we hope that by 1968 at the major party conventions to be
ready to demand that the [Freedom] Budget be a major plank in both party platforms.”
219
While
such plans may seem naïve or utopian from the contemporary vantage point, it is important to recall
that Rustin—especially during this period—was as grounded in the quotidian power dynamics of the
period as any activist. Rustin was ambitious and radical, but not utopian. Indeed as he reminded the
community leaders whom he addressed this memo to, “the Civil Rights Acts of 1964 and 1965 were
not introduced because Congress was finally convinced that civil rights were morally right, but
because Negro people were marching in the streets.”
220
And it would take similar action—if not
greater—to achieve their goal. To do so, they created a subcommittee within the Leadership
Conference on Civil Rights in order to draft legislation.
221
But the pursuit of such legislation was
stymied in a host of ways.
The Failure of the Freedom Budget
Despite widespread support in many circles for the Freedom Budget, Rustin and his allies
still needed a host of circumstances to break in their favor for their ambitious proposal to have a
chance at succeeding. But throughout the two years following its October 1966 unveiling, the
Freedom Budget was dealt blow after blow as Rustin tried to galvanize grassroots support for it. The
most notable setback came at the same time the Freedom Budget was being launched. The midterm
election of November 1966 saw big Republican gains. “GOP Roars Back,” read the Chicago Defender
Headline.
222
Most significantly, the House of Representatives lost huge numbers of the Democratic
backers of the Great Society programs, as well as supporters of open housing, rent subsidies, and
other liberal legislative proposals.
223
In this sense, the election provided a rebuttal to Johnson’s
liberal domestic agenda and provoked questions of a “white backlash.”
224
But one area where
Johnson did not lose support was with regard to policy supporting the Vietnam War, as supporters
of the war won 30 seats in the House.
225
And with the war continuing to move ahead, spending for it

195
produced calls for cutbacks in domestic expenditures. As the Wall Street Journal noted, “the sharply
enlarged Republican strength…deepens the dilemma…[over] how to preserve the momentum of
[Johnson’s] emerging Great Society programs in the face of the ravenous revenue demands of the
Vietnam war and the general concern about inflation.”
226
Over the subsequent year, Wilbur Mills and
other conservatives utilized their power over Johnson. They repeated to him, over and over, that
having guns (the Vietnam War) and butter (social spending) was not possible.
227

The Freedom Budget, however, tried to navigate around the question of the Vietnam War
and the military spending upon which it relied. While Rustin had been a longtime pacifist, instead of
coming out against the war, the Freedom Budget maintained that military spending should not
inhibit a true war on poverty. As Randolph put it in his introduction to the Freedom Budget, the
struggle for guaranteed jobs or income, and all the other demands, are “not predicated on cutbacks
in national defense nor on one or another position regarding the Vietnam conflict.”
228
And Rustin
explained this point further in a letter to Irving Howe. The Freedom Budget, he wrote, “makes no
independent judgment about military spending.”
229
In 1966, Rustin did not personally support the
war, but argued that, “if the war in Viet Nam tragically continues, poor Negroes and whites cannot
be expected to bear the heaviest burden in financing it.”
230
For Rustin and his milieu, this was
attitude was rooted in both tactics and organizing tradition. As Rachelle Horowitz reflected:
“We all agreed…you don’t stop fighting for civil rights because there’s a war on. You don’t
stop pushing for demands at home because there’s a war on …and that had been true
historically…Bayard had initially left the Young Communist League because once Russia
came into the war they thought you shouldn’t have marches for civil rights. And…there had
been opposition amongst the Shachtmanites against the no-strike pledge during World War
II…You certainly can not turn away from domestic matters…and certainly [that was] Bayard
and Randolph’s attitude toward the Korean War when they advocated civil disobedience
unless Blacks were admitted to the army, or Randolph’s March on Washington for the
FEPC. So historically, the position—Randolph’s, Bayard’s—tradition was you don’t give up
fighting for what you think is right because there’s a war on.”
231

In addition to this tradition that refused to discipline its demands to the needs of foreign policy,
those fighting for the Freedom Budget fundamentally did not believe Wilbur Mills’ narrative that

196
guns and butter were economically impossible. The question, for them, was not one of economic
limits, but one of political will.
However, as the war accelerated, the Freedom Budget’s agnostic position on the military
spending placed its champions in an antagonist position with the New Left and anti-war activists.
The Freedom Budget’s position towards the war was not untenable during the early stages of its
drafting and while Rustin was garnering supporters in the summer of 1966. (Included as a signatory,
for example, is leading anti-war activist Dr. Benjamin Spock.)
232
But as Rustin tried to mobilize
grassroots support in 1967, this became a problem for the coalition he was trying to build. From
February to April 1967, for example, Keyserling and Rustin engaged in amiable, but strenuous
debate with leaders of the National Council of Churches, Reverend Shirley Greene and Reverend
James Breeden. In response to their questioning of the connection to between domestic and
international priorities, Keyserling stressed, “we do not believe that any sufficiently powerful
domestic coalition can he formed in support of any important domestic objective if it were to be
limited exclusively to those willing to express opposition to the war in Vietnam.”
233
While Greene
was sympathetic to Keyserling’s points, Breeden’s comments of the Freedom Budget evoke deep
generational divides of language. Keyserling—having been under Senate investigations over
questions of his and his wife’s loyalty fifteen years prior—spoke in the bland language that poverty
was caused by the “misallocation of material or economic resources.”
234
Breeden—who had been a
civil rights activist in Mississippi in the prior years—suggested that since the Freedom Budget does
not frontally discuss “‘power’ and ‘control’ in its analysis of poverty,” this indicated a “serious
defect” in analytical framework.
235
In many ways Breeden, though completely incorrect in his
skepticism of the Freedom Budget, was apt in being suspicious of Keyserling and the proposal. In a
political moment when “naming the system” was increasingly important, and liberals were suspect
amongst the New Left, it would have been quite difficult to understand Keyserling’s politics, which

197
were persistently trying to push the left edge of Keynesianism’s boundaries.
236
While Keyserling’s
proposals did not seek to overturn capitalist property relations per se, his stances on progressive
taxation, inflation policy, and guaranteed jobs or income, terrified the wealthy.
237
In contrast to
Breeden’s assessment, the language of the Freedom Budget was precisely the language of power and
control. Rustin and Keyserling had crafted a document that had a chance of being turned into
legislation, that could, if passed, fundamentally reshaping the entire U.S. political economy: taking
control of monetary policy away from bankers, and putting fiscal policy to the needs of the U.S.’s
most marginalized people. But, nonetheless, convincing the Council of Churches to support was
slow going. After continuing discussions throughout 1967, by the time, Rustin felt “heartened” by
trends within the Council, in May 1968, the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights was resisting
acting on the proposed Freedom Budget bill they had drafted.
238

A less amiable debate ensued between Rustin and the former the director of SNCC’s
Freedom School program and prominent New Left historian, Staughton Lynd. In April 1965, when
Rustin, Norman Thomas, and others in their socialist milieu denounced SDS’s anti-war march on
Washington for its decision to welcome Communists, Lynd wrote Rustin to question this decision.
Lynd asked a question that would become a common New Left critique of the Freedom Budget: is
“jobs and freedom” to be achieved “for Americans only”? While people like Wilbur Mills worried
about the costs of the full employment for the rate of inflation or taxes on the wealthy, Lynd
wondered if “the price is to make our brothers in Vietnam a burnt offering on the altar of political
expediency.”
239
A few months later, during the summer, Lynd publicly denounced Rustin’s political
realignment and the proposals he explored in his “Protest to Politics” essay. In an article in entitled,
“Coalition Politics or Nonviolent Revolution,” Lynd excoriated Rustin’s proposals as elitist
politicking, at best. And at worst, the coalition politics of the realignment thesis advocates an
“implicit acceptance of Administration foreign policy,” and as a result becomes, a “coalition with the

198
marines.”
240
For Lynd, the “Social Democratic vision of electing more and more radical legislators
until power passes peacefully to the Left, seems…illusory.” Lynd’s critiques, and others like it, were
met with forceful rebukes from Rustin and Kahn and their grouping, with the harsh style that they
were well accustomed to in the anti-Stalinist movement.
241
These sorts of debates were relatively
normal for the Freedom Budget’s proponents. But while they were focused on refuting Lynd’s
criticism, the legislative advocacy was suffering. Years later, Horowitz wondered if this was a
strategic error. “We were so much of the New York left that we [perhaps] spent too much time
fighting the New York left and not enough time working on where it was possible in Washington,”
she reflected.
242

But it is important to note, that implicitly, the Freedom Budget posed an immense challenge
to the Vietnam War at the most fundamental level: labor power. Like the situation with the Korean
War, there is no possible way the Vietnam War could have been fought on its existing terms without
a racist and brutal political economy to coerce young people to join the military. As the historian
Kimberley Phillips has documented, during this time Black men were disproportionately represented
in those who soldiered and those who died. By time the Freedom Budget was announced in late
1966, Black soldiers were 40-45% of the “volunteer” troops. And they reenlisted as well. As Phillips
notes, Black soldiers “remained in or returned to the military because they found civilian
employment elusive, even for veterans.” Phillips notes that the experience of Jimi Hendrix was a
common one for many young Black men; they were the targets of two different options of state
violence: unemployment and jail in the U.S., or soldiering in Vietnam.
243
From this vantage point,
one can see how the effort to negate the threat of unemployment and starvation via the Freedom
Budget posed a basic challenge to the war making practices of the period. In this sense, the Freedom
Budget’s designers could not separate domestic and international policy, since the labor power for
the war was derived from the economic suffering they sought to abolish.

199
As with Lynd, similar disagreements and political divisions were exacerbated between SNCC
and Rustin during this time. The differences and choices that would break apart SNCC’s relationship
with Rustin were by no means foretold. In the months after the March on Washington, SNCC
organized a Conference on Jobs and Food, which addressed the role of machinery in devastating the
economic prospects of Southern workers—both Black sharecroppers and industrial workers (See
Figure 15).
244
The conference, at which Rustin was a key speaker, hit on all the topics the Freedom
Budget sought to address. But the divisions had sharpened in the years since the conference and
further still after 1964 Democratic convention. And when Carmichael called for “Black Power” in
June 1966, the gulf between the individuals and their political groupings grew. Carmichael (who had
been elected Chairman of SNCC in May 1966) had originally endorsed Freedom Budget in the
summer; but by end of the summer and fall, the conditions had changed significantly as it pertained
to asking SNCC for an organizational endorsement. By August and September, Rustin had publicly
criticized both SNCC and the concept of Black Power, stating that it “lacks any real value,” and
“diverts the movement from a meaningful debate over strategy and tactics.”
245
By November, SNCC
members, led by Ralph Featherstone and others had completed their study of the Freedom Budget
and concluded that “we cannot look to economic white supremacy” for solutions to poverty. They
argued that “the apparatus that created the poverty” is unlikely to “be the moving force in
eliminating it.”
246
By mid-December, when Rustin and Carmichael debated each other New York
City about Black Power versus the Freedom Budget, Carmichael had removed his name from the
Freedom Budget, under the reasoning that it “automatically supports the war in Vietnam.”
247

200
Figure 15: Image from a SNCC brochure highlighting their attentiveness to concerns over
mechanization.
248

Throughout 1967 and most of 1968 Rustin and the Randolph Institute, continued to try to
build up support for the Freedom Budget and get legislators on board, but with increasingly little
results. The war grew in scale and ferocity, and protests mounted against the unpopular president. In
the summer of 1967, the uprisings, which Rustin and Randolph had been persistently warning about,
continued. In the midst of the five-day rebellion in Detroit, whereby the police killed thirty people
and thirteen others lost their lives, Rustin wrote to Vice President Humphrey to urge him to
promote the Freedom Budget.
249
“As I indicated to you some months ago, when we had dinner, the
conflagration we are now witnessing will continue until programs as basic and far-reaching as the
Freedom Budget are enacted.”
250
Rustin wrote similar remarks to President Johnson to attempt to
cultivate interest in the Freedom Budget. “I am convinced that the present violent turmoil through
which we are passing will not abate through the use of police and army power alone. The basic

201
causes of the rioting, as you yourself have indicated, are social and economic, and no amount of
police or military force can, or has ever been able to, deal with such matters.”
251
Rustin’s appeal was
met with little enthusiasm from the White House, and even if it had, it is unclear how far it would
have taken them. After the 1966 mid-term elections, Johnson’s relationship with Congress was
mangled. While popular lore holds Johnson as the premier manager of the legislative branch, such
an assessment is rooted in the experience prior to November 1966. As his former aide, Kenneth
O’Donnell recalled, “he’s the worst handler of Congress in the world, the worst!” Johnson had
burned so many bridges with Congress that after 1966, according to O’Donnell, “he couldn’t get a
Mother’s Day through.”
252
And without the large-scale social movements pushing Congress and
Johnson for the Freedom Budget, the success of the project was slim.
Conclusion
While Johnson was incapable of expanding the War on Poverty into a jobs or income
program, one area in which he did serve to innovate and develop the power and scope of the
Federal Government was with regard to its role in addressing “street crime.” With a few years of
exceptions, prior to the Johnson administration, relatively small amounts of federal expenditures
went towards crime control.
253
But at the same time as the uprising in Watts in August 1965, the Law
Enforcement Assistance Act was passed; it put forward relatively small but significant federal money
($20 million over three years) to support the states in training and coordination of police
departments.
254
The 1965 law proved the harbinger of more significant shifts as it provided the basis
for the 1968 Omnibus Crime Control and Safe Streets Act, which exponentially expanded the
funding available for the states. The law authorized block grants to the states so as to avoid
administration by cities (and thus decrease the likelihood of being controlled by liberal democrats).
255

While people like Wilbur Mills claimed there was not enough money for guns and butter, he was
able to find enough money to support an uptick in the government’s capacity for repression. The

202
1968 law authorized $100 million for 1969, $300 million for 1970 and eventually hit $1.75 billion in
1973.
256
Such expenditures were a far cry from what was needed for the Freedom Budget, but
nonetheless would prove to be tremendously significant as the government increasingly turned its
policy priorities in towards crime control in the coming decades.
One of the many tragedies of the Freedom Budget’s failure is the immense consensus across
left movements that existed with regard to its fundamental goals. Just as the Freedom Budget was
announcing itself to the world, so was the Black Panther Party for Self Defense (BPP). BPP’s second
point in their Ten-Point Platform affirmed a governmental guarantee to a job as an essential
component of their struggle. “We believe that the federal government is responsible and obligated
to give every man employment or a guaranteed income,” they declared.
257
Such a statement could
have been lifted practically word for word from a Rustin speech or a Keyserling report. Likewise,
contemporaneous to this, women on welfare across the country were organizing themselves into the
National Welfare Rights Organization and calling for “justice, dignity, democracy, and MORE
MONEY NOW!”
258
However, these sorts of potentials for coalitions live in hindsight. Liberals too
were divided amongst themselves during this period. In January 1968, fed up with the ADA’s focus
on getting rid of Johnson and their inattention to the Freedom Budget, Keyserling resigned from the
powerful liberal group that he had been a part almost since its founding.
259
The differences of
strategy, tactics, political milieu, ideological commitments, and more, meant that the Freedom
Budget was unable to become the rallying program that Rustin and Keyserling had hoped would
realign the U.S. political spectrum and achieve a tremendous victory in the long struggle for
abolition democracy.
The fight for the jobs and freedom civil rights agenda displays the challenges for social
movements to fight in the legislative realm; in this regard, crude metrics of success or failure are
inadequate to apprehend the results of such efforts. Looking back, one can see the unbelievable

203
difficulty that the Freedom Budget faced. It was not only an audacious plan to negate capitalism’s
most significant tool (starvation) to compel workers to seek out wages to subsist, but it tried to
pursue such a goal during rapidly changing and unforeseen political circumstances. During the most
advantageous conditions, the Freedom Budget would have been a difficult fight; but as the war
accelerated, inflation increased, cities burned, and the left fought each other, the bulk of the turning
points that the Freedom Budget’s designers needed to turn in their favor did not. And when Richard
Nixon won the election in 1968, the prospects for winning Freedom Budget slipped further and
further away. In the buildup to the election, Rustin had told everyone who would listen that this
election was the “most crucial for Negroes since the Reconstruction.”
260
On the day after the
election, the Randolph Institute cleaned out their offices in Harlem to move to a new location. As
Horowitz recalled, “if you wanted to see people in despair, it was us.”
261
While the 1964 election had
provided an opening to realign both major parties to the left, by the 1968 election it was clear that
even in losing, the ideology Randolph had described as “Goldwaterism” had won a significant
victory. In October 1967, already worried about the opposition the Freedom Budget was facing,
Keyserling urged Rustin along, stating, “if we bury the ‘Freedom Budget,’ we will live to regret it.”
262

Neither Rustin nor Keyserling buried the Freedom Budget, but myriad historical circumstances and
choices did. However, over the subsequent decade as unemployment continued to ravage working
peoples’ lives, Keyserling would continue his work with forces in the civil rights and labor
movements to actualize the vision of the Freedom Budget.

204
Chapter 5: “You’re Not Unemployed Anyway—You’re Fighting Inflation”: The Struggle for
Full Employment in the 1970s
“The rate of inflation and the rate of unemployment…are not strictly comparable objects of choice
which can be rationally evaluated according to this [the Phillips Curve
1
] theoretical schema…the
avoidance of inflation and the maintenance of full employment can be most usefully regarded as
conflicting class interests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, respectively, the conflict being
resolvable only by the test of relative political power in the society.” – Harry G. Johnson, 1968
2

“Accepting unemployment to control inflation amounts to choosing the people at the very bottom
of the economic pyramid to bear the entire economic burden. In the so-called war against inflation,
America's 10 million unemployed have been the Administration’s conscript army.” – Coretta Scott
King, 1976
3

In March 1967, 3,000 people came to UCLA to hear economists Leon Keyserling and
Milton Friedman debate about the problems of poverty and unemployment. Although Friedman
would go on to become one of the most prominent economists of the subsequent decades—during
which time he helped develop what would come to be called “neoliberal economics”—Friedman
was not the headliner that day.
4
Keyserling still commanded the first mention in newspaper articles
describing the panel.
5
At the time, neither of them would have known how their respective visions
for political economy would be actualized or inhibited. Freidman was rising to prominence, having
recently begun his role as a Newsweek columnist, and gaining attention for his support of Governor
Ronald Reagan’s call to impose tuition on California’s university students.
6
Despite trenchant
resistance by student protesters to the tuition proposal, Friedman, who was a visiting professor at
UCLA at the time, could count a certain segment of students as his allies due to his opposition to
the military draft.
7
As Keyserling commented during the debate, “Dr. Friedman’s talk was mainly a
hate government talk.”
8
And that included the draft.
In contradistinction to Friedman who argued for an increased role of the market in social
life, Keyserling continued to assert the necessity for government to provide everyone with jobs or
income. As he explained, “I think we can start on these two fronts of guaranteed employment and
guaranteed income and budget the employment towards the nation’s needs in housing, health, and

205
social security and other things of that kind.” He attempted to refute the growing debates about the
characteristics and deficiencies of unemployed and poor people themselves, and evaluate the issue as
one of political economy. He mocked the former analytic framework, which would become
entrenched over the coming decades, by maintaining that the problem was not about teaching
people “how to re-manicure their toenails or re-comb their hair so that they will be able to compete
with others, or to help them get a little better training and education so they will be able to take the
jobs away from those who now already hold the jobs because they have a little more training and
education.” Instead, Keyserling attempted to recalibrate the debate by recounting a story of how the
Department of Labor had recently produced a report that noted how, if one limited their study to
white men between 25-35, then unemployment rates were astonishingly low. “So I sent them a
telegram,” he told the audience, ‘“Dear Friends: If you only count the employed, the unemployed is
zero.’” As he noted, of course, those who are most vulnerable to discrimination and oppression will
be hit with unemployment unevenly; “that is not the explanation as to why they are unemployed;
they are unemployed because the jobs aren’t there, because the nation doesn’t care.” At the time,
Keyserling was engaged in the Freedom Budget campaign in order to convince both the country and
the political class to do more than care. Keyserling knew the answer to the question he posed in the
title of his talk—Is the U.S. Economy Rich Enough to Afford Justice; the real question was: how to
untether that wealth and redistribute it to those who needed it? Although the Freedom Budget was
unsuccessful, in the years after this debate, Keyserling would continue his decades of struggle to
achieve these goals.
In the subsequent years, Friedman would help popularize the idea that there was a “natural”
rate of unemployment necessary to restrain inflation. But, as his University of Chicago colleague
Harry G. Johnson indicated in the above epigraph (contemporaneous to Freidman’s
pronouncements) the choice between unemployment and inflation is a manifestation of political

206
power. Freidman alluded to such circumstances but steered away from the more forthright
characterization of his colleague. “Many of the market characteristics that determine [the natural rate
of unemployment] are man-made and policy-made,” Friedman noted. And, as Friedman concluded,
“the ‘market’ rate [of unemployment] can be kept below the ‘natural’ rate [of unemployment] only
by [policies leading to] inflation.”
9
Such an assessment stood in contradistinction to Keyserling, who
had suggested that unemployment fell unjustly on those he designated as the “vulnerables,” and that
there were many ways to address inflation that did not rely on the suffering of unemployed people.
Friedman’s argument was that this state of affairs was necessary for the market to stabilize real
inflation. Implicit in Friedman’s analysis of the ‘natural rate of unemployment’ was an embrace of
the current structure of wealth distribution in society.
By contrast, implicit in Keyserling’s analysis, was what “vulnerable” meant: vulnerable to
racist, patriarchal, and otherwise discriminatory labor markets—vulnerable to Federal Reserve
power. Likewise, what Keyserling aimed to confront with his quip about the Department of Labor
report was that Friedman’s construction of a supposed “natural” rate of unemployment served as a
legitimating apparatus, an alibi for public policy that favored the wealthy in distributional conflicts;
likewise, this policy choice relied on an acceptance of racist and discriminatory labor markets. In this
sense, Keyserling asked the audience to analyze the natural rate of unemployment as a racial rate of
unemployment, and an index of oppression. In the years after this debate, Friedman’s view would
consistently win him plaudits and audiences with the powerful, as he would become an informal
advisor to President Nixon, and be awarded the Nobel Prize in Economics. And Keyserling, with
less fanfare, would continue his involvement with the struggles amongst the civil rights-labor
coalition that pushed forward the Freedom Budget.
Almost six years after Keyserling and Friedman’s debate, in October 1973, UCLA would
again be an important site to consider the struggle for a governmental guarantee to a job. Under the

207
leadership of Augustus Hawkins, the Congressional Representative from Watts, UCLA hosted a
symposium to deliberate about what the next steps were in the fight for full employment. Building
off these conversations (and the years of struggle to actualize the Full Employment Bill of 1945)
eight months after the UCLA symposium, Hawkins introduced the bill, which, through much
contestation and compromise, would eventuate in the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act of
1978. Keyserling, along with civil rights activists like Coretta Scott King would play a central role in
the effort to enact a governmental guarantee to a job or income in the 1970s. However, like the
experience of the 1946 Employment Act, the process of going from a bill to a law sapped the
dynamism from what was initially an ambitious proposal akin to the Freedom Budget. As Harry
Johnson noted, the struggle of social priorities between inflation and unemployment can be most
crudely, but accurately, understood with an eye toward the balance of class forces; amidst
skyrocketing unemployment and inflation—“stagflation”—during the decade, the fight for
Humphrey-Hawkins presented the most significant opportunity to achieve full employment
legislation since the 1940s. However, by the end of the decade, the social warrant establishing the
right to a job as a dominant moral value was shattered, and inflation fighting, with its attendant
social costs, became accepted in circles far beyond the sphere of elite political and economic actors.
Continuing the Movement for Full Employment: Coretta Scott King and the National
Committee for Full Employment
In the years since the Freedom Budget campaign had unraveled, unemployment and poverty
persisted even amidst an economy hot with military spending; but these problems would deepen in
the early 1970s. While U.S. workers had been relatively protected by the military Keynesian economy
that Keyserling had helped bring about via NSC-68, in 1973, the U.S.’s geopolitical interests would
elicit a response that would devastate working people. In October 1973, in response to the U.S. and
President Nixon’s support for Israel and their military aggression, the Arab states within the
Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), cut off oil supplies to the U.S. As a

208
result of dwindling supplies, oil prices for shot up almost 400% within three months.
10
And with so
many people reliant on oil, prices for food and other commodities also spiked.
11
Almost
immediately, unemployment began to rise pushing more workers into the precarious environs that
Black workers had been struggling against for decades.
12
As historian Judith Stein notes, such
circumstances “reopened the social contract by setting off distributional struggles between capital
and labor.”
13
As a result, the deepening of unemployment helped bring further into collaboration the
labor-civil rights alliance that Rustin had dreamed of. At the forefront of this alliance, however, was
not Rustin, but Coretta Scott King.
In the immediate days and then years after her husband’s 1968 assassination (while he was
supporting striking sanitation workers in Memphis) Coretta Scott King continued his legacy fighting
to end the war in Vietnam and abolish poverty and unemployment. When Dr. King was killed, he
was in the midst of planning the Poor People’s campaign to bring a multiracial alliance of poor
people, women on welfare, and unemployed people to Washington in order to demand economic
justice.
14
Bayard Rustin briefly took charge of portions of the planning for the March’s climactic
event, drawing up signs emblazoned with the slogans: “Go Home Wilbur Mills” and asking, “How
About that Butter?” But Rustin chose to tone down some of the more fundamental proposals such
as those for land rights and an immediate end to the war in Vietnam, in favor of what he felt were
more attainable objectives.
15
As a result of conflict surrounding his leadership, he resigned; and it
was Scott King who would emerge as the major voice furthering Dr. King’s legacy.
On May 12, 1968, Scott King led a Mother’s Day March to launch the Poor People’s
campaign. Sponsored by the National Welfare Rights Organization (NWRO), and joined by 3,000
people, she argued that everyone in the U.S. has a “right to live.”
16
And to support this, Scott King
emphasized the special role mothers play: “Since women have been entrusted with the sacred task of
giving birth and rearing children, transmitting the values of the cultural heritage of the nation, we

209
have a special commission at this time to nurture, protect and save their lives from destruction.”
Marchers held signs demanding “the right to a decent job” and others lofted the NWRO banner
reading “Mother Power.” Scott King explained to the protesters how corporate Keynesian policy
enriched the wealthy at the expense of others. “Congress passes laws which subsidize corporations,
firms, oil companies, airlines, and houses for suburbia, but when they turn their attention to the
poor they suddenly become concerned about balancing the budget and cut back on funds,” she told
the audience.
17
Although they cancelled the plan due to the rainy weather, the marchers had
originally intended to deliver an ironic Mother’s Day card to the wife of Wilbur Mills to focus
attention on her husband and the role of the Ways and Means Committee (which he chaired) in
drafting welfare restrictions. In these efforts, Scot King illustrated a broadened conception of
violence that focused on the role of poverty and unemployment and its accompanying
consequences. “I must remind you that starving a child is violence,” she told those gathered for the
march. “Suppressing a culture is violence,” she continued. “Neglecting school children is violence.
Punishing a mother and her family is violence. Contempt for poverty is violence.” And she insisted
that inaction in the face of human misery was also violence. “Even the lack of will power to help
humanity is a sick and sinister form of violence,” she said. Reflecting on her political analysis,
historian Thomas Jackson has noted, Scott King connected the issues of poverty and policy even
“more forcefully than her husband.”
18
In this sense, Scott King confronted the continued struggle to
displace Wilbur Mills’ Jim Crow power. Although the work of so many over the prior years had won
legislation in order to shatter Dixiecrat congressional dominance, Scott King had no illusions about
the influence Mills, and others of his ilk, still wielded to enact violent public policies.
Over the subsequent years, Scott King continued this trajectory. She aligned herself closely
with the New York based hospital workers union, Local 1199, of which she was named an honorary
chairperson.
19
One of the leaders of 1199 was Moe Foner, a close friend of the longtime advisor to

210
Dr. King, Stanley Levison, who continued to work closely with the Scott King up until his death.
This relationship helped knit together Scott King’s alliance with the union.
20
As New York Times
labor reporter, A.H. Raskin, commented of her role in support of the union, “she has helped to
make the blue-and-white 1199 cap a countrywide freedom symbol.” Raskin highlighted that in a
moment when many unions were increasingly inattentive to their rank and file members, 1199
differed. As he observed, those in 1199 are “nurturers of the old idealism, perhaps because they
move into the nineteen-seventies still obliged to fight the elementary battles for human dignity that
gave unions their great emotional appeal in the turbulent thirties.”
21
After the Poor People’s
campaign, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference worked in support of 1199’s difficult
campaign in Charleston, SC. The repression of the organizing drive that led to a 113-day strike was
so fierce that when she arrived one day to support, a reporter greeted her with the comment,
“welcome to Charleston, South Vietnam.”
22
As she had in the years since her husband’s death, Scott
King continued to connect the intimacies of state violence across continents, calling for an end to
the “triple evils” of poverty, racism and war.
23
Likewise, Scott King maintained her relationship with
NWRO, attending protests and conferences and supporting their initiatives.
24

But the most far-reaching and significant role that Scott King would play in the efforts to
craft a just political economy came when she, along with Leonard Woodcock, President of the
United Auto Workers (UAW), tried to further knit together the civil rights-labor coalition to fight
for full employment. For her, this was essential to stem the tide of what she felt was a growing
backlash against the civil rights agenda.
25
In 1968, Walter Reuther, then president of the UAW,
organized a group of prominent academics, politicians, labor leaders, and activists as the Committee
of 100 for National Health Insurance, to call for a governmental guarantee to adequate health care
for all. As Reuther explained, “we are living in the space age but we are still traveling in a pre-Model
T economic organization with respect to health care.”
26
This organization served as the basis for

211
Scott King and Woodcock to initiate a related formation dedicated to full employment. A few
months after Hawkins’ UCLA conference, in May 1974, Scott King—along with Hawkins, and
activists and labor leaders like Michael Harrington, Cesar Chavez, Murray Finely, and Gloria
Steinem, as well as Senators Walter Mondale, Ted Kennedy, and Jacob Javits—wrote to a select
group whom they wanted to organize to “develop and disseminate ideas about strategy and tactics
for full employment.”
27
They asked those who were interested to join them for a conference in New
York to consider the next steps. In issuing their call, they developed a “Four Point Employment
Statement” in order to ground their thinking going into the convening:
1. “The problem which influences all other problems is persisting and ballooning
unemployment. It expunges hope for millions, especially the young; it generates
insecurity for the employed; it is an economic deadweight that results in the loss of
billions in gross national product.
2. The guarantee of a job is a basic civil right, without which human dignity and equality are
diminished or excluded for millions.
3. Full employment is in the interest of the employed whose bargaining power shrinks as
unemployment is enlarged. Full employment will result in the delivery of vital services
presently restricted. Stimulating private services employment is necessary for economic
stability, for political morality and for social tranquility. Modern society is a contradiction
without it.
4. Therefore, the Coalition for Full Employment is committed to achievement of a full
employment economy, and works to support all measures, public and private, to that
end. As we celebrate the 200
th
anniversary of the nation, it is time to declare as public
policy that the pursuit of happiness and equality means the right to employment.”
28

There was an enthusiastic response to the invitation. Unsurprisingly, Leon Keyserling was amongst
the first to welcome the invitation, and at the convening he gave a speech about how to achieve full
employment without inflation. Perhaps due to Scott King’s stance against the war, as well as the
initiation of troop removals from Vietnam starting the previous year, Keyserling was joined in
attendance by two anti-war antagonists of the Freedom Budget with whom he and Rustin had
debated: economists Seymour Melman and Robert Browne.
29
Coming out of the convening the
attendees determined to continue to the unfinished tasks of the Freedom Budget and put
unemployment at the center of their agenda. As Scott King argued, “if we could solve the

212
unemployment problem most of the social problems we have could be solved. In fact, most of the
social problems stem from unemployment.”
30
Although Woodcock was unable to continue on as the
co-chair, Murray Finley, the President of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America (ACWA)
agreed to take his place. And building off of this, the participants agreed to organize as a coalition.
Over the coming months, they would set about to create the National Committee for Full
Employment and the Full Employment Action Council (NCFE/FEAC).
31

Over the subsequent four months, Scott King and Finley initiated the creation of the new
coalition. They solicited membership for a board of directors, developed a statement of purpose,
crafted by-laws and a charter, and legally incorporated as a non-profit organization.
32
At one of the
initial board meetings in October, two months after President Nixon’s resignation, Scott King
opened the meeting by explaining the reason they were in the room together. “Full employment,”
she said, “has been a wistful dream so long people may not regard us as serious, and it will be an
initial task to convince them we are not trying merely to be on the side of the angels verbally but are
deadly serious.” As she noted, the freedom struggle for democracy was incomplete if people were
unable to survive. The challenge, she suggested, was to, ensure that the U.S., “on the 200

[year]
anniversary of its birth will begin to take democracy seriously.”
33
Scott King’s co-chair, Finley, also
indicated the difficulty of unemployment displacing inflation from the key agenda item of the day. But
he assured the rest of the board that their coalition would confront this task forcefully. At the
meeting they approved the statement of purpose for the group, which largely reflected the “four
point statement” from the summer convening. However, it emphasized that they would challenge
the type of intellectual gymnastics and quantitative metrics that attempted to rob “full employment”
of its meaning. They refused the “sophisticated ‘numbers game’ whereby ‘full employment’ is
defined as an ever-increasing percentage of unemployment.” Instead, they explained that “any rate is
unacceptable…full employment means no involuntary unemployment.”
34

213
In the months after the October meeting, the NCFE/FEAC had begun preparations for a
number of informational publications, including a pamphlet by Leon Keyserling and a newsletter. In
January, they took out an full-page advertisement in the New York Times explaining their viewpoints;
they called for the federal government to issue “An Emergency Plan for Immediate Action!” to
ameliorate the skyrocketing unemployment that was wreaking havoc across the country. (For
example, a few days before their ad ran in the Times, a melee broke out at the Atlanta Civic Center
when 3,000 people turned out to apply for 225 public service jobs.)
35
When Scott King and
Woodcock had first put out the call for a full employment convening in May 1974, official
unemployment was at 5.1%. But by the time the ad was written, more people were searching for
wages as unemployment climbed to 7.2% in December. The ad also underscored how many more
people were left uncounted in official unemployment statistics; it ominously, but correctly, predicted
that unemployment would go higher.
36
In response the NCFE/FEAC put forward a number of
different proposals including: (1) expanding public service jobs; (2) doubling the duration of
unemployment benefits to 52 weeks; (3) encouraging the Federal Reserve to lower interest rates; and
(4) they argued against President Ford’s proposed budget reductions. In addition, since they astutely
noted that the OPEC oil embargo was a major cause of the inflation that was sapping workers’
purchasing power, they asked congress to (5) “encourage the development of new energy sources
and prevent the abuse of monopoly power by energy corporations.” But they also insisted that
unemployed people should not be forced to bear the weight of the inflation crisis. Inflation, they
noted, “provides no legitimate excuse to neglect the unemployment crisis, especially since
unemployment itself is a sign that our current inflation is not caused by a general excess of demand.”
And further they maintained that the current problem of unemployment, in fact, contributed to the
inflationary circumstance by reducing supplies, thus enabling demand-pull inflation (when scant
supplies of a given good or service force increases in its price).
37
In addition to these efforts at

214
putting forward an alternative explanation of the economic tumult, they continued to formally
collaborate with Hawkins and his legislative staff, and worked on crafting a statement of their own
legislative goals.
38

By the coalition’s meeting in April 1975, they had made impressive strides in many
directions. They had built out their board and leadership with a robust alliance of leading figures in
the liberal-labor-civil rights-religious orbit, including: I.W. Abel of the United Steelworkers, Dorothy
Height of the National Council of Negro Women, Olga Madar, President of the newly-formed
Coalition of Labor Union Women, Leon Shull of Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), as well
as many others.
39
Not coincidental to their early success was that they were secure financially.
Indeed, their meal choices during their meetings reveals as much. The lunch for the 35 person
meeting cost over $35 per person (in 2014 dollars).
40
By the April meeting, they had already raised
almost $143,000 (in 2014 dollars) from organized labor and foundations.
41
In addition to the
financial resources that the unions were able to generate for the NCFE/FEAC’s activities, Scott
King, through her leadership of the Martin Luther King Center for Social Change, had access to her
own organizing resources. During the prior year, a number of leading musicians and entertainers
such as Isaac Hayes, Sly and the Family Stone, and Richard Pryor, participated in a benefit to raise
money for the Center.
42
This type of financial stability certainly played a part in the coalitions’ ability
to become established as a political force within a few months.
Also at the April meeting, the coalition discussed a position paper written by Leon
Keyserling. Keyserling’s paper had been adapted by Andrew Levison, the son of Stanley Levison,
who was also working with the coalition through the King Center.
43
Andrew Levison was in the
midst of becoming an intellectual force in his own right. In September 1974, he published an
influential article in the New Yorker, entitled “The Working-Class Majority.” In the article, and a
book of the same title also published that year, he reassessed the data that suggested blue-collar

215
workers were becoming obsolete due to the rise of white-collar workers. Levison, consequently,
suggested a political strategy to accommodate this analysis, and maintained that despite popular
assumptions, “blue-collar workers are no more conservative than the middle-class on most issues
and are more liberal on some.”
44
Levison, now in 1975 took on a similar role that Tom Kahn had
played a decade prior, to help edit and summarize Keyserling’s prose. In the position paper,
“Toward a National Commitment for Full Employment,” Keyserling worried about how for “22
years we have suffered a long-term retreat from full employment.” He decried the growing
economic inequality; and, having argued for full employment being utilized for alternative energy
sources since his Pabst essay from 1944, Keyserling emphasized how the problem of inflation is
“unbearable in its effects upon the most vulnerable,” and was enabled by “national policies designed
to ‘fight inflation’” by “keeping production too low,” and thus inhibiting public employment for
new energy sources (which he and others had pursued). From this perspective, that understood the
dialectic of action and inaction of government, Keyserling argued that, “we must remedy the errors
of commission and omission.”
45
For him, increased energy costs via OPEC may have been the
immediate cause of the current condition, but an underlying element, and concomitant causal factor
was the years spent stifling the solutions he and others had been proposing for more than three
decades. And these policy choices, for him, were compounded by the refusal to ameliorate the
current problems of unemployment and inflation for those on fixed and low incomes, whom
inflation hit with the most force.
In the position paper, Keyserling also took up a number of his old causes, including the
Employment Act of 1946, and the undemocratic power of the Federal Reserve. Having lost the fight
around Fed independence in 1951, he sought to reopen it, arguing that “there is an immediate need
for a Congressional mandate to bring the Federal Reserve Board under the effective control of the
President and the Congress, and to require that its policies conform to the purposes” of full

