Overview

Race against Liberalism examines how black workers' activism in Detroit shaped the racial politics of the labor movement and the white working class. Tracing substantive, long-standing disagreements between liberals and black workers who embraced autonomous race-based action, David M. Lewis-Colman shows how black autoworkers placed themselves at the center of Detroit's working-class politics and sought to forge a kind of working-class unity that accommodated their interests as African Americans. The book covers the independent caucuses in the 1940s and the Trade Union Leadership Council in the 1950s, the black power movement and Revolutionary Union Movements of the mid- 1960s, and the independent race-based activism of the 1970s that resulted in Coleman Young becoming the city's first black mayor in 1973.

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9780252075056

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Reviews

Lewis-Colman's careful history of the politics of racial liberalism is the most detailed study to date of race and black workers in the UAW from 1941 to 1973 and is a compelling contribution to labor studies, black studies, race relations, sociology, and social history. Richard W. Thomas, author of Understanding Interracial Unity: A Study of U.S. Race Relations

Author Information

David M. Lewis-Colman is an assistant professor of African American history at Ramapo College of New Jersey.

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