Princeton University Press
Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party
Key Metrics
- Paul Frymer
- Princeton University Press
- Paperback
- 9780691134659
- 9.17 X 6.39 X 0.54 inches
- 0.7 pounds
- History > United States - 20th Century
- English
Secure TransactionBook Description
In the 1930s, fewer than one in one hundred U.S. labor union members were African American. By 1980, the figure was more than one in five. Black and Blue explores the politics and history that led to this dramatic integration of organized labor. In the process, the book tells a broader story about how the Democratic Party unintentionally sowed the seeds of labor's decline.
The labor and civil rights movements are the cornerstones of the Democratic Party, but for much of the twentieth century these movements worked independently of one another. Paul Frymer argues that as Democrats passed separate legislation to promote labor rights and racial equality they split the issues of class and race into two sets of institutions, neither of which had enough authority to integrate the labor movement.
From this division, the courts became the leading enforcers of workplace civil rights, threatening unions with bankruptcy if they resisted integration. The courts' previously unappreciated power, however, was also a problem: in diversifying unions, judges and lawyers enfeebled them financially, thus democratizing through destruction. Sharply delineating the double-edged sword of state and legal power, Black and Blue chronicles an achievement that was as problematic as it was remarkable, and that demonstrates the deficiencies of race- and class-based understandings of labor, equality, and power in America.
Author Bio
Paul Frymer is a Professor of Politics and Director of the Program in Law and Public Affairs at Princeton University. His research and teaching interests are broadly in American politics and public policy, engaging specifically in questions of law, civil rights and race, labor and employment, parties and social movements, and historical-institutional development.
He is the author of numerous articles and three books: Uneasy Alliances: Race and Party Competition in America (Princeton University Press, 1999, second edition 2010); Black and Blue: African Americans, the Labor Movement, and the Decline of the Democratic Party (Princeton University Press, 2008); and Building an American Empire: The Era of Territorial and Political Expansion (Princeton University Press, 2017).
Black and Blue received the best book award from the American Political Science Association's Race, Ethnicity, and Politics Section, and an article from the book project received the Mary Parker Follett Award for best article in Politics and History, the McGraw Hill Prize for best article in Law and Courts from the American Political Science Association, and the Best Article award from the Law and Society Association. Building an American Empire received the J. David Greenstone Award for the best book in Politics and History and the best book in Political Sociology from the American Sociological Association.
He is also the recipient of multiple teaching awards, including the Stanley Kelley, Jr. Teaching Award from the Princeton Politics Department. He has a B.A. and J.D. from U.C. Berkeley and a Ph.D. in political science from Yale University.
Source: Program in Law and Public Affairs Princeton University
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