216
employment. Although Keyserling believed that this authority still remained with the President due
to the Employment Act, he also knew that through its actions, the Fed had established its
independence culturally, if not legally, and this made taking away its power via a thirty-year old law a
tricky proposal for any president. But, through continuing to question the legitimacy of the Fed’s
authority, Keyserling and the NCFE/FEAC targeted one of the central institutions of ruling-class
dominance.
Also, in the position paper, Keyserling put forward a number of different visions for
Keynesian policy apart from the military Keynesianism he had helped institutionalize via NSC-68. At
the October meeting of a NCFE/FEAC subcommittee, Mary Dublin Keyserling had asked that the
group spell out in greater detail what sorts of public employment they were demanding.
46
As a
response to this, the position paper explored a number of key proposals. Leon Keyserling wrote that
the process of creating guaranteed jobs should include goals for:
• “conservation and development of natural resources and raw materials and energy
supply
• housing geared to a decent home in a greatly improved living environment…
• improvement of the environment
• adequate medical care for all, at costs within their means
• full educational opportunity for all
• adequate day care and, and nursery and kindergarten facilities
• mass transportation required to underpin full employment and production
• increased production of food and fibers required to meet the needs of a fully
employed family, and to make appropriate contributions toward the battle against
mass starvation in some areas of the world
• nation-wide equalization efforts with respect to incomes and public services
• the development of basic science and applied science
• artistic, aesthetic, cultural, and recreational activities in all areas of the country
• Federal aid to State and local governments for needed public services
• the virtual liquidation of poverty, substandard wages, and substandard conditions of
employment…and for substantial income progress among low income families
above the poverty level
• needed income transfer expenditures and related services for those unable to work
and their dependents
• the control or elimination of practices by businesses of any size which are inimical
to the public interest
• alternative activities, to facilitate or adjust for reductions in military and other
industrial activities”
47

217
While couched in much of the language and style of liberalism of the day, the revolutionary
implications of many of these demands are noteworthy. Vladimir Lenin suggested that during a
revolutionary situation, “the upper classes should be unable to govern in the old way.”
48
By making
demands that proposed to equalize incomes, eliminate businesses that harm the public interest, and
take over the power the Federal Reserve, NCFE/FEAC was pursuing a serious challenge to the
configuration of political and economic relations of their day.
In the days after the April NCFE/FEAC meeting, Scott King would highlight her own
political perspectives and how they were being expressed in her organizing for guaranteed jobs. As
she explained to an interviewer with the Washington Star newspaper, “if we’re going to have a free
and just society there must be jobs for all people.”
49
Like the above list, which was discussed at the
meeting, Scott King placed emphasis on the areas of work that were least susceptible to
technological obsolescence: “human needs,” health care, education, and housing. She drew on her
late husband’s perspective to note that he was “opposed to all forms of violence.” And in this
tradition, “any form of deprivation is a form of violence. Starving a child is a form of violence.
Depriving a person of a job is violence.” Indeed, she observed that, historically, much of the U.S.
economy has been premised on militarism, and they were proposing an alternative to that model of
economic development. As she explained, “the nation has never honestly dealt with the question of
a peacetime economy.”
50
It was to fulfill this task—to pull Keynesianism to the left, and to refuse
corporate, military Keynesianism—that she and the NCFE/FEAC directed themselves.
Grounded in these moral and political perspectives, NCFE/FEAC sought to continue to
intervene in the public discourse and build a movement to support legislation that opposed what
New York University professor and NCFE/FEAC supporter Helen Ginsburg termed the “strategy
of misery.”
51
When the New York Times published an article claiming that “most analysts today,
regardless of their political affiliations, believe that 5.5 to 6 per cent unemployment is probably the

218
lowest that the Government can achieve without stirring up virulent inflation again,” NCFE/FEAC
responded with a stern letter to the editor; they refused the suggestion that there was a consensus
amongst economists about the amount of tolerable unemployment and the causes of the current
inflation.
52
Instead, they emphasized the role of OPEC and “the tendency of large corporations in
concentrated industries to raise their prices in bad times as well as good ones.” For NCFE/FEAC,
these were the key problems creating inflation.
53
Ginsburg, likewise, in a February 1975 Nation
magazine article (that would be widely circulated by the coalition) highlighted the inadequacy of the
Phillips Curve to apprehend the current crisis of stagflation; instead she directed attention toward
growing corporate power since the real earnings of workers were shrinking and corporate profits
were rising.
However, buoyed by racist and patriarchal assessments of the labor market, such appeals
often held little sway with the Republican administration. As Ginsburg recounted, when giving
testimony to the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress (JEC) in 1972, Treasury Secretary John
Connally had emphasized that “we can’t be carried away by an unemployment figure of say, 6
percent.” Connally’s reason for such an assessment: “if you take the unemployment rate for males,
heads of families, you get down to an unemployment rate figure of 3 percent.” As Ginsburg
commented, “apparently, only adult males matter. Preferably white.”
54
Connally’s attitude—the same
one Keyserling had excoriated in his 1967 debate with Friedman—was commonplace, however. In
his Nobel Prize speech in 1976, Freidman reiterated this assessment, arguing that the “natural rate
[of unemployment] has been rising…[because] women, teenagers, and part-time workers have been
constituting a growing fraction of the labor force.”
55
Instead of analyzing these economic
circumstances, by which more people were being compelled to work for wages as evidence of a
wage squeeze, thereby causing family units to take on more waged work in order to make ends meet,
right wing economic thinking cast these circumstances as merely women in search of “pin money.”

219
NCFE/FEAC confronted this in their letter to the New York Times, stating that such an assessment
“is simply wrong,” not least of all since fifteen million women are the “major wage earner” of the
family, and “another six million are the wives of men earning less than $7,000 a year.”
56
Scott King
also highlighted the racialized and gendered aspects of this right wing analysis as well, noting that
Black women “almost always had to work,” and for this reason especially, she supported the
demands of the women’s movement for equal pay for equal work and for adequate childcare.
57

Indeed, looking back on these circumstances, historian Nancy MacLean has noted that the
“unraveling of the family wage system” best elucidates postwar gender history.
58
From this analytic
framework, it is clear that the right wing economic rational for inadequate minimum wage and
employment policies, and the destruction of the family wage (for those who ever had it), was
predicated on racist and patriarchal assessments of the relative health of the economy.
***
Throughout this period of global economic transformation, U.S. fiscal policies continued
their trend of the late 1960s, whereby appropriations towards social service and public employment
for the most marginalized workers was miserly, while spending to develop the country’s policing
apparatus was robust. For the members of the Congressional Black Caucus (CBC), formed in 1971
to “promote the general welfare of Black Americans”—these issues were wholly intertwined. The
CBC confronted these policy choices at a 1972 Forum at Harvard titled, “What Our National
Priorities Should Be.” The Caucus foregrounded the need for full employment policies, insisting that
“massive unemployment” is the “most perilous domestic problem.” And that unemployment of
Black people, the cause of which they declared as “institutional racism and sterile economic and
fiscal policies…is only a symptom of a larger and more cancerous disease which must be eradicated,
the failure of our system to provide employment to all those who desperately seek it.”
59
Likewise,
their position paper on the legal system argued:

220
“the Criminal Justice System is an excellent example of the inability to merge institutionally
American law with Black notions of human justice. The task is, indeed, so great in
corrections that certain individuals are beginning to feel that we should forget about limited
reforms, and consider, instead, the abolition of the prison structure. American law divorced
from Black reality has driven many to that conclusion.”
60

Jesse Jackson, too, like the members of the CBC understood the linkages between the failure of full
employment and the scaling up the government’s punishment apparatus. At a keynote to the
meatpackers union a few months prior to the 1972 elections, he challenged the union members,
saying: “It is our job to win back the blue collar workers who shifted from the coalition in 1968,
thinking that ‘Law and Order’ was the same as a job or an income.”
61
An assessment of the budgets
for this pivotal five-year period in political and economic transformation and the construction of the
neoliberal order reveals the political choices at work. From 1971-1975, federal, state, and local
governments spent an unprecedented amount, $61.8 billion on criminal justice expenditures, versus
the $74.1 billion (inflation adjusted) estimated by the Freedom Budget authors to eradicate poverty.
62

During the mid-70s, in the midst of the continuing crisis of unemployment (that was now
touching even more peoples’ lives) the CBC and NCFE/FEAC attempted to shift these policy
priorities toward full employment. In May 1975, the CBC and the think-tank that it frequently
collaborated with, the Joint Center for Political Studies, organized an ad-hoc congressional hearing
on full employment.
63
Speakers at the hearing included Hubert Humphrey and leading members of
the CBC like John Conyers, Augustus Hawkins, Parren Mitchell, and Shirley Chisholm.
64
They aimed
to promote full employment as a “viable economic goal.” As one speaker, William Lucy, the
Secretary/ Treasurer of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees
(AFSCME) and a co-founder (with Cleveland Robinson) of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists,
noted, the government certainly has the ability to create jobs and do necessary training. “In
wartime,” Lucy explained a few days before the hearing, “when they gear up the war machine,
everybody fits into a slot: they make welders out of laborers and pipefitters out of farmers.” Lucy

221
argued that the federal government should employ people “in transportation, construction, health
services, environmental work.”
65
The challenge remained the situation that Wilbur Mills and the
politics of the late 1960s had established: how to generate the political will that could put the
resources and energies so often deployed for domestic and international military purposes to
alternative, social ends.
In the midst of these circumstances, with unemployment having skyrocketed to almost 9%,
the Democratic controlled Congress tried to act, but President Ford smothered their attempts. The
day after the Senate authorized over $6 billion dollars for one million public jobs and other
economic stimulus efforts, an estimated 60,000 people rallied in Washington D.C., at a protest
planned by the AFL-CIO Industrial Union Department. Lillian Roberts—who had been the first
Black worker at the University of Chicago’s obstetrical clinic, and had since worked her way up to a
leadership position in District Council 37 of New York (which helped send an estimated 20,000
members to the rally)—explained the need to get President Ford’s attention. While New York was
in the midst of its own fiscal crisis that was brutalizing her union’s members, Roberts noted: “they're
talking about ‘upcurves’ and ‘acceptable rates of unemployment’ and millions of Americans are
worried sick about how to pay the rent and feed their children,” she said.
66
The protesters held signs
reading, “Save Our Jobs, Save Our Cities,” “Jobs Now,” “I’m in the Red,” and “Burns Fiddles,
Interest Soars,” (in reference to Fed chair Arthur Burns’ tight monetary policies). Many of the
protesters were in no mood to be talked at by politicians, even those who were fighting for
unemployment programs like Hubert Humphrey and Barbara Jordan. The crowd was so furious that
they stormed the field of the baseball stadium where the protest was held, forcing it to be cancelled
early. As one unemployed meat cutter put it, “we want our voices heard. They offer no solutions.”
And another hospital worker declared, “the people who were doing all the talking had $65,000-a-
year jobs, why should we have to listen to that?”
67
The protesters were calling for immediate action.

222
But the voices and plight of garment workers like Janice Pinder from Cambridge, MD, who was only
able to work one day per week at the time, had little impact on President Ford; he vetoed the jobs
bill the next month.
68

Figure 16: This cartoon, published in response to President Ford’s veto of the Emergency
Employment Appropriations Bill, was reproduced in NCFE/FEAC materials and aptly indicates the
importance of unemployed people to broader economic relations.
69

Ford’s veto was guided by the long-promoted ideology that compelled the lives and
possibilities of people like Pinder to serve as human sacrifices for the interests of price stability. In
addition, it was guided by a political calculus that cast aside the interests of unemployed people. As
one of Ford’s economists told the New York Times, “only 10 percent [of people] really worry about
unemployment.” Whereby, in his mind, “one hundred per cent of the people have been hit by
inflation.”
70
Inflation remained the prime concern amongst people polled at the time, and Ford

223
sought to use such fears to rewrite the 1946 Employment Act to give price stability equal weight
with maximum employment (a proposal that had been brought forward seventeen years prior by a
Du Pont executive).
71
Ford’s explanation for vetoing the bill was that it could be inflationary, and
“would hurt more than it would help our economy in the long run.”
72
In addition, although Ford
had signed a tax cut a few months prior (reminiscent of President Kennedy), he cited his anxiety
around budget deficits as another reason for his veto. However, as was clear during the relatively
buoyant economic times of the 1964-68 period (after the Kennedy/Johnson tax cuts had gone into
effect and the economy was cushioned with robust military expenditures) this type of stimulus
would be ineffective at putting the “vulnerable” unemployed people into decent jobs. While tax cuts
might have some impact to support more privileged workers, whose unemployment might have
been caused by the cyclical contraction of the economy, for those whose unemployment could be
more accurately construed as structural—such as the 42% of Black teenagers who looked for
work—the situation needed a more far-reaching response.
73

To this end, the NCFE/FEAC set about to organize the necessary force to overcome these
dire conditions. When Ford’s veto was sent back to Congress for a potential override, they pressured
the legislature to act accordingly, trying to both overturn the veto and the sensibility that authorized
the “willingness to accept widespread unemployment as a fact of American life.”
74
But the
Democrats were unable to summon the votes needed in the House of Representative, falling five
short. Looking toward the 1976 election, House majority leader Tip O’Neill argued that “we will not
be faced again this session with so clear a confrontation between the philosophy and ideals of the
Republican and Democratic parties.”
75
Indeed, Ford’s willingness to take such bold veto actions in
the face of such extreme unemployment certainly compelled a reassessment of what type of
legislative possibilities existed during the 94
th
Congress. It was clear that even with a huge

224
Democratic majority, and unemployment unseen since the 1930s, ameliorative legislation would not
come easily.
***
To continue their quest to refute the growing acceptability of sustained unemployment and
project an alternative, NCFE/FEAC organized a conference in June to bring together leading
figures on the topic and further grow their coalition. Coming three weeks after the failed attempt to
override the veto, President Ford’s power loomed large. During his speech, Augustus Hawkins,
foregrounded how “labor’s minimum program” as it was articulated in the Democratic Party’s
program, had become a “veto victim.” Hawkins urged the 400 people, representing over 150
organizations, to continue to pursue, “not a bill that has been compromised to death,” but instead a
bold proposal that was sufficiently ambitious to capture the imaginations of the electorate, and
“force the President’s hand until it is too weak for a veto or his political fortunes too insecure for
reelection.”
76
While Ford’s top economic advisor, Alan Greenspan, suggested that a recovery was on
the way, his notion of a recovery excluded many people. Claiming that, “the recession for all
practical purposes is over,” Greenspan’s hopeful prediction saw the unemployment rate dropping to
7.5% by the end of 1976—a rate that put it on par with the worst months of the 1949 and 1957-58
recessions.
77
Accordingly, Hawkins questioned: “if continued unemployment is required to achieve
recovery how are its victims to be selected?”
78
Hawkins knew the answer to his question though:
people or color, women, young people, and those living in places where capital was fleeing. He had
seen this first hand over the prior months as he traveled with the Subcommittee on Equal
Opportunities of the House’s Education and Labor Committee; with the group of legislators,
Hawkins had been holding traveling hearings on unemployment, going from Washington to Detroit,
New York, Los Angeles and New Mexico, and bearing witness to the lives that were being
destabilized by political action and inaction. A few weeks prior to the NCFE/FEAC conference,

225
Hawkins had been back at UCLA for a follow-up symposium on full employment from the previous
one two years prior. During his talk, he retold the aforementioned story of Treasury Secretary
Connally’s attitude that unemployment was only a crisis if one focused on people who were not
white men of prime working age. Rooted in this understanding of how the policy surrounding
unemployment was being developed, Hawkins argued that as a result, “it is the minorities, the
women, and the teenagers who must play a role in mobilizing…support…encouraging full
employment.”
79
At the conference, Coretta Scott King detailed a similar frame. As she explained,
“from the churches and the union halls to the organizations and even homes…the demand for jobs
must echo as loudly and clearly across America in the 70’s as the demand for freedom did in the
60’s.”
80

Figure 17: This cartoon, which criticized Greenspan and President Ford’s attitude toward
unemployed people was reproduced in Augustus Hawkins’ newsletter, the Hawkins’ Full Employment
Bulletin.
81

226
The conference was a dramatic success toward this goal of building such a robust alliance. It
brought together a huge array of groups, including both Freedom Budget architects, Bayard Rustin
and Leon Keyserling. Rustin, however, was mostly absent from the coalition that seemed to be
following the plan he had done so much to promote during the previous decade.
82
He supported its
goals, arguing in 1975 that, “it will only be through the realization of a full employment economy
that black people will achieve the full participation in society that was the overriding objective of the
civil right movement.”
83
Nevertheless, despite the relative absence of one of the leading intellectuals
of labor-civil rights coalitionism, NCFE/FEAC continued to articulate much of the goals that
Rustin and Randolph had explored in the Freedom Budget; and it seemed, in many ways, that the
goals were more suited to garnering mass support a decade later than they were when Rustin was
enumerating them in the 1960s.
The media also gave the efforts of NCFE/FEAC much attention. As Hubert Humphrey
joked at the press conference for the June convening, “I haven’t had this much coverage since I ran
for President.”
84
Indeed, the conference had its desired impact, presenting to the public an
alternative to the austerity agenda, which suggested that little could be done to mollify the pain of
unemployment. The three major television networks all had news segments about the conference.
85

Major newspapers covered it as well. The New York Times highlighted how President Ford had
declared himself unwilling to “adopt any programs that created jobs at the risk of renewed
inflation.” But the Times noted that, despite years of infighting amongst the forces present at the
conference, for those in attendance, “there was unanimity—something must be done to overcome
what they contended was the indifference of the Ford Administration to the human misery of
unemployment.” To this end, the Times suggested that the conference was itself, “a political
occasion,” of significant note.
86
And the ripple effects of the conference were felt further still. In the
weeks afterwards, The Catholic Virginian reported that the associate secretary for domestic social

227
development at the U.S. Catholic Conferences, after the June convening, declared, “no level of
unemployment is acceptable to the Church, which believes that everyone has a right to a job.”
87

Also deriving from the conference, in the effort to further to refute the notion that there was
an ideological consensus amongst economists on the relationship between inflation and
unemployment, the NCFE/FEAC circulated a statement laying out an alternative explanation for
the crisis of stagflation. Entitled, “Economists and Social Scientists Attack Contrived
Unemployment-Inflation Tradeoff,” the statement, in a direct rebuke of Greenspan and Ford,
declared that, “to describe as ‘economic recovery’ a situation in which 20 to 25 million persons will
be unemployed at some time over the course of the next year is deceitful.” Furthermore, the
statement attempted to convey an alternative set of explanations for the debilitating loss of
purchasing power that inflation enabled: “inflation is caused by administered prices, the shortage of
goods and services, the consequences of reactionary monetary policy, and the uncertainties of a
deliberately contrived roller coaster economy.”
88
The statement was signed by many of the key
figures in the liberal-labor and social democratic milieu, including former Freedom Budget
supporters like Bertram Gross (who had worked on the Full Employment Bill of 1945 and the
Employment Act of 1946); Elizabeth Wickenden (a longtime social welfare expert who, like the
Keyserlings, had her political ambitions circumscribed after her husband’s loyalty investigation); and
Columbia Professor Herbert Gans.
89
In addition, it was signed by activists and intellectuals like
Charles V. Hamilton, Eleanor Holmes Norton, Robert Lekachman, and Betty Friedan. The
statement attempted to overturn the “myth…that the price of fighting inflation is ever-increasing
unemployment.”
90

However, certainly not all economists were convinced, even the liberal Keynesian ones.
James Tobin, the noted economist from Yale, while stating that he agreed “with its spirit,” could
not, however, agree with the economics of it.
91
Tobin understood the issues at work, having written

228
a decade prior of the importance of a tight labor market to alleviating racist discrimination in
hiring.
92
But Tobin had also been clear that, while inflationary fears were exaggerated and
incommensurate with the pain wrought by unemployment, “running the economy with a tight labor
market would mean a somewhat faster upward creep in the price level.”
93
For this reason, Tobin
thought that NCFE/FEAC skirted the facts a bit when it came to the impact of full employment on
inflation. As he wrote, in his refusal to sign onto the letter from economists and social scientists,
“those of us who favor full employment must be prepared either to accept the inflationary risks
involved or to prescribe other means of avoiding them.”
94
This discrepancy points to the ambiguous
space in the economics profession between scholarly inquiry and political action. Whereas
Keyserling was a thoroughly political actor (though he also believed his assessment) Tobin, while an
influential economist who had served on President Kennedy’s Council of Economic Advisors under
Walter Heller, was more in the mold of an academic economist. But especially in 1975, it was the
politics, not the economics (such that they can be disaggregated) that stifled unemployment policy.
At the most fundamental level, the social movement opposition was not strong enough to
compel Ford to accede to the congressional desire to lower the unemployment rate. As Alan
Greenspan recalled, “the response to these higher levels of unemployment was remarkably mild.”
Greenspan noted that a columnist at the time mentioned the “failure of social radicalism to emerge
as a consequence” of the high unemployment. Greenspan commented that this circumstance is what
allowed them to take such bold policy action. “Essentially,” he remembered, “that [staid] political
milieu enabled us to stay fairly well on stream.”
95
In this sense, the efforts of NCFE/FEAC to
generate social movement backing for the full employment were spot-on analytically, but also, they
proved incapable of putting the pressure on Ford and Greenspan that was necessary to change their
policies. In hindsight, with Greenspan’s reflections in mind, it is worth pondering the question
recently asked by historian Michael Katz: “why don't American cities burn very often?”
96
Based on

229
the prior decades’ evidence, and the austere response of Ford and Greenspan to a 60,000 person
unemployment protest, one wonders what types of action would have been required to halt Ford’s
veto actions. Jack Spiegel, director of the Chicago Shoemakers Union wondered the same thing at an
October unemployment hearing telling members of the Joint Economic Committee of the
Congress, “if you don’t send us help and jobs you had better send troops.”
97
But no significant
unemployment riots occurred. And this period presented a difficult time for the grassroots
organizing that would have been needed to alter the Ford’s course. While NCFE/FEAC was in its
infancy in 1975, the National Welfare Rights Organization was in the process of folding; a casualty
of the deep recession, they were hampered by fundraising troubles.
98
Having vetoed 36 bills in his
first year in office, by the end of the summer in 1975, it had become clear that getting President
Ford to sign unemployment legislation during the 94
th
Congress would be a tremendous effort;
perhaps the best strategy NCFE/FEAC would be to consolidate for their power in preparations for
the 1976 elections.
99

Looking forward to these elections and seeking to shape the agenda of the primary race, the
NCFE/FEAC began to push the potential candidates for their opinion on full employment policy.
In September 1975, Scott King and Finley sent letters to all the leading presidential contenders
attempting to have meetings with them in order to shape their campaign issues. As they explained,
“we will make every effort to raise the problems of unemployment to the top of the national agenda
during the Presidential campaign.”
100
Presidential candidate and former Georgia Governor Jimmy
Carter was ostensibly supportive of the NCFE/FEAC, nominally serving on the Board of Directors;
but as the primary season got underway starting in January 1976, Carter, who organized labor had
been skeptical of, began to back away from a strong commitment to full employment politics.
101

With the conditions for achieving legislation under Ford set against them, and general social
movement energy and infrastructure declining, in subsequent months after the June conference, the

230
NCFE/FEAC continued the work to strengthen their coalition and build consensus. In order to
create political unity and carefully consider what types of legislative proposals they wanted to
support, Keyserling prepared a document, “Twelve Essentials for Full Employment Legislation,” for
their October 23rd meeting that detailed a set of principles by which the coalition should evaluate
policy proposals. Partly as a consequence of the need to debate full employment via quantitative
metrics, Keyserling suggested that “3 percent or less full-time unemployment within no more than
two years must be the legislative mandate.” Such a rate had never been met in the postwar period,
not even during the Korean War. To do this, Keyserling argued, “the Federal Government must
finance or provide directly the useful jobs requited to close any gap between actual employment and
full employment.” Drawing on his thinking from his 1960s pamphlet, “The Role of Wages in the
Great Society,” Keyserling also emphasized that the full employment program should be required to:
“(a) foster nationwide ‘equalization’ of priority services to the people, and (b) to supplement
the incomes of the unemployed, the needy old and disabled, and the low-income employed,
toward eliminating poverty within a few years and reducing deprivation among those living
above poverty but below an American decency standard.”
In addition, Keyserling reflected on two of his major political defeats over the past three decades
and sought to correct their errors. He stressed that the Employment Act of 1946 should finally be
enlivened and actualized. And to that end, he continued his argument against the Federal Reserve
independence, maintaining, that, “as monetary policy can nullify or militate against all other full
employment policies, the legislation must mandate the Federal Reserve Board to support at all times
the full employment and national priorities policy.” In this regard, he made certain to point out that
“the legislation must mandate that the alleged ‘trade-off’ between employment and inflation, and
other considerations of national or international policy, must not be permitted to interfere in any
way with full employment.”
102
Such a clarifying statement was more necessary than ever, as
competing bills began being created. A week prior to Keyserling’s twelve point statement, he had

231
prepared a systematic critique of one such bill, which was “subject to the same deficiencies which
have plagued the operations of the Employment Act of 1946.”
103

Figure 18: Finley and Scott King lead the NCFE/FEAC Board Meeting on October 23, 1975
through a discussion of Keyserling’s “Twelve Essentials” document.
104

The influence of the NCFE/FEAC’s consensus and attention to these issues began to be
felt over the coming months. In early October, as Ford pushed forward another tax cut proposal—
“reactionary Keynesian” solutions to the economic crisis—the AFL-CIO passed a resolution at their
conference which demanded “the immediate adoption of a national full employment policy.”
105
The
resolution noted that, “at long last we must recognize that in our modern society a worker is entitled
to a job as a matter of right and the total society including government, must assume this
responsibility and must guarantee its fulfillment.”
106
At the December 15th board meeting, the
NCFE/FEAC discussed a set of principles for full employment legislation modeled after the ones
that Keyserling had developed. Keyserling’s initial draft had been reworked by a committee that
included himself, UAW economist Nat Weinberg, and was chaired by the ADA’s Leon Shull.
Together they highlighted how full employment legislation must specify that the public employment
they were discussing would concentrate on “important national priorities such as education, health,
housing, resource development, energy, environment, food supply, transportation, social insurances,

232
and urban and metropolitan renewal so that job opportunities in these areas shall meet national
priority needs.” They wanted to ensure that the public employment would not be the type of
corporate Keynesianism that transferred governmental resources to private companies and served
little public needs. Likewise, in addition to including proposals that limited and shifted the power of
the Fed over monetary policy, the set of principles outlined a key goal of reducing income inequality.
As the principles stressed “the full employment plan shall be designed to promote an increased
equity in the distribution of the national income on both economic and social grounds.” Likewise,
their principles insisted that guaranteed income policy was fundamental for those unable to work, or
those who lacked adequate training for the jobs available. In this way, NCFE/FEAC attempted to
place the onus on government, not individuals, to plan for socially useful labor. And furthermore,
they attempted to refute the notion that the unemployed people were somehow deficient.
107

Over the following months, as the presidential primaries moved forward, NCFE/FEAC
continued their educational campaigns to ensure that full employment was central to the political
conversation. Under the leadership of Coretta Scott King, the King Center sponsored a full
employment conference honoring what would have been Dr. King’s 47
th
birthday. In addition to
panels featuring leading civil rights and trade union leaders like Cleveland Robinson and William
Lucy, as well as many of the mainstays of the NCFE/FEAC, who explained, as Keyserling put it, the
need for “responsible impatience” when it came to full employment, the 750-person conference also
featured a concert by the singer Freda Payne.
108
But perhaps, most noteworthy, was a 25,000 person
march to downtown Atlanta calling for full employment. With the prime rate standing stubborn at
7% (its lowest point in almost three years), they brought the protest from the famed Ebenezer
Baptist Church to its end point at the Atlanta Federal Reserve bank. Scott King commented that
“outside of the Congress, the Federal Reserve has perhaps more power to correct our economic ills
than any other agency or institution.”
109
Indeed, concerts and protests such as these were part of a

233
panoply of tactics to do popular education around the economic issues of the period, and build up
grassroots power for the full employment agenda. As Andrew Levison reflected on the role of the
Phillips Curve to legitimize arguments against full employment: “[it] was held up like a
talisman…they said, ‘full employment is impossible—look at this chart’…it was the main argument
against full employment, so you had to take it on.”
110
The ‘unemployment versus inflation tradeoff’
mode of thinking, which was embodied in the Phillips Curve, had been a guiding compass for Fed
action for the prior decades; but during this period, it was becoming a popular assumption. And to
achieve full employment, pushing back against this belief was vital.
Figure 19: The King Center sponsored a conference to continue to popularize the idea of full
employment and encourage the presidential candidates to make it a central issue in their campaign.
111

NCFE/FEAC also used the anniversary of the Employment Act of 1946 to call attention to
how the law continued to be undermined. They drew on the anniversary to argue for the
reinvigoration of its promise, and garner attention for full employment. Under the direction of

234
Hubert Humphrey, the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress (JEC) (which was created by
the 1946 law) sponsored a conference in March on the continued need for full employment. They
dubbed the Employment Act, “the Magna Carta of the American Economy.” But as with the Magna
Carta which, in its winding path to acceptance, saw its ambitions (such as the granting people rights
to the rivers for fishing) undermined by subsequent power struggles, the contest of vying political
forces over to what ends such legislation could be put remained the key issue.
112
In their hearings, it
was clear whose side the JEC was on, as they highlighted the issues of both cyclical and structural
unemployment. In their pamphlet, produced in honor of the conference, they drew attention to
what many felt was a return to the Great Depression. The JEC’s pamphlet featured depression-era
art from Ben Shahn and commented, “but for some of us, [the Great Depression] is already
here…can a free society tolerate this chronic despair?” They highlighted the voices of the
unemployed people with whom they had spoken during the regional hearing held in cities
throughout the past year. As Annie Pearl Smith, an unemployed mother of seven, who had been laid
off after working five years at a Georgia General Motors plant testified, “I want to work…I have
looked for jobs, filled out applications, taken physicals.” But after losing her house and car, and
having her son laid off, Smith remained unable to find work. On the one hand the conference was
tremendously successful: more than 1,000 people attended to hear ambitious plans from the 34
witnesses, including Keyserling, Finley, and Michael Hartington. But for the 7.6% of people looking
for work—like Smith, or Ruth Schaffner, an unemployed Chicago worker whose only
unemployment compensation payment came after waiting over three months—conferences and
innovative plans could not put gas in their car or food on their table.
113

In the build up to the 1976 election, NCFE/FEAC had been successful in getting full
employment to be taken seriously as a campaign issue. Finley, who had met with the Democratic
platform committee, had seen NCFE/FEAC’s perspective affirmed.
114
“Unemployment,” the

235
platform noted, “represents mental anxiety, fear of harassment over unpaid bills, idle hours, loss of
self-esteem, strained family relationships, deprivation of children and youth, alcoholism, drug abuse
and crime.” In response, it called for governmental planning to respond these dire circumstances.
“Jobs are the solution to poverty, hunger and other basic needs of workers and their families. Jobs
enable a person to translate legal rights of equality into reality.” Although the platform emphasized
private sector job creation, it also noted that public jobs for full employment were necessary. “There
are houses to build, urban centers to rebuild, roads and railroads to construct and repair, rivers to
clean, and new sources of energy to develop.” While from a contemporary vantage point, such
language can be read as both stirring and quixotic, their ambitions for proposals such as these were
relatively standard fare of the period. For example, as a key power broker within the Democratic
establishment, Keyserling had been a pivotal figure in shaping many Party platforms such as these.
However, when it came time to pass legislation, the necessary forces would be more difficult to
cohere.
As the summer continued, although they knew it had a slim chance of passing the White
House, Hawkins, in collaboration with NCFE/FEAC, hoped to get their Humphrey-Hawkins bill
on the floor of the House of Representatives sometime after the August Republican convention.
115

It is unclear, but likely, that they intended this as an election-time strategy to focus attention on
Republican intransigence, and as a type of highly public theater that could bring into relief the
differences between the two candidates on unemployment policy.
116
While Carter as President would
vacillate and back off his support for Humphrey-Hawkins, in mid-July, having just achieved the
party’s nomination for president, he sent a lead staffer to the NCFE/FEAC board meeting to
discuss full employment. While there, Carter’s representative “had made a strong statement pledging
support for the Humphrey-Hawkins Bill.”
117
A few weeks before the November election,
NCFE/FEAC helped sponsor a luncheon in honor of Hawkins, and the effort for full employment

236
policy. As Richard Brown, a key member of the NCFE/FEAC team reflected on the importance of
the event, “it helped create the feeling that this [legislative] session was a beginning, not an end, and
that we had accomplished something in making full employment a national issue.”
118
As a result of
this frame, accompanied by the hope the Carter would win the election and throw his support in
their direction, as he had pledged, NCFE/FEAC planned to continue their efforts after the election.
While NCFE/FEAC was a coalition developed from the top, they also had worked to
develop a grassroots presence. Jerry Tucker, who would go on to be a prominent leader of the
UAW’s New Directions Movement in the 1980s, worked on a subcommittee helping to plan the
grassroots activities for the coalition.
119
Between March and June in 1976, NCFE/FEAC helped
organize ten conferences on full employment in Atlanta, New York, Detroit, Sacramento, and
Pittsburgh, amongst other sites. And over the same time period they had held at least twenty
seminars on full employment throughout the country with groupings like the U.S. Conference of
Mayors, the Jewish Labor Committee, and the Catholic Priests of Pittsburgh.
120
By the end of 1976,
they had developed local groups to build grassroots support in Boston, Philadelphia, Seattle, San
Francisco, Detroit, Kansas City and Atlanta.
121

In April of 1976, Scott King worked to cohere the forces within the growing women’s
movement and chaired a conference on women and full employment with the goal to “create a
group of informed leaders who will bring the issue to their organizations or communities and
mobilize appropriate actions and generate media publicity.” Included in the conference were Mary
Dublin Keyserling, who was now working for the Mayor’s Conference on the Status of Women,
Ethel Payne, the influential journalist and editor of the Chicago Defender, as well as leaders of the
League of Women Voters, the Coalition of Labor Union Women, and the National Council of
Churches. Others who were unable to attend the meeting but remained part of the steering
committee on the issue included: Karen DeCrow of the National Organization for Women,

237
LaDonna Harris of Americans for Indian Opportunity, Addie Wyatt of the Amalgamated Meat
Cutters Union, and Gloria Steinem, Marion Wright Edelman, and Eleanor Holmes Norton.
122
A year
later, Harris, Steinem, and Wyatt, along with Scott King, would all be appointed by President Carter
to the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year. Not coincidently,
when the Commission held their famed National Women’s Conference in Houston, they approved a
resolution calling for the urgent need for full employment policy.
123
As the Commission noted in
their 1978 report, “despite the huge numbers of women who must support themselves and their
families, women are still too often seen as working for ‘pin money’ and they are expected to ‘go back
home’ when jobs are scarce.”
124
These efforts to continue to garner enthusiasm for full employment
demands were of fundamental importance as Carter vacillated on his support soon after becoming
president.
After Carter’s election, the grassroots component of NCFE/FEAC became even more
urgent as the NCFE/FEAC struggled to maintain the bill’s political integrity as it moved through
the congressional committee process and had some of its most innovative proposals removed.
125

NCFE/FEAC helped coordinate many tremendously successful actions while the bill traveled
through congress. They sponsored the vibrant and successful Full Employment Action Week, which
featured actions in 300 cities and mobilized over one million people from September 4-10
th
, 1977.
The Massachusetts Coalition for Full Employment organized a solar-heating and weatherizing
“work-in” with building trades officials to show what types work needed doing, and they began
plans to coordinate with the Clamshell Alliance and Science for the People to show how full
employment could be utilized for new energy sources.
126
In Des Moines, a local coalition organized
an unemployment hotline and began an unemployed people’s union with the support of public
sector workers.
127
At the New York rally in Herald Square, Doris Turner, Executive Vice President
of 1199, told the 5,000 people gathered there that, “if we say that it is wrong to steal…we much also

238
say it is wrong to force people to resort to those methods in order to survive…we simply can’t deal
with crime until we deal with unemployment.”
128
In Kansas City, where 25,000 people rallied for full
employment, a member of the Laborers Union held a sign reading, “Jobs are Human Rights: We
Stand for Full Employment.” Erie, PA, had a full employment parade with 130 floats and saw
40,000 people come out to support.
129
Hawkins believed that the organizing for the week of protests
were the greatest since the March on Washington.
130

Efforts such as these, mainly driven by the unions, did turn out huge numbers of people but
the question remained: what would it mean if President Carter continued to withhold serious
support for the bill? At the NCFE/FEAC board meeting a few months after Full Employment
Action Week, Bert Deleeuw, a former welfare rights activist, raised his frustration with the latest
version of the bill because Carter was forcing too many concessions on price stability. However
strong Keyserling’s essential program for full employment legislation was, he also had spent enough
time in Washington to know that such frustrations were quite valid, but of scant political utility.
Having seen Ford’s veto power at work, Keyserling replied that “nothing can be done if the
President us not behind the bill.” By the end of the meeting, despite misgivings, the board agreed to
support the current version of the bill.
131

However, the grassroots activism in support of the bill was not the only force mobilizing.
Instead, this period saw the increased organization of business interests, who were especially
attendant to anti-inflation politics.
132
While historian Jefferson Cowie and others have maligned the
Humphrey-Hawkins coalition for their lack of an organizational base capable of bringing forth
dynamic and consistent protest movements in support of the bill, one must contextualize this
critique within an analysis of the balance of forces they opposed.
133
The Humphrey-Hawkins bill
faced staunch opposition from a mobilized, grassroots right wing, which one Chamber of
Commerce official suggested became more skillfully organized than the unions during this period.
134

