Settlers - San Francisco Bay Area Independent Media Center

Similarly, when the National Labor Union was
formed in 1866, most of its members and leaders clearly intended
to simply push aside Afrikan labor. The N.L.U.
was the first major labor federation of white workers, the
forerunner of today's AFL-CIO. Delegates from 59 trade
unions and craft organizations took part in its first
Baltimore meeting, with observers from much of the rest
of the settler craft unions joining into the heady talking
and planning. The most "advanced" settler unionists
strongly argued for "unity" with Afrikan workers. It was
repeatedly pointed out how the capitalists had used
Afrikan workers to get around strikes and demands for
higher wages by white workmen. Rather than let Afrikans
compete in the job market against settlers, it was urged to
restrain them by taking them into the N.L.U.
As DuBois pointed out: "Here was a first halting
note. Negroes were welcome to the labor movement, not
because they were laborers but because they might be competitors
in the market, and the logical conclusion was
either to organize them or guard against their actual competition
by other methods. It was to this latter alternative
that white American labor almost unanimously turned."
In other words, settler trade-unionists preferred to limit
job competition between whites and Afrikans by driving
the latter out of the labor market. All motions to admit
Afrikans to the N.L.U. were defeated, as the settler tradeunionists
continued following the capitalists' long-range
plan to use them to replace Afrikan labor. It should be
remembered that in all these deeds, Euro-Amerikan labor,
no matter how much it huffed and puffed itself up, was
just servilely following the genocidal strategies of the industrial
bourgeoisie-for which service the cgipitalists had
imported them in the first place, rewarding their pawns
with the customary mixture of table scraps and kicks.
But note, the radical/conservative difference of
opinion within the ranks of settler unionism was just like
that between Gov. Berkeley and Bacon; a difference between
following cooptive strategies of genocide or seeking
an immediate "final solution" through overwhelming
force. These two opposites in the eternal settler debate are
obviously inseparable and interwoven. By the National
Labor Union's 1869 Convention the advocates of tactically
embracing Afrikan workers had gained the upper hand,
for there was serious trouble. Afrikan labor had gotten
"out of control."
Throughout the Empire - but especially in their
Nation - Afrikan workers were organizing their own
unions, following their own leaders, launching their own
strikes. In Richmond, Va. there were strikes by Afrikan
stevedores and railroad workers and tobacco factory
workers. On the heels of the 1867 strike wave throughout
the South, Afrikan unions formed in city after city. In
Savannah, Ga. the 1867 strike of Afrikan longshoremen
forced the city government to lift a $10 poll tax. .In
Charleston, S.C., they formed the powerful Colored
Longshoremen's Protective Union Association, the
strongest and most respected labor organization in that
state. After winning a strike for better wages, the
C.L.P.U.A. started helping other unions of Afrikan proletarians
get organized. By 1869, state conventions of
Afrikan unions were being held, following the call for the
December, 1869, first convention of the National Colored
Labor Union. This federation was intensely political, and 4
embraced Afrikan workers in all spheres of production,
North and South. Longshoremen, carpenters, tenant
farmers, printers, waiters, barbers, construction laborers,
etc. were all united within it. Eventually it would have
locals in 23 states.
Clearly, Euro-Amerikan labor was feeling the
heat. Their colonial competitors were "out of control",
building their own organizations to further their own interests.
This had to be fought! The immediate decision was
to warmly invite these Afrikan unions to join the white
N.L.U., so that the settler unionists could mislead and
undermine them. So at the 1869 N.L.U. Convention, for
the first time, nine Afrikan union delegates were seated. As
we might expect, the speeches and pledges of eternal
brotherhood flowed like some intoxicating drink. In a
scene reminiscent of the festive ceremonies that marked the
signing of the early "peace" treaties between settlers and
Indians, the convention became imbued with the spirit of
unity. So much that an amazed New York Times reporter
wrote:
"When a native Mississipian and an exconfederate
officer, in addressing a convention, refers to a
colored delegate who has preceded him as 'the gentleman
from Georgia', when a native Alabamian, who has for the
first time crossed the Mason and Dixon line, and who was
from boyhood taught to regard the Negro simply as chattle,
sits in deliberate consultation with another delegate
whose ebony face glistens with African sheen, and signs
the report of his colored co-delegate, when an ardent and
Democratic partisan (from New York at that*) declares
with a 'rich Irish brogue' that he asks for himself no
privilege as a mechanic or a citizen that he is not willing to
concede to every other man, white or black-when, I say,
these things can be seen or heard at a national convention,
called for any purpose, then one may indeed be warranted
in asserting that time works curious changes."(46)
But the celebration of unity was short-lived. The
white trade-unionists were, of course, only attempting to
deceive Afrikan workers. Their invitation to "join" the
N.L.U. simply meant that Afrikans would promise to
honor all white strikes and organizing drives; in return,
they would have the privilege of being consoled as white
labor savagely and relentlessly annexed their jobs. The second
aspect of this "unity" was that Afrikans would be expected
to follow European labor in opposing democratic
demands in the South and helping to restore the chains
around their legs. The "integration" of the N.L.U. meant
not only submission to European hegemony, but was virtually
suicidal. Small wonder that Afrikans quickly parted
ways with the N.L.U.(47)
While the N.L.U. had granted Afrikan organizations
the privilege of affiliating with it as a federation,
Afrikans themselves were barred out of the individual
white trade-unions. Every advance, therefore, of European
trade-unionism meant the "clearing" of Afrikan
workers out of another mill, factory, railroad, warehouse
or dock. The capitalist attack on Afrikan labor, begun in
* The reporter remarks on this because the Democratic
Party was the pro-slavery party, and New York was infamous
as the seat of some of the most vicious and violent
3 anti-Afrikan mass sentiment.