Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality

by Rick Halpern, Roger Horowitz

Overview

"Here is a piece of history not found in conventional textbooks. If ever there were a book our young needed, it is Meatpackers-it reveals an epoch in which trade unions fought and won whatever rights working people possess today. With these rights constantly imperiled, this book is mandatory reading."
—Studs Terkel
"The stories are dramatically and richly told, and they offer insights no scholarly study can quite adequately provide."
—Peter Rachleff, Journal of American History
Available for the first time in paperback, Meatpackers provides an important window into race and racism in the American workplace. In their own words, male and female packinghouse workers in the Midwest-mostly African-American-talk of their experiences on the shop floor and picket lines. They tell of their fight between the 1930s and 1960s for economic advancement and racial equality. In cities like Chicago, Kansas City, Omaha, Fort Worth, and Waterloo, Iowa, meatpackers built a union that would defend their interests as workers-and fight for their civil rights.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583670057
Publisher:	Monthly Review Press
Publication date:	03/01/1999
Pages:	162
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.41(d)

About the Author

Rick Halpern teaches at UniversityCollege London and is the author of Down on the Killing Floor: Black and White Workers in Chicago's Packinghouses, 1904-54 (1997).

Roger Horowitz is associate director of the Center for the History of Business, Technology, and Society at the Hagley Museum and Library in Wilmington, Delaware, and author of “Negro and White, Unite and Fight!” A Social History of Industrial Unionism in Meatpacking, 1930-90 (1997).

What People are Saying About This

Peter Rachleff

The stories are dramatically and richly told, and they offer insights no scholarly study can quite adequately provide.
— Journal of American History

Studs Terkel

Here is a piece of history not found in conventional textbooks. If ever there were a book our young needed, it is Meatpackers-it reveals an epoch in which trade unions fought and won whatever rights working people possess today. With these rights constantly imperiled, this book is mandatory reading.

Editorial Reviews

In the 1980s, Halpern (Univ. College, London) and Horowitz (Hagley Museum and Lib.) interviewed members of the United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA), covering the years from the establishment of the union in the late 1930s to the closing of the major meatpacking centers in the 1960s. For this book, the authors have selected those interviews that focused on civil rights issues in the plant and the local communities (Chicago, Kansas City, Fort Worth, and Waterloo, Iowa). By the 1930s, black workers were an integral part of the meatpacking process, and workers recognized that unity was needed to achieve their goals. The UPWA adopted a comprehensive antidiscrimination program, and from these interviews we hear of union leadership shared by blacks and whites, men and women. The editors have done a good job of editing these interviews. Their work is a fascinating study that should be of interest to more than specialists.-Linda L. McEwan, Elgin Community Coll., Ill.

Library Journal