239
Letters to leading full employment proponent Senator Scoop Jackson show a huge amount of
opposition to the bill, in contrast to the few he received as member of the House in the 1940s for
the full employment legislation of that period. These point to the building of the economic right
wing that historian Kim Phillips-Fein and others have documented.
135
One letter, sent from Orofino,
Idaho, ends with the postscript: “I have been wondering if you have ever read any of the writings
and works of Ludwig von Mises? Like maybe The Anti-Capitalist Mentality.”
136
Another, hand-
written and noticeably terse letter urged a vote against the bill arguing that it was “nothing but
socialistic nonsense.”
137
This was a common refrain throughout the letters Jackson received.
Another, hand written letter addressed the Senator as “Dear Henry” and said, “I am opposed to any
bill that promotes socialism and glorifies the free loaders. [The bill] would…promote socialism and
help destroy our way of life.”
138
The letters reflect an overwhelming presence of grassroots
opposition to the bill; they are often handwritten and informal, not on corporate or professional
stationary. If they are on stationary at all, they are personal in nature, in one case bearing the phrase,
“Get US Out! Of the United Nations.”
139
The organized opposition was generated by groups like
the Independent Business Association and the National Federation of Independent Businesses.
Those letters in opposition overwhelm the ones in support of the full employment legislation.
Although NCFE/FEAC was able to organize all the protests enumerated above, and many more, as
Andrew Levison recalled, “it never really became a bottom-up, grassroots movement…It was
basically a lobbying effort by default.”
140
Without an enormous grassroots base pushing the bill, the
prospect for passing the type of bill that NCFE/FEAC had hoped for was severely hampered.
By the end of 1977, it was unclear what form the bill, if it were to be passed, would take.
Those opposing Humphrey-Hawkins empowered the Congress and the President Carter to continue
to weaken the bill. And as they weakened it, people saw less and less need to support a
compromised bill. Business Week, however, understood the potentials that were opened up even

240
without the dynamic promise of the earlier versions of the bill. “It would be a mistake to regard
Humphrey-Hawkins as a legislative paper tiger,” the magazine commented. “Humphrey-Hawkins
can and will be used to maintain pressure on Carter and other presidents to fight unemployment.”
In an undelivered speech, written a few days before his death, Humphrey told his imagined
audience, “don’t listen to those who say this bill is watered down and not worth fighting for…some
of these commentators are trying to kill the bill by convincing its supporters that it is
meaningless.”
141
But the bill was able to move forward and came to a vote in the House in mid-
March. Supported by the efforts of NCFE/FEAC to coordinate 100 local coalitions that distributed
100,000 pieces of literature about the bill during the two months prior to its passage, Humphrey-
Hawkins passed the House by a 257-152 margin.
142
In addition, the National Council of Churches
placed over 3,000 phone calls to key congressional districts in order to create the necessary pressure
that helped fend off amendments to the bill that would have stifled it even further.
143

Power struggles surrounding the bill mounted in the Senate over the coming months, and
the NCFE/FEAC and the bill’s legislative supporters continued their actions to win its passage. The
bill had a particularly difficult time in the Senate Banking committee as they tried to add provisions
to it calling for a goal of zero inflation; as the ADA wrote to their members, the Banking Committee
“did a real hatchet job on the bill.” During the summer, commenting on the past few months of
legislative struggle, they noted, “reactionary business forces and the right-wing have been
increasingly successful in recent months in defeating progressive legislation (Consumer Protection,
Labor Law Reform, etc.).” And they further emphasized the need to “keep fighting, since
“Humphrey-Hawkins is crucial, as full employment policy is central to any progressive agenda.”
144

The Congressional Black Caucus and the liberal-labor-civil rights coalition did keep fighting.
During a meeting over the bill with Carter and Vice-President Walter Mondale, leading CBC
member John Conyers walked out in frustration with Carter’s refusal to bring together a summit

241
with Republican and Democrat leaders about how to move Humphrey-Hawkins forward. Likewise,
Parren Mitchell got into a shouting match with Mondale about the administration’s inadequate
support for the bill. As the legislative session was drawing to a close, Mitchell and others worried
whether this might be the last chance in a good while for such a legislative opening. As he
commented, “if we don’t get full employment legislation passed this year, we may never do it.” “The
Proposition 13 mentality, the drift toward the conservative right and a host of other factors militate
against passage of the bill in the next session,” he noted, suggesting that the recently passed
California law that capped property tax was part of a broader anti-tax attitude that cut against those
fighting to expand social Keynesianism across the color line.
145

Although tremendously weakened from its earlier versions, the Senate passed the bill one
day before the end of the 95
th
Congress. In the midst of the high pressure legislative bargaining, the
NCFE/FEAC helped fight off the worst parts of the Senate Banking Committee’s bill that included
an inflation goal of 0% and a governmental spending limit at 20% of GDP. However, in order to
defeat the Banking Committee bill, they were forced to accede to ambiguous qualitative
compromises to maintain low governmental spending so long as it was “consistent with national
needs and priorities.” And, they compromised on the inflation goals with 3% inflation “at the
earliest possible time.”
146
But, as the NCFE/FEAC wrote to their members, “the Act makes clear
that these anti-inflation efforts are subordinate to the achievement of the employment goals.” The
Act, though far from perfect, included goals for 3% unemployment within five years, and mandated
the Fed to present the Joint Economic Committee of the Congress with a bi-annual report detailing
how they would work to fulfill the goals of Humphrey-Hawkins.
147
Although this was a far cry from
rolling back the Fed’s independence, it was significant. As Scott King explained, now with the Act,
“not any more” would the Fed be allowed to make choices “which forced up the jobless rate.” In
contradistinction to those who suggested that the Act was merely symbolic, she argued that “it is so

242
significant that it rivals the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act.” While this may
have been a bit of conscious hyperbole on the part an activist who had just suffered a
disappointment, it also presented a framework to continue to struggle with a new political tool at her
disposal. As she put it, “Humphrey-Hawkins is the vital first step. All of the gains of the Movement
my husband led in the Fifties and Sixties were not all accomplished at once.” So, she announced,
“we will be back in Washington year after year after year until there is full employment.”
148
And
indeed this was the case; Scott King continued to work with the NCFE/FEAC far into the 1980s,
even as the promise of full employment receded further and further.
Conclusion
Humphrey-Hawkins, however, did not renew the social warrant that said everyone was
entitled to a job or income. Instead, the remaining years of the Carter presidency saw a roll back of
the social democratic promise that Scott King and others had fought so hard to further. As Charles
Schultze, the head of Carter’s Council of Economic Advisors explained, Carter “was a fiscal
conservative…[and] he turned with more conviction to austerity during his last two or two and one-
half years.”
149
In the year after Humphrey-Hawkins, the crisis of inflation broke out again, as the
Iranian revolution forced oil prices to skyrocket. With energy and fuel costs spiking, Carter fretted
about the crisis of business confidence, and lamented the situation whereby “the phrase ‘sound as a
dollar’” ceased to be “an expression of absolute dependability.”
150
If Business Week had worried about
the power of Humphrey-Hawkins to sap the Fed’s strength, Carter’s appointment to Fed Chair of
Paul Volcker soon quelled any anxieties. In the years since his Princeton senior thesis noted that
monetary policy needed to be under the control one agency (either formally under the Treasury, or
the Fed’s complete independence), Volcker had gone on to work with both the Fed and then in
Nixon’s Treasury Department. In October 1979, a year after Humphrey-Hawkins, Volcker told the
Joint Economic Committee (which had done so much to promote Humphrey-Hawkins and enliven

243
the promise of the 1946 Employment Act) that, “the standard of living of the average American has
to decline.” And he set about to the task. With inflation running at 13%, Treasury Secretary G.
William Miller affirmed Volcker’s policy prescription; he stated that, “containment of inflation is
fundamental to a restoration of sound economic growth,” and is the administration’s “top
priority.”
151
Instead of looking to problems of wage stagnation, many spoke of “inflationary
psychology,” and Miller commented that the problem was that U.S. consumers were “saving too
little and borrowing too much.”
152
Volcker told an audience of the American Bankers Association
that, “restrictive monetary policies are never calculated to win popularity contests,” and determined
to constrain the money supply and raise the discount rate to a shocking and unprecedented 12%.
Within two weeks the prime rate kept rising from 14.5 to 15%, breaking its own records and
eventually hitting almost 20%. The Wall Street Journal called the Fed’s action the “most important
one the Federal Reserve has made since the early 1950s” when it won its independence.
153
With
unemployment running steady at 6%, a relatively low rate for the decade, but one that would have
seemed intolerable two decades prior, the Washington Post commented that to Volcker and Miller the
economic outlook was “cheery.”
154
Of course, this was not the case for those in places like Erie, PA,
dubbed by some as “dreary Erie.” One union organizer tried to put a gloss on the coming recession
commenting, “hard times aren't that hard for us because we've never had boom times.” But for the
40,000 people who had optimistically turned out to Erie’s full employment protests two years prior,
the 100 public-works jobs the city received could hardly compensate for the 3,000 jobs that moved
into machines and towards the Sun Belt over the prior few years.
155
As the union organizer had
noted, for some the economic devastation was not a new phenomenon; but what was new, and what
the attitude and behavior of Volcker and Miller consolidated was an acceptance of a political
doctrine that had lived in the shadows of Federal Reserve and Jim Crow power for the prior
decades. A structurally unemployed, surplus labor force was now embraced publicly as a cost of

244
inflation containment. While the fight for a guaranteed job or income was not altogether dead—
activists of this ilk rarely quit—NCFE/FEAC lost during a historic window of opportunity.

245
Conclusion: The End of Full Employment and the Consolidation of the Carceral State in the
1980s
“The march of the automation revolution, with its displacement and liquidation of unskilled
workers, creates an incredible cost in poignant human suffering, in not only joblessness but hopeless
hopelessness.” – A. Philip Randolph
1

“The class struggle, which is always present to a historian influenced by Marx, is a fight for the crude
and material things without which no refined and spiritual things could exist. Nevertheless, it is not
in the form of the spoils which fall to the victor that the latter make their presence felt in the class
struggle. They manifest themselves in this struggle as courage, humor, cunning, and fortitude. They
have retroactive force and will constantly call in question every victory, past and present, of the
rulers. As flowers turn toward the sun, by dint of a secret heliotropism the past strives to turn
toward that sun which is rising in the sky of history. A historical materialist must be aware of this
most inconspicuous of all transformations.” – Walter Benjamin
2

The failure of to achieve legislation for full employment in the 1970s rested atop decades of
power struggles that were both discrete and interdependent. Each failure to create governmental
guarantees to a job weakened working people and strengthened capital. The series of contests
enumerated throughout this dissertation reveal that the ascendance of neoliberalism relied on more
than ideological victories; the persistent force of Jim Crow violence and governmental and extra-
governmental repression constrained the movements to lower the unemployment rate throughout
the Keynesian era. Likewise, during the moments when it seemed like private industry was inclined
to lower the unemployment rate (often during wars), the Federal Reserve raised interest rates to
make the cost of borrowing higher and slow the economy, thus ensuring that unemployment rarely
dipped below 4%.
Analyzing this history shows that unemployment is not inevitable. Instead, unemployment
and the creation of the relative surplus population are established by governmental action and
inaction; they are political productions. Likewise, this history reveals that autonomous acts of racism
on the part of employers does not wholly explain the unemployment of Black people. Rather, to
explain the perpetuation of unemployment, one must look to macroeconomics and the concrete
contests in which labor and capital tested their relative strength in the sphere of government

246
through fights around public policy; would the elected branches of government seek control, or
greater influence over the Federal Reserve system, or demand representation from non-banking
interests (such as workers and consumers) in the Fed? Would the federal government ensure that
those whom private industry would not employ could be guaranteed a job or income at a living
wage, and innovate policy tools to address inflation that did not require unemployed people to bear
the brunt of the social costs for price stability? To each of these questions, which were debated
throughout the postwar period, the answer was “no.” But that answer was far from determined. And
even after the abandonment of Humphrey-Hawkins’ most ambitious proposals, people continued to
fight for guaranteed jobs, even amidst difficult circumstances and much disappointment.

Despondent and frustrated in lead up to the 1984 elections, Leon Keyserling wrote a set of
letters to Bayard Rustin wondering what had happened to their political milieu. He looked back on
the Freedom Budget as “the fullest and most concrete specification of what we needed to do.”
Keyserling was terribly concerned with both the lack of vibrant organizing and the disintegration of
policy plans amongst the labor-liberal-civil rights forces during the period. He criticized the A. Philip
Randolph Institute, and the other groups within his and Rustin’s orbit stating, “they parade, and talk,
and shake their fists, but appear to have forgotten that demonstrations must back something very
specific to produce results.” In reflecting back on the desertion of the Freedom Budget legislation,
Keyserling commented that the effort was abandoned due to an assessment that “the only thing that
was profitable or feasible on the Hill was to fight rear guard action of an ad hoc nature to prevent
from getting a little less on a wide range of programs which would not have meant very much even
if one got a little more.” “I suppose,” he continued, “this was called being ‘pragmatic.’”
3
These
letters reveal the candid reflections from someone who had spent the greater part of five decades

247
pursuing legislation to ameliorate starvation wages, and worse, for those whom the market
discarded. And from that perspective, Keyserling’s goals of negating the sting of unemployment
seemed almost hopelessly far away.
For Keyserling, the failure to continue to push the goals of the Humphrey-Hawkins Act
after it was enacted was a key error. As he explained, “the power groups…did not want to say
anything to embarrass a Democratic President before he was going to run for re-election.”
Keyserling wondered about the neglect of Humphrey-Hawkins and what would have happened had
the civil rights movement jettisoned their ultimate goals after winning the Civil Rights and Voting
Rights Acts; and he questioned: what if organized labor went quietly into the night after the Wagner
Act was passed? In this sense, Keyserling argued, that the “abandonment” of Humphrey-Hawkins
“by its appropriate supporters, precisely like the abandonment of the Freedom Budget, has meant
that there is no prospect for attaining any of these [social democratic] objectives in the deteriorating
situation across the board during recent years and now.”
4
Keyserling was correct. His critique,
however, could not fully be applied to Rustin, who devoted the bulk of his energies to the Social
Democrats U.S.A., (a Shachtmanite-influenced group that continued to argue for Democratic Party
realignment, emphasizing full employment and anti-Communism). Likewise, Scott King maintained
her organizing with the NCFE/FEAC until at least 1988, as they continued to call attention to the
dire circumstances for unemployed people in the 1980s. In the years since Humphrey-Hawkins, they
worked with groups like Environmentalists for Full Employment and organized teach-ins about the
deleterious consequences of President Reagan’s economic policies.

248

Figure 20: Poster publicizing a teach-in organized by Coretta Scott King and the NCFE/FEAC.
5

Nor were Rustin and Scott King’s groupings alone in their call for full employment. The
International Association of Machinists attempted to build up support for a legislative package
under the moniker of a “New Technology Bill of Rights.” The first of these rights declared: “new
technology shall be used in a way that creates jobs and promotes community-wide and national full
employment.” And further, it argued that “displaced workers shall be entitled to training, retraining,
and subsequent job placement or reemployment.”
6
However, such appeals were unable to marshal
the forces needed. In the wake of the 1979 recession, by most metrics available, unions were
weakened, on the defensive, and concessionary bargaining became the dominant mode.
7
The scholar
and activist Stuart Hall, looking out at the challenges for left movements in Britain under Margaret
Thatcher, posed the question starkly: “if we cannot mobilize a full-scale popular agitation around the

249
limited demands of maintaining and expanding ‘welfare state reformism’, on what grounds could we
conceivably conceptualize the political conjuncture as one likely to lead to an ‘irreversible shift of
power’ towards immediate working-class power?”
8
Hall’s question presented perhaps even a greater
challenge for the U.S. context. As President Reagan argued for a tax cut for the wealthy to stimulate
investment (since Volker’s high interest policy had refrigerated the economy), unemployment
maintained above 7% for the bulk of the his presidency; all this occurred while he cut back social
programs and attacked trade unions—actions that would have been near impossible for prior
presidents.
9

Amidst this right-wing revanche, few revealed the liberal abandonment of full employment
like Tip O’Neill, the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representatives. A left-liberal, O’Neill had
been an energetic force in the NCFE/FEAC orbit pushing Humphrey-Hawkins. However, in 1986
he took an active role in shaping two pieces of bipartisan legislation of great consequence to the
constituencies that the NCFE/FEAC sought to support; O’Neill proved a pivotal figure in shaping
the Anti Drug Abuse Act of 1986 and the Tax Reform Act of 1986. If unemployment and inflation
were the watchwords of the 1970s congress, drugs and fiscal deficits were the key issues of the
1980s. And under the direction of the Reagan administration, as some of his final actions after three
decades in the congress, O’Neill crafted bipartisan legislation ostensibly suited to these issues.
The Republican-Democratic alliance on both pieces of legislation was not simply political
posturing. As O’Neill declared at a press conference soon after he determined that the Democrats
would enlist their forces in the drug war, “the great mayor of the city of New York, Fiorello La
Guardia once said there is no republican way to collect garbage. That is exactly my attitude on the
matter of drugs. There is no Democratic or Republican policy toward drug abuse.”
10
Infamously, the
Anti-Drug Abuse Act of 1986 established the 100: 1 crack versus cocaine disparity in sentencing, as

250
well as a number of other harsh mandatory minimum sentences.
11
Passed by the House with scant
debate, no committee reports,
but 301 co-sponsors, it helped consolidate the drug war as a
bipartisan effort.
12
Following the trends established by Wilbur Mills and subsequent congresses after
the mid-1960s, granting budgetary appropriations for policing and imprisonment proved relatively
easy, while funding for the public jobs that were called for by NCFE/FEAC was scarce. So, policing
and imprisonment became the public policy solution for dealing with the relative surplus population,
of whom the unemployment rate and those imprisoned represented the “empirical minimum.”
13

The Tax Reform Act of 1986 further imperiled the future of full employment struggles. Like
the Kennedy and Johnson tax cuts, this act reduced the tax burden on poor people and the wealthy
alike. In a moment of widespread concern with the deficit (partially due to reduced tax receipts
resulting from so many people being out of work) the Act (also like the 1960s tax cuts) made
prospects for enacting legislation that guaranteed jobs with progressive taxation much more difficult;
most notably, the Act reduced the top marginal tax rate from 50% to 28%, and the corporate tax
rate from 46% to 34%. While the legislation has been lauded by political scientists as a hallmark of
the “spirit of compromise” due to its goals of curbing tax loopholes, one such loophole is
particularly noteworthy, not for its impact at the time, but in the future.
14
As average earnings for
production workers shrank, consumers took on more and more debt.
15
Prior to the 1986 law
consumer borrowers (primarily the more-well off) were supported in this by being able to deduct
their interest from the tax bill. However, this practice was eradicated in the 1986 law and only the
sacrosanct home mortgage interest deduction remained.
16
As working-class consumers became
increasingly reliant on debt to survive, over the subsequent decades, the tax assistance they could
have relied on in prior years was no longer available. Although the tax reforms were purported to
have revenue-neutral results, by the time many of the proposals had gone into effect three and four
years after, tax receipts were down more than $9 billion.
17
And with revenue down, arguing for

251
governmental guarantees for jobs proved an even more arduous task. While the 1984 Democratic
Party platform was the first in four decades not to declare its allegiance to full employment, the
“spirit of compromise” that elicited the Tax Reform Act of 1986 ensured that this decision was not
a passing omission, but instead it represented the consolidation of the political abandonment of
those who searched for work.
In the 1990s, groups on the left continued to argue for full employment, but with little
support from the mainstream of Democratic politics, as Bill Clinton and the centrist Democratic
Leadership Council took control of the party. In many ways, O’Neill, in his last days, had created a
template from which the New Democrats would govern: harsh policies in the sphere of criminal
justice, and little to offer for marginalized working and workless people. While the goal of
governmental guarantees to a job or income remained alive, it had been pushed to the margins. The
Labor Party of the 1990s continued to promote full employment so as to “correct the condition of
this historical amnesia,” about the politics of unemployment; they sought to promote alternatives
and “redefine what work is,” as had been done five decades prior via the GI Bill.
18
Likewise, the
Black Radical Congress confronted the Clinton agenda most wholly, as they denounced the state of
affairs whereby the “U.S. prison-industrial complex has become a vast warehouse for millions of
unemployed and low-wage laborers.” And they also echoed decades of Black freedom movements
declaring, “we want full employment and a guaranteed income for all those unable to work.”
19

However, like the past efforts, these goals of full employment and guaranteed income continued to
go unfulfilled, and people continued to suffer.
Recently, as the Great Recession has forced many more people to feel the persistent threat
of unemployment, those on the left are talking again about the need for guaranteed jobs or income;
and, under the moniker of the “precariat,” more and more people are turning attention to the those

252
who are excluded from a traditional terrain of trade union politics.
20
As this dissertation shows, it
will take many strong, multi-faceted movements to bring such demands into fruition. The inability
of the civil rights and labor movements during the Keynesian era to win such goals gives one a sense
of what types of forces will be necessary to marshal. But, to paraphrase the historian E.P.
Thompson, causes that were lost in 1877, or 1968, might yet be won in 2015 or after.
21
And to this
end, Black freedom movements for jobs, income, and abolition democracy are essential historical
guides to the continued struggle against hopelessness and all those who insist that guaranteeing jobs
or income is impossible. The history of proposals like the Freedom Budget shows that visionary
plans do not need to be invented anew, but rather, they must be innovated for the present.

253
References

Introduction
1
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. Repr. London: Penguin Books, 1990,
270-273.
2
Rusche, Georg. “Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on Sociology and Criminal Justice.”
In Punishment and Penal Discipline: Essays on the Prison and the Prisoners’ Movement, edited by Tony Platt
and Paul Takagi. Berkeley, CA: Crime and Social Justice Associates, 1980, P. 13.
3
Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, 273.
4
Katznelson, Ira. When Affirmative Action Was White: An Untold History of Racial Inequality in Twentieth-
Century America. New York: W.W. Norton, 2005, 103.
5
Randolph, A. Philip. “Testimony...Before the Committee on Employment and Manpower,” July
25, 1963. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1963. A. Philip Randolph Papers, Library of Congress,
Manuscript Division.
6
Katznelson, When Affirmative Action Was White, 113.
7
Mike Davis notes this comparison between the GI Bill and the Homestead Act as both “epochal.”
See: Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy of the US Working Class. London:
Verso, 1987, 191. Cumings, Bruce. Dominion from Sea to Sea: Pacific Ascendancy and American Power. New
Haven: Yale University Press, 2009, 24-25.
8
Linda Gordon argues that “uncovering past visions requires examining not only what happened
but also what did not…losing proposals illuminate victorious ones.” See: Gordon, Linda. Pitied But
Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890-1935. New York: Free Press, 1994, 3.
9
Rusche, “Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on Sociology and Criminal Justice.” In
Punishment and Penal Discipline: Essays on the Prison and the Prisoners’ Movement, 12. Platt, Tony. “Street
Crime: A View From the Left.” Crime and Social Justice, no. 9 (Spring-Summer 1978): 30. Takagi, Paul.
“A Garrison State in ‘Democratic’ Society.” Crime and Social Justice, no. 1 (Spring-Summer 1974): 32.
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.
University of California Press, 2007, 70-78. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1,
782.
10
Rusche, “Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on Sociology and Criminal Justice.” In
Punishment and Penal Discipline: Essays on the Prison and the Prisoners’ Movement, 12.
11
Rusche, “Labor Market and Penal Sanction: Thoughts on Sociology and Criminal Justice.” In
Punishment and Penal Discipline: Essays on the Prison and the Prisoners’ Movement, 13.
12
Linebaugh, Peter. “Karl Marx, The Theft of Wood, and Working Class Composition: A
Contribution to the Current Debate.” Crime and Social Justice, no. 6 (Fall/ Winter 1976): 5.
13
Murch, Donna. “The Many Meanings of Watts: Black Power, Wattstax, and the Carceral State.”
OAH Magazine of History 26, no. 1 (January 2012): 38-39.
14
Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1, 790.
15
Jacobs, Meg. “Inflation: ‘The Permanent Dilemma’ of the American Middle Class.” In Social
Contracts Under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the Turn of the Century, edited by

254

Olivier Zunz, Leonard J. Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari. New York: Russell Sage Foundation,
2002, 133.
16
For example, the post-1951 Fed receives no mentions in the important texts, The Rise and Fall of the
New Deal Order, 1930-1980, or A Companion to Post-1945 America. See: Fraser, Steve, and Gary Gerstle,
eds. The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-1980. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press,
1989. Agnew, Jean-Christophe, and Roy Rosenzweig, eds. A Companion to Post-1945 America. Oxford,
UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2007. A key exception from the field of radical political economy, whose
analysis has been fundamental to this project, is the work of Edwin Dickins. Other important
exceptions both within and outside the field of history include: Krippner, Greta R. Capitalizing on
Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of Finance. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press,
2012. Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American
Empire. London; New York: Verso, 2012. Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded
Factories for Finance in the Seventies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010. Hyman, Louis. Debtor
Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011.
17
Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1., 875.
18
On this point, I am informed by Selma James’ apt rendering of what capital does: “It takes our
time, which happens to be our life.” See: James, Selma. “Marx and Feminism (1983).” In Sex, Race
and Class—The Perspective of Winning: A Selection of Writings 1952-2011. Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2012,
149.
19
Garraty, John. Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and Public Policy. New York: Harper & Row,
1978, 4. Keyssar, Alexander. Out of Work: The First Century of Unemployment in Massachusetts.
Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 4.
20
See: Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and Economic Origins of Our Time. 2nd Beacon
Paperback ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001. Denning, Michael. “Wageless Life.” New Left Review
66 (December 2010). Linebaugh, Peter. The London Hanged: Crime and Civil Society in the Eighteenth
Century. New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992. Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy,
Volume 1. Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive Accumulation. New
York: Autonomedia, 2004. Blackhawk, Ned. Violence Over the Land: Indians and Empires in the Early
American West. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006. Williams, Eric. Capitalism & Slavery.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1994.
21
Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy of the US Working Class. London:
Verso, 1987, P. 7.
22
Alice Kessler-Harris has suggested that for consumption to maintain at levels necessary to keep
the economy in even relative stability, many families needed to rely on two wage earners in a
household. See: Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-Earning Women in the United
States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, P. 318. See also: MacLean, Nancy. “Postwar
Women’s History: The ‘Second Wave’ or the End of the Family Wage?” In A Companion to Post-1945
America, edited by Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy Rosenzweig, 235–259. Oxford, UK: Blackwell
Publishing Ltd, 2007. See also: Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s discussions of “unwaged reproductive work”
and it’s relationship between imprisoned people and their allies on the ‘outside.’ Gilmore, Ruth
Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of
California Press, 2007, P. 215, 237-238.
23
Kerner, Otto. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. Government Printing
Office, 1968, 7-8. Center for Research on Criminal Justice. The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove: An

255

Analysis of the U.S. Police. Second Edition. Berkeley Center for Research on Criminal Justice, 1977,
50-59.
24
Wicker, Tom. “Jobs and Crime.” The New York Times, April 25, 1975.
25
See: Johnson, Harry G. “Problems of Efficiency in Monetary Management.” Journal of Political
Economy 76, no. 5 (October 1968), P. 986. Perelman, Michael. “Sado-Monetarism: The Role of the
Federal Reserve System in Keeping Wages Low.” Monthly Review 63, no. 11 (April 2012).
http://monthlyreview.org/2012/04/01/sado-monetarism.
26
Cowie, Jefferson, and Nick Salvatore. “The Long Exception: Rethinking the Place of the New
Deal in American History.” International Labor and Working-Class History 74, no. 1 (Fall 2008): 25.
27
Cleaver, Harry. Reading Capital Politically. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979, P. 175.
28
Cleaver, Harry. Reading Capital Politically. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979, P. 54.
29
When Eugene Debs and the American Railway Union argued for the need to organize industrially
in the 1890s, such projects did not see their full flowering until the birth of the CIO forty years later.
30
On rank and file rebellions in the 1970s, see: Brenner, Aaron, Robert Brenner, and Calvin
Winslow, eds. Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s. London ;
New York: Verso, 2010.
31
This is true for even the very best work today such Peter Frase’s articles in Jacobin and amongst
economists like Robert Pollin. See: Frase, Peter. “Work It.” Jacobin: A Magazine of Culture and Polemic,
February 13, 2014. https://www.jacobinmag.com/2014/02/work-it/. Pollin, Robert. Back to Full
Employment. A Boston Review Book. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 2012.
32
Smith, Robert Charles. We Have No Leaders: African Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era. SUNY
Series in Afro-American Studies. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1996, P. 188.
33
A further discussion of this term and its legacy is explored in Chapter 4. It was coined by W.E.B.
Du Bois to argue that new democratic institutions, “based on freedom, intelligence and power for
all,” were needed to respond to the harms of slavery. Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America,
1860-1880. New York: Free Press, 1998, 182.
34
Perry, Mary Ellen. “Q and A: Coretta Scott King On Justice--Economic.” The Washington Star,
April 15, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 8. ACTWU’s Vice-President’s Office Records #5619/029. Kheel
Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library.
35
Marable, Manning. How Capitalism Underdeveloped Black America: Problems in Race, Political Economy,
and Society. Updated ed. Cambridge, Mass.: South End Press, 2000, 30.
36
Luxemburg, Rosa. “Social Reform or Revolution.” In The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, edited by
Peter Hudis and Kevin Anderson. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, 129.
37
Moody, Kim. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. London; New York: Verso, 1988,
128-132.
Chapter 1
1
Hall, Stuart. “Gramsci’s Relevance to the Study of Race & Ethnicity.” In Stuart Hall: Critical
Dialogues in Cultural Studies. London; New York: Routledge, 1996, 423. See also, Denning, The Cultural
Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. London; New York: Verso, 1998, 464.

256

2
Montgomery, David. The Fall of the House of Labor: The Workplace, the State, and American Labor
Activism, 1865-1925. 1st pbk. ed. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1989, 8.
3
Cited in: Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1973, 21.
4
Hobsbawm, Eric. The Age of Revolution: Europe, 1789-1848. London: Penguin Books: Cardinal, 1962.
5
Alexander Saxton quotes a celebration of the railroad by San Francisco Judge Nathaniel Bennett,
who ascribes the feat not to the Chinese workers, but to the emerging consolidation of whiteness in
California. As Bennett declared, “in the veins of our people…flows the commingled blood of the
four greatest nationalities of modern days. The impetuous daring and dash of the French, the
philosophical and sturdy spirit of the German, the unflinching solidity of the English, and the light-
hearted impetuosity of the Irish, have all contributed each its appropriate share." In addition, Martin
Glaberman remarks on the role of the railroad to fuse the U.S. together: "the federal government
under Lincoln poured a lot of money into the building of the transcontinental railroad because there
was a fear that if communication did not improve between the west coast and the eastern part of the
United States, there was the possibility that the Northwest would secede; and there was always a
possibility that the same might happen in the Southwest, which had been stolen from Mexico.”
Today, the railroad remains a symbolic touchstone for the U.S. President Obama recently noted the
endeavor as one of the most important achievements of the federal government. See: Saxton,
Alexander. “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra.” Pacific Historical Review 35, no. 2 (May 1966):
152. Glaberman, Martin. “Reflections on Marxism and the Politics of C.L.R. James.” In Punching Out
& Other Writings. Chicago Il.: C. H. Kerr Pub., 2002. 192. “Transcript of the First Presidential
Debate in Denver.” The New York Times, October 3, 2012.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/03/us/politics/transcript-of-the-first-presidential-debate-in-
denver.html?pagewanted=all.
6
Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American
Empire. London; New York: Verso, 2012, 26. Karl Polanyi, classically, made this point: “There was
nothing natural about laissez-faire; free markets could never have come into being merely by
allowing things to take their course. Just as cotton manufactures—the leading free trade industry—
were created by the help of protective tariffs, export bounties, and indirect wage subsidies, laissez-
faire itself was enforced by the state.” See: Polanyi, Karl. The Great Transformation: The Political and
Economic Origins of Our Time. 2nd Beacon Paperback ed. Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 2001, 145.
7
Saxton, “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra,” 143.
8
Esch, Elizabeth, and David Roediger. “One Symptom of Originality: Race and the Management of
Labour in the History of the United States.” Historical Materialism 17, no. 4 (December 2009): 4.
9
Saxton, “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra,” 141-144. Saxton, Alexander. The Indispensable
Enemy: Labor and the Anti-Chinese Movement in California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1995,
62-63.
10
Lisa Lowe explains, “the law of value has operated…by creating, preserving, and reproducing the
specifically racialized and gendered character of labor power. These processes of differentiation have
provided the means for capital to exploit through the fracturing and segmentation of different
sectors of the labor force.” The theorizations of working class composition and decomposition
explored by autonomist Marxists like Harry Cleaver and utilized in this project (as discussed in the
introduction) attempt to account for the manifold specificities and contradictions between labor and
capital as they are actualized in particular historic-geographic conjunctures. Lowe, Lisa. Immigrant

257

Acts: On Asian American Cultural Politics. Durham: Duke University Press, 1996, 27-28. Building on
and highlighting Lowe’s point, see also Esch and Roediger, “One Symptom of Originality,” 7.
Cleaver, Harry. Reading Capital Politically. Austin: University of Texas Press, 1979, 162.
11
Saxton, “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra,” 149.
12
Saxton, “The Army of Canton in the High Sierra,” 149.
13
Freese, Barbara. Coal: A Human History. Cambridge, MA: Perseus Pub., 2003, 127.
14
Marx, Karl. Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Volume 1. Repr. London: Penguin Books in
association with New Left Review, 1990, 874.
15
From 1850-1857 the railroad companies received 25 million acres of land for free from the
government. Later during the Civil War, they received 100 million more acres. See: Zinn, Howard. A
People’s History of the United States: 1492-Present. Originally published: New York: Harper Collins, 2003.
[New ed.], 2005, 220, 238, 283.
16
Du Bois explains further as well: “An empire of rich land, larger than France, Belgium and
Holland together, had been snatched from the hands of prospective peasant farmers and given to
investors and land speculators. All of the national treasure of coal, oil, copper, gold and iron had
been given away for a song to be made the monopolized basis of private fortunes with perpetual
power to tax labor for the right to live and work.” It should be noted of course, as will be explained
later in the chapter, that Du Bois wrote these passages in the early to mid-1930s (Black Reconstruction
was published in 1935) in the midst of another federally funded enclosure movement sponsored by
the Agricultural Adjustment Act of 1933. Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880.
New York: Free Press, 1998, 406, 581.
17
Cooper, Jerry. “The Army as Strikebreaker—The Railroad Strikes of 1877 and 1894.” Labor History
18, no. 2 (1977).
18
Brecher, Jeremy. Strike! San Francisco: Straight Arrow Books, 1972, 55. On the relations between
private and military policing see: Center for Research on Criminal Justice. The Iron Fist and the Velvet
Glove: An Analysis of the U.S. Police. Second ed. Berkeley Center for Research on Criminal Justice,
1977, 28-29.
19
One should not, however, think that this was an automatic decision, and that the government
simply acted at the behest of capital. The decision to deploy troops in the summer of 1894 against
the Pullman strike followed a failed attempt in April when Great Northern Railroad executive James
J. Hill lobbied President Cleveland for the deployment of troops to quell the striking American
Railway Union workers. The ARU workers won that strike, which then catalyzed their union’s
recruitment efforts. For the subsequent weeks after the strike, two thousand people joined the union
per day. As Salvatore describes, “the revolution in sentiment, long brewing among the western
railroad men, had finally found a structure for systemic and effective expression.” As shown here,
political sentiments must be conjoined with organizations to give such feelings their most powerful
expression and to make effective change. David Montgomery has made a similar point on the role of
organizations as an expression for common feelings. “All the time that I worked in Minneapolis
Honeywell the shift on which I worked had a group of workers—90 percent men, 10 percent
women—among whom communication often didn’t require words. The sense that an injury to one
was an injury to all ran through the whole department with such effectiveness that in the end, the
only way Minneapolis Honeywell could rid of us was to close the entire division…An articulation of
a mood of this kind requires a movement, requires an organization in order to reach broader society.

258

An articulation that comes from an organization is always somewhat distorted. But without it, there
is no way in which the experiences and struggles of one locality can be more than the life of us in
the Twenty-ninth Street Plant.” See: Salvatore, Nick. Eugene V. Debs: Citizen and Socialist. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1982, 121, 125. MARHO: The Radical Historians Organization. “David
Montgomery.” In Visions of History. New York: Pantheon Books, 1983, 176.
20
Cooper, “The Army as Strikebreaker,” 187. Brecher, Strike!,84.
21
Brecher, Strike!, 92.
22
Such a strategy was pushed forward by the railroads who, rather than ameliorate the troubles
(specifically related to mail service) caused by the strike, exacerbated them so as to elicit federal
governmental action. See: Brecher, Strike!, 84.
23
Michael Mann defines the infrastructural power of the modern state as “the capacity of the state to
actually penetrate civil society, and to implement logistically political decisions throughout the
realm.” As should be clear, infrastructural power does not evolve in a smooth or natural cycle, but
rather, it is a site and effect of class struggle. See, Mann, Michael. States, War, and Capitalism: Studies in
Political Sociology. Oxford; New York, NY: Blackwell, 1988, 5. For a discussion of policing and class
struggle see: Center for Research on Criminal Justice, The Iron Fist and the Velvet Glove, 30. On the
Pullman strike and constitution law see: Orren, Karen. “The Primacy of Labor in American
Constitutional Development.” The American Political Science Review 89, no. 2 (June 1995): 380.
24
Cooper, “The Army as Strikebreaker,” 188.
25
Brecher, Strike!, 86.
26
Debs, Eugene. “How I Became a Socialist.” In American Working-Class Literature: An Anthology,
edited by Nicholas Coles and Janet Zandy. New York: Oxford University Press, 2007, 206.
27
Cooper, “The Army as Strikebreaker,” 195.
28
Cooper, “The Army as Strikebreaker,” 192.
29
Barrow, Clyde. Critical Theories of the State: Marxist, Neo-Marxsist, Post-Marxist. Madison: University
of Wisconsin Press, 1993, 125.
30
Brecher, Strike!, 89.
31
Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 208.
32
Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 128.
33
Brecher, Strike!, 94.
34
Montgomery, The Fall of the House of Labor, 209. Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, 138.
35
Brecher, Strike!,96.
36
Debs, “How I Became a Socialist,” 204-207. Salvatore, Eugene V. Debs, 138.
37
Debs, “How I Became a Socialist,” 207.
38
Federici explains: capitalism is not only a “concentration of exploitable workers and capital,” but
“also an accumulation of differences and divisions within the working class, whereby hierarchies
built upon gender, as well, as ‘race’ and age, became constitutive of class rule and the formation of
the modern proletariat.” Federici, Silvia. Caliban and the Witch: Women, The Body, and Primitive

259

Accumulation. New York: Autonomedia, 2004, 63-64. Robinson, Cedric. Black Marxism: The Making of
the Black Radical Tradition. Chapel Hill N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2000.
39
Hall, Stuart. “Rethinking the ‘Base and Superstructure’ Metaphor.” In Papers on Class, Hegemony and
Party : the Communist University of London. London: Lawrence and Wishart, 1977, 71.
40
Hall, Stuart. “Race, Articulation and Societies Structured in Dominance.” In Sociological Theories:
Race and Colonialism, edited by UNESCO. Paris: UNESCO, 1980, 330.
41
For what Jordan Camp calls “neoliberal racial regimes,” see: Camp, Jordan. “‘We Know This
Place’: Neoliberal Racial Regimes and the Katrina Circumstance.” American Quarterly 61, no. 3
(September 2009).
42
See for example: Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. Saxton, “The Army of Canton
in the High Sierra.”
43
Bailey, Stephen Kemp. Congress Makes a Law: The Story Behind the Employment Act of 1946. 3rd ed.
New York: Columbia University Press, 1957, 14.
44
Weir, Margaret, and Theda Skocpol. “State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynesian’
Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden, Britain, and the United States.” In Bringing the State
Back In. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1985, 107.
45
Katznelson, Ira, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder. “Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in
Congress, 1933-1950.” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 284.
46
It’s with some ambivalence that I use the term “democratize” as an attempt to articulate the broad
movements and ideas, or “structure of feeling,” of those who sought to create political and
economic reforms within the Keynesian order as an attempt to push it to further suit their needs.
I’ve chosen “democratize” both because it is an idiom that the activists themselves might have
selected, and also because, as Raymond Williams explains, it reaches for “the very edge of semantic
availability” and is rather amorphous “until specific articulations—new semantic figures—are
discovered in material practice.” And in this sense, my ambivalence is rooted in how their demands
push past the “residual” of liberal bourgeois democracy into a new “emergent” democracy that does
not enshrine private property over human need and rather yokes together democratic forms of
economic and political relations. See: Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford [Eng.]:
Oxford University Press, 1977, 120-127, 134.
47
Weir and Skocpol suggest this distinction “meant that the federal government used tax cuts and
‘automatic’ (rather than discretionary) adjustments of public spending to manage the economy, with
more emphasis on controlling inflation than on eliminating unemployment.” See: Weir, and Skocpol.
“State Structures and the Possibilities for ‘Keynesian’ Responses to the Great Depression in Sweden,
Britain, and the United States,” 108. See also: Fraser, Steve, and Gary Gerstle, eds. The Rise and Fall of
the New Deal Order, 1930-1980. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989, xiv. My
understanding of the failures of social Keynesianism in the U.S. is centrally informed by Weir’s
analysis. Weir, Margaret. Politics and Jobs: The Boundaries of Employment Policy in the United States.
Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1993, 3-61.
48
MARHO: The Radical Historians Organization. “C.L.R. James.” In Visions of History. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1983, 271.
49
Alexander Saxton describes some of the intimacies between these racist-regional relations after the
Civil War: “the Chinese issue, while directly stating racist hostilities in California, referred

260

metaphorically to nationwide anxieties over the potential power of free blacks.” See, Saxton,
Alexander. The Rise and Fall of the White Republic: Class Politics and Mass Culture in Nineteenth-Century
America. London; New York: Verso, 1990, 295. David Montgomery also comments on how
Attorney General (and a 35 year veteran of the railroad industry) Richard Olney encouraged the
growth of the racist trade unionism of the railway brotherhoods for fear of a resurgence of more
broad industrial unionism akin to the American Railway Union (though the ARU had prevented the
membership of Black workers). See: The Fall of the House of Labor, 366. Debs is often portrayed as
lacking an analysis of race due to the frequent quoting of his line from the 1903 essay, “The Negro
and Class Struggle,” that the members of the Socialist Party “have nothing special to offer the
Negro.” However, William Jones has convincingly shown that such a view is misguided and that for
Debs, “African Americans’ struggle for economic freedom and political equality was critical to
realizing the millennial promise of American civilization.” Indeed, in the same essay, Debs describes
a scene from his travels in Yoakum, TX that displays the analysis of the psychological wage of
whiteness that W.E.B. DuBois explored in Black Reconstruction. Debs commented on a group of white
men whom he met at the a train depot: “Here was a savory bouquet of white superiority... they
represented all there is of justification for the implacable hatred of the Negro race. They were
ignorant, lazy, unclean, totally void of ambition, themselves the foul product of the capitalist system
and held in lowest contempt by the master class, yet esteeming themselves immeasurably above the
cleanest, most intelligent and self-respecting Negro, having by reflex absorbed the ‘nigger’ hatred of
their masters.” See: Jones, William P. “‘Nothing Special to Offer the Negro’: Revisiting the
‘“Debsian View” of the Negro Question’.” International Labor and Working-Class History 74, no. 01
(November 7, 2008): 222. Debs, Eugene. “The Negro In The Class Struggle.” In Eugene V. Debs
Speaks, edited by Jean Tussey. Pathfinder Press, 1970, 90-91.
50
John Garraty makes the point, that prior to the 1890s, “those concerned with the subject…fell
back upon such circumlocutions as ‘want of employment’ and ‘involuntary idleness,’ which indicates
that they saw the phrase as meaning ‘unused’ or at ‘leisure.’” Indeed, unemployment becomes a
problem when employment is constituted as natural and necessary for survival so that workers—free in
the dual sense as Marx explained—must work or starve. Alexander Keyssar dates the common use
of the term a bit earlier to the 1870s. See: Garraty, John. Unemployment in History: Economic Thought and
Public Policy. New York: Harper & Row, 1978, 4-5. Keyssar, Alexander. Out of Work: The First Century
of Unemployment in Massachusetts. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1986, 4-6.
Denning, Michael. “Wageless Life.” New Left Review 66 (December 2010): 82.
51
The term “full employment” was consistently a terrain of struggle; but for the purposes of its
advocates studied in this chapter, most would have agreed with William Beveridge’s influential
definition: “It means having always more vacant jobs than unemployed men, not slightly fewer jobs.
It means that the jobs are at fair wages, of such a kind, and so located that the unemployed men can
reasonably be expected to take them…the labour market should always be a seller’s market rather
than a buyer’s market.” See: Beveridge, William H. Full Employment in a Free Society. George Allen and
Unwin, 1944, 18-19.
52
Zinn,. A People’s History of the United States, 387.
53
Bernstein, Irving. The Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker, 1933-1941. Chicago, IL:
Haymarket Books, 2010, 1.
54
Piven, Frances Fox, and Richard Cloward. Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare. Second
ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1993, 47.

261

55
Irving Bernstein notes Richard Hofstadter’s argument about the New Deal as “not a philosophy
but a temperament.” Bernstein, Irving. The Turbulent Years, 18. MacLean, Nancy. “Getting New Deal
History Wrong.” International Labor and Working-Class History 74, no. 1 (Fall 2008). Piven, and
Cloward. Regulating the Poor, 76-77. Cohen, Lizabeth. Making a New Deal: Industrial Workers in Chicago,
1919-1939. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990, 289.
56
Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 7.
57
Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 76. Cohen, Making a New Deal, 288.
58
Lipsitz, George. Rainbow at Midnight: Labor and Culture in the 1940s. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1994, 68.
59
Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 65.
60
Piven and Cloward, Regulating the Poor, 105. Kessler-Harris, Alice. Out to Work: A History of Wage-
Earning Women in the United States. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983, 205.
61
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2010. 4. Montgomery, David. Workers’ Control in America: Studies in the History of Work,
Technology, and Labor Struggles. Cambridge [Eng.]; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1992, 147.
Denning, The Cultural Front, 22.
62
As George Rawick has influentially argued, “the unions did not organize the strikes; the working
class in the strikes and through the strikes organized the Unions.” Rawick, George “Working Class
Self-Activity.” In Listening to Revolt: The Selected Writings of George Rawick, edited by David Roediger
and Martin Smith. Chicago, IL: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 2010, 47.
63
Boggs, James. “The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook (1963).” In
Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James Boggs Reader, edited by Stephen M. Ward. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 2011, 86
64
Katznelson, Ira. Fear Itself: The New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: Liveright Publishing
Corporation, 2013, 149.
65
Roediger, David. Working Toward Whiteness: How America’s Immigrants Became White : the Strange Journey
from Ellis Island to the Suburbs. New York: Basic Books, 2006, 204.
66
Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness, 205.
67
Nevertheless, this period also saw great labor unrest as Mexican workers struck over fifty times in
the San Joaquin and Imperial Valleys, including an 18,000 person cotton pickers’ strike in 1933.
Ngai, Mae. Impossible Subjects: Illegal Aliens and the Making of Modern America. Princeton N.J.: Princeton
University Press, 2004, 134-138. Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness, 205.
68
Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness, 203. Ngai, Impossible Subjects, 17.
69
Woods, Clyde. Development Arrested: The Blues and Plantation Power in the Mississippi Delta. London;
New York: Verso, 1998, 122-128.
70
These relationships also led both Woods and Nancy MacLean to argue that the Southern
plantation elites were some of the first to experiment with what would come to be called
neoliberalism. See: MacLean, Nancy. “Southern Dominance in Borrowed Language: The Regional
Origins of American Neoliberalism.” In New Landscapes of Inequality: Neoliberalism and the Erosion of
Democracy in America. Edited by Micaela di Leonardo and Jane Collins. School for Advanced
Research Press, 2008.

262

71
Lange, Dorothea. Cotton Is Planted Close to the Abandoned Cabins Whose Occupants Were Displaced by
Power Farming. Aldridge Plantation, Mississippi. Photograph, July 1937. Farm Security
Administration/Office of War Information Black-and-White Negatives. Library of Congress.
http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/fsa2000001446/PP/.
72
Payne, Charles. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, 129.
73
“Lynching Record for 1932 Reaches Vast Proportions; Many Suppressed.” The Chicago Defender,
December 24, 1932. Roediger, David. How Race Survived US History: From Settlement and Slavery to the
Obama Phenomenon. New York: Verso, 2008, 175. Katznelson, Fear Itself, 96.
74
Arnesen, Eric. Brotherhoods of Color: Black Railroad Workers and the Struggle for Equality. Harvard
University Press. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001, 24-25, 116.
75
Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 24-25, 118-119.
76
“Re-New War on Negro Firemen: La. Rail Worker Shot from Ambush; White Also Endangered.”
Atlanta Daily World. Atlanta, GA, September 15, 1932.
77
Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 120-125. Butler, Hilton. “Murder for the Job.” The Nation, July 12,
1933.
78
MacLean, Nancy. Behind the Mask of Chivalry: The Making of the Second Ku Klux Klan. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1994, 165.
79
“White Terrorists Murder Another Railway Worker.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition), July
23, 1932.
80
“Mob Law Still Holds Own in South.” The Chicago Defender, December 24, 1932.
81
MacLean has highlighted the way that “the Klan’s conservative ideology was a deeply gendered
phenomenon. Klansmen could not discuss issues of race, class, or state power apart from their
understanding of manhood, womanhood, and sexual decorum.” MacLean, Behind the Mask of
Chivalry, xii.
82
On workers’ struggles for seniority rights in the 1930s, see: Montgomery, Workers’ Control in
America, 139-143. For the role of Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen and Enginemen, see:
Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 125.
83
“Mob Law Still Holds Own in South.” The Chicago Defender, December 24, 1932.
84
Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 125-126.
85
Hamilton, Dona, and Charles V. Hamilton. The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare Policies of Civil
Rights Organizations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, 3.
86
Pfeffer, Paula. A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State
University Press, 1990, 8. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 60-76. Montgomery, The Fall of the House of
Labor, 284.
87
Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream: Politics and Economy of the US Working Class. London:
Verso, 1987, 49.
88
Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 10.

263

89
Randolph, A. Philip, and Chandler Owen. “Why Negroes Should Join the I.W.W.” The Messenger,
July 1919, 8. Randolph, A. Philip, and Chandler Owen. “The General Strike.” The Messenger, August
1919, 8.
90
Bynum, Cornelius L. A. Philip Randolph and the Struggle for Civil rights. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 2010, 102. Randolph, A. Philip. “Economics and Politics: Lynching: Capitalism Its Cause;
Socialism Its Cure.” The Messenger, March 1919, 11.
91
Randolph, “Economics and Politics: Lynching: Capitalism Its Cause; Socialism Its Cure,” 10-12.
92
Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 88-89. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 153. Manning Marable has
attributed this quote to Woodrow Wilson. See: Marable, Manning. “A. Philip Randolph and the
Foundations of Black American Socialism.” Radical America 14, no. 2 (April 1980), 7.
93
Randolph and Owen. “Why Negroes Should Join the I.W.W,” 8.
94
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 164, 170.
95
For more on what they call “race-management,” see: Esch and Roediger, “One Symptom of
Originality: Race and the Management of Labour in the History of the United States,” 8.
96
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 158-159.
97
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 163.
98
Terkel, Studs. “E.D. Nixon.” In Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. 1st trade
paperback ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, 118.
99
Derickson, Alan. “‘Asleep and Awake at the Same Time’: Sleep Denial Among Pullman Porters.”
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 5, no. 3 (September 1, 2008): 13–44.
100
As Nixon described, “any time the Company felt you’d done anything—if you had anything to do
with the Brotherhood, the got rid of you,. Or punished you…” See: Terkel, “E.D. Nixon,” 120.
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 178.
101
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 182-183.
102
Harris, William H. Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, 1925-1937. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1977, 110-116.
103
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 202-203.
104
Harris, Keeping the Faith, 141, 162, 183.
105
On the National Industrial Recovery Act as “enabling legislation and nothing more,” see:
Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 28-35. On its impact on the BSCP, see: Anderson, A. Philip Randolph,
217.
106
In 1937, Randolph described the conditions and sacrifices the porters faced in these years:
“Hundreds of men lost their jobs in the conflict. Leaders of the Movement like Ashley L. Totten,
Milton P. Webster, Bennie Smith, E.J. Bradley, and C.L. Dellums lost their homes and underwent
severe privations to put the union over. Totten was nearly murdered by thugs in Kansas City and
Smith was threatened with a lynching and driven out of Jacksonville, Florida. These men were
former porters, all. None of them received any pay over half the life of the Brotherhood.” Harris,
Keeping the Faith, 183.
107
One very important contradiction in the story of this legislation is how Randolph supported
Washington Senator Clarence Dill’s proposal to outlaw Filipino sleeping car attendants before the

264

Committee on Interstate and Foreign Commerce, of which Dill was the chair. See: Harris, Keeping the
Faith, 183-188.
108
Harris, Keeping the Faith, 193. Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 360-368.
109
Harris, Keeping the Faith, 199. Bernstein, The Turbulent Years, 368.
110
Harris, Keeping the Faith, 201-207.
111
Harris, Keeping the Faith, 209-214. “Pullman Porters Win Increase in Wages: Company Gives in
After Hard 12 Year Fight.” The Chicago Defender, September 4, 1937.
112
“Rail Tie-Up Threatened As Conference Fails: Strike of 350,000 Trainmen Looms After Roads
Refuse Wage Demands.” Los Angeles Times (AP). Chicago, IL, August 26, 1937.
113
Arnesen, Brotherhoods of Color, 95. Fleming, G. James. “Millions to Porters to End Pullman Fight.”
The New York Amsterdam News, September 4, 1937.
114
On this point, I am informed by David Roediger and Philip Foner’s suggestion that struggles over
the hours of the working day were the hallmark of fights over workers’ control. See: Roediger,
David, and Philip Foner. Our Own Time: A History of American Labor and the Working Day. London;
New York: Verso, 1989.
115
Fleming, “Millions to Porters to End Pullman Fight,” 19.
116
Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 42.
117
The Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem. “The Negro in Harlem: A Report on Social
and Economic Conditions Responsible for the Outbreak of March 19, 1935.” In The Politics of Riot
Commissions, 1917-1970, edited by Anthony Platt. New York: Collier Books, 1971, 169.
118
The Mayor’s Commission on Conditions in Harlem. “The Negro in Harlem,” 161-182.
119
Gellman, Erik. Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012, 16.
120
The Popular Front was the strategy (established at the 1935 Congress of the Communist
International, although the U.S. Communist Party had already begun to move in this direction prior
to the Congress) to build broad alliances, even with liberals and socialists, due to the threats of
fascism. On the Popular Front, see amongst many others: Barrett, James R. “Rethinking the Popular
Front.” Rethinking Marxism 21, no. 4 (October 2009): 531–550. Gellman, Erik. “National Negro
Congress.” In Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, edited by Eric Arnesen. New York:
Routledge, 2007, 974
121
The concept of the “Black Popular Front” is discussed and debated in a number of sources. See:
Mullen, Bill. Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46. Urbana: University
of Illinois Press, 1999, 1-19. Biondi, Martha. To Stand and Fight: The Struggle for Civil Rights in Postwar
New York City. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2003, 6. Dowd Hall, Jacquelyn. “The
Long Civil Rights Movement and the Political Uses of the Past.” The Journal of American History 91,
no. 4 (March 2005): 1245.
122
Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 16-17.
123
Davis, John P. “Let Us Build a National Negro Congress”. National Sponsoring Committee:
National Negro Congress, Washington D.C., October 1935. The John P. Davis Collection: The
Forgotten Civil Rights Leader. http://www.collection.johnpdaviscollection.org/Collection.html. 10-
12.

265

124
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 229-230. Robin Kelley notes that the NNC also had roots in the
Communist Party’s “Hands off Ethiopia” campaign. Kelley, Robin. Hammer and Hoe: Alabama
Communists During the Great Depression. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 1990, 123.
Erik Gellman has put the number of organizations involved at 750. See: Gellman, “National Negro
Congress,” 973.
125
Michael Denning notes that the NNC was a premier institution through which the Popular Front
of Harlem was expressed. See: Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture
in the Twentieth Century. London; New York: Verso, 1998, 15.
126
Mike Davis suggests that one of the key components for the success of the strike waves of this
period was a “fecund synthesis…between the highly participant and egalitarian tradition of struggle
derived from the Wobblies, and some of the best elements of American Leninism’s emphasis on
organization, discipline and strategy.” See: Davis, Prisoners of the American Dream, 60.
127
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 232.
128
Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph, 42. Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 230-231.
129
Bates, Beth. “A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda of the Old Guard in the NAACP, 1933-
1941.” The American Historical Review 102, no. 2 (April 1997): 364.
130
McDuffie, Erik S. “Esther V. Cooper’s ‘The Negro Woman Domestic Worker in Relation to
Trade Unionism’: Black Left Feminism and the Popular Front.” American Communist History 7, no. 2
(December 2008): 206.
131
Baker, Ella, and Marvel Cooke. “The Bronx Slave Market.” The Crisis, November 1935, 330-331,
340.
132
Cooke—the child of socialists and followers of Debs—had previously worked with Du Bois and
was active in the Communist Party. Baker was very good friends and comrades at the time with
socialist George Schuyler who had previously worked with Randolph on The Messenger. Ransby,
Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel Hill: University
of North Carolina Press, 2003, 77-79.
133
Baker and Cooke, “The Bronx Slave Market,” 330.
134
Davis, “Let Us Build a National Negro Congress,” 3.
135
Davis, “Let Us Build a National Negro Congress,” 30.
136
Gellman, Erik. Death Blow to Jim Crow, 5.
137
In her critique of both those who get stuck in reformism, but also those who ignore the needs of
ameliorative struggles, Luxemburg argued: “the practical daily struggle for reforms, for the
amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and
for democratic institutions, offers Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian
class struggle and working in the direction of the final goal—the conquest of political power and the
suppression of wage labor. For Social Democracy there exists an indissoluble tie between social
reform and revolution. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its goal.”
Luxemburg, Rosa. “Social Reform or Revolution.” In The Rosa Luxemburg Reader, edited by Peter
Hudis and Kevin Anderson. New York: Monthly Review Press, 2004, 129.
138
Written in the fall of 1935, such an analysis and fear of Nazi Germany was prescient and by no
means widespread. The Nuremburg Olympics would continue in 1936 and U.S. Ambassador

266

William Dodd would remain in Germany until 1937. As Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has noted, “African
Americans and their allies were among the first to grasp the enormity of the Nazi persecution of the
Jews and to drive home the parallels between racism and anti-Semitism.” Likewise, Nancy MacLean
suggests that it was in fact organizations like the NNC—“a strong and inclusive working-class
movement …able to pose an alternative to both the far right and the status quo” that might explain
the failure of the Ku Klux Klan to grow dramatically in the 1930s. For original quote see: Davis,
“Let Us Build a National Negro Congress,” 26. Dowd Hall, “The Long Civil Rights Movement,”
1247. On the Ku Klux Klan see: MacLean, Behind the Mask of Chivalry, 184-188.
139
Davis, “Let Us Build a National Negro Congress,” 27.
140
Davis, “Let Us Build a National Negro Congress,” 30. For more on Black anti-fascism in relation
to Italy and Spain, see: Kelley, Robin D. G. Race Rebels: Culture, Politics, and the Black Working Class.
New York: Free Press, 1996, 123-158.
141
Bates, “A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda,” 360.
142
Kelley, Robin D. G. “Southern Negro Youth Congress.” In Encyclopedia of the American Left, edited
by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1992, 738.
143
Bates, “A New Crowd Challenges the Agenda,” 363-364.
144
This suggestion is made by Michael Denning, who is drawing on Raymond Williams. Denning,
The Cultural Front, 26. Williams, Raymond. Marxism and Literature. Oxford: Oxford University Press,
1977, 128-135.
145
Gellman, Erik. Death Blow to Jim Crow, 1.
146
This quote comes at the conclusion of Thompson’s essay collection Out of Apathy and should be
understood as an important political statement that would be shared by many civil rights activists
and organizers who understood the need for a “revolution in values” (as Dr. King would put it), to
be coupled with any quantitative political gains. It’s my suggestion that many activists and thinkers
who formed and were formed by the Black Popular Front’s structure of feeling—Ella Baker, Bayard
Rustin, A. Philip Randolph, Esther Cooper Jackson, James Boggs, Claudia Jones, and many more—
share much in terms of values. Sectarianism, political and tactical differences, and other historic
choices (including government repression) sometimes prevented the expression of these values from
becoming widespread in an organization. See: Thompson, E. P. “Revolution.” New Left Review 1, no.
3 (June 1960): 7. King, Martin Luther. “A Time to Break Silence.” For King, see: A Testament of Hope:
The Essential Writings and Speeches of Martin Luther King, Jr., edited by James Melvin Washington. San
Francisco: Harper, 1991, 240.
147
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 236. Gellman, Erik. Death Blow to Jim Crow, 150-151.
148
While describing what would eventually break apart the most far-ranging prospects of the NNC,
this piece captures the best potential of the NNC as a vehicle to articulate the Black Popular Front:
“Negroes from the North, South, East, and West were heading for Washington, seeking affirmation
of their will to freedom. They were coming with their doubts and with their convictions.” Ellison,
Ralph. “A Congress That Jim Crow Didn’t Attend.” New Masses, May 14, 1940, 7.
149
There is, however, some suggestion that Randoph’s arguments about organizing autonomy for
Black workers was an excuse to exclude white Communists and thus inhibit the ability of
Communists to shape the MOWM. I am inclined to agree with this assessment. See: Garfinkel,

267

Herbert. When Negroes March: The March on Washington Movement in the Organizational Politics for FEPC.
New York: Atheneum, 1969, 48.
150
Indeed it remains an issue. See: Biondi, Martha. “Response to Eric Arnesen.” Labor: Studies in
Working-Class History of the Americas 3, no. 4 (2006), 59–63.
151
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 239.
152
“Randolph Quits National Negro Congress: Yergan, Former ‘Y’ Secretary, Voted Leader of
Group.” Atlanta Daily World, May 1, 1940.
153
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 239.
154
Naison, Mark. Communists in Harlem During the Depression. Urbana: University of Illinois Press,
2005, 150-151.
155
Randolph, A. Philip. “Randolph Hits Critics In Negro Congress Affair.” The Chicago Defender
(National Edition), May 25, 1940, 6.
156
O’Dell, Jack. “‘I Never Met a Black Person Who Was in the Communist Party Because of the
Soviet Union:’ Jack O’Dell on Fighting Racism in the 1940s.” Interview by Sam Sills, August 5,
1993. http://historymatters.gmu.edu/d/6927/. For more on this point, see: Biondi, To Stand and
Fight. Kelley, Hammer and Hoe.
157
Police killed ten people and shot thirty (three of whom were children) during the 1937 Little Steel
strike. The fiscal restraints also coalesced with a shift in monetary policy as Federal Reserve
Chairman, Marriner Eccles, raised bank reserve requirements tightening the supply of money that
firms could borrow. On the strike, see: The American Social History Project, ed. Who Built America?
Working People and the Nation’s Economy, Politics, Culture, and Society, Volume Two: From the Gilded Age to
the Present. New York: Pantheon Books, 1992, 416-432. On Eccles, see: Greider, William. Secrets of the
Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. 1st Touchstone ed. New York: Simon & Schuster,
1989, 320-321.
158
Cited in Hamilton, Hamilton and Hamilton, The Dual Agenda, 26.
159
Hamilton and Hamilton, The Dual Agenda, 26.
160
Lichtenstein, Nelson. Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World War II. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1987, 33.
161
Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 26-34.
162
As I will discuss further in chapter three, these investments in the aircraft industry would help!!!!
undermine the strength of the BSCP, as postwar airline travel would cut into the ridership on
railroads. The rise of passenger air travel is inseparable from the government investments during the
war when employment in the sector jumped from 63,000 in 1939 to a peak of 1,345,000. See:
Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 45. Noble, David F. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial
Automation. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986, 5.
163
Zinn, A People’s History of the United States, 417. See also: Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 39.
164
Bates, Beth. “‘Double V for Victory’ Mobilizes Black Detroit, 1941-1946.” In Freedom North :
Black Freedom Struggles Outside the South, edited by Jeanne Theoharis, Komozi Woodard, and Matthew
Countryman. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003, 18.
165
Cited in: Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 19.

268

166
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 246-248. Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 33-35.
167
Randolph, A. Philip. “‘Defense Rotten’--Randolph: Let’s March on Capital 10,000 Strong, Urges
Leader Of Porters.” The Pittsburgh Courier, January 25, 1941, 13. See also: Anderson, A. Philip
Randolph, 248-49.
168
Anderson, A. Philip Randolph, 251.
169
Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 53-60.
170
“50,000 Negroes Must Attend Madison Square Garden Rally”, June 16, 1942. Box: 26, Folder:
March on Washington Circulars. A. Philip Randolph Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript
Division (Hereafter cited as Randolph Papers). “Program: Mass Meeting at Madison Square
Garden”, June 16, 1942. Box: 26, March on Washington Circulars. Randolph Papers. “Why Should
We March?”, 1943. Box: 26, Folder: March on Washington Circulars. Randolph Papers. Garfinkel,
When Negroes March, 83-96.
171
Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 60-61.
172
Roediger, Working Towards Whiteness, 208, 213.
173
Bates, “‘Double V for Victory,’” 22.
174
Bates, “‘Double V for Victory,’” 23.
175
Patterson, William. “A. Philip Randolph Can’t Sell This War to Oppressed, Jim Crowed Negro
People.” Daily Worker. New York, March 3, 1941, 6. Within the Trotskyist orbit, C.L.R. James
considered Patterson’s opinion to be “an absolutely warped, distorted, sectarian attitude,” though
James later excoriated Randolph for calling off the March on Washington. See: Johnson, J.R. “All
Out July 1 for the March on Washington.” Labor Action 5, no. 24 (June 16, 1941): 4. Johnson, J.R.
“Negroes, We Can Depend Only on Ourselves!” Labor Action 5, no. 28 (July 14, 1941): 4.
176
On the Civil Rights Congress, see: Horne, Gerald. Communist Front?: The Civil Rights Congress, 1946-
1956. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1988. On the charging genocide, see:
Patterson, William. We Charge Genocide: The Historic Petition to the United Nations for Relief from a Crime of
the United States Government Against the Negro People. [New ed. New York: International publishers,
1970.
177
Patterson, “A. Philip Randolph Can’t Sell This War,” 6.
178
Patterson, “A. Philip Randolph Can’t Sell This War,” 6.
179
Patterson, William L. The Man Who Cried Genocide: An Autobiography. New York: International
Publishers, 1991, 82-85, 128-129, 157-158.
180
Horne, Communist Front?, 13, 23-25.
181
D’Emilio, John. Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press, 2004, 34-63.
182
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to the Draft Board”, November 16, 1943. Box: 45, Folder: 2. Bayard
Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
183
D’Emilio, John. Lost Prophet, 83.
184
This social reproduction work is part of the dual nature that Sylvia Federici discusses. “The
reproduction of human beings is the foundation of every economic and political system…the
‘double character’ of reproductive work as work that reproduces us and ‘valorizes’ us not only in

269

view of our integration in the labor market but also against it.” Federici, Silvia. Revolution at Point Zero:
Housework, Reproduction, and Feminist struggle. Oakland, CA; Brooklyn, NY: PM Press; Common
Notions: Autonomedia;, 2012, 2. See also, Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s discussions of “unwaged
reproductive work” and it’s relationship between imprisoned people and their allies on the ‘outside.’
Gilmore, Ruth Wilson. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California.
University of California Press, 2007, 215, 237-238.
185
Rustin, Julia. “Letter to Bayard Rustin”, Circa 1945. Box: 45, Folder: 2. Bayard Rustin Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Hereafter cited as Rustin Papers). Muste, AJ. “Letter to
Bayard Rustin”, Christmas 1945. Box: 45, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
186
Randolph, A. Philip. “Letter to Bayard Rustin”, April 17, 1944. Box: 45, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
187
Alan Brinkley argues that full employment politics was one of the most emblematic articulations
of these fears. Brinkley, Alan. The End of Reform: New Deal Liberalism in Recession and War. New York:
Vintage Books, 1996, 234.
188
Stringer, William H. “Industry Forms Postwar Group: Housing to Take Big Place Model of
Postwar Auto Reconversion.” The Christian Science Monitor, February 17, 1943. Gahan, Edwin F.
“Furniture Makers Plan Big Expansion: They Map Quick Reconversion to Supply Demand from
Returning Soldiers.” The New York Times, July 18, 1943.
189
So fearful were the members of N.A.M. during the 30s and 40s that they developed a wide array
of repressive tactics, going so far as to purchase and stockpile 60% of the teargas purchased between
1933-1938. “Defend Labor Aim of Industrial Body: Manufacturers’ Association Officials Testify on
Policy to La Follette Commitee.” The New York Times, March 3, 1938. Gotthart, Charles. “N.A.M.
Meets Under Pall of Strike Gloom: Lifting Conversion from Ditch Is Aim.” Chicago Daily Tribune,
December 6, 1945. Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 13-15.
190
“Public Works Proposed for Post-War Era: FWA Chief Says Jobs Must Be Provided for A While:
Industry Reconversion to Peace Will Take Time, He Says.” The Baltimore Sun, October 22, 1942.
191
Glaberman, Martin. Wartime Strikes: The Struggle Against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW During
World War II. Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1980, 121. See also: Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight.
Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home.
192
Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 166.
193
Stringer “Industry Forms Postwar Group,” 10. Von Tresckow, Walter. “Post-War Industrial
Problems and Prospects: Packard’s Outlook Illustrates Probable Effect of Reconversion on
Manufacturers and Employees.” Barron’s National Business and Financial Weekly, June 14, 1943.
194
Meier, August, and Elliott Rudwick. Black Detroit and the Rise of the UAW. Oxford; New York:
Oxford University Press, 1981, 166-171. Bates, “‘Double V for Victory’ Mobilizes Black Detroit, 28-
32. Noble, David. Progress Without People: New Technology, Unemployment, and the Message of Resistance.
Toronto: Between the Lines, 1995, 76. Kelley, Robin D. G. “Christopher Columbus Alston:
Organizer, Fighter and Historian.” Against the Current no. 61 (March-April 1996).
http://www.solidarity-us.org/site/node/2514. Gellman, Death Blow to Jim Crow, 87, 103.
195
Von Tresckow, “Post-War Industrial Problems and Prospects,” 9.
196
Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 154-156.

270

197
Emmons, William M. “Implications of Ownership, Regulation, and Market Structure for
Performance: Evidence from the U.S. Electric Utility Industry Before and After the New Deal.”
Review of Economics and Statistics 79, no. 2 (May 1997): 287–289.
198
Energy Information Administration. The Changing Structure of the Electric Power Industry 2000: An
Update. Office of Coal, Nuclear, Electric and Alternate Fuels, U.S. Department of Energy, October
2000, 7.
199
Quoted in Katznelson, Fear Itself, 253. On Rankin and the REA, see: Schlesinger, Arthur M. The
Politics of Upheaval, 1935-1936, The Age of Roosevelt, Volume III. The Age of Roosevelt. Boston:
Houghton Mifflin, 2003, 383-384.
200
Hahamovitch, Cindy. No Man’s Land: Jamaican Guestworkers in America and the Global History of
Deportable Labor. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011, 23.
201
Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 27-31.
202
Hahamovitch, No Man’s Land, 49.
203
“Harlem Is Orderly with Heavy Guard Ready for Trouble.” The New York Times, August 3, 1943.
“6 Dead In Harlem Riot: Fight Begins When N.Y. Cop Shoots MP.” The Chicago Defender (National
Edition), August 7, 1943. Rebecca Hill (drawing on Ida B. Wells) has theorized the relations between
legal and extra-legal killing in the context of lynching as a “police-mob continuum.” See: Hill,
Rebecca. Men, Mobs, and Law: Anti-lynching and Labor Defense in US Radical History. Durham: Duke
University Press, 2008, 15.
204
“Mob Outbreak Kills Six in Harlem Area: Hoodlumism, ‘Not Race Riot,’ Declares Mayor La
Guardia.” The Atlanta Constitution, August 3, 1943, 8. Randolph, A. Philip. “Randolph Views Riot
With Sorrow, Distress.” The New York Amsterdam News, August 7, 1943, 13.
205
Randolph, A. Philip. “Negroes and Race Riots,” 1943. A. Philip Randolph Papers, Box: 2.
Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture,
The New York Public Library.
206
Kassalow, Everett M. “‘The Great Depression and the Transformation of the American Union
Movement,’ Testimony Delivered Before the U.S. Congress Joint Economic Committee, Nov. 28,
1980.” University of Wisconsin-Madison, Industrial Relations Research Institute, Reprint No. 234,
1980, 334
207
Murray, Philip. “C.I.O Re-Employment Plan.” Washington D.C.: CIO Dept. of Research and
Education, 1944, 5-7.
208
Phillips, Lisa. A Renegade Union: Interracial Organizing and Labor Radicalism. Urbana, Chicago:
University of Illinois Press, 2012, 77-78.
209
Roosevelt, Franklin D. “State of the Union Message to Congress”. Franklin D. Roosevelt
Presidential Library and Museum, January 11, 1944.
http://www.fdrlibrary.marist.edu/archives/address_text.html.
210
On the duration of the Popular Front, see: Barrett, “Rethinking the Popular Front,” 542.
211
Roosevelt, “State of the Union Message to Congress”.
212
Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands.
213
While these statistics help reveal the values of the people polled, one thing they miss is the ability
of these values to become politically mobilized. Such grassroots political mobilization is one place

271

where the effort for the 1945 Full Employment Bill fell short. According to July 1945 polling from
Illinois’ second Congressional District, though 83% of people said they would support such a Bill,
69% of people did not know that one existed and was being debated at the time. Weir, Politics and
Jobs, 52. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 179-181.
214
This should be viewed as an achievement in crafting ideological dominance of full employment
ideology, but it should be clear by the fact that Dewey was immediately undermining the definition of
full employment and the process to implement such policy that the full employment had not yet
achieved ideological hegemony. Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 42.
215
Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings: Social Politics in a Progressive Age. Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap
Press of Harvard University Press, 1998, 492. On the Beveridge Plan generally, see: 484-501.
216
“Sir William Beveridge and the Negro Problem.” Atlanta Daily World, July 1, 1943, 6.
217
Lipsitz, George. The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1998, 216.
218
As Jason Scott Smith explained, “New Dealers used the state capacities of the WPA in the service
of a distinctly undemocratic enterprise.” Smith, Jason Scott. “New Deal Public Works at War: The
WPA and Japanese American Internment.” Pacific Historical Review 72, no. 1 (February 2003): 67.
Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness. 71, 216.
219
Canaday, Margot. “Building a Straight State: Sexuality and Social Citizenship Under the 1944 G.I.
Bill.” Journal of American History 90, no. 3 (December, 2003), 935.
220
Keyserling, Leon H. “Discussion from A History of the Federal Reserve: Volume 1: 1913-1951.”
American Economic Review, Papers and Proceedings 62 (May 1972).
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/meltzer/record.php?id=4187. 134. See also, Bernstein, Turbulent Years,
186.
221
Brazelton, W. Robert. “The Economics of Leon Hirsch Keyserling.” Journal of Economic Perspectives
11, no. 4 (Fall 1997), 189-190.
222
Cobble, Dorothy Sue. The Other Women’s Movement: Workplace Justice and Social Rights in Modern
America. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2004, 55. Storrs, Landon R.Y. “Red Scare
Politics and the Suppression of Popular Front Feminism: The Loyalty Investigation of Mary Dublin
Keyserling.” Journal of American History 90, no. 2 (September 2003): 497.
223
Storrs, “Red Scare Politics and the Suppression of Popular Front Feminism,” 493-494, 512.
224
Storrs, “Red Scare Politics and the Suppression of Popular Front Feminism,” 498.
225
Pickens, Donald K. Leon H. Keyserling: A Progressive Economist. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books,
2009, 73-74.
226
Stein, Herbert, and Leon H. Keyserling. “The Pabst Post-War Employment Awards,” 1944.
http://econ.duke.edu/events/conferences/hope-spring-conference-2012/cabinet-of-curiosities.
227
Herbert Stein, who would become head of President Nixon’s Council of Economic Advisors
won the first prize. “The Pabst Post-War Employment Awards,” 2. “U.S. Experts Win 10 OF 17
Essay Prizes: Results of the Pabst Brewing Company’s Post-War Plan Contest Are Announced.” The
New York Times, May 18, 1944.
228
He had written it because of an injury to her wrist. See: Pickens, Leon H. Keyserling, 74.

272

229
Keyserling, Leon H. “The American Economic Goal: A Practical Start Toward Postwar Full
Employment”, 1944. Box: 84. Leon H. Keyserling Papers, The Harry S. Truman Presidential
Library. Storrs, “Red Scare Politics and the Suppression of Popular Front Feminism,” 506.
230
For Keyserling, inflation is most acutely a problem when it hurts people on low or fixed incomes,
and prevents them from buying their necessities. However, he argued that this should be responded
to with government support for such necessities. Inflation that reduces the wealth of rentier interests
and provokes right-wing opposition is not a problem for Keyserling. Brazelton, W. Robert. “On the
‘Orthodoxy’ of Leon Hirsch Keyserling: Selected Major Analytical and Policy Concepts and Advice
to Presidents.” The American Economist 51, no. 1 (Spring 2007): 16. Brazelton, W. Robert. Designing US
Economic Policy: An Analytical Biography of Leon H. Keyserling. New York: Palgrave, 2001.
231
Keyserling, Leon H. “The American Economic Goal,” 14.
232
Bowman, Ralph. “Planning the Future.” New Masses, October 17, 1944, 25.
233
Ginsburg, Helen Lachs. “Historical Amnesia: The Humphrey-Hawkins Act, Full Employment
and Employment as a Right.” The Review of Black Political Economy 39, no. 1 (December 7, 2011): 126.
See also: Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 243.
234
Weir, Politics and Jobs, 46-53.
235
On the politicians who opposed the 1945 Bill, see: Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 189-205. On the
planter bloc and the Delta Council, see: Woods, Development Arrested, 10, 131.
236
“Maximum employment,” however was a compromise forced from the right in order to avoid
specific prescriptions for full employment and change the definition of “full employment.” While in
hindsight, it can’t be understated how large a victory this was for the business class, this was not
clear at the time. See: Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 220-234. Meltzer, Allan H. A History of the Federal
Reserve. Vol. 1: 1913-1951. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004, 611.
237
Truman, Harry S. “Statement by the President Upon Signing the Employment Act.” February 20,
1946. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=12584.
238
Montgomery, Workers’ Control in America, 170.
239
Jackson, Henry. “Letter to Herb Wilson”, October 11, 1945. Full Employment 1945, Box: 32.
Henry M. Jackson Papers, Special Collections, University of Washington (Hereafter cited as Jackson
Papers).
240
Wilson, Herb. “Letter to Scoop Jackson”, October 3, 1945. Full Employment 1945, Box: 32.
Jackson Papers.
241
Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 26-67.
242
Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 132-138.
243
Bailey, Congress Makes a Law, 191-193, Phillips-Fein, Invisible Hands, 3-6.
244
Kalecki, Michal. “Political Aspects of Full Employment (1943).” In The Last Phase in the
Transformation of Capitalism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1972, 78.
245
Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 110.
246
Johnson, Clark. “Letter to Scoop Jackson”, August 30, 1945. Full Employment 1945, Box: 32.
Jackson Papers.

273

247
Woodford, Frank D. “Detroit Area Strike-Torn by Reconversion Disputes: 50,000, Made Idle by
CIO-AFL Clash, Agree to Return, but Threat Remains.” The New York Times, July 1, 1945, 45.
248
Lichtenstein, Labor’s War at Home, 216.
249
Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 120.
250
Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 99.
251
Woodford, “Detroit Area Strike-Torn by Reconversion Disputes,” 45. Lichtenstein, Labor’s War
at Home, 222.
252
Sullivan, Mark. “Strikes And Reconversion: Public Helplessness.” The Washington Post, November
16, 1945, 10.
253
George Caffentzis argues the “work/ energy crisis” became centrally important when, due to
changes in production, “absolute time was no more of the essence, productive intensity was.” The
increase in productive intensity that has been premised on the exploitation of fossil fuels is
fundamental to the political-economic transformations of the postwar period. Understanding
struggles around the energy sector, like those over other hydrocarbon energy resources (wood, coal,
oil) in prior eras, is crucial to understanding the postwar relations of labor and capital. On this point,
see: Caffentzis, George. “The Work/ Energy Crisis and the Apocalypse.” In Midnight Oil: Work,
Energy, War, 1973-1992, edited by Midnight Notes Collective. Brooklyn NY: Autonomedia, 1992,
217. Linebaugh, Peter. The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2008, 4, 225. Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for
Finance in the Seventies. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, 74-100. On the oil seizure, see:
Strout, Richard L. “Nation’s Oil Plants Face U.S. Seizure; N.E. Doles Out Gas.” The Christian Science
Monitor, October 4, 1945. Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 114.
254
Strout, “Nation’s Oil Plants Face U.S. Seizure, ” 14. Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 114-115.
255
For an overview of these themes and the general strikes to which I am tremendously indebted:
Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 99-181.
256
Lipsitz, Rainbow at Midnight, 130.
257
Weir, Stan. “American Labor on the Defensive: A 1940s Odyssey.” Radical America 9, no. 4–5
(August 1975): 178.
258
“General Strike Threat in Philadelphia After Police Rout Marchers.” Daily Boston Globe, March 1,
1946, 1.
259
Collins, Edward. “Economics and Finance: Anatomy of the General Strike.” The New York Times,
December 6, 1946.
260
“Strict Coal Rationing Asked in Mine Strike: Government Issues Call as Truman Returns from
Vacation to Direct Fight with Lewis.” The Los Angeles Times, November 24, 1946.
261
Krock, Arthur. “Capital Sees Increase in Truman’s Prestige: Firm Stand Against Any
Compromise in the Coal Strike Has Helped Him Greatly, Leaders Agree.” The New York Times,
December 15, 1946.
262
See: The American Social History Project, ed. Who Built America?, 505.
263
As Keynes wrote, “the outstanding faults of the economic society in which we live are its failure
to provide for full employment and its arbitrary and inequitable distribution of wealth and incomes.”

274

Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money. Amherst, NY:
Prometheus Books, 1997, 372.
264
Garfinkel, When Negroes March, 19.
265
Keynes, John Maynard. The General Theory, 376.
266
On how the “laboring of American culture” became “almost hegemonic,” see: Denning, The
Cultural Front, 152-153. George Lipsitz defines “social warrants” as “a collectively sanctioned
understanding of obligations and entitlements that has the force of law, even though it is rarely
written down. Social warrants author and authorize new ways of knowing and new ways of being;
they challenge and transform what is permitted and what is forbidden.” See: Lipsitz, George. “A
Culture of War.” Critical Survey 18, no. 3 (2006): 83.
267
On the architecture of global capitalism during and after the war: Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin.
The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American Empire. London; New York: Verso,
2012, 67-107.

Chapter 2
1
“Inflation Is the Devil.” Life, July 23, 1951.
2
Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American
Empire. London; New York: Verso, 2012, 79.
3
McCormick, Thomas J. America’s Half-Century: United States Foreign Policy in the Cold War. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 1989, 53. Arrighi, Giovanni. The Long Twentieth Century: Money, Power,
and the Origins of Our Times. London; New York: Verso, 1994,278-279.
4
Honey, Michael K. Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights: Organizing Memphis Workers. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1993, 214.
5
Cited in: Noble, David F. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1986, 21.
6
On management rights, see: Rose, James D. “The Struggle over Management Rights at US Steel,
1946-1960: A Reassessment of Section 2-B of the Collective Bargaining Contract.” The Business
History Review 72, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 446–477. On strikes, see: U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical
Abstract of the United States: 1960. 81st Edition. Washington D.C., 1960, 234.
7
Quoted in Zieger, Robert H. The CIO, 1935-1955. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press,
1995, 241.
8
See: U.S. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency. “Assuring Full Employment in a
Free Competitive Economy. Report from the Committee on Banking and Currency to Accompany
S. 380 a Bill to Establish a National Policy and Program for Assuring Continuing Full Employment
in a Free Competitive Economy, Through the Concerted Efforts of Industry, Agriculture, Labor,
State and Local Governments, and the Federal Government,” September 22, 1945, 48.
9
“Thank God It’s Ended!” The Chicago Defender, August 10, 1946. “FEPC Suffers In Congress:
House And Senate Block Passage.” The Chicago Defender, July 20, 1946.
10
Zieger, The CIO, 243.

275

11
Knighton, William. “Democratic Left Suffers: Crumbles Badly In Election Yielding GOP
Congress.” The Baltimore Sun, November 7, 1946. 1.
12
Quoted in Zieger, The CIO 230.
13
Wright, Gavin. “The New Deal and the Modernization of the South.” Federal History no. 2 (January
2010): 59-60.
14
Griffith, Barbara S. The Crisis of American Labor: Operation Dixie and the Defeat of the CIO.
Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1988, 3, 22. Zieger, The CIO, 231.
15
Zieger, The CIO, 233.
16
Griffin, Larry J., and Robert Korstad. “Class as Race and Gender: Making and Breaking a Labor
Union in the Jim Crow South.” Social Science History 19, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 427.
17
Quoted in Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 78-79.
18
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 63.
19
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 46.
20
Minchin, Timothy J. What Do We Need a Union For?: The TWUA in the South, 1945-1955. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1997, 3.
21
Korstad, Robert Rodgers. Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the
Mid-Twentieth-Century South. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, 298.
22
Zieger, The CIO, 232.
23
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 23-25.
24
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 37.
25
Zieger, argues, “unless a workplace held a large black majority, SOC’s course of stressing pure-
and-simple gains and soft-pedaling the CIO’s progressive political agenda made obvious sense. See:
The CIO, 232, 240.
26
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 37. Zieger, The CIO, 232.
27
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 221.
28
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 41.
29
Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, 231.
30
Honey, Southern Labor and Black Civil Rights, 229. Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 66-67.
31
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 29.
32
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 46-47.
33
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 60.
34
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 51, 60. Zieger, The CIO, 236-37.
35
On housing in Kannapolis, see: Zieger, The CIO, 237. On Cannon Mills’ profits, see: “Cannon
Mills Company Annual Report -- 1946.,” 1946. ProQuest Annual Reports.
http://search.proquest.com/docview/88183609?accountid=14749.
36
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 291-292.
37
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 292-294.

276

38
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 295.
39
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 30. Zieger, The CIO, 238.
40
“Report of the President’s Temporary Commission on Employee Loyalty,” November 26, 1946.
Official File, Truman Papers. The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library, 3.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/loyaltyprogram/documents/index.ph
p?pagenumber=3&documentdate=1946-11-26&documentid=4-1. Katznelson, Ira. Fear Itself: The
New Deal and the Origins of Our Time. New York: Liveright Publishing Corporation, 2013, 459.
41
Storrs, Landon R. Y. The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left. Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2013, 287.
42
Lichtenstein, Nelson. “From Corporatism to Collective Bargaining: Organized Labor and the
Eclipse of Social Democracy in the Postwar Era.” In The Rise and Fall of the New Deal Order, 1930-
1980, edited by Steve Fraser and Gary Gerstle. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1989,
134.
43
Zieger, The CIO, 246-47.
44
However, as with the choice to emphasize textile workers over tobacco workers, the type of
World War II-forged “blue-collar identity” that this facet of Taft-Hartley undermined, emphasized
the whiteness and maleness of U.S. workers. Zieger, The CIO, 247. Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the
American Dream: Politics and Economy of the US Working Class. London: Verso, 1987, 89-90.
45
Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century.
London; New York: Verso, 1998, 151-153.
46
Murray, R. Emmett. The Lexicon of Labor: More than 500 Key terms, Biographical Sketches, and Historical
Insights Concerning Labor in America. New York: New Press, 2010, 195.
47
Katznelson, Fear Itself, 629.
48
Wilkins, Roy. “The Watchtower.” Los Angeles Sentinel, July 10, 1947, 7.
49
“Randolph Hits Taft-Hartley Labor Edict.” New York Amsterdam News, July 12, 1947, 2.
50
Patterson, William L. “Who’s Kidding Who?” The Chicago Defender (National Edition), September 6,
1947, 14. On flood control, see: Du Bois, W.E.B. “The Winds Of Time.” The Chicago Defender, June
28, 1947.
51
“Negro Women Hardest Hit By Taft-Hartley Bill.” Atlanta Daily World, July 3, 1947, 7. MacLean,
Nancy. “Gender Is Powerful: The Long Reach of Feminism.” OAH Magazine of History 20, no. 5
(October 1, 2006): 20. Swerdlow, Amy. “Congress of American Women.” In Encyclopedia of the
American Left, edited by Mari Jo Buhle, Paul Buhle, and Dan Georgakas, 161–162. Urbana and
Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1992, 161-162. MacLean, Nancy. The American Women’s
Movement, 1945-2000: a Brief History with Documents. Bedford Series in History and Culture. Boston:
Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2009, 6-9.
52
This pamphlet is written under pseudonyms by Phil Singer and Grace Lee Boggs. At the time,
both were members of the Johnson-Forest Tendency, which was at time of publication moving
from the Workers Party to the Socialist Workers Party. Romano, Paul, and Ria Stone. The American
Worker. Detroit: Bewick Editions, 1947, 22. Boggs, Grace Lee. Living for Change: An Autobiography.
Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998, 62-64.

277

53
Foster, James Caldwell. The Union Politic: The CIO Political Action Committee. Columbia: University of
Missouri Press, 1975, 72-75.
54
“100,000 Auto Workers Stage ‘Save Labor’ Rally In Detroit.” The Baltimore Sun, April 25, 1947.
“Labor Bill Protested By Parade of 140,000.” The Hartford Courant, June 11, 1947.
55
Zieger, The CIO, 249.
56
Zieger, The CIO, 249.
57
Zieger, The CIO, 250.
58
“CIO Rejects Strike Idea: Labor Fight On New Law In Courts Instead Proposed.” The Baltimore
Sun, June 28, 1947. “CIO General Walkout Plan Voted Down: Leadership Decides To Fight Taft-
Hartley Law in Courts, Polls.” The Hartford Courant, June 28, 1947.
59
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 368-372.
60
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 369. “R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company Annual Report -- 1947.”
ANN ARBOR: ProQuest Annual Reports, 1947.
http://search.proquest.com/docview/88185402?accountid=14749.
61
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 376, 380, 386.
62
Huntley, Horace. “The Red Scare and Black Workers in Alabama: The International Union of
Mine, Mill, and Smelter Workers, 1945-1953.” In Labor Divided: Race and Ethnicity in United States
Labor Struggles, 1835-1960. SUNY Series in American Labor History. Albany: State University of
New York Press, 1990, 131.
63
Lichtenstein, Nelson. The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit: Walter Reuther and the Fate of American Labor.
New York, NY: Basic Books, 1995, 274. Schlesinger, Arthur M. Robert Kennedy and His Times. 1st
Mariner Books ed. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002, 291.
64
Murolo, Priscilla, and A. B Chitty. From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend: A Short, Illustrated
History of Labor in the United States. New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W. Norton, 2001, 236.
Gellman, Erik. Death Blow to Jim Crow: The National Negro Congress and the Rise of Militant Civil Rights.
Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012, 209.
65
Bérubé, Allan. “No Race-Baiting, Red-Baiting, or Queer-Baiting! The Marine Cooks and Sewards
Union from the Depression to the Cold War.” In My Desire for History: Essays in Gay, Community, and
Labor History, edited by John D’Emilio and Estelle B Freedman. Chapel Hill: University of North
Carolina Press, 2011, 315-317.
66
Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 393.
67
Huntley, “The Red Scare and Black Workers in Alabama,” 138-145.
68
Minchin, What Do We Need a Union For?, 220.
69
Such aspirations included and were informed by those of the Communist Party, but can’t be
reduced to that. See: Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism, 399.
70
MacLean, The American Women’s Movement, 7.
71
For some of the impacts of the Red Scare on the civil rights and labor movements in the early
1950s, see: Lang, Clarence. “Freedom Train Derailed: The National Negro Labor Council and the
Nadir of Black Radicalism.” In Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement:

278

“Another Side of the Story”, edited by Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang. New York: Palgrave
Macmillan, 2009, 163.
72
Storrs, Landon R. Y. The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of the New Deal Left. Politics and Society
in Twentieth-century America. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, 1.
73
Storrs, The Second Red Scare, 262.
74
Griffith, The Crisis of American Labor, 59.
75
Weir, Stan. Singlejack Solidarity. Edited by George Lipsitz. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota
Press, 2004, 263-266.
76
Bérubé, “No Race-Baiting, Red-Baiting, or Queer-Baiting!, 314.
77
Schrecker, Ellen. The Age of McCarthyism: A Brief History with Documents. 2nd ed. The Bedford Series
in History and Culture. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2002, 86.
78
Storrs has documented that as least 2,700 federal governmental workers were fired, and another
12,000 resigned. See: Storrs, The Second Red Scare, 3. Schrecker, The Age of McCarthyism, 86-87.
79
Katznelson, Ira, Kim Geiger, and Daniel Kryder. “Limiting Liberalism: The Southern Veto in
Congress, 1933-1950.” Political Science Quarterly 108, no. 2 (Summer 1993): 283–306.
80
Friedman, Tami J. “Communities in Competition: Capital Migration and Plant Relocation in the
U.S. Carpet Industry, 1929-1975.” Dissertation, Columbia University, 2001. Cowie, Jefferson. Capital
Moves: RCA’s Seventy-Year Quest for Cheap Labor. New York: New Press: Distributed by W.W.
Norton, 2001.
81
I define “Jim Crown monetary policy” as “anti-democratic decisions about interest rates that
undermine the power of the most marginalized working-class people, and in particular, but not only,
Black people.” I explore this concept further in the subsequent chapter.
82
Thorbecke, Willem. “A Dual Mandate for the Federal Reserve: The Pursuit of Price Stability and
Full Employment.” Eastern Economic Journal 28, no. 2 (2002): 255.
83
Velde, Francois. “The Recession of 1937—A Cautionary Tale.” Economic Perspectives 33, no. 4
(Winter 2009): 20-22.
84
Greider, William. Secrets of the Temple: How the Federal Reserve Runs the Country. 1st Touchstone ed.
New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989, 321.
85
Greider, William. Secrets of the Temple, 321.
86
Eichengreen, Barry, and Peter M. Garber. “Before the Accord: U.S. Monetary-Financial
Policy, 1945-51.” In Financial Markets and Financial Crises, edited by R. Glenn Hubbard. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991, 180.
87
Greider, William. Secrets of the Temple, 323.
88
Bernancke, Ben S. “Central Bank Independence, Transparency, and Accountability.” presented at
the Institute for Monetary and Economic Studies International Conference, Bank of Japan, Tokyo,
Japan, May 26, 2010, 9.
89
Greider, William. Secrets of the Temple, 327.

279

90
Hargrove, Erwin C., and Samuel A. Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under
Chairman Leon H. Keyserling, 1949-1953: Oral History Interview.” In The President and the Council of
Economic Advisers: Interviews with CEA Chairmen. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1984, 83.
91
Nourse, Edwin G. “Resignation Letter from Edwin G. Nourse to Harry S. Truman with Related
Correspondence [draft],” November 11, 1948. Student Research File, Federal Reserve Archival
System for Economic Research (Hereafter cited as FRASER),
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/stures/record.php?id=17307.
92
Flash Jr., Edward S. Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership: The Council of Economic Advisors. New
York: Columbia University Press, 1965, 24-25. Hess, Jerry H. “Oral History Interview with Leon H.
Keyserling.” Harry S. Truman Library Independence, Missouri, May 3, 1971.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/keyserl1.htm#note.
93
Brazelton, W. Robert. Designing US Economic Policy: An Analytical Biography of Leon H. Keyserling. New
York: Palgrave, 2001, 24.
94
Flash, Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership, 35.
95
“A Report to the National Security Council - NSC 68,” April 12, 1950.
http://www.trumanlibrary.org/whistlestop/study_collections/coldwar/documents/pdf/10-1.pdf. 3.
96
Gaddis, John Lewis, and Paul Nitze. “NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat Reconsidered.” International
Security 4, no. 4 (Spring 1980): 165.
97
McCormick, America’s Half-Century, 73-98.
98
Block, Fred L. The Origins of International Economic Disorder: A Study of United States International
Monetary Policy from World War II to the Present. Berkeley, Cal.: University of California Press, 1977,
105-106. Arrighi, The Long Twentieth Century, 297. McCormick, America’s Half-Century, 95. Panitch and
Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism, 94.
99
Flash, Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership, 37. Block, The Origins of International Economic
Disorder, 106.
100
Gaddis, John Lewis, and Paul Nitze. “NSC 68 and the Soviet Threat Reconsidered,” 173.
101
Storrs, The Second Red Scare, 170.
102
Block, The Origins of International Economic Disorder, 107.
103
Kolko, Main Currents in Modern American History, 318.
104
Block, The Origins of International Economic Disorder, 243.
105
Acheson’s biographer has suggested this widely reported quote should probably be attributed to
Paul Nitze, but nonetheless, Acheson would agree with it. Beisner, Robert L. Dean Acheson: A life in
the Cold War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009, 377.
106
Office of Management and Budget. Budget of the United States Government: Historical Tables, Fiscal
Year 2013. Washington D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2012, 347. See also: Block, The
Origins of International Economic Disorder, 108.
107
U.S. Census Bureau. “No. HS-36. Consumer and Gross Domestic Price Indexes: 1913 to 2002.”
In Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2003. Washington D.C., 2003.
http://www.census.gov/compendia/statab/hist_stats.html.
108
Flash, Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership, 77-79.

280

109
Some would also argue that the Federal Reserve Act itself (Section 10) grants the power to the
Secretary of the Treasury. Gerald Epstein and Juliet Schor note this point, but suggest that Snyder
chose not to invoke such a power since he had “lost his stomach for the battle.” On this point, see:
“FRB: Federal Reserve Act: Section 10.” Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. Accessed
August 28, 2013. http://www.federalreserve.gov/aboutthefed/section%2010.htm. Epstein, Gerald,
and Juliet Schor. “The Federal Reserve-Treasury Accord and the Construction of the Post-War
Monetary Regime in the United States.” Social Concept 7, no. 1 (1995), 43. For Keyserling’s memo,
see: Keyserling, Leon H. “Leon H. Keyserling to Charles S. Murphy, Including Proposed Response
Drafted for President Truman to Send to Thomas McCabe,” February 8, 1951. Student Research
File. FRASER. http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/stures/record.php?id=17398.
110
Martin, William McChesney. “Meeting in the Cabinet Room, White House,” February 26, 1951.
FRASER, http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/martin/record.php?id=4813. William McChesney Martin Jr.
Collection. Meltzer, Allan H. A History of the Federal Reserve. Volume 1: 1913-1951. Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2004, 708.
111
Flash, Economic Advice and Presidential Leadership, 83.
112
Hess, Jerry H. “Oral History Interview with Leon H. Keyserling.” Harry S. Truman Library
Independence, Missouri, May 3, 1971. http://www.trumanlibrary.org/oralhist/keyserl1.htm#note.
113
Hetzel, Robert L., and Ralph F. Leach. “The Treasury-Fed Accord: A New Narrative Account.”
Economic Quarterly 87, no. 1 (Winter 2001): 52.
114
United States. Congress. Senate. Committee on Banking and Currency. “Nomination of William
McChesney Martin, Jr. Hearing before the Senate Committee on Banking and Currency,” March 19,
1951. William McChesney Martin Jr. Collection. Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic
Research, FRASER. http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/martin/record.php?id=4365.
115
Hetzel and Leach, “The Treasury-Fed Accord,” 52.
116
Sproul, Allan. “Letter to Arthur,” August 21, 1977. Box: 9, Folder: 5. Allan Sproul Papers, BANC
MSS 79/26 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
117
Sproul, Allan. “Letter to William Kempay,” October 6, 1977. Box: 9, Folder: 5. Allan Sproul
Papers, BANC MSS 79/26 c, The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
118
Epstein and Schor. “The Federal Reserve-Treasury Accord and the Construction of the Post-War
Monetary Regime in the United States, ” 29-30.
119
On the Federal Reserve as a premier engine of ruling class power see: Livingston, James. Origins of
the Federal Reserve System: Money, Class, and Corporate Capitalism, 1890-1913. Ithaca, N.Y: Cornell
University Press, 1986, 18. Reich, Robert B. Locked in the Cabinet. New York: Knopf, 1997, 85.
Henwood, Doug. Wall Street: How it Works and for Whom. London; New York: Verso, 1998, 97, 218-
19. Center for Popular Economics. Economics for the 99%. Amherst, MA: Center for Popular
Economics, 2012, 17-18.
120
Epstein, Gerald, and Juliet Schor. “The Federal Reserve-Treasury Accord and the Construction
of the Post-War Monetary Regime in the United States, ” 11.
121
This attitude was aptly characterized by the conservative economist Milton Friedman. As
Friedman explained, “few trends could so thoroughly undermine the very foundations of our free
society as the acceptance by corporate officials of a social responsibility other than to make as much
money for their stockholders as possible.” See: Friedman, Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. 40th

281

anniversary ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, 133. Galbraith, John Kenneth. The New
Industrial State. 3rd ed. New York, NY: The New American Library, 1978, 105.
122
“Text of Wilson’s Address Warning of Inflation Dangers and Need for Controls.” The New York
Times, July 10, 1951.
123
I don’t mean to suggest that inflationary spirals are not a problem. Indeed, especially as it pertains
to wage-price inflation, they have great potential to further segment an already divided working-class
along the racialized, gendered, and regional lines of differential power; workers in a strong position
to keep up with rising prices can win wage gains, while those without see their real wages squeezed.
Anxieties about inflation during this period were well grounded. From 1945-1952, the Consumer
Price Index went up by 49%. See: “Inflation Is the Devil.” Life, July 23, 1951. Sparrow, James T.
“‘Buying Our Boys Back’: The Mass Foundations of Fiscal Citizenship in World War II.” Journal of
Policy History 20, no. 2 (April, 2009), 280.
124
See: “Roper Commercial Survey,” June 1950. IPOLL Databank. The Roper Center for Public
Opinion Research, University of Connecticut.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html.
125
For an influential multi-faceted account of the period, see: Meyerowitz, Joanne J., ed. Not June
Cleaver: Women and Gender in Postwar America, 1945-1960. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1994.
126
Pfeffer, Paula F. A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. Baton Rouge: Louisiana
State University Press, 1990, 133, 136-137
127
Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph,147. Phillips, Kimberley L. War! What Is It Good For?: Black Freedom
Struggles and the U.S. Military from World War II to Iraq. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina
Press, 2012, 106-107.
128
Phillips, War! What Is It Good For?, 154.
129
Phillips, War! What Is It Good For?, 147.
130
U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1960. 81st Edition. Washington D.C.,
1960, 205. Jones, Isaac. “Unemployment Mounts in Detroit Auto Plants.” Atlanta Daily World,
January 24, 1952, 1.
131
Phillips, War! What Is It Good For?, 146.
132
Cordiner, Ralph J. “Automation in the Manufacturing Industries.” In Automation and Society, edited
by Howard Boone Jacobson and Joseph S. Roucek. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959, 22.
133
Noble, Forces of Production, 26, 73. . Harris, William H. The Harder We Run: Black Workers Since the
Civil War. New York: Oxford University Press, 1982, 128.
134
Kolko, Main Currents in Modern American History, 319.
135
Markusen, Ann R. Dismantling the Cold War Economy. New York: BasicBooks, 1992, 188-190
136
Green, James R. The World of the Worker: Labor in Twentieth-Century America. American Century
Series. New York: Hill and Wang, 1980, 204. See also: Friedman, Tami J. “Exploiting the North-
South Differential: Corporate Power, Southern Politics, and the Decline of Organized Labor After
World War II.” Journal of American History 95, no. 2 (September, 2008): 323–348.
137
Zieger, The CIO, 339.
138
Davis, Mike. Prisoners of the American Dream, 194.

282

139
Markusen, Ann. “The Military Remapping of the United States.” Built Environment 11, no. 3
(1985): 173, 178.
140
Manor, Stella. “Geographic Changes in U.S. Employment From 1950 to 1960.” Monthly Labor
Review 86, no. 1 (1963): 2.
141
As Louis Hyman notes, however, these attempts at restricting installment credit largely failed due
to the inability to regulate revolving credit, which thereby ascended to prominence. See: Hyman,
Louis. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2011,
127-131.
142
Wigderson, Seth. “The Wages of Anticommunism: U.S. Labor and the Korean War.” In Labor’s
Cold War: Local Politics in a Global Context. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2008, 233.
143
Townsend, as President of the United Transport Service Employees had done his part to enable
this situation by assisting in the destruction of Local 22 of the FTA. For quote, see: Townsend,
Willard. “Fate of the Negro Worker In Peacetime Is The Fate of All Workers.” The Chicago Defender
(National Edition), August 2, 1952, 11. For Townsend and FTA, see: Korstad, Civil Rights Unionism,
395. Harris, The Harder We Run, 138.
144
Zieger, The CIO, 337.
145
Quoted in Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 280.
146
As Nelson Lichtenstein notes, the pivotal moment came in February 1949 when mild deflation
allowed General Motors to cut wages and there was corresponding frustration amongst rank and file
workers. See: Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 277-281.
147
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996, 136
148
Brody, David. In Labor’s Cause: Main Themes on the History of the American Worker. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993, 221-224.
149
Boggs, James. “The American Revolution: Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook (1963).” In
Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James Boggs Reader, edited by Stephen M Ward. Detroit: Wayne
State University Press, 2011, 92. Boggs, Living for Change, 91.
150
Zieger, The CIO, 342.
151
This quote is attributed for Pittsburgh Congressional Representative Herman Eberharter.
Congress of Industrial Organizations Political Action Committee. “1954 Handbook,” 1954. Kheel
Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, M.P. Catherwood Library, Cornell
University, 234. Many thanks to Heather Furnas for making this document available to me.
152
CIO Committee on Economic Policy. “CIO’s 10 Point Program to Halt Growing
Unemployment,” 1954, 1-4. Congress of Industrial Organizations Political Action Committee. “1954
Handbook,” 226-230.
153
Zieger, The CIO, 341.
154
“ORC Public Opinion Index.” The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of
Connecticut, November 1953. iPOLL Databank.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html.

283

155
“ORC Public Opinion Index.” The Roper Center for Public Opinion Research, University of
Connecticut, July 1954. iPOLL Databank.
http://www.ropercenter.uconn.edu/data_access/ipoll/ipoll.html.
156
CIO Committee on Economic Policy. “CIO’s 10 Point Program to Halt Growing
Unemployment,” 1954, 4.
157
Quoted in: Gabin, Nancy. Feminism in the Labor Movement: Women and the United Auto Workers, 1935-
1975. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1990, 154.
158
Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement, 154.
159
Cowley, Joyce. “Youth In a Delinquent Society.” Fourth International 16, no. 4 (Fall 1955): 111–
119.
160
Gordon, Linda. Heroes of Their Own Lives: The Politics and History of Family Violence. New York:
Viking, 1988, 155.
161
Eisenhower, Dwight. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union,” January 6,
1955. http://www.eisenhower.archives.gov/all_about_ike/speeches/1955_state_of_the_union.pdf.
162
“Link Juvenile Delinquency to Job Dearth.” Chicago Daily Tribune, December 30, 1955.
163
MacCunn, Richard Dyer. “Current Cycle of Films Pointing to a Problem.” The Christian Science
Monitor, December 8, 1955.
164
Lindsay, Malvina. “‘Punish the Parent’ Remedy Is Revived.” The Washington Post and Times Herald,
December 22, 1955.
165
Cowley, Joyce. “Working Mothers and Delinquency.” The Militant, September 12, 1955, 2.
166
United Auto Workers. “A Union Protects Its Women Members (1955).” In The American Women’s
Movement, 1945-2000: A Brief History with Documents, edited by Nancy MacLean. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2009, 56.
167
Cowley, Joyce. “Working Mothers and Delinquency.” The Militant, September 12, 1955, 2.
168
Self defines “breadwinner liberalism” as a governmental program crafted to support an idealized
“white middle-class nuclear family headed by a patriotic and heterosexual male.” Self, Robert O. All
in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. New York: Hill and Wang, 2012, 4.
See also: MacLean, Nancy. “Postwar Women’s History: The ‘Second Wave’ or the End of the
Family Wage?” In A Companion to Post-1945 America, edited by Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy
Rosenzweig, 235–259. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2007.
169
See especially: Self, Robert O. All in the Family, 309-338.
170
Gabin, Feminism in the Labor Movement, 143.
171
Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo
Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987, 49-50.
172
Robinson, The Montgomery Bus Boycott, 124, 103.
173
U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1960. 81st Edition. Washington D.C.,
1960, 234.
174
Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Telephone Broadcast to the AFL-CIO Merger Meeting in New York
City.” The American Presidency Project, December 5, 1955.

284

http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=10394#axzz2hcbHYNLC. See also: Buhle, Paul. Taking
Care of Business: Samuel Gompers, George Meany, Lane Kirkland, and the Tragedy of American Labor. New
York: Monthly Review Press, 1999, 135.
175
GKH. “Labor Unity: A Momentous Event.” The New International 21, no. 4 (Winter, 1955-1956):
214. “Mr. George Meany And The New AFL-CIO.” The Baltimore Sun, December 5, 1955, 14.
176
Wolman, Leo. “Labor Builds Political Power.” Nation’s Business, June 1955, 30.
177
The author declared, “It is one of the puzzles of our recent political and legislative history that a
community which had traditionally been so sensitive to the threat of power in private business
should appear so indifferent to the rise of a still greater private power in organized labor.” Wolman,
“Labor Builds Political Power,” 94. On the effect of such corporate strategies, see also: Moody,
Kim. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. London; New York: Verso, 1988, 52.
178
“Wildcat Strikes by 40,000 Auto Workers Shut Down 13 GM Plants as Talks Resume.” Wall Street
Journal, June 9, 1955. Boggs, “The American Revolution,” 92.
179
“Uprisings Idle 50,000 Auto Workers: Extension Averts GM Strike But ‘Local Issues’ Flare Up.”
Daily Boston Globe, June 8, 1955.
180
Glaberman, Martin. “Be His Payment High of Low”: The American Working Class of the Sixties. Facing
Reality, Bewick Editions, 1975, 8.
181
Zieger, The CIO, 368.
182
GKH, “Labor Unity: A Momentous Event,” 213.
183
Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 322-323.
184
Kerry, Tom. “The Political Meaning of the CIO-AFL Merger.” Fourth International 16, no. 2
(Spring 1955): 42-43.
185
GKH, “Labor Unity,” 213.
186
Payne, Ethel L. “Unionists Worry Over Racial Status In Merger.” The Chicago Defender (National
Edition), December 3, 1955, 4.
187
“Oppose Biased Union’s Bid To Join Merger.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition), November
19, 1955, 3.
188
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address by A. Philip Randolph, Third Annual Conference: National Trade
Union Committee for Racial Justice,” November 11-12, 1955. Box: 39. A. Philip Randolph Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
189
Payne, Ethel. “Combined AFL-CIO Launches Strong Fight Against Jim-Crow In Nation.” The
Chicago Defender (National Edition), December 17, 1955, 5.
190
On Meany, see: Zieger, Robert H. “George Meany: Labor’s Organization Man.” In Labor Leaders
in America, edited by Melvyn Dubofsky and Warren R. Van Tine. The Working Class in American
History. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1987, 324-349. Buhle, Taking Care of Business, 91-145.
191
Goldin, Claudia, and Robert A. Margo. “The Great Compression: The Wage Structure in the
United States at Mid- Century.” The Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 1 (February 1992): 1–34.

285

Chapter 3
1
Cordiner, Ralph J. “Automation in the Manufacturing Industries.” In Automation and Society, edited
by Howard Boone Jacobson and Joseph S. Roucek. New York: Philosophical Library, 1959, 20.
2
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Transition of Black Labor from Slavery to the Twentieth Century,
Keynote Address...at 3rd Annual Convention of the Negro American Labor Council, Sheraton-
Atlantic Hotel, New York, NY,” November 9, 1962. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1962. A. Philip
Randolph Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. (Hereafter cited as Randolph Papers).
3
Nash, Malcolm. “Blind Musician Sees Automation Curtailing Work for Sightless.” New York
Amsterdam News, April 20, 1957. “AME Zion to Hear Pianist.” New York Amsterdam News, February
23, 1957.
4
“Automation” begins its rise in the lexicon in the postwar period, gaining steady usage to identify
the social relations of management’s increased use of machines to undermine worker’s skill, pace of
work, and shop-floor control. Ford executive Demar S. Harder is credited with coining the term in
1946 to describe, the “automatic transfer of work-pieces from one machine to another in the
production process without human aid.” See: Veillette, Paul T. “The Rise of the Concept to
Automation.” In Automation and Society, edited by Howard Boone Jacobson and Joseph S. Roucek.
New York: Philosophical Library, 1959, 3.
5
“Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject: Unemployment Rate, 1948-1958.” Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Accessed July 1, 2013. http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet.
6
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Struggle of Black Labor for Status in the Revolution of Automation:
Address...to Gamma Alpha Sigma Chapter of Phi Bete Sigma Fraternity Inc., 48th Anniversary
Conclave, Cleveland, OH,” December 27, 1962. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1962. Randolph Papers.
7
Randolph, A. Philip. “Statement...at the Fiftieth Anniversary Conference of the National Urban
League, Hotel Commodore, New York City,” September 7, 1960. Box: 40, Folder: Speeches, 1960.
Randolph Papers.
8
Raskin, A.H. “Labor: ‘Featherbedding’ Issue: Automation Spurs Rules Dispute.” The New York
Times, October 11, 1959.
9
In 1953, the UAW’s convention resolution on automation was titled, “The Second Industrial
revolution.” See: Paschell, William. “The 14th Convention of the UAW-CIO.” Monthly Labor Review
76, no. 496 (May 1953): 501. This term was frequently invoked to describe the changes underway.
See: “Automation and Technological Change: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Economic
Stabilization of the Joint Committee on the Economic Report to the Congress of the United States.”
U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1955, 246.
10
Poll cited in: Widick, B.J. Labor Today: The Triumphs and Failures of Unionism in the United States.
Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1964, 3. “Nothing to Fear!” Pittsburgh Courier, April 2, 1955.
11
Steigerwald, David. “Walter Reuther, the UAW, and the Dilemmas of Automation.” Labor History
51, no. 3 (August 2010): 429–453.
12
Noble, David F. Forces of Production: A Social History of Industrial Automation. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986, 75.
13
Wiener defined cybernetics broadly as “the study of control and communication in the living
being and in the machine.” Brown, Gordon S., and Norbert Wiener. “Automation, 1955: A
Retrospective.” Annals of the History of Computing 6, no. 4 (October 1984): 383.

286

14
As Wiener wrote to Boeing, “If therefore I do not desire to participate in the bombing or
poisoning of defenseless peoples—and I most certainly do not—I must take a serious responsibility
as to those to whom I disclose my scientific ideas.” Wiener, Norbert, and Leo Pach. “From the
Archives.” Science, Technology, & Human Values 8, no. 3 (Summer 1983): 37. See also: Noble, Forces of
Production, 74.
15
Conway, Flo, and Jim Siegelman. Dark Hero of the Information Age: In Search of Norbert Wiener, the
Father of Cybernetics. New York: Basic Books, 2005, 255-271.
16
Conway and Siegelman, Dark Hero of the Information Age, 237-245.
17
Conway and Siegelman. Dark Hero of the Information Age, 245.
18
Wiener, Norbert. “Letter to Walter Reuther,” August 13, 1949. (Author’s possession.)
19
Conway and Siegelman, 245.
20
Paschell, “The 14th Convention of the UAW-CIO,” 496.
21
Bannon, Ken, and Nelson Sharp. “Impact of Automation on Ford-UAW Relationships.” Monthly
Labor Review 81, no. 6 (June 1958): 612–615.
22
“Walter Reuther: The Mike Wallace Interview,” January 25, 1958. Harry Ransom Center, The
University of Texas at Austin.
http://www.hrc.utexas.edu/multimedia/video/2008/wallace/reuther_walter_t.html.
23
For Reuther’s stance on the GAW and the 1955 contract, see: Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous
Man in Detroit, 284-285, 297. Steigerwald,“Walter Reuther, the UAW, and the Dilemmas of
Automation,” 437.
24
“Walter Reuther: The Mike Wallace Interview,” January 25, 1958.
25
Weinberg, Edgar. “Inquiry into the Effects of Automation.” Monthly Labor Review 79, no. 1
(January 1956): 13.
26
Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 295-296.
27
Weir, Stan. “New Technology: A Catalyst for Crises in Collective Bargaining, Industrial Discipline,
and Labor Law (1984),” In Singlejack Solidarity, 45.
28
Weir, “The Human Cost of Automation (1992),” In Singlejack Solidarity, 69. Rosenstein, Mark.
“The Rise of Maritime Containerization in the Port of Oakland.” M.A. Thesis, New York
University, 2000, 23.
29
Levinson, Marc. The Box: How the Shipping Container Made the World Smaller and the World Economy
Bigger. Princeton, N.J.; Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2008, 109-110.
30
Levinson, The Box, 111.
31
Swados, Harvey. “West Coast Waterfront: End of An Era.” In A Radical at Large: American Essays.
London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968, 42. Weir, “New Technology,” 44-47.
32
Levinson, The Box, 113-116.
33
Levinson, The Box, 123.
34
Swados, “West Coast Waterfront: End of An Era,” 36.
35
Weir, “Effects of Automation on the Lives of Longshoremen (1983).” In Singlejack Solidarity, 92.

287

36
Weir, “Containerization Makes for a Lonely Waterfront (1978).” In Singlejack Solidarity, 73.
37
Levinson, The Box, 116-117.
38
Maggard, Charles “Buck”. “A Conversation With Charles ‘Buck’ Maggard” Interview by Robert
Korstad, September 25, 1992. Southern Rural Poverty Collection, DeWitt Wallace Center for Media
& Democracy. http://dewitt.sanford.duke.edu/rutherfurd-living-history/southern-rural-poverty-
collection/#maggard.
39
Raskin, A.H. “Pensioner Ratio in Mining Soars: Union Debate Shows Scores of Locals Having
Only Idle as Machinery Cuts Jobs.” The New York Times, October 9, 1956, 16. Dubofsky, Melvyn,
and Warren R. Van Tine. John L. Lewis: A Biography. Abridged ed. Urbana: University of Illinois
Press, 1986, 357.
40
Maggard, “A Conversation With Charles ‘Buck’ Maggard.”
41
Dubofsky and Van Tine, John L. Lewis, 357-360.
42
Cited in: Tharpe, Everette. “Appalachian Committee for Full Employment: Background and
Purpose.” The Appalachian South 1 (Summer 1965): 45.
43
Harriman, John. “Union Leader’s Policies Have Paid Off in High Wages and Big Trade Exports:
John L. Lewis Welcomed Automation.” Daily Boston Globe, December 4, 1958, 33.
44
Many thanks to Kopana Terry for making this interview available to me. Maggard, Charles (Buck).
Interview with Charles (Buck) Maggard. Interview by Thomas Kiffmeyer, November 29, 1990. War
On Poverty Oral History Project. Appalachia Oral History Collection, Louie B. Nunn Center for
Oral History, University of Kentucky. http://nunncenter.org/OHMS-
Viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=1991OH025_App297_Maggard_not_indexed.xml.
45
Maggard, “A Conversation With Charles ‘Buck’ Maggard.”
46
Bigart, Homer. “Depression Rivaling ’30s Grips Kentucky-Virginia Coal Area.” The New York
Times, January 11, 1959, 1, 40.
47
Maggard, Charles (Buck). “Interview with Charles (Buck) Maggard” Interview by Thomas
Kiffmeyer, November 29, 1990. War On Poverty Oral History Project. Appalachia Oral History
Collection. http://nunncenter.org/OHMS-
Viewer/viewer.php?cachefile=1991OH025_App297_Maggard_not_indexed.xml. Swados, Harvey.
“The Miners: Men Without Work.” In A Radical at Large: American Essays. London: Rupert Hart-
Davis, 1968, 20.
48
Swados, “The Miners: Men Without Work,” 15.
49
Swados, “The Miners: Men Without Work,” 28.
50
“Automation and Technological Change: Hearings Before the Subcommittee on Economic
Stabilization of the Joint Committee on the Economic Report to the Congress of the United States.”
U.S. Government Printing Office, October 1955, 104.
51
“National Steel Corporation Annual Report -- 1947.” ANN ARBOR: ProQuest Annual Reports,
1947. http://search.proquest.com/docview/88185909?accountid=14749. 6.
52
Barbour, George E. “Steel Strike Unites Workers in District.” Pittsburgh Courier, July 7, 1956.
53
Gottschalk, Marie. The Shadow Welfare State: Labor, Business, and the Politics of Health-Care in the United
States. Ithaca, N.Y: ILR Press, 2000, 16.

288

54
Stein, Judith. Running Steel, Running America: Race, Economic Policy and the Decline of Liberalism. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998, 16.
55
Bruno, Robert. “Steel on Strike: From 1936 to the Present.” In The Encyclopedia of Strikes in
American History, edited by Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness. Armonk, N.Y: M.E.
Sharpe, 2009, 368.
56
Rose, “The Struggle over Management Rights at US Steel,” 447.
57
Rose, “The Struggle over Management Rights at US Steel,” 465.
58
Cited in Rose, “The Struggle over Management Rights at US Steel,” 474.
59
Stein, Running Steel, Running America, 23-25. Bruno, “Steel on Strike,” 369-370.
60
Pfeffer, A. Philip Randolph,146.
61
Terkel, Studs. “E.D. Nixon.” In Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression. 1st trade
paperback ed. New York: Pantheon Books, 1986, 119.
62
Robinson, Jo Ann Gibson. The Montgomery Bus Boycott and the Women Who Started It: The Memoir of Jo
Ann Gibson Robinson. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1987, 27-28.
63
Wilson, Joseph F., ed. Tearing Down the Color Bar: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Brotherhood
of Sleeping Car Porters. New York: Columbia University Press, 1989, 51-55.
64
Randolph, A. Philip. “Statement to the Labor Conference on Human Rights, Los Angeles County
Central Labor Council,” October 3, 1958. Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
65
“Text of Eisenhower Address on National Economy.” New York Times, October 26, 1954.
66
Rose, Mark H. “Reframing American Highway Politics, 1956-1995.” Journal of Planning History 2,
no. 3 (2003): 213, 217. Rose, Mark H. Interstate: Express Highway Politics, 1939-1989. Rev. ed.
Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1990, 89-95. Kay, Jane Holtz. Asphalt Nation: How the
Automobile Took Over America, and How We Can Take It Back. Berkeley: University of California Press,
1998, 231-233.
67
Tye, Larry. Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. New York:
Henry Holt, 2005, 233.
68
Tye, Rising from the Rails, 231.
69
On the fracturing of the labor-management accord in 1958, see: Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous
Man in Detroit, 295.
70
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address by A. Philip Randolph, Third Annual Conference: National Trade
Union Committee for Racial Justice,” November 11-12, 1955. Box: 39. Randolph Papers.
71
Cited in Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 291.
72
“Walter Reuther: The Mike Wallace Interview,” January 25, 1958.
73
Hyman, Louis. Debtor Nation: The History of America in Red Ink. Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 2011, 132.
74
Hyman, Louis. Borrow: The America Way of Debt. New York: Vintage Books, 2012, 116.
75
Hyman, Debtor Nation, 156-157.
76
Beveridge, William H. Full Employment in a Free Society. George Allen and Unwin, 1944, 18.

289

77
Even Milton Friedman, an enthusiastic supporter of the Fed’s policies during this time, acceded
this point, stating on a 1958 television program that, “some of the measures which were taken to
counter inflation, a good objective and a good aim, have been carried too far in that diection and
have been one of the factors that tended to produce the recession.” See: “How Stong Is Our
Economy? (Transcript).” The Great Challenge. New York, NY: CBS, March 23, 1958. Box: 44, Folder:
5. Milton Friedman Papers, The Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
78
Marx, Karl. Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft). Translated by
Martin Nicolaus. London; New York: Penguin Books, 1993, 100. See also: Hall, Stuart. “Marx’s
Notes on Method: A ‘Reading’ of the ‘1857 Introduction.’” Cultural Studies 17, no. 2 (March 2003):
127-128.
79
On the political empowerment of organized labor, see: Disalvo, Daniel. “The Politics of a Party
Faction: The Liberal-Labor Alliance in the Democratic Party, 1948–1972.” Journal of Policy History 22,
no. 03 (June, 2010): 275. For the importance of the Fed in global capitalism, see: Panitch and
Gindin, The Making of Global Capitalism, 86-87.
80
Romer, Christina D., and David H. Romer. “A Rehabilitation of Monetary Policy in the 1950’s.”
American Economic Review 92, no. 2 (May 2002): 126.
81
Romer, Christina D., and David H. Romer. “A Rehabilitation of Monetary Policy in the 1950s,
Working Paper 8800.” National Bureau of Economic Research, February 2002: 3.
82
As Edwin Dickens has put it, “when the no-strike pledge expired, so did the Federal Reserve’s
efforts to stabilize the economy.” Auto and steel were the prime industries that the FOMC
concentrated on during this period. That summer, steel workers won a major contract after a 34 day
strike. See: Dickens, Edwin. “U.S. Monetary Policy In The 1950s: A Radical Political Economic
Approach.” Review of Radical Political Economics 27, no. 4 (December 1995), 87. Bruno, Robert. “Steel
on Strike: From 1936 to the Present.” In The Encyclopedia of Strikes in American History, edited by
Aaron Brenner, Benjamin Day, and Immanuel Ness. Armonk, N.Y: M.E. Sharpe, 2009, 369.
Metzgar, Jack. “Steel Strike (1959).” In Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-Class History, edited by
Eric Arnesen. New York: Routledge, 2007, 1322.
83
“General Motors Stock Split: Stockholders Must Pass On Directors’ Proposal.” The Baltimore Sun,
July 6, 1955, 1, 4.
84
“GM Dominates Trading With Jump of 15 Points.” The Christian Science Monitor, July 6, 1955, 12.
85
Federal Open Markets Committee. “Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve
System, Meeting Minutes, August 2, 1955,” August 2, 1955. 9-12.
86
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “Forty-Second Annual Report of the Board
of Governors of the Federal Reserve System Covering Operations for the Year 1955,” 1955, 101-
102.
87
Martin, William McChesney. “Address of Wm. McC. Martin, Jr. Chairman, Board of Governors of
the Federal Reserve System before the New York Group of the Investment Bankers Association of
America,” October 19, 1955. William McChesney Martin Jr. Collection. The Federal Reserve
Archival System for Economic Research.
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/historical/martin/martin55_1019.pdf.
88
Martin, “Address of Wm. McC. Martin,” October 19, 1955.

290

89
Revealing the class-bias of the Fed, however, members of the FOMC consistently used the term
“cost-price” instead of “wage-price,” illuminating their sensibilities as owners of capital who see
wages as “costs,” rather than the essential means of material reproduction.
90
Federal Open Markets Committee. “Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve
System, Meeting Minutes, March 27, 1956,” March 27, 1956. 31-33.
91
“Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, March 27,
1956,” 32.
92
Bremner, Robert P. Chairman of the Fed: William McChesney Martin, Jr., and the Creation of the Modern
American Financial System. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, 115-116. Hargrove and Morley,
“The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Arthur F. Burns, 1953-1956: Oral History
Interview,” 106.
93
Vardaman Sr.’s slogan when running for Governor was “A Vote for Vardaman is a Vote for white
supremacy.” See: Beezley, Paul R. “James K. Vardaman: ‘A Vote for White Supremacy’ and the
Politics of Racism.” In The Human Tradition in the Civil Rights Movement, edited by Susan M. Glisson.
The Human Tradition in America. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006. For Vardaman Jr. see:
“Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, March 27,
1956,” 34.
94
“Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, March 27,
1956,” 27.
95
“Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, March 27,
1956,” 34
96
“Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, March 27,
1956,” 34.
97
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System. “Forty-Third Annual Report of the Board of
Governors of the Federal Reserve System Covering Operations for the Year 1956,” June 3, 1957.
The Federal Reserve Archival System for Economic Research.
http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/publications/arfr/1950s/arfr_1956.pdf.
98
Bremner, Chairman of the Fed, 117.
99
Hargrove and Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Arthur F.
Burns, 1953-1956: Oral History Interview,” 110.
100
Hargrove and Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Raymond J.
Sauliner, 1956-1961: Oral History Interview,” 136.
101
Gable, Richard W. “The Politics and Economics of the 1957-1958 Recession.” The Western Political
Quarterly. 12, no. 2 (June 1959): 557-559. Bremner, Chairman of the Fed, 129.
102
Romer and Romer, “A Rehabilitation of Monetary Policy in the 1950s, Working Paper 8800,” 11.
103
Federal Open Markets Committee. “Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve
System, Meeting Minutes, July 17, 1956,” July 17, 1956.
104
Hargrove and Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Raymond J.
Sauliner, 1956-1961: Oral History Interview,” 124-125. Gable, “The Politics and Economics of the
1957-1958 Recession,” 558.
105
Bremner, Chairman of the Fed, 127.

291

106
For a debate on “inflationary psychology,” see: Federal Open Markets Committee. “Federal Open
Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, August 19, 1958,” August 19,
1958. On the Fed and auto and steel workers, see: Dickens, “U.S. Monetary Policy In The 1950s,”
97.
107
“Federal Open Markets Committee of the Federal Reserve System, Meeting Minutes, August 19,
1958,” 40.
108
Christina Romer served as Chair of President Obama’s Council of Economic Advisors from
2009-2010. Romer and Romer, “A Rehabilitation of Monetary Policy in the 1950s, Working Paper
8800,” 1, 16.
109
“Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population, 1942 to Date.” Bureau of Labor
Statistics, February 5, 2013. http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat01.htm.
110
Glaberman, Martin. Punching Out & Other Writings. Chicago Il.: C. H. Kerr Pub., 2002, 205.
111
Brenner, Robert. “The Political Economy of the Rank-and-File Rebellion.” In Rebel Rank and File,
49. Brody, David. In Labor’s Cause: Main Themes on the History of the American Worker. New York:
Oxford University Press, 1993, 221-250. Lichtenstein, Nelson. Labor’s War at Home: The CIO in World
War II. Cambridge; New York: Cambridge University Press, 1987, 226.
112
Lichtenstein, The Most Dangerous Man in Detroit, 288.
113
It is likely that these workers were members of the UAW’s Local 7, which featured a number of
radical workers during this time including those aligned with Trotskyist movements, James Boggs
and B.J. Widick, and Industrial Workers of the World member, Nick DiGaetano. “Members Picket
U.A.W.: Jobless Chrysler Workers Hit Overtime for Others.” The New York Times, November 19,
1958. See also: Glaberman, “Be His Payment High of Low,” 5. Boggs, “The American Revolution,” 94.
Mason, Philip P. “Labor History Archives at Wayne State University.” Labor History 5, no. 1 (January
1964): 70.
114
Armknecht, Paul A., and John F. Early. “Quits in Manufacturing: A Study of Their Causes.”
Monthly Labor Review 95 (November 1972): 32, 36, 37.
115
Swados, Harvey. “Less Work—Less Leisure.” In A Radical at Large: American Essays. London:
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968, 58.
116
Swados, Harvey. “The Myth of the Happy Worker.” In A Radical at Large: American Essays.
London: Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968, 67.
117
Eisenhower, Dwight. “Veto of Bill Authorizing Appropriations for Rivers, Harbors, and Flood
Control Projects.” The American Presidency Project, April 15, 1958.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11349.
118
Eisenhower, Dwight. “146 - Veto of the Area Redevelopment Bill.” The American Presidency
Project, May 13, 1960. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=11781.
119
Eisenhower, Dwight D. “Annual Message to the Congress on the State of the Union.” The
American Presidency Project, January 12, 1961.
http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=12074.
120
Gable, “The Politics and Economics of the 1957-1958 Recession,” 559.
121
Nossiter, Bernard D. “Causes of Rising Costs Argued by Economists.” The Washington Post and
Times Herald, November 10, 1958.

292

122
See: “Employment Status of the Civilian Noninstitutional Population, 1942 to Date.” On
Vietnam and the Fed, see: Dickens, Edwin. “The Great Inflation and U.S. Monetary Policy in the
Late 1960s: A Political Economy Approach.” Social Concept 9, no. 1 (1995): 49–82.
123
Kessler, Matthew K. “Economic Status of Nonwhite Workers, 1955-62.” Monthly Labor Review
86 (July 1963): 782.
124
In addition, the Communist Party leadership was shifting strategies during this time and
instructing members to work in more mainstream civil rights organizations. See: Gore, Dayo F.
Radicalism at the Crossroads: African American Women Activists in the Cold War. New York: New York
University Press, 2013.
125
Lang, Clarence. “Freedom Train Derailed: The National Negro Labor Council and the Nadir of
Black Radicalism.” In Anticommunism and the African American Freedom Movement: “Another Side of the
Story,” edited by Robbie Lieberman and Clarence Lang. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2009, 162.
Lewis-Colman, David M. Race Against Liberalism: Black Workers and the UAW in Detroit. Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 2008, 38.
126
Gore, Radicalism at the Crossroads, 102.
127
Lang, “Freedom Train Derailed,” 163-164.
128
De Mille, Arnold. “Labor Organizes to Fight Red Influence: CIO and AFL Back New National
Organization.” The Chicago Defender (National Edition), March 15, 1952.
129
“Labor Unit Set Up for Negro Rights: 75 Anti-Communist Unions Form Committee to Improve
Lot of Individual Workers.” The New York Times, March 2, 1952.
130
Booker, Jimmy. “UpTown LowDown: Name Dropping!” New York Amsterdam News, November
21, 1959.
131
Randolph, A. Philip. “Why the National Negro Labor Council: Statement by A. Philip Randolph
to the Steering Committee of the Proposed National Negro Labor Council, Hotel Carnegie,
Cleveland, Ohio,” November 14, 1959. Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
132
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and Labor: Address by A. Philip Randolph,
President of Sleeping Car Porters, at NAACP Convention, The Coliseum, New York City,” July 15,
1959. Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
133
Thorton, John M. “The Negro and Organized Labor: The American Negro Labor Council
Grows.” Pittsburgh Courier, December 19, 1959.
134
Randolph, A. Philip. “Report of the International Executive Board, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car
Porters to the Third Triennial International Convention, Chicago, Illinois,” September 6-11, 1959.
Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
135
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address by A. Philip Randolph, Third Annual Conference: National Trade
Union Committee for Racial Justice,” November 11-12 1955. Box: 39. Randolph Papers.
136
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address by A. Philip Randolph at NAACP Annual Conference, Civic
Auditorium, San Francisco, California,” July 27, 1956. Box: 39. Randolph Papers.
137
Stepan-Norris, Judith. Left Out: Reds and America’s Industrial Unions. Cambridge; New York:
Cambridge University Press, 2003, 265. Murolo and Chitty, From the Folks Who Brought You the
Weekend, 242. Zieger, The CIO, 370.

293

138
Murolo and Chitty, From the Folks Who Brought You the Weekend, 242. Buhle, Taking Care of Business,
169.
139
On White Citizen Council backlash, see: Rustin, Bayard. “Terror in the Delta.” Liberation,
December 1956. Box: 39, Folder: 6. Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript
Division.
140
Raskin, A.H. “Meany, in a Fiery Debate, Denounces Negro Unionist.” The New York Times,
September 24, 1959.
141
Raskin, “Meany, in a Fiery Debate, Denounces Negro Unionist.”
142
Randolph, “The Civil Rights Revolution and Labor.”
143
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Role of the Negro Worker in the American Trade Union Movement
and the Problem of Racial Discrimination: Address by A. Philip Randolph to the Trade Union
Leadership Council, Inc., Gotham Hotel, Detroit, Michigan,” February 7, 1959. Box: 40. Randolph
Papers. On the Trade Union Leadership Council, see: Lewis-Colman, David M. Race Against
Liberalism, 72-74.
144
Randolph, “Address by A. Philip Randolph, Third Annual Conference: National Trade Union
Committee for Racial Justice,”
145
Randolph, “Why the National Negro Labor Council.”
146
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and the Negro Workers in the Labor
Movement: Keynote Address of Temporary Chairman A. Philip Randolph at Founding Convention
of the Negro American Labor Council, Statler Hotel, Detroit, Michigan,” May 28, 1960. Box: 40.
Randolph Papers.
147
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and the Negro Workers in the Labor
Movement.”
148
“Longshoreman ‘Break-through’ On Bias Issue.” Los Angeles Sentinel, September 8, 1960.
149
“Rap Jim Crow Hiring: ‘Frisco NALC Pickets Sailors’ Union (SUP).” The Pittsburgh Courier,
September 16, 1961.
150
“NALC Wants to Know About Jobs at the Civic Arena.” Pittsburgh Courier, September 16, 1961.
151
On the role of NALC, I have been greatly influenced by: Jones, William P. The March on
Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights, 2013, 142. Jones, William P. “The
Unknown Origins of the March on Washington: Civil Rights Politics and the Black Working Class.”
Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 7, no. 3 (2010): 33–52.
152
Randolph, A. Philip. “Job Discrimination on the New York Piers,” October, 1961. Box: 25.
Randolph Papers.
153
Randolph, A. Philip. “Letter to George Meany,” October 9, 1961. Box: 25. Randolph Papers.
154
AFL-CIO Executive Council, A. Philip. “Statement on Civil Rights,” February 28, 1961. Box: 25.
Randolph Papers.
155
I rely on government data that classified Black people as “nonwhite.” Harrison, George, Richard
Walsh, and Jacob Potofsky. “Report to the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO by Its Subcommittee
to Review the Memorandum on Civil Rights in the AFL-CIO Submitted by Vice President
Randolph to The Executive Council At Its Meeting at Unity House, PA,” June 25-30, 1961. Box: 25.

294

Randolph Papers. U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1963. 84th Edition.
Washington D.C., 1963, 221.
156
Harrison, Walsh, and Potofsky, “Report to the Executive Council of the AFL-CIO.”
157
Widick, B.J. Labor Today, 92.
158
Levey, Stanley. “A.F.L.-C.I.O. Chiefs Score Randolph: Say Civil Rights Views Split Labor and
Negro Groups.” The New York Times, October 13, 1961.
159
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Struggle for the Liberation of the Black Laboring Masses in the This
Age of a Revolution in Human Rights: Text of Keynote Address...at NALC Second Annual
Convention, Hamilton Hotel, Chicago, IL,” November 10-12, 1961. Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
160
Webb, Waven O. “Letter to George Meany,” October 24, 1961. Box: 25. Randolph Papers.
161
This sentiment was echoed by the leadership of District 65 in New York as well. See: “Labor
Leader Admits Randolph Attack Hurts.” The New York Amsterdam News, November 11, 1961. Spann,
James. “Letter to George Meany,” October 22, 1961. Box: 25. Randolph Papers.
162
Overton, LJ, Richard Parrish, John M. Thorton, Cleveland Robinson, Horace Sheffield, Boyd
Wilson, Joseph Beavers, and Cornelius Maiden. “Telegram to George Meany (Reproduced in Memo
from A. Philip Randolph),” November 20, 1961. Box: 25. Randolph Papers.
163
“Statement of the Delegation of Negro Trade Unionists to President George Meany and
Delegates to the 1971 Biennial Convention of the AFL-CIO at the Americana Hotel, Miami Beach,
Florida,” December 5, 1961. Box: 31. Randolph Papers.
164
“Statement of the Delegation of Negro American Labor Council to President George Meany and
Delegates to the 1971 Biennial Convention of the AFL-CIO at the Americana Hotel, Miami Beach,
Florida,” December 5, 1961. Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
165
A copy of this article was placed in Randolph’s papers. Widick, B.J. “Labor’s Divided House.”
The Nation, December 23, 1961.
166
Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1986, 308.
167
U.S. Census Bureau, Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1963, 221.
168
“Untitled NALC Document, ‘Advent of NALC…’,” Circa 1962 or 1963. Box: 31. Randolph
Papers.
169
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...to the Fourth Triennial Convention of the Brotherhood of
Sleeping Car Porters, Queen’s Hotel, Montreal, Que.,” September 10, 1962. Box: 41. Randolph
Papers.
170
“Hearings before the Subcommittee on Unemployment and the Impact of Automation,” U.S.
Government Printing Office, April 1961, 6, 113, 173, 588.
171
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...During Negro History Week Celebration at Central State College,
Wilberforce, OH,” February 14, 1961. Box: 40. Randolph Papers.
172
Randolph, A. Philip. “Randolph Tells Program To Win Full Race Equality.” The Chicago Defender
(National Edition), July 10, 1943.
173
Born, Roscoe. “Labor Leaders Charge Federal Money Policies Stunt Economic Growth.” Wall
Street Journal, August 21, 1959.

295

174
Nossiter, Bernard D. “Labor Asks U.S. Fiscal Policy Voice: Place on Federal Reserve Board
Urged by Council.” New York Times, February 25, 1959.

Chapter 4
1
Du Bois, W.E.B. Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880. New York: Free Press, 1998, 16.
Randolph, A. Philip. “Labor and the Civil Rights Revolution: Negro Revolt Against Race Bias,
Address, at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH,” January 15, 1964. Box: 41, Folder:
Speeches, 1964. A. Philip Randolph Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Hereafter
cited as Randolph Papers).
2
Randolph, A. Philip. “Testimony…Before the Committee on Employment and Manpower,” July
25, 1963. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1963. Randolph Papers.
3
Meg Jacobs identifies inflation as the “Achillies heel of postwar labor-liberalism.” In this regard, my
argument both affirms and expands Jacobs’ assessment. And her scholarship has been fundamental
to my conclusions. See: Jacobs, Meg. “Inflation: ‘The Permanent Dilemma’ of the American Middle
Class.” In Social Contracts Under Stress: The Middle Classes of America, Europe, and Japan at the Turn of the
Century, edited by Olivier Zunz, Leonard J Schoppa, and Nobuhiro Hiwatari. New York: Russell
Sage Foundation, 2002, 135.
4
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 2/2. Interview by
David Stein, October 25, 2011.
5
Randolph, A. Philip. “Why the Emancipation March for Jobs?,” May 15, 1963. Box: 31, Folder: 9.
Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division (Hereafter cited as Rustin Papers).
6
Bremner, Robert P. Chairman of the Fed: William McChesney Martin, Jr., and the Creation of the Modern
American Financial System. New Haven: Yale University Press, 2004, 204-226.
7
Woodward, C. Vann. The Strange Career of Jim Crow. Oxford University Press, 2002, 8. Randolph, A.
Philip. “Address...at Bethune-Cookman College, Daytona Beach, FL,” October 2, 1955. Box: 39,
Folder: Speeches, 1955. Randolph Papers.
8
Randolph, A. Philip. “Civil Rights Day,” December 15, 1955. Box: 39, Folder: Speeches, 1955.
Randolph Papers. Randolph, A. Philip. “Labor and the Civil Rights Revolution: Negro Revolt
Against Race Bias, Address, at Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH,” January 15, 1964. Box:
41, Folder: Speeches, 1964. Randolph Papers.
9
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...During Negro History Week Celebration at Central State College,
Wilberforce, OH,” February 14, 1961. Box: 40, Folder: Speeches, 1961. Randolph Papers.
10
Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 634.
11
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...During Negro History Week Celebration at Central State College,
Wilberforce, OH,” February 14, 1961. Box: 40, Folder: Speeches, 1961. Randolph Papers.
12
Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 635.
13
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and the Negro Workers in the Labor
Movement: Keynote Address of Temporary Chairman A. Philip Randolph at Founding Convention
of the Negro American Labor Council, Statler Hotel, Detroit, Michigan,” May 28, 1960. Box: 40,
Folder: Speeches, 1960. Randolph Papers.

296

14
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Crisis of the Civil Rights Revolution: Address...at Annual Dinner of
Americans for Democratic Action, Shoreham Hotel, Washington D.C.,” February 1, 1964. Box: 41,
Folder: Speeches, 1964. Randolph Papers.
15
Du Bois, Black Reconstruction, 182.
16
Davis, Angela. Abolition Democracy: Beyond Empire, Prisons, and Torture. Seven Stories Press 1st ed.
New York: Seven Stories Press, 2005, 73. See also: Lipsitz, George. “Abolition Democracy and
Global Justice.” Comparative American Studies 2, no. 3 (September 2004): 271–286.
17
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and the Negro Workers in the Labor
Movement: Keynote Address of Temporary Chairman A. Philip Randolph at Founding Convention
of the Negro American Labor Council, Statler Hotel, Detroit, Michigan,” May 28, 1960. Box: 40,
Folder: Speeches, 1960. Randolph Papers.
18
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...at the March on Washington, Washington D.C.,” August 23, 1963.
Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1963. Randolph Papers.
19
Randolph, A. Philip. “Crossroads of the Civil Rights Revolution, Keynote Address, Fourth Annual
Convention of the Negro American Labor Council, Cleveland, OH,” May 29, 1964. Box: 41, Folder:
Speeches, 1964 (2 of 2). Randolph Papers.
20
Randolph, A. Philip. “Statement...at Labor Dinner of the NAACP, Fifty-Second Annual
Convention, Sheraton Hotel, Philadelphia, PA,” July 14, 1961. Box: 40, Folder: Speeches, 1961.
Randolph Papers.
21
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...at Brown University, Providence, RI,” 6-8 1962. Box: 40, Folder:
Speeches, 1962. Randolph Papers.
22
Randolph, A. Philip. “Statement...at Labor Dinner of the NAACP, Fifty-Second Annual
Convention, Sheraton Hotel, Philadelphia, PA,” July 14, 1961. Box: 40, Folder: Speeches, 1961.
Randolph Papers.
23
King Jr., Martin Luther, A. Philip Randolph, Charles McDew, and James Farmer. “Committee for
the Emancipation March for Jobs,” 1963. Box: 30, Folder: 14. Rustin Papers.
24
“Emancipation March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, Benefit Flyer,” 1963. Box: 26,
Folder: March on Washington Jobs and Freedom. Randolph Papers.
25
Kahn and Rustin were romantically involved for a time during this period. See: D’Emilio, John.
Lost Prophet: The Life and Times of Bayard Rustin. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004,278. Le
Blanc, Paul. “Trotskyism in the United States: The First Fifty Years.” In Trotskyism in the United States:
Historical Essays and Reconsiderations. Revolutionary Studies. Atlantic Highlands, N.J: Humanities Press,
1996, 25. Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 1/2.
Interview by David Stein, September 30, 2011.
26
When Shachtman led the Independent Socialist League (ISL) into the Socialist Party in 1958, the
youth wing of the ISL, the Young Socialist League, also joined the youth wing of the Socialist Party,
the Young People’s Socialist League. See: Isserman, Maurice. If I Had a Hammer: The Death of the Old
Left and the Birth of the New Left. New York: Basic Books, 1987, 59. Horowitz, Rachelle. “Tom Kahn
and the Fight for Democracy: A Political Portrait and Personal Recollection.” Democratiya, no. 11
(Winter 2007): 209.
27
Haskell, Gordon. “Labor Movement Too Is Put on the Spot by the Historic Fight in the South.”
Labor Action:, March 5, 1956, 1, 8.

297

28
Kahn, Tom. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” November 16, 1959. Box: 1, Folder: 7. Tom Kahn Papers,
Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. See also: Horowitz, “Tom Kahn and the Fight for
Democracy,” 219.
29
As Horowitz described, “I remember telling Fred Shuttleworth…that I had not voted for John F.
Kennedy. You would have thought I had come from Mars…By '64 we had realized that this was
not—if you wanted to sit in a loft in New York City and discuss politics this was fine—but it was
not something that anybody in the civil rights movement could stand. Horowitz, Rachelle. The A.
Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 2/2. Interview by David Stein, October 25,
2011.
30
Kahn, Tom. Unfinished Revolution. New York, 1960, 41-44.
31
King Jr., Martin Luther, A. Philip Randolph, Charles McDew, and James Farmer. “Committee for
the Emancipation March for Jobs,” 1963. Box: 30, Folder: 14. Rustin Papers.
32
U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1965. 86th Edition. Washington D.C.,
1965, 216, 218.
33
Height, Dorothy I. “‘We Wanted the Voice of Black Women to Be Heard’: Black Women and the
1963 March on Washington.” In Sisters in the Struggle African American Women in the Civil Rights-Black
Power Movement, edited by Bettye Collier-Thomas and V. P Franklin. New York: New York
University Press, 2001, 86.
34
Height, “‘We Wanted the Voice of Black Women to Be Heard,’” 87. Jones, William P. The March
on Washington: Jobs, Freedom, and the Forgotten History of Civil Rights, 2013, 175. U.S. Census Bureau.
Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1965, 216.
35
AFL-CIO Executive Council. “Resolution...on Widespread Unemployment Among Negro
Workers,” May 16, 1963. Box: 30, Folder: 13. Rustin Papers.
36
See: Jones, The March on Washington, 171. Anderson, Jervis. A. Philip Randolph: A Biographical Portrait.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986, 327.
37
AFL-CIO News Service. “Meany Hails Progress in Eliminating Segregated Locals,” August 13,
1963. Box: 25, Folder: Labor Civil Rights in the CIO-AFL. Randolph Papers.
38
The act reduced tax receipts by .2%. See: Tempalski, Jerry. Revenue Effects of Major Tax Bills, Updated
Tables for All 2010 Bills. Office of Tax Analysis, Department of the Treasury, June 2011. Kennedy,
John F. “468- Statement by the President Upon Signing the Revenue Act.” The American
Presidency Project, October 16, 1962. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=8967.
39
Boggs would, however, expressed mixed sentiments towards the ameliorative recommendations of
the March, arguing that “we have to stop looking for solutions in pump-priming, featherbedding,
public works, war contracts, and all the other gimmicks that are always being proposed by labor
leaders and well-meaning liberals…what we need today is a new Declaration of Human Rights to fit
the new Age of Automation.” Published just before March, it is unclear whether Boggs, a
consummate dialectician, would have located the March’s demands in the former category or the
latter. However, in the next year, Boggs would join Rustin and Harrington and others in a group
called the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution (cybernation, weaponry, and human rights).
Whereas the Committee proposed things like massive public works towards housing, education, and
energy, Boggs diverged from the other members of the committee with respect to the immediate
response needed. Instead he, along with economist Robert Theobald suggested, that “the two major

298

principles of the transitional period will be (1) that machines rather than men will take up new
conventional work openings, and (2) that the activity of men will be directed to new forms of ‘work’
and ‘leisure.’ Therefore, in their opinion, the specific proposals outlined in this section are more
suitable for meeting the problems of the scarcity-economic system, than for advancing through the
period of transition into the period of abundance.” See: Boggs, James. “The American Revolution:
Pages from a Negro Worker’s Notebook (1963).” In Pages from a Black Radical’s Notebook: A James
Boggs Reader, edited by Stephen M Ward. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2011, 109, 112. For
the Ad-Hoc Committee on the Triple Revolution, see: “Hearings before the Select Subcommittee on
Education and Labor, House of Representatives, on H.R. 10310 and Related Bills to Establish a
National Commission on Automation and Technological Progress.” U.S. Government Printing
Office, April 1964, 126, 127, 132.
40
Boggs, “The American Revolution,” 98.
41
Rustin, Bayard, Tom Kahn, and Norman Hill. “The Washington Action Program, (January 1963).”
In I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in Letters, edited by Michael G. Long. San Francisco: City Lights
Books, 2012, 255.
42
Garrow, David J. Bearing the Cross: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Southern Christian Leadership
Conference. 1st Vintage Books ed. New York: Vintage Books, 1988, 267. Jones, The March on
Washington, 166-67.
43
Rustin, Bayard, and Cleveland Robinson. “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,
Organizing Manual No. 1,” 1963. Box: 30, Folder: 1. Rustin Papers.
44
Rustin, Bayard, and Cleveland Robinson. “March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom,
Organizing Manual No. 1,” 1963. Box: 30, Folder: 1. Rustin Papers.
45
Swados, Harvey. “Revolution on the March.” In A Radical at Large: American Essays. London:
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968, 261-263.
46
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum: Signs to Be Carried at the March,” August 21, 1963. Box: 31,
Folder: 8. Rustin Papers.
47
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address…at the March on Washington,” August 28, 1963. Box: 41, Folder:
Speeches, 1963. Randolph Papers.
48
Swados, Harvey. “The Meaning of the March.” In A Radical at Large: American Essays. London:
Rupert Hart-Davis, 1968, 267.
49
James Reston commented in the New York Times that “Congress has scarcely noted the full
objective of the protest…there is even less likelihood that the Kennedy Administration will get its
economic growth and full employment programs through the Congress than its civil rights
programs.” Reston, James. “Washington: The White Man’s Burden and All That.” The New York
Times, August 28, 1963.
50
Quoted in: Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the King Years, 1954-63. New York: Simon
and Schuster, 1989, 884. On the “immigrant analogy,” see: Omi, Michael, and Howard Winant.
Racial Formation in the United States: From the 1960s to the 1990s. 2nd ed. New York: Routledge, 1994,
16-20.
51
U.S. Census Bureau. Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1965, 216.
52
Photo from: Jeffries, Hasan Kwame. “‘What We Demand:’ March on Washington, 50 Years
Later.” From the Square: NYU Press Blog, August 28, 2013. http://www.fromthesquare.org/?p=5511.

299

53
Socialist Party. “The Socialist Party 1963 National Conference on the Civil Rights Revolution,
Program,” August 29, 1963. Box: 35, Folder: 23. Rustin Papers.
54
Elkin, Betty. “Letter to Socialist Party/ Social Democratic Federation on March on Washington
National Conference,” August 21, 1963. Box: 35, Folder: 23. Rustin Papers.
55
Lester, Joan Steinau, and Eleanor Holmes Norton. Fire in My Soul: The Life of Eleanor Holmes Norton.
New York: Atria Books, 2004, 83.
56
As described by Stone, I. F. “The March on Washington.” In The Best of I.F. Stone, edited by Karl
Weber. New York: Public Affairs, 2006, 189-190.
57
Rustin, Bayard. “Apprenticeship: A Gimmick?” Equity and Excellence in Education 1, no. 6 (1963):
42.
58
Baldwin, James. “Statement by James Baldwin (on the Birmingham Killings),” April 16, 1963. Box:
31, Folder: 9. Rustin Papers.
59
On the event, see: D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 361.
60
Rustin, Bayard. “What Follows the March?,” September 25, 1963. Box: 31, Folder: 9. Rustin
Papers.
61
D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 359-363.
62
Rustin, Bayard. “What Follows the March?,” September 25, 1963. Box: 31, Folder: 9. Rustin
Papers.
63
Bundy, McGeorge. “National Security Action Memorandum, No. 273,” November 26, 1963.
Http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/nsams/nsam273.asp. Lyndon Baines Johnson
Presidential Library. See also: Gettleman, Marvin E., Jane Franklin, Marilyn B. Young, and H. Bruce
Franklin, eds. Vietnam and America: A Documented History. 2nd ed., rev. and enl. New York: Grove
Press, 1995, 235-240.
64
Johnson, Lyndon B. “Address before a Joint Session of the Congress (November 27, 1963).” In
Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism: A Brief Biography with Documents, edited by Bruce J.
Schulman. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Bedford/St. Martins, 2006, 184.
65
Zelizer, Julian E. Taxing America: Wilbur D. Mills, Congress, and the State, 1945-1975. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2000, 209. 179-189.
66
Duscha, Julius. “Wilbur Mills Has a Lot to Say About Your Taxes: The Most Important Man On
Capitol Hill Today.” The New York Times, February 25, 1968. Zelizer, Taxing America, 209.
67
Hargrove, Erwin C., and Samuel A. Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under
Chairman Walter W. Heller, 1961-1964: Oral History Interview.” In The President and the Council of
Economic Advisers: Interviews with CEA Chairmen. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1984, 195, 201.
68
Keyserling, Leon H. Interview by Stephen Goodell, January 9, 1969. Oral History Collection.
Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library, 8.
69
Johnson, “Address before a Joint Session of the Congress (November 27, 1963),” 184.
70
Hargrove and Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Walter W.
Heller, 209. Zelizer, Taxing America, 203.

300

71
Johnson, Lyndon B. “President Lyndon B. Johnson’s Annual Message to the Congress on the
State of the Union January 8, 1964,” January 8, 1964. Lyndon Baines Johnson Presidential Library.
http://www.lbjlib.utexas.edu/johnson/archives.hom/speeches.hom/640108.asp.
72
Zelizer, Taxing America, 204.
73
Tempalski, Revenue Effects of Major Tax Bills.
74
Hargrove and Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Walter W.
Heller, 204. Zelizer, Taxing America, 204.
75
Schlesinger, Arthur M. A Thousand Days: John F. Kennedy in the White House. 1st Mariner Books ed.
Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002, 1012.
76
Hargrove and Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under Chairman Walter W.
Heller, 176.
77
Katz, Michael B. The Undeserving Poor: From the War on Poverty to the War on Welfare. New York:
Pantheon Books, 1989, 16.
78
See: Katz, Michael B., ed. The “Underclass” Debate: Views from History. Princeton, N.J: Princeton
University Press, 1993.
79
Keyserling, Leon H. Interview by Stephen Goodell, 6.
80
Keyserling, Leon H. Interview by Stephen Goodell, 8.
81
Galbraith, John K. “Galbraith Worries About the Kansas Teacher,” The Washington Post and Times
Herald, February 28, 1965.
82
Yarmolinsky, Adam. Oral History Interview with Adam Yarmolinsky. Interview by Michael L.
Gillette, October 21, 1980. The Miller Center, University of Virginia, 14.
83
Yarmolinsky, Adam. Oral History Interview with Adam Yarmolinsky. Interview by Michael L.
Gillette, October 21, 1980. The Miller Center, University of Virginia, 4.
84
Russell, Judith. Economics, Bureaucracy, and Race: How Keynesians Misguided the War on Poverty. New
York: Columbia University Press, 2004, 41-42, 152-54.
85
Schlesinger, A Thousand Days, 1010.
86
During the planning sessions, Harrington would often sign memos stating, “of course, there is no
real solution to the problem of poverty until we abolish the capitalist system.” See: Isserman,
Maurice. The Other American: The Life of Michael Harrington. New York: PublicAffairs, 2000, 212, 218.
87
Yarmolinsky, Adam. Oral History Interview with Adam Yarmolinsky. Interview by Michael L.
Gillette, October 21, 1980. The Miller Center, University of Virginia, 4-5.
88
Randolph and Harrington wrote the foreword to Kahn’s pamphlet. Kahn, Tom. The Economics of
Equality. New York: League of Industrial Democracy, 1964.
89
Orleck, Annelise. “Introduction: The War on Poverty from the Grass Roots Up.” In The War on
Poverty: A New Grassroots History, 1964-1980, edited by Annelise Orleck and Lisa Gayle Hazirjian.
Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011, 11. See also: Jackson, Thomas F. “The State, The
Movement, and the Urban Poor: The War on Poverty and Political Mobilization in the 1960s.” In
The “Underclass” Debate: Views from History, edited by Michael B. Katz. Princeton, N.J: Princeton
University Press, 1993, 411-422.

301

90
Payne, Charles. I’ve Got the Light of Freedom: The Organizing Tradition and the Mississippi Freedom Struggle.
Berkeley: University of California Press, 2007, 121-124, 288-290.
91
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 2/2. Interview by
David Stein, October 25, 2011.
92
Garrow, Bearing the Cross, 285.
93
Rustin describes Randolph’s fights with New York City administrators to put more respectful,
Black, police officers in Harlem prior to the 1964 Harlem uprising. See: Rustin, Bayard. “Riots in the
U.S.--The Causes and Cures (Draft, Later Published in AFL-CIO Free Trade Union News),” 1967.
Box: 39, Folder: 13. Rustin Papers. Rustin, Bayard. “What Follows the March?,” September 25,
1963. Box: 31, Folder: 9. Rustin Papers.
94
Randolph, A. Philip. “Crossroads of the Civil Rights Revolution, Keynote Address, Fourth Annual
Convention of the Negro American Labor Council, Cleveland, OH,” May 29, 1964. Box: 41, Folder:
Speeches, 1964 (2 of 2). Randolph Papers.
95
Randolph, A. Philip, and Michael Harrington. “Foreword.” In The Economics of Equality, by Tom
Kahn. New York: League of Industrial Democracy, 1964, 5.
96
McAdam, Doug. Freedom Summer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1988, 69-72. Payne, I’ve Got
the Light of Freedom, 301.
97
My thinking on the importance of the Harlem uprising is influenced by: Schrader, Stuart. “Local
Policing Meets Global Counterinsurgency: The 1964 Riots and the Transnational Frontlash.” In The
American Studies Association Annual Meeting. Washington D.C., 2013.
98
Apple Jr., R.W. “The Chief Policeman Talks About His Beat: With the Advent of Summer
Bringing Two Threats—Civil Rights Disturbances and an Epidemic of Violence—Commissioner
Murphy Discusses the Role of His Police.” The New York Times, June 21, 1964.
99
“Riot for 3rd Day in Harlem: Scores Hurt as Mobs Hurl Rocks, Bombs, All Police Put on
Emergency Duty.” The Chicago Tribune, July 20, 1964.
100
Apple Jr., “The Chief Policeman Talks About His Beat.”
101
Apple Jr., R.W. “Police Ban March Today; Sponsors Defiant: Leftists Still Plan Protest on
Department--Rights Chiefs to Discuss Riots.” The New York Times, July 25, 1964.
102
Randolph, A. Philip. “Crossroads of the Civil Rights Revolution, Keynote Address, Fourth
Annual Convention of the Negro American Labor Council, Cleveland, OH,” May 29, 1964. Box: 41,
Folder: Speeches, 1964 (2 of 2). Randolph Papers.
103
Kihss, Peter. “City to Increase Negro Policemen on Harlem Duty.” The New York Times, July 21,
1964.
104
Handler, M.S. “Negro Factions Are Considering a United Front.” The New York Times, July 29,
1964.
105
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Whitney Young,” July 29, 1964. Box: 2, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
106
These conflicts were by no means unidirectional. While Rustin and Randolph frequently criticized
Black Nationalism and “separatism,” the Nation of Islam (NOI) dubbed the March’s leaders “the
Uncle-Tom Negro leaders.” Randolph, by contrast argued that “Black nationalism is unsound
because it disallows contact between the races. Without contact there cannot be communication,
and without communication there breeds suspicions, doubts, fears and frustrations that prevent

302

understanding, confidence and cooperation between the Negro and white workers.” See: Randolph,
A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and the Negro Workers in the Labor Movement: Keynote
Address of Temporary Chairman A. Philip Randolph at Founding Convention of the Negro
American Labor Council, Statler Hotel, Detroit, Michigan,” May 28, 1960. Box: 40, Folder:
Speeches, 1960. Randolph Papers. For the complicated personal and political relations between NOI
and Malcolm X and the Rustin and Randolph, see: Marable, Manning. Malcolm X: A Life of
Reinvention. New York: Viking, 2011, 191-193, 250-259.
107
Ransby, Barbara. Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement: A Radical Democratic Vision. Chapel
Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2003, 331.
108
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 2/2. Interview by
David Stein, October 25, 2011. Harrington, Michael. Fragments of the Century. 1st ed. New York:
Saturday Review Press, 1973, 122.
109
Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 333.
110
Carmichael (Kwame Ture) reflected on the experience years later saying, “We were running on
hope and maybe faith. At least the local people were, those brave souls on the delegation and the
communities that had elected them. They were the ones with faith. (The press, in its usual wisdom
would quickly pronounce and dismiss them as naïve, politically unsophisticated, uneducated,
simple.)…Faith in what? In the truth. In the justice and decency of the American people, once they
knew the truth.” See: Carmichael, Stokely. Ready for Revolution: The Life and Struggles of Stokely
Carmichael (Kwame Ture). New York: Scribner, 2003, 398, 410.
111
Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 341.
112
Blackside, Inc. Interview with Bayard Rustin for Eyes on the Prize: America’s Civil Rights Years
(1954-1965), 1979. Washington University Libraries, Film and Media Archive, Henry Hampton
Collection. http://digital.wustl.edu/e/eop/eopweb/rus0015.0145.091bayardrustin.html.
113
Quoted in: Ransby, Ella Baker and the Black Freedom Movement, 342.
114
Harrington, Fragments of the Century, 124.
115
See also: Carson, Clayborne. In Struggle: SNCC and the Black Awakening of the 1960s. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 1981, 123-129.
116
Del Pozzo, Theresa. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” September 19, 1964. Box: 2, Folder: 8. Rustin
Papers.
117
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Theresa Del Pozzo,” September 29, 1964. Box: 2, Folder: 8. Rustin
Papers.
118
Randolph, A. Philip. “Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Revolution: Address...at Convention
of International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, Statler Hotel, Washington D.C.,”
September 22, 1964. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1964. Randolph Papers.
119
Rustin, Bayard. Oral History Interview with Bayard Rustin. Interview by T.H. Baker, June 17,
1969. The Miller Center, University of Virginia, 14.
120
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Jack Heyman,” October 13, 1964. Box: 2, Folder: 9. Rustin Papers.
121
Randolph, A. Philip. “Organized Labor and the Civil Rights Revolution: Address...at Convention
of International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers, Statler Hotel, Washington D.C.,”

303

September 22, 1964. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1964. Randolph Papers. Trohan, Walter. “Johnson
Gets 61.4 Pct. of U.S. Popular Vote.” The Chicago Tribune, November 5, 1964.
122
D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 362.
123
Rustin, Bayard. Telephone Interview with Bayard Rustin. Interview by August Meier, December
10, 1975. August Meier Papers, Box: 58, Folder: 4. Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division,
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The New York Public Library.
124
D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 362.
125
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Whitney Young,” July 29, 1964. Box: 2, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
126
D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 373-374.
127
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Jean V. Chace,” August 12, 1964. Box: 2, Folder: 7. Rustin Papers.
128
Rustin, Bayard. “A. Philip Randolph Institute Prospectus,” N.D., Circa 1964. Box: 7, Folder: 1.
Rustin Papers.
129
D’Emilio, Lost Prophet, 397.
130
A. Philip Randolph Institute. “A. Philip Randolph Institute, Statement of Income and Expenses,
May 1965 - August 1966,” 1966. Box: 7, Folder: 1. Rustin Papers.
131
A. Philip Randolph Institute. “A. Philip Randolph Institute, Estimated Budget, September 1966 -
August 1967,” 1966. Box: 7, Folder: 1. Rustin Papers.
132
Rustin, Bayard. “A. Philip Randolph Institute Prospectus,” N.D., Circa 1964. Box: 7, Folder: 1.
Rustin Papers.
133
Rustin, Bayard. “From Protest to Politics: The Future of the Civil Rights Movement.” In Time on
Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard Rustin, edited by Devon Carbado and Devon Weise. San
Francisco, CA: Cleis, 2003, 117.
134
Rustin, “From Protest to Politics,” 122.
135
Rustin, “From Protest to Politics,” 124.
136
Nichols, Robert E. “Economics & People: No Time for Doublethink: IBM’s New System/360
Punctuates Our Changing Needs.” The Los Angeles Times, April 12, 1964. Nichols, Robert E. “‘New
Generation’ of IBM Computers Told.” The Los Angeles Times, April 8, 1964.
137
Rustin, “From Protest to Politics,” 129.
138
Rustin, “From Protest to Politics,” 128-129.
139
Cited in: Hamilton, Dona, and Charles V. Hamilton. The Dual Agenda: Race and Social Welfare
Policies of Civil Rights Organizations. New York: Columbia University Press, 1997, 130.
140
Randolph, A. Philip. “Crossroads of the Civil Rights Revolution, Keynote Address, Fourth
Annual Convention of the Negro American Labor Council, Cleveland, OH,” May 29, 1964. Box: 41,
Folder: Speeches, 1964 (2 of 2). Randolph Papers.
141
Rustin, Bayard, and A. Philip Randolph Institute. “Press Release: Rustin Urges Wagner Act to
Avoid Long Hot Summer,” May 19, 1965. Box: 41, Folder: 17. Rustin Papers. Rustin, Bayard.
“Telegram to Mayor Robert Wagner,” May 21, 1965. Box: 41, Folder: 17. Rustin Papers.
142
Kerner, Otto. Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders. New York: Bantam
Books, 1968, 7-8.

304

143
Kurashige, Scott. The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic
Los Angeles. Princeton, N.J.; Woodstock: Princeton University Press, 2010. 269.
144
Rustin, Bayard. “Some Lessons from Watts.” In Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard
Rustin, edited by Devon Carbado and Devon Weise. San Francisco Calif.: Cleis, 2003, 136.
145
Rustin, Bayard. “Some Lessons from Watts.” In Time on Two Crosses: The Collected Writings of Bayard
Rustin, edited by Devon Carbado and Devon Weise. San Francisco Calif.: Cleis, 2003, 137.
146
Rustin, Bayard. “The Watts Manifesto and the McCone Report.” In Down the Line: The Collected
Writings of Bayard Rustin. Chicago, IL: Quadrangle Books, 1971, 142.
147
While both Rustin and Randolph’s arguments are tinged with a common condescension towards
the lumpenproletariat’s inability to act as a revolutionary force, there is also much in their analysis
that harmonizes with that of Grace Lee Boggs’ assessment of the distinction between rebellion and
revolution. See: Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...at Annual Awards Banquet of Negro Trade Union
Leadership Council, Philadelphia, PA,” October 8, 1965. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1965 (1 of 2).
Randolph Papers. Boggs, Grace Lee. Living for Change: An Autobiography. Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 1998, 142-57.
148
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...at Annual Awards Banquet of Negro Trade Union Leadership
Council, Philadelphia, PA,” October 8, 1965. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1965 (1 of 2).
149
Rustin, “The Watts Manifesto and the McCone Report,” 147.
150
Rustin, “The Watts Manifesto and the McCone Report,” 153.
151
Herbers, John. “Report Focuses on Negro Family: Aid to Replace Matriarchy Asked by Johnson
Panel.” The New York Times, August 27, 1965.
152
Patterson, James T. The Eve of Destruction: How 1965 Transformed America. New York: Basic Books,
2012, 186-187.
153
Moynihan noted that he in fact wrote Johnson’s speech, though this is disputed by two Johnson
aids. Johnson, Lyndon B. “‘To Fulfill These Rights’: Commencement Address at Howard
University.” In Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism, 226-229. Yuill, Kevin L. “The 1966 White
House Conference on Civil Rights.” The Historical Journal 41, no. 1 (March 1998): 262.
154
Evans, Rowland, and Robert Novak. “Insider Report: The Moynihan Report.” The Washington Post
and Times Herald, August 18, 1965. Herbers, John. “Report Focuses on Negro Family: Aid to Replace
Matriarchy Asked by Johnson Panel.” The New York Times, August 27, 1965.
155
Rustin, Bayard. “Recommendations for the White House Conference on Negro Family Life,”
October 7, 1965. Box: 36, Folder: 14. Rustin Papers.
156
Rustin, Bayard. Who Speaks for the Negro?, Tape 1. Interview by Robert Penn Warren, 1964.
http://whospeaks.library.vanderbilt.edu/interview/bayard-rustin.
157
Rustin, Bayard. “Recommendations for the White House Conference on Negro Family Life,”
October 7, 1965. Box: 36, Folder: 14. Rustin Papers.
158
Rustin, Bayard. “Riots in the U.S.--The Causes and Cures (Draft, Later Published in AFL-CIO
Free Trade Union News),” 1967. Box: 39, Folder: 13. Rustin Papers.
159
Rustin, Bayard. “Education?” In Dialogue on Poverty. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1967, 59.

305

160
“Press Release: Planning Session for The White House Conference ‘To Fulfill These Rights,’”
November 12, 1965. Box: 33, Folder: White House Conference “To Fulfill these Rights” Planning
Session. Randolph Papers.
161
Rustin, Bayard, and A. Philip Randolph Institute. “Background Paper: White House Planning
Conference,” November 1965. Box: 33, Folder: White House Conference “To Fulfill these Rights”
Planning Session. Randolph Papers.
162
Max Shachtman’s biographer has claimed that Shachtman named the “Freedom Budget,” but I
have found little evidence to support this assertion. Shachtman was a mentor to Kahn and Horowitz
and an important figure in the circles pursuing the realignment strategy, but his role in the Freedom
Budget campaign and its genesis has been exaggerated. Horowitz, for example, does not recall what
significant involvement he had on the campaign. See: Drucker, Peter. Max Shachtman and His Left.
Amherst, NY: Humanity Books, 1993, 287. Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute
and the Freedom Budget, 1/2. Interview by David Stein, September 30, 2011.
163
Randolph, A. Philip. “Statement...at White House Conference on Civil Rights, Washington, DC,”
November 17, 1965. Box: 41, Folder: Speeches, 1965 (1 of 2). Randolph Papers.
164
Silberman, Charles E. “Letter to Harry C. McPherson Jr.,” August 27, 1965. Box: 36, Folder: 14.
Rustin Papers.
165
Popham, John H. “Keyserling Urges ‘Prosperity’ Index: Truman Economic Aide Tells Urban
League We Need ‘Will to Act’ on Resources.” The New York Times, September 8, 1948. Keyserling,
Leon H. “‘For a National Prosperity Budget.’” The New York Times, March 25, 1956.
166
Estes, Steve. I Am a Man!: Race, Manhood, and the Civil Rights Movement. Chapel Hill: University of
North Carolina Press, 2005, 118-119.
167
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to A. Philip Randolph,” November 19, 1965. Box: 33, Folder: White
House Conference “To Fulfill these Rights” Correspondence. Randolph Papers. Yuill, Kevin L.
“The 1966 White House Conference on Civil Rights,” 266.
168
Randolph, A. Philip. “Letter to Leon H. Keyserling,” December 7, 1965. Box: 33, Folder: White
House Conference “To Fulfill these Rights” Correspondence. Randolph Papers.
169
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Nat Goldfinger,” November 30, 1965. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin
Papers.
170
Evans, Rowland, and Robert Novak. “Insider Report: Civil Rights Disaster.” The Washington Post
and Times Herald, November 24, 1965.
171
Slaughter, Adolph. “Rights Parley Draws Fire from Some Other Leaders.” The Chicago Daily
Defender, November 30, 1965. Patterson, James T. Freedom Is Not Enough: The Moynihan Report and
America’s Struggle over Black Family Life: From LBJ to Obama. New York: Basic Books, 2010, 80.
172
Cohen, David. “Letter to Norman Hill,” November 23, 1965. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin Papers.
173
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Nat Goldfinger,” November 30, 1965. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin
Papers.
174
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum: December 22nd Meeting to Discuss Proposal for a $100 Billion
Freedom Budget,” December 9, 1965. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers. For Colm biography, see:
Hawrylchak, Sandra Hunt. “Biographical Sketch: Gerhard Colm Papers.” Finding Aid for the Gerhard
Colm Papers, 1929-1972, October 4, 2005. http://library.albany.edu/speccoll/findaids/ger029.htm.

306

175
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” February 9, 1966. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin
Papers.
176
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum: Meeting to Draw up Legislation in Behalf of The Freedom
Budget for All Americans,” March 16, 1966. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
177
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum: June 2nd Meeting to Discuss Revised Freedom Budget,” May 24,
1966. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
178
Schulman, Bruce. J. Lyndon B. Johnson and American Liberalism, 144.
179
Carson, In Struggle, 184-185. Sale, Kirkpatrick. SDS. New York: Vintage Books, 1974, 172-173.
180
See: Sale, SDS, 60-70. Phelps, Christopher. “Port Huron at Fifty: The New Left and Labor: An
Interview with Kim Moody.” Labor Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 9, no. 2 (June 1,
2012): 41-42.
181
Sale, SDS, 176-179.
182
Gettleman, Marvin E., Jane Franklin, Marilyn B. Young, and H. Bruce Franklin, eds. Vietnam and
America: A Documented History, 296-297.
183
Sale, SDS, 238-239.
184
Carson, In Struggle, 127-129.
185
On Young, see: Carson, In Struggle, 188. For Statement by SNCC: Student Nonviolent
Coordinating Committee. “Statement on the War in Vietnam,” January 6, 1966. Box: 36, Folder: 12.
Rustin Papers.
186
Randolph, A. Philip. “The Civil Rights Revolution and the Negro Workers in the Labor
Movement: Keynote Address of Temporary Chairman A. Philip Randolph at Founding Convention
of the Negro American Labor Council, Statler Hotel, Detroit, Michigan,” May 28, 1960. Box: 40,
Folder: Speeches, 1960. Randolph Papers. Randolph, A. Philip. “Address…at Commencement
Exercises, Lincoln University,” June 4, 1967. Box: 42, Folder: Speeches, 1967. Randolph Papers.
187
Carmichael, Ready for Revolution, 504-507.
188
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Tom Kahn,” April 24, 1966. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” September 26, 1966. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin
Papers.
189
In this way, the longtime socialists broke with the Trotskyist critique of the popular front as this
displayed a willingness to ally with some capitalist interests. Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Nat
Goldfinger, Potential Endorsers,” July 20, 1966. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin Papers.
190
The 89
th
Congress passed important pieces of legislation for marginalized people, including the
Voting Rights Act, Housing and Urban Development Act, and the Social Security Amendments of
1965, which created Medicare and Medicaid.
191
Harrington, Fragments of the Century, 126.
192
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-
1975 to Achieve “Freedom From Want.” New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966, 25, 34.
193
Keyserling, Leon H. The Role of Wages in the Great Society: Stressing Minimum Wage Gains to Help the
Working Poor. Washington D.C.: The Conference on Economic Progress, 1966, 4.

307

194
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 59, 63.
195
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 1/2. Interview by
David Stein, September 30, 2011.
196
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” September 28, 1966. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin
Papers.
197
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-
1975 to Achieve “Freedom From Want.” New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966. A. Philip
Randolph Institute. “Press Kit: A Freedom Budget for All Americans,” October 26, 1966. Box: 21,
Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
198
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 25.
199
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 24.
200
Neil Smith has shown these phenomena of uneven development to be “the product and the
geographical premise of capitalist development.” Uneven development, he explained, “is social
inequality blazoned into the geographical landscape, and it is simultaneously the exploitation of that
geographical unevenness for certain socially determined ends.” See: Smith, Neil. Uneven Development:
Nature, Capital, and the Production of Space. 3rd ed. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2008, 206.
201
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 54.
202
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 26. On uneven development
and the sexual division of labor, see: Smith, Uneven Development, 71, 135.
203
In August 1964, Keyserling published The Toll of Rising Interest Rates, which described the problems
of tight monetary polices.
204
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 73.
205
Keyserling, The Role of Wages in the Great Society, 1. A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget”
For All Americans, 74.
206
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 75.
207
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 21-22.
208
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans, 68-70, 75. Keyserling, Leon H.
“Letter to Bayard Rustin,” December 9, 1966. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
209
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to James Baldwin,” March 6, 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 1. Rustin Papers.
210
King Jr., Martin Luther. Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community. New York: Bantam
Books, 1968, 230.
211
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum on Recent Developments in Support of "The Freedom Budget
for All Americans,” March 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers. A. Philip Randolph Institute.
“Press Release,” February 7, 1966. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
212
Roe, Charlotte. “Memorandum to Bayard Rustin and Walter Stevens, Re: Youth Activities on the
Freedom Budget,” January 10, 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 12. Rustin Papers.
213
The U.S. Youth Council (USYC) coordinated activities for more than thirty youth groups and was
the youth affiliate of the National Social Welfare Assembly and, until February 1967, included SDS
in its alliance. However, in February 1967, contemporaneous to the Freedom Budgets’ conferences,

308

it was revealed that the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been funding the U.S. Youth Council
through a conduit, The Foundation for Youth and Student Affairs. It was estimated at the time
USYC derived 90% of its funding from the CIA-funded foundation. It is unclear to what extent that
CIA derived resources went towards supporting the Freedom Budget outreach. The USYC
estimated the conferences would cost $26,239.50, and they applied for funding from a number of
different sources such as Stern Family Fund and the Taconic Foundation; but it is unclear from the
records where they were able to secure funding to organizing the conferences. See: Roe, Charlotte.
“Proposal for a Series of Youth Conferences on the Freedom Budget, Sponsored by the United
States Youth Council,” N.D. Circa 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 13. Rustin Papers. Roe, Charlotte.
“Memorandum to Bayard Rustin and Walter Stevens, Re: Youth Activities on the Freedom Budget,”
January 10, 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 12. Rustin Papers. Sheehan, Neil. “Foundations Linked to C.I.A.
Are Found to Subsidize 4 Other Youth Organizations.” The New York Times, February 16, 1967.
Reed, Roy. “Youth Council to Investigate Charge of C.I.A. Link.” The New York Times, March 6,
1967. “Student Group Cuts Ties With U.S. Youth Council.” The New York Times, February 22, 1967.
214
Chavez, Cesar. “Prefacio: Un ‘Presupuesto de Libertad’ Para Todos,” March 27, 1967. Box: 19,
Folder: 13. Rustin Papers.
215
U.S. Youth Council. “Flyer: New England Conference on the Freedom Budget,” November
1967. Box: 33, Folder: Freedom Budget. Julius Bernstein Papers, WAG 116, Tamiment Library and
Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University (Hereafter cited as Bernstein Papers). U.S.
Youth Council. “Flyer: Firebombs or a Freedom Budget,” November 1967. Box: 33, Folder:
Freedom Budget. Bernstein Papers.
216
A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans: A Summary. New York: A.
Philip Randolph Institute, 1967, 3.
217
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Jacob Javits,” September 30, 1966. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin Papers.
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Robert F. Kennedy,” September 30, 1966. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin
Papers.
218
Javits, Jacob K. “The Road Back For the G.O.P.: The Road Back for the G.O.P.” The New York
Times, November 15, 1964.
219
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum to Community Leaders, Re: What You Can do about the
‘Freedom Budget for All Americans,’” N.D. Circa 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
220
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum to Community Leaders, Re: What You Can do about the
‘Freedom Budget for All Americans,’” N.D. Circa 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin Papers.
221
Rustin, Bayard. “Memorandum to Woodrow Ginsburg, Nat Goldfinger, Vivian Henderson,
Marvin Kaplan, Leon Keyserling and Joe Rauh, Regarding: Meeting to Draw up Legislation in
Behalf of The Freedom Budget For All Americans,” March 16, 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 6. Rustin
Papers.
222
“GOP Roars Back in Election Gains.” The Chicago Daily Defender, November 10, 1966.
223
“Johnson Program Faces House Snag: Analysis Shows Big Drop in Great Society Backers.” The
New York Times, November 13, 1966.
224
“Johnson Believes G.O.P. Gains Peril New Legislation: But Says He Is Confident of Renewed 2-
Party Front on National Security.” The New York Times, November 11, 1966.

309

225
“Johnson Program Faces House Snag: Analysis Shows Big Drop in Great Society Backers.” The
New York Times, November 13, 1966.
226
Otten, Alan L. “Politics and People: The Johnson Dilemma.” Wall Street Journal, November 16,
1966.
227
Mills, Wilbur. Oral History Interview with Wilbur Mills. Interview by Joe B. Frantz, November 2,
1971. The Miller Center, University of Virginia, 15. Schulman, Lyndon B. Johnson and American
Liberalism, 170-171.
228
Keyserling echoed this sentiment as well. A. Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All
Americans. For Keyserling, see: Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Norman Thomas,” December 21,
1966. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
229
This letter was in response to a condemnation of the Freedom Budget from the professor and
critic of the military industrial complex, Seymour Melman, who suggested that the Freedom Budget
was a “war budget.” See: Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Irving Howe,” November 10, 1966. Box: 21,
Folder: 5. Rustin Papers. Kemble, Penn. “Letter to Rachelle Horowitz,” November 5, 1966. Box: 21,
Folder: 5. Rustin Papers.
230
Rustin, Bayard. “Draft: Freedom Budget Article,” N.D. Circa Summer-Fall 1966. Box: 21, Folder:
6. Rustin Papers.
231
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 1/2. Interview by
David Stein, September 30, 2011.
232
However, the impact of an accelerated war was not wholly unforeseen. On August 31, 1966,
Norman Thomas wrote to Rustin to wonder, “I don’t see how we can avoid reference to what effect
the Vietnam War may have on the Budget.” See: Thomas, Norman. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,”
August 31, 1966. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin Papers.
233
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Reverend Shirley E. Greene,” April 6, 1967. Box: 20, Folder: 2.
Rustin Papers.
234
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Reverend Shirley E. Greene,” April 6, 1967. Box: 20, Folder: 2.
Rustin Papers.
235
Breeden, James P. “Memorandum to Shirley Greene, Regarding: Leon Keyserling’s Letter in
Response to My Memo on the Freedom Budget,” March 27, 1967. Box: 20, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
On Breeden, see: “Biographical Information, James P. Breeden.” Finding Aid for the James P. Breeden
Papers, 1964-1984. Accessed March 31, 2014. http://ead.dartmouth.edu/html/ml59.html.
236
“Naming the system” is the title given to SDS President Paul Potter’s speech from the April, 1965
anti-Vietnam protests in Washington D.C. See: Potter, Paul. “Naming The System.” Monthly Review
Zine, January 15, 2006. http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/2006/potter150106.html.
237
Of all the responses to the Freedom Budget, few grasped its implications like the Chamber of
Commerce. They described Rustin and Keyserling and their ilk as “battle-hardened veterans willing
to fight future skirmishes to win their war. They are working on interim goals now to grab ground
nearer their ultimate objectives.” And they noted that, “of all the plans forwarded [to address
poverty and unemployment], the most ambitious is spelled out in a document called the ‘Freedom
Budget.’” See: “Lavish Welfare Schemes Ahead: Here’s the Grand Strategy Welfarists Are Now
Mapping.” Nation’s Business, August 1967, 34.

310

238
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” October 19, 1967. Box: 3, Folder: 10. Rustin
Papers. Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Leon H. Keyserling,” May 25, 1968. Box: 3, Folder: 10. Rustin
Papers.
239
Lynd, Staughton. “Letter to Bayard Rustin (April 19, 1965).” In I Must Resist: Bayard Rustin’s Life in
Letters, edited by Michael G. Long. San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2012, 301-303.
240
Lynd, Staughton. “Coalition Politics or Nonviolent Revolution?” In The New Left: A Documentary
History, edited by Massimo Teodori. Indianapolis, IN: Bobbs-Merrill, 1969, 198-199.
241
Max Shachtman, for example, was known to be a devastating debater as well as a skilled (and to
his enemies, ruthless) political tactician during factional disputes. Tom Kahn replied to the style of
critique lodged by Lynd in an article that was reprinted as a League of Industrial Democracy
pamphlet, see: Kahn, Tom. “The Problems of the New Left.” Commentary, July 1966. For
Shachtman, see: Kahn, Tom. “Max Shachtman: His Ideas and His Movement.” New America 10, no.
22 (November 15, 1972): 4-5. Weir, Stan. “Requiem for Max Shachtman.” Radical America 7, no. 1
(1973): 69–78. Jacobson, Julius. “The Two Deaths of Max Shachtman.” New Politics, January 1973,
96–100.
242
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 1/2. Interview by
David Stein, September 30, 2011.
243
Phillips, Kimberley L. War! What Is It Good For?: Black Freedom Struggles and the U.S. Military from
World War II to Iraq. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2012, 188, 206, 217.
244
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “SNCC Conference on Jobs and Food,”
November 1963. Box: 7, Folder: 1. Ella Baker Papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black
Culture, The New York Public Library.
245
Carmichael, Stokely. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” August 16, 1966. Box: 19, Folder: 16. Rustin
Papers. Rustin, Bayard. “‘Black Power’ and Coalition Politics.” Commentary 42, no. 3 (September
1966): 35-40.
246
This piece is signed by “Ralph, Charlie, and Jack.” It is likely that the authors were Ralph
Featherstone, and perhaps Jack Minnis, and it is unclear whom the “Charlie” is. It could be Charlie
Cobb, but my efforts to confirm this were unsuccessful. The Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee. “Position on Freedom Budget,” November 22, 1966. Box: 1, Folder: 4. Miller (Michael
J.) Civil Rights Collection: Special Collections, McCain Library and Archives, University of Southern
Mississippi. http://digilib.usm.edu/cdm/ref/collection/manu/id/3122.
247
Federal Bureau of Investigation. “FBI Memo, Re: Stokely Carmichael,” December 19, 1966.
Bayard Rustin, Federal Bureau of Investigation File.
248
The Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. “SNCC Brochure: ‘We’ll Never Turn Back,’”
N.D. Box: 8, Folder: 17. Ella Baker papers, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The
New York Public Library.
249
Sugrue, Thomas J. The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit. Princeton,
N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1996, 259.
250
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Hubert Humphrey,” July 31, 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.
251
Rustin, Bayard. “Letter to Lyndon B. Johnson,” July 31, 1967. Box: 21, Folder: 2. Rustin Papers.

311

252
O’Donnell, Kenneth. Oral History Interview with Kenneth O’Donnell. Interview by Paige E.
Mulhollan, July 23, 1969. The Harold Weisberg Archive: Digital Collection, Hood College, 91.
253
One exception is Eisenhower’s involvement in juvenile delinquency policy discussed in the prior
chapter. See: Feeley, Malcolm, and Austin Sarat. The Policy Dilemma: Federal Crime Policy and the Law
Enforcement Assistance Administration. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1980, 3.
254
Weaver, Vesla. “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy.” Studies in
American Political Development 21, no. Fall (2007): 244-45. Feeley and Sarat. The Policy Dilemma, 36.
255
Weaver, Vesla. “Frontlash: Race and the Development of Punitive Crime Policy,” 255. Feeley and
Sarat. The Policy Dilemma, 50.
256
Feeley and Sarat. The Policy Dilemma, 47.
257
As BPP historian Donna Murch notes, especially about this demand, “BPP’s Ten Point Program
fell squarely within reformist and rights-based political tradition, its aims were much more
ambitious.” See: Murch, Donna. Living for the City: Migration, Education, and the Rise of the Black Panther
Party in Oakland, California. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2010, 131. “Black
Panther Party for Self Defense Ten Point Platform & Program,” October 1966.
http://www.itsabouttimebpp.com/home/bpp_program_platform.html.
258
Kornbluh, Felicia Ann. The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, 60. Nadasen, Premilla, Jennifer Mittelstadt, and
Marisa Chappell. Welfare in the United States: A History with Documents, 1935-1996. New York:
Routledge, 2009, 49.
259
“Keyserling Resigns as Vice Chairman of ADA.” Los Angeles Times, February 14, 1968. Keyserling,
Leon H. “Letter to the Board of Americans for Democratic Action,” January 29, 1968. Box: 61,
Folder: 8. Albert Glotzer Papers, The Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
260
Rustin, Bayard, and A. Philip Randolph Institute. “Press Release: Is the Negro Vote Irrelevant?,”
July 18, 1968. Box: 41, Folder: 17. Rustin Papers.
261
Horowitz, Rachelle. The A. Philip Randolph Institute and the Freedom Budget, 1/2. Interview by
David Stein, September 30, 2011.
262
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” October 19, 1967. Box: 3, Folder: 10. Rustin
Papers.

Chapter 5
1
The Phillips Curve, named after economist A.W. Phillips, maintained that economies could
tradeoff between inflation and unemployment—with the two being inversely related. For example,
less unemployment would necessitate more inflation. See: Phillips, A. W. “The Relation Between
Unemployment and the Rate of Change of Money Wage Rates in the United Kingdom, 1861-1957.”
Economica 25, no. 100 (November 1958): 283–99.
2
Johnson was a leading “Chicago School” economist and a one of the preeminent thinkers of
monetary economics. See: Johnson, Harry G. “Problems of Efficiency in Monetary Management.”
Journal of Political Economy 76, no. 5 (October 1968), 986. See also: Perelman, Michael. “Sado-
Monetarism: The Role of the Federal Reserve System in Keeping Wages Low.” Monthly Review 63,
no. 11 (April 2012). http://monthlyreview.org/2012/04/01/sado-monetarism. For the making of

312

the Chicago School via private subsidy, see Van Horn, Rob, and Philip Mirowski. “The Rise of the
Chicago School of Economics and the Birth of Neoliberalism.” In The Road from Mont Pèlerin: The
Making of the Neoliberal Thought Collective, edited by Philip Mirowski and Dieter Plehwe. Cambridge,
Mass: Harvard University Press, 2009, 150-151.
3
King, Coretta Scott. “Pamphlet: Why We Still Can’t Wait,” N.D. Circa 1975-1976. Box: 12, Folder:
32. Cleveland Robinson Papers WAG.006.001. Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor
Archives, New York University (Hereafter cited as Robinson Papers).
4
I am relying on David McNally’s definition of “neoliberalism” as: “The policies, practices and ideas
associated with the sharp turn to market regulation of social life since the 1970s. Because this
glorification of the market was first preached by the liberalism of the eighteenth and nineteenth
centuries, the recent version is commonly referred to as a new or neoliberalism. Neoliberalism
preaches hostility to socialism, trade unions, and social welfare programs, all of which are alleged to
‘interfere’ with the market. Economists like Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman are often
associated with this doctrine, as are politicians such as former British Prime Minister Margaret
Thatcher and former U.S. president Ronald Reagan. The effects of neoliberalism have included
increased social inequality, indebtedness for much of the Global South, and heightened policing and
militarism.” See: McNally, David. Global Slump: The Economics and Politics of Crisis and Resistance.
Oakland, CA: PM Press, 2011, 196.
5
“Debate Set on Poverty Alternatives.” The Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1967. “Economist Will Be
on Panel.” The Los Angeles Times, March 2, 1967.
6
Goodman, Mark. “Visiting Professor Critical of Anti-Tuition Movement.” The Daily Bruin,
February 27, 1967.
7
Friedman describes another debate with Keyserling during this time, at the University of
Wisconsin, whereby Freidman’s resistance to the draft won over the audience. See: Friedman,
Milton. Capitalism and Freedom. 40th anniversary ed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002, xiv.
Friedman, Milton. “A Volunteer Army.” Newsweek, December 19, 1966.
8
Keyserling, Leon H. “Is the U.S. Economy Rich Enough to Afford Justice?,” March 1967. Box: 38.
Leon H. Keyserling Papers, The Harry S. Truman Presidential Library (Hereafter cited as Keyserling
Papers).
9
Friedman, Milton. “The Role of Monetary Policy.” The American Economic Review 58, no. 1 (March
1968): 9.
10
Merrill, Karen R. The Oil Crisis of 1973-1974: A Brief History with Documents. Boston: Bedford/St.
Martin’s, 2007, 20-22.
11
Stein, Judith. Pivotal Decade: How the United States Traded Factories for Finance in the Seventies. New
Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2010, 106.
12
“Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject: Unemployment Rate, 1948-2014.” Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Accessed July 1, 2013. http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet.
13
Stein, Pivotal Decade, 74-75.
14
Jackson, Thomas. From Civil Rights to Human Rights: Martin Luther King, Jr., and the Struggle for
Economic Justice. Philadelphia Pa.: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, 22.
15
Mantler, Gordon Keith. Power to the Poor: Black-Brown Coalition and the Fight for Economic Justice, 1960-
1974. Chapel Hill: The University of North Carolina Press, 2013, 167-168.

313

16
Kornbluh, Felicia Ann. The Battle for Welfare Rights: Politics and Poverty in Modern America.
Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007, 102.
17
Sterne, Joseph R.L. “King Widow Leads Trek by Mothers.” The Baltimore Sun, May 13, 1968.
18
Jackson, From Civil Rights to Human Rights, 358.
19
Fink, Leon, and Brian Greenberg. Upheaval in the Quiet Zone: A History of Hospital Workers’ Union,
Local 1199. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1989, 138. Young, Cynthia. Soul Power: Culture,
Radicalism, and the Making of a U.S. Third World Left. Durham: Duke University Press, 2006, 87.
20
Fink, and Greenberg, Upheaval in the Quiet Zone, 138.
21
Raskin, A.H. “A Union with ‘Soul.’” The New York Times, March 22, 1970.
22
Fink, and Greenberg, Upheaval in the Quiet Zone, 144.
23
“Luncheon to Benefit King Fund.” The Los Angeles Times, May 4, 1969.
24
“Many Children from City Expected at Welfare Protest.” The Baltimore Sun, March 22, 1972. Smith,
Lucinda. “1200 of Nation’s Poor Convene in R.I.” Boston Globe, July 29, 1971.
25
Levison, Andrew. The National Committee for Full Employment and the Full Employment
Action Council in the 1970s. Interview by David Stein, November 14, 2013.
26
Fraser, C. Gerald. “Reuther Asks National Health System.” The New York Times, November 15,
1968.
27
King, Coretta Scott, and The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change. “Letter to Full
Employment Conference Invitees,” May 31, 1974. Box: 69, Folder: 23. United Federation of
Teachers Records, WAG. 022, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York
University (Hereafter cited as UFT Papers).
28
King, Coretta Scott, and The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change. “A Four Point
Employment Statement,” May 31, 1974. Box: 69, Folder: 23. UFT Papers.
29
See previous chapter for a discussion of Rustin’s debates with Melman. Browne and Keyserling
discussed the Freedom Budget in a series of letters as well as in the pages of the influential
magazine, Freedomways. See: Keyserling, Leon H., and Robert Browne. “Reader’s Forum: The
Freedom Budget.” Freedomways 7, no. 4 (Fall 1967): 349–355.
30
Hunter, Charlayne. “Panel of 100 Asks Full Employment.” The New York Times, June 15, 1974.
31
These were parallel non-profit organizations primarily separated for tax purposes. See: Levison,
Andrew. The National Committee for Full Employment and the Full Employment Action Council
in the 1970s. Interview by David Stein, November 14, 2013.
32
National Committee for Full Employment. “Notes on Recent Activities,” April 11, 1975. Box: 6,
Folder: 11. ACTWU’s Vice-President’s Office Records #5619/029. Kheel Center for Labor-
Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library (Hereafter cited as ACTWU
VP Papers).
33
“Meeting Minutes of the Board of Directors of the National Committee for Full Employment,”
October 18, 1974. Box: 1, Folder: 8. ACTWU’s Murray Finley Records from the President’s Office.
#5619/036. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University
Library (Hereafter cited as Finley Papers).

314

34
National Committee for Full Employment. “Statement of Purpose,” N.D. Circa 1974. Box: 1,
Folder: 9. Finley Papers.
35
Ayres Jr., E. Drummond. “3,000 Seek Jobs in Atlanta Melee.” The New York Times, January 11,
1975.
36
“Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject: Unemployment Rate, 1948-2014.” Bureau of Labor
Statistics. Accessed July 1, 2013. http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet.
37
Full Employment Action Council. “New York Times Advertisement: ‘An Emergency Program for
Immediate Action,’” January 12, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 8. ACTWU VP Papers.
38
National Committee for Full Employment. “Notes on Recent Activities,” April 11, 1975. Box: 6,
Folder: 11. ACTWU VP Papers.
39
National Committee for Full Employment. “Attendence Report for National Committee for Full
Employment Meeting,” April 11, 1975. Box: 6, Folder: 11. ACTWU VP Papers.
40
Suall, Joan. “Letter to Dina Boichot,” March 31, 1975. Box: 6, Folder: 11. ACTWU VP Papers.
41
National Committee for Full Employment. “Agenda for Meeting,” April 11, 1975. Box: 6, Folder:
11. ACTWU VP Papers.
42
The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change. “Newsletter,” April 1974. Box: 12, Folder:
31. Robinson Papers.
43
Levison, Andrew. “Summary of ‘Areas of Interest for National Committee for Full Employment
by Leon Keyserling,’” April 7, 1975. Box: 6, Folder: 11. ACTWU VP Papers.
44
On the article’s influence, see: Cobble, Dorothy Sue. “A ‘Tiger by the Toenail’: The 1970s Origins
of the New Working-Class Majority.” Labor: Studies in Working-Class History of the Americas 2, no. 3
(September 1, 2005): 103. Levison, Andrew. “The Working-Class Majority.” The New Yorker,
September 2, 1974, 36. Levison, Andrew. The Working-Class Majority. New York: Coward, McCann,
and Geoghegan, 1974.
45
Keyserling, Leon H. “Toward a National Commitment for Full Employment,” April 1974. Box: 1,
Folder: 9. Finley Papers.
46
National Committee for Full Employment. “Minutes of the Task Force on Full Employment
Policy, Washington D.C.,” October 5, 1974. Box: 8, Folder: 15. ACTWU VP Papers.
47
Keyserling, Leon H. “Toward a National Commitment for Full Employment,” April 1974. Box: 1,
Folder: 9. Finley Papers.
48
Lenin, V.I. “May Day Action by the Revolutionary Proletariat.” In Lenin: Collected Works. Vol. 19.
Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1977.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/jun/15.htm. See also: Marable, Manning.
Black American Politics: From the Washington Marches to Jesse Jackson. New York: Verso, 1985, 72.
49
Perry, Mary Ellen. “Q and A: Coretta Scott King On Justice--Economic.” The Washington Star,
April 15, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 8. ACTWU VP Papers.
50
Perry, Mary Ellen. “Q and A: Coretta Scott King On Justice--Economic.” The Washington Star,
April 15, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 8. ACTWU VP Papers.

315

51
This piece was reprinted and circulated by NCFE/FEAC. See: Ginsburg, Helen. “Deliberate
Unemployment: The Strategy of Misery.” The Nation, February 1, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 5. ACTWU
VP Papers.
52
Golden, Soma. “High Joblessness Expected to Persist as a Condition of U.S. Through Decade.”
The New York Times, April 21, 1975.
53
National Committee for Full Employment, Leon H. Keyserling, Wilbur Cohen, Robert
Lekachman, and Frank Riessman. “Letter to Editor of the New York Times,” April 24, 1975. Box: 9,
Folder: 8. ACTWU VP Papers.
54
Ginsburg, Helen. “Deliberate Unemployment: The Strategy of Misery.” The Nation, February 1,
1975. Box: 9, Folder: 5. ACTWU VP Papers.
55
Friedman, Milton. “Nobel Lecture: Inflation and Unemployment,” November 29, 1976. Box: 55,
Folder: 24. Milton Friedman Papers, The Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University.
56
National Committee for Full Employment, Leon H. Keyserling, Wilbur Cohen, Robert
Lekachman, and Frank Riessman. “Letter to Editor of the New York Times,” April 24, 1975. Box: 9,
Folder: 8. ACTWU VP Papers.
57
Perry, Mary Ellen. “Q and A: Coretta Scott King On Justice--Economic.” The Washington Star,
April 15, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 8. ACTWU VP Papers.
58
MacLean, Nancy. “Postwar Women’s History: The ‘Second Wave’ or the End of the Family
Wage?” In A Companion to Post-1945 America, edited by Jean-Christophe Agnew and Roy
Rosenzweig. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2007, 237.
59
Congressional Black Caucus, U.S. House of Representatives. “A Position on Employment: A
Position Paper of the Congressional Black Caucus.” April 5-7, 1972. Box: 1, Folder: 64. Edward
Goldstein Papers, WAG 232, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York
University (Hereafter cited as Goldstein Papers).
60
Congressional Black Caucus, U.S. House of Representatives. “Black Perspectives on Law and
Justice: A Position Paper of the Congressional Black Caucus,” April 5-7, 1972. Box: 1, Folder: 64.
Goldstein Papers.
61
This was one of the three challenges Jackson presented in his keynote address at the Meatpackers
Union Convention, August 9, 1972. Jackson, Jesse L. “Three Challenges to Organized Labor, No. 4,
1972.” In Freedomways Reader: Prophets in Their Own Country, edited by Esther Cooper Jackson and
Constance Pohl. Boulder: Westview Press, 2000, 220.
62
The Freedom Budget authors estimated that the outlays for their proposals would be $10 billion
per year (in 1964 dollars); I have adjusted this value per the inflation rate from 1971-1975. See: A.
Philip Randolph Institute. A “Freedom Budget” For All Americans: Budgeting Our Resources, 1966-1975 to
Achieve “Freedom From Want.” New York: A. Philip Randolph Institute, 1966, 9-10. For the criminal
justice outlays, see: Armbrust, Earl A. Federal Law Enforcement Assistance: Alternative Approaches, Budget
Issue Paper for Fiscal Year 1979. Washington D.C.: Congressional Budget Office, Congress of the
United States, April 1978, 35. “Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject: Inflation Calculator:
Bureau of Labor Statistics.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed April 20, 2014.
http://www.bls.gov/data/inflation_calculator.htm.

316

63
On the CBC and the Joint Center, see: Smith, Robert Charles. We Have No Leaders: African
Americans in the Post-Civil Rights Era. SUNY Series in Afro-American Studies. Albany: State University
of New York Press, 1996, 111-123.
64
The Congressional Black Caucus, and Joint Center for Political Studies. “Program: Toward Full
Employment: A Viable Goal,” May 20, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 10. ACTWU VP Papers.
65
Nyhan, David. “The Bitter Struggle for Jobs.” The Boston Globe, May 18, 1975.
66
On Roberts, see: Freeman, Joshua. Working-Class New York: Life and Labor since World War II. New
York: New Press, 2000, 207-208. Greenhouse, Steven. “Public Lives: Back to the Battlefield,
Heeding Her Old Union’s Call.” The New York Times, March 1, 2002. Reverby, Susan, and Lillian
Roberts. “Hospital Organizing in the 1950s: An Interview with Lillian Roberts.” Signs 1, no. 4
(Summer 1976): 1053–63. For quote: “400 Busloads to March on Washington.” The New York
Amsterdam News, April 23, 1975.
67
“Speakers Drowned Out at Huge Capital Rally.” The Los Angeles Times, April 27, 1975. Feaver,
Douglas B., and Ron Shaffer. “60,000 Protest for Jobs: Equipment Foulup Cuts Stadium Rally.” The
Washington Post, April 27, 1975. “45,000 Rally for Jobs.” The Baltimore Sun, April 27, 1975.
68
“60,000 Protest for Jobs: Equipment Foulup Cuts Stadium Rally.” The Washington Post, April 27,
1975.
69
Flannery, Tom. “Editorial Cartoon: ‘You’re Not Exactly Unemployed Anyway--You’re Fighting
Inflation.’” The Baltimore Sun, June 6, 1975. National Committee for Full Employment, and Full
Employment Action Council. National Committee for Full Employment, and Full Employment
Action Council. “Flyer: What Are the Facts About Full Employment,” N.D. Circa 1975-76. Box: 64,
Folder: 13. UFT Papers.
70
Golden, Soma. “High Joblessness Expected to Persist as a Condition of U.S. Through Decade.”
The New York Times, April 21, 1975.
71
Golden, Soma. “High Joblessness Expected to Persist as a Condition of U.S. Through Decade.”
The New York Times, April 21, 1975. Nossiter, Bernard D. “Causes of Rising Costs Argued by
Economists.” The Washington Post and Times Herald, November 10, 1958.
72
Ford, Gerald. “288 - Veto of an Emergency Employment Appropriations Bill.” The American
Presidency Project, May 28, 1975. http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=4947.
73
Golden, Soma. “High Joblessness Expected to Persist as a Condition of U.S. Through Decade.”
The New York Times, April 21, 1975.
74
King, Coretta Scott, and Murray Finley. “Letter to Congress,” May 30, 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 6.
Finley Papers.
75
Hicks, Nancy. “House Fails to Override Veto of Bill to Add Jobs.” The New York Times, June 5,
1975.
76
Hawkins, Augustus. “Address…before the 1st National Full Employment Conference, Statler
Hilton Hotel, Washington D.C.,” June 24, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 17. ACTWU VP Papers. National
Committee for Full Employment. “Overflow Crowd Attends Meeting.” The Full Employment
News Reporter, Volume 1, No. 2, October 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 3. Finley Papers.
77
“Greenspan Says Rate of Jobless Will Ease Slowly.” The New York Times, June 23, 1975.

317

78
Hawkins, Augustus. “Address…before the 1st National Full Employment Conference, Statler
Hilton Hotel, Washington D.C.,” June 24, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 17. ACTWU VP Papers.
79
Bullock, Paul, ed. “Goals for Full Employment: The Full Employment and Balance Growth Act
of 1976: A Discussion, June 6, 1975.” Institute of Industrial Relations, University of California-Los
Angeles, 1976, 15.
80
King, Coretta Scott. “Draft Speech to the 1st National Full Employment Conference, Statler
Hotel, Washington D.C.,” June 24, 1975. Box: 9, Folder: 17. ACTWU VP Papers.
81
Block, Herb. “Recession Is Over for All Practical Purposes.” Hawkins’ Full Employment Bulletin,
N.D. Circa 1975. Box: 26. Keyserling Papers.
82
Rustin spent the bulk of his time during this period organizing chapters of the A. Philip Randolph
Institute to bring together Black trade unionists to support the program of the AFL-CIO; and he
also focused increasing attention supporting the state of Israel, and an alignment of socialists and
social democrats who were increasingly moving rightward under the banner of Social Democrats-
USA and the Coalition for a Democratic Majority.
83
Rustin, Bayard. “The Foundation: A Black Working Class (reprinted from Ebony, August 1975).”
The A. Philip Randolph Institute, Circa 1975-1976. Box: 18, Folder: 12. Finley Papers.
84
National Committee for Full Employment. “Full Employment Action Council in the News.” The
Full Employment News Reporter, Volume 1, No. 2, October 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 3. Finley Papers.
85
National Committee for Full Employment. “Overflow Crowd Attends Meeting.” The Full
Employment News Reporter, Volume 1, No. 2, October 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 3. Finley Papers.
86
Shabecoff, Philip. “Unemployment as Political Issue.” The New York Times, June 27, 1975.
87
“Catchup.” The Catholic Virginian, July 4, 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 6. Finley Papers.
88
National Committee for Full Employment. “Economists and Social Scientists Attack Contrived
Unemployment-Inflation Tradeoff,” July 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 3. Finley Papers.
89
Wickenden was a longtime member of this milieu. In the late 1960s she was a leader of the
National Social Welfare Assembly, the parent organization of the U.S. Youth Council, which helped
coordinate the Freedom Budget conferences. In addition, she was also one of the speakers during
the UCLA debate on poverty between Milton Friedman and Leon Keyserling. For her political
background in the 1940s and 50s, see: Storrs, Landon R. Y. The Second Red Scare and the Unmaking of
the New Deal Left. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2013, 243-246.
90
National Committee for Full Employment. “Economists and Social Scientists Attack Contrived
Unemployment-Inflation Tradeoff,” July 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 3. Finley Papers.
91
Tobin, James. “Letter to Frank Reisman,” July 17, 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 6. Finley Papers.
92
Tobin, James. “On Improving the Economic Status of the Negro.” Daedalus 94, no. 4 (Fall 1965):
880. See also: Tabb, William K. The Political Economy of the Black Ghetto. New York: Norton, 1970,
110-112.
93
Tobin, “On Improving the Economic Status of the Negro,” 885.
94
Tobin, James. “Letter to Frank Reisman,” July 17, 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 6. Finley Papers.

318

95
Hargrove, Erwin C., and Samuel A. Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under
Chairman Alan Greenspan, 1974-1977: Oral History Interview.” In The President and the Council of
Economic Advisers: Interviews with CEA Chairmen. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1984, 445.
96
Katz, Michael. “Why Don’t American Cities Burn Very Often?” Journal of Urban History 34, no. 2
(January 2008): 185–208.
97
Joint Economic Committee of the Congress. “Toward Full Employment: A Conference on the
30th Anniversary of the Employment Act,” March 1976. Box: 9, Folder: 20. ACTWU VP Papers.
98
Nadasen, Premilla, Jennifer Mittelstadt, and Marisa Chappell. Welfare in the United States: A History
with Documents, 1935-1996. New York: Routledge, 2009, 58. Kornbluh, The Battle for Welfare Rights,
181-182. White, Deborah Gray. Too Heavy a Load: Black Women in Defense of Themselves, 1894-1994.
New York: W.W. Norton, 1999, 242.
99
Kalman, Laura. Right Star Rising: A New Politics, 1974-1980. 1st ed. New York: W.W. Norton, 2010,
39.
100
King, Coretta Scott, and Murray Finley. “Letter to Senator Birch Bayh,” September 9, 1975. Box:
1, Folder: 6. Finley Papers.
101
Stein, Pivotal Decade, 143.
102
Keyserling, Leon H. “Twelve Essentials for Full Employment Legislation (Prepared for the Full
Employment Action Committee),” October 23, 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 3. Finley Papers.
103
Keyserling, Leon H. “Comments on September 30, 1975 Discussion Draft of Bill ‘To Establish
Rules and Procedures for the Congressional Review (and Possible Disapproval) of Biennial Balance
Economic Growth Plans and for Other Purposes’ (So-Called Bolling Proposal),” October 26, 1975.
Box: 1, Folder: 2. Finley Papers.
104
Soalt, Jerry. “Photos from Full Employment Action Council Board Meeting,” October 23, 1975.
Box: 6, Folder: 10. ACTWU VP Papers.
105
Democratic Study Group, U.S. House of Representatives. “Special Report: The Real Impact of
Ford’s Tax Proposals on the Poor,” October 20, 1975. Box: 1, Folder: 2. Finley Papers. “The
National Economy (Excerpt from Resolution No. 94, Passed by the AFL-CIO Convention, Oct. 2-
7),” October 1975. Box: 6, Folder: 10. ACTWU VP Papers.
106
“The National Economy (Excerpt from Resolution No. 94, Passed by the AFL-CIO Convention,
Oct. 2-7),” October 1975. Box: 6, Folder: 10. ACTWU VP Papers.
107
Shull, Leon, Alan Gartner, Leon H. Keyserling, Leonard Lesser, and Nat Weinberg. “Principles
for Full Employment Legislation, Draft #6,” December 3, 1975. Box: 6, Folder: 9. ACTWU VP
Papers.
108
The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change. “Conference Program: A Full Employment
Economy, Eighth Annual Birthday Celebration, Forty-Seventh Anniversary for the Reverend
Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.,” January 1976. Box: 12, Folder: 31. Robinson Papers.
109
King, Coretta Scott. “Press Conference: Statement by Coretta Scott King,” January 19, 1976. Box:
12, Folder: 31. Robinson Papers.
110
Levison, Andrew. The National Committee for Full Employment and the Full Employment
Action Council in the 1970s. Interview by David Stein, November 14, 2013.

319

111
The Martin Luther King Jr. Center for Social Change. “Conference Program: A Full Employment
Economy, Eighth Annual Birthday Celebration, Forty-Seventh Anniversary for the Reverend
Doctor Martin Luther King, Jr.,” January 1976. Box: 12, Folder: 31. Robinson Papers.
112
Linebaugh, Peter. The Magna Carta Manifesto: Liberties and Commons for All. Berkeley: University of
California Press, 2008.
113
Joint Economic Committee of the Congress. “Toward Full Employment: A Conference on the
30th Anniversary of the Employment Act,” March 1976. Box: 9, Folder: 20. ACTWU VP Papers.
Joint Economic Committee of the Congress. “Notes from the Joint Economic Committee, Volume
2, Number 7,” April 9, 1976. Box: 9, Folder: 20. ACTWU VP Papers.
114
Brown, Richard. “Letter to All Full Employment Action Council Board Members,” June 23,
1976. Box: 6, Folder: 15. ACTWU VP Papers.
115
Samuel, Howard. “Letter to Full Employment Action Council,” July 28, 1976. Box: 6, Folder: 15.
ACTWU VP Papers.
116
Historian Jefferson Cowie argues that “in retrospect, [Humphrey-Hawkins] turned out to be
more of an election year weapon than a political vision for a generation.” See: Cowie, Jefferson.
Stayin’ Alive: The 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class. New York; London: New Press, 2012,
279.
117
Samuel, Howard. “Letter to Full Employment Action Council,” July 28, 1976. Box: 6, Folder: 15.
ACTWU VP Papers.
118
Brown, Richard. “Letter to Coretta Scott King, Murray Finley, Howard Samuel,” October 6,
1976. Box: 6, Folder: 15. ACTWU VP Papers.
119
Brown, Richard. “Letter to Murray Finley, Coretta Scott King, Howard Samuel, Re: Strategy
Committee Meeting, March 22, 1976,” March 24, 1976. Box: 9, Folder: 16. ACTWU VP Papers.
120
“Report on Organizing NCFE/FEAC Activities, Received by Howard Samuel,” June 4, 1976.
Box: 9, Folder: 16. ACTWU VP Papers.
121
“Report on the Activities of the Full Employment Action Council, 1976,” N.D. Circa 1977. Box:
178, Folder: 21. ACTWU’s Jacob Sheinkman Records from the Sectretary-Treasurer’s and
President’s Offices. #5619/004. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and
Archives, Cornell University Library (Hereafter cited as Sheinkman Papers).
122
“Progress Report on Women’s Conference (on Full Employment),” N.D. Circa April 1976. Box:
9, Folder: 16. ACTWU VP Papers.
123
Self, Robert O. All in the Family: The Realignment of American Democracy Since the 1960s. New York:
Hill and Wang, 2012, 322-324.
124
Bird, Caroline. “The Spirit of Houston: The First National Women’s Conference, An Official
Report to the President, the Congress and the People of the United States.” National Commission
on the Observance of International Women’s Year, March 1978, 44.
125
One major weakness in the bill, however, occurred prior to Carter’s election, when the AFL-CIO
demanded the removal of the provision that allowed individuals to sue the government if the job
guarantee was not provided. The labor federation was skeptical of such a legal enforcement
mechanism. See: Ginsburg, Helen Lachs. “Historical Amnesia: The Humphrey-Hawkins Act, Full

320

Employment and Employment as a Right.” The Review of Black Political Economy 39, no. 1 (December
2011): 130-131. Smith, We Have No Leaders, 195.
126
Massachusetts Coalition for Full Employment. “Meeting Minutes,” August 22, 1977. Box: 7,
Folder: 22. Julius Bernstein Papers, WAG 116, Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor
Archives, New York University (Hereafter cited as Bernstein Papers). “Millions Turn Out for Full
Employment Week.” Full Employment Advocate, October 1977. Box: 64, Folder: 13. UFT Papers.
127
Full Employment Action Council. “Countown: Full Employment Week,” July 25, 1977. Box: 7,
Folder: 22. Bernstein Papers. “Report from Regional Groups,” August 19, 1977. Box: 7, Folder: 22.
Bernstein Papers.
128
“Speakers at Herald Square Rally Hold Carter to Promise on Jobs.” The New York Times,
September 8, 1977. “Millions Turn Out for Full Employment Week.” Full Employment Advocate,
October 1977. Box: 64, Folder: 13. UFT Papers.
129
“Americans Demand Jobs, Not Promises.” Full Employment Advocate, October 1977. Box: 64,
Folder: 13. UFT Papers.
130
“Full Employment Action Council Board Meeting Minutes,” November 10, 1977. Box: 178,
Folder: 21. Sheinkman Papers.
131
“Full Employment Action Council Board Meeting Minutes,” November 10, 1977. Box: 178,
Folder: 21. Sheinkman Papers.
132
Waterhouse, Benjamin C. “Mobilizing for the Market: Organized Business, Wage-Price Controls,
and the Politics of Inflation, 1971-1974.” Journal of American History 100, no. 2 (September 2013):
454–78.
133
Cowie, Stayin’ Alive, 287.
134
Moody, Kim. An Injury to All: The Decline of American Unionism. London; New York: Verso, 1988,
130.
135
Phillips-Fein, Kim. Invisible Hands: The Businessmen’s Crusade Against the New Deal. New York: W. W.
Norton, 2010.
136
Jasper, Morris. “Letter to Henry Jackson,” October 2, 1976. Box: 146. Henry M. Jackson Papers,
Special Collections, University of Washington (Hereafter cited as Jackson Papers).
137
Hasenwinkle, Earl D. “Letter to Henry Jackson,” October 16, 1976. Box: 146. Jackson Papers.
138
Caproni, Grant A. “Letter to Henry Jackson,” August 11, 1976. Box: 146. Jackson Papers.
139
Larsen, Howard A. “Letter to Henry Jackson,” October 15, 1976. Box: 146. Jackson Papers.
140
Levison, Andrew. The National Committee for Full Employment and the Full Employment
Action Council in the 1970s. Interview by David Stein, November 14, 2013.
141
Cited in: “Selected Commentary on Humphrey-Hawkins,” November 1977. Box: 178, Folder: 21.
Sheinkman Papers.
142
“Numbers Tell the Story.” Full Employment Action News, March 1978. Box: 64, Folder: 13. UFT
Papers.
143
“House Passes Humphrey-Hawkins 257-152, Tough Fight Expected in the Senate.” Full
Employment Action News, March 1978. Box: 64, Folder: 13. UFT Papers.

321

144
Otten, Vicki, and Tim Sears. “Memorandum to ADA Chapters and National Board, Re: Full
Employment,” July 27, 1978. Box: 72, Folder: 32. ACTWU’s Secretary-Treasurer’s Office Records
#5619/018. Kheel Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University
Library (Hereafter cited as ACTWU Secretary-Treasurer Papers).
145
Houston, Paul. “Black Congressmen, Carter Clash Over Employment Bill.” The Los Angeles Times,
September 27, 1978. On Proposition 13 and anti-tax politics, see: Martin, Isaac William. Rich People’s
Movements: Grassroots Campaigns to Untax the One Percent. Oxford; New York: Oxford University
Press, 2013, 167.
146
“The Final Days: Diary of Senate Action.” Full Employment Action News, November 1978. Box: 64,
Folder: 13. UFT Papers.
147
“Summary of Full Employment Act.” Full Employment Action News, November 1978. Box: 64,
Folder: 13. UFT Papers.
148
King, Coretta Scott. “Letter to Black Americans, and to Everyone Who Supports Full Economic
Rights for All Minorities,” October 19, 1978. Box: 72, Folder: 32. ACTWU Secretary-Treasurer
Papers.
149
Hargrove, Erwin C., and Samuel A. Morley, eds. “The Council of Economic Advisers Under
Chairman Charles Schultze, 1974-1977: Oral History Interview.” In The President and the Council of
Economic Advisers: Interviews with CEA Chairmen. Boulder, Colo: Westview Press, 1984, 478.
150
Panitch, Leo, and Sam Gindin. The Making of Global Capitalism: The Political Economy of American
Empire. London; New York: Verso, 2012, 167.
151
Rattner, Steven. “Volcker Asserts U.S. Must Trim Living Standards, Warns of Inflation Peril If
Oil Spending Is Not Cut.” The New York Times, October 18, 1979. “Volcker Warns Inflation Fight
Will Lower Living Standards.” The Hartford Courant, October 18, 1979. “Databases, Tables &
Calculators by Subject: Unemployment Rate, 1948-2014.” Bureau of Labor Statistics. Accessed July 1,
2013. http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet. McNally, Global Slump, 25.
152
“Volcker Warns Inflation Fight Will Lower Living Standards.” The Hartford Courant, October 18,
1979. Neikirk, Bill. “Fed’s ‘Saturday Night Special’ Well Calculated.” Chicago Tribune, October 21,
1979.
153
Clark Jr., Lindley H. “The Fed’s Saturday Surprise.” Wall Street Journal, October 9, 1979. Berry,
John M. “Major Banks Raide Prime Interest Rate to Record 15 Pct.” The Washington Post, October
24, 1979. Jones, William H. “Fed Chief Calls Plan’s Long-Term Effects Favorable.” The Washington
Post, October 10, 1979. Neikirk, Bill. “Fed’s ‘Saturday Night Special’ Well Calculated.” Chicago
Tribune, October 21, 1979. Krippner, Greta R. Capitalizing on Crisis: The Political Origins of the Rise of
Finance. Cambridge, Mass.; London: Harvard University Press, 2012, 114-118.
154
Brown, Merrill. “Miller, Volcker Cheery About U.S. Outlook.” The Washington Post, October 13,
1979.
155
Hymowitz, Carol. “Easing the Pain: An Old Industrial City Strives to Lessen Effect Of a Possible
Recession.” Wall Street Journal, October 31, 1979.

322

Conclusion
1
Randolph, A. Philip. “Address...at Negro American Labor Council Workshop and Institute,
Metropolitan Baptist Church, Washington, DC,” 17-18 1961. Box: 40, Folder: Speeches, 1961. A.
Philip Randolph Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
2
Benjamin, Walter. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books, 1986, 254-255.
3
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” August 22, 1983. Box: 35, Folder: 18. Bayard
Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division. Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard
Rustin,” September 22, 1983. Box: 35, Folder: 18. Bayard Rustin Papers, Library of Congress,
Manuscript Division.
4
Keyserling, Leon H. “Letter to Bayard Rustin,” August 22, 1983. Box: 35, Folder: 18. Bayard
Rustin Papers, Library of Congress, Manuscript Division.
5
Full Employment Action Council. “Will You Be the Next Casualty of Reaganomics,” 1983. Box:
30, Folder: 32. ACTWU’s Murray Finley Records from the President’s Office. #5619/036. Kheel
Center for Labor-Management Documentation and Archives, Cornell University Library.
6
International Association of Machinists. “Worker’s Technology Bill of Rights.” Democracy 3, no. 2
(1983): 26.
7
Moody, Kim. US Labor in Trouble and Transition: The Failure of Reform from Above, the Promise of Revival
from Below. New York: Verso, 2007, 1.
8
Hall, Stuart. “Authoritarian Populism: A Reply to Jessop et Al.” New Left Review, no. 151 (June
1985): 123.
9
“Databases, Tables & Calculators by Subject: Unemployment Rate, 1955-1960.” Bureau of Labor
Statistics, April 9, 2013. http://data.bls.gov/pdq/SurveyOutputServlet.
10
O’Neill, Tip. “Audio Recording: Drugs,” July 23, 1986. Box: 472-2, Folder: 28. Thomas P.
O’Neill, Jr. Congressional Papers (CA2009-01), John J. Burns Library, Boston College.
11
Baum, Dan. Smoke and Mirrors: The War on Drugs and the Politics of Failure. Boston: Little Brown,
1996, 228.
12
Conaboy, Richard P. Special Report to the Congress: Cocaine and Federal Sentencing Policy. U.S. Sentencing
Commission, Diane Publishing, 1995, 117. “Bill Summary & Status - 99th Congress (1985 - 1986) -
H.R.5484 - Cosponsors.” The Library of Congress, THOMAS. Accessed April 28, 2014.
http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/bdquery/z?d099:HR05484:@@@N.
13
This is Ruth Wilson Gilmore’s conceptualization for estimating California’s relative surplus
population. Golden Gulag: Prisons, Surplus, Crisis, and Opposition in Globalizing California. University of
California Press, 2007, 72.
14
Gutmann, Amy. The Spirit of Compromise: Why Governing Demands It and Campaigning Undermines It.
Princeton; Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2012, 5-7.
15
Gordon, David M. “The New Class War: Rich Americans Get Richer, While the Rest of Us Pay
Their Bills.” The Washington Post, October 26, 1986.
16
Hyman, Louis. Borrow: The America Way of Debt. New York: Vintage Books, 2012, 221-225. “New
Tax Code’s Principal Elements.” The New York Times, October 23, 1986.

323

17
Tempalski, Jerry. Revenue Effects of Major Tax Bills, Updated Tables for All 2010 Bills. Office of Tax
Analysis, Department of the Treasury, June 2011.
18
Mazzocchi, Tony. We Want to Redefine what Society is All About. Interview by Sheila Mannix,
February 1, 1997. http://zcomm.org/zmagazine/we-want-to-redefine-what-society-is-all-about-by-
mark-harris/.
19
