| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 107.2 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Timothy J. Minchin. The Color of Work: The Struggle for Civil Rights in the Southern Paper Industry, 1945–1980. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press. 2001. Pp. x, 277. Cloth $55.00, paper $24.95.

In this fine study of paper industry workers, Timothy J. Minchin attempts to show how both employers and white union leaders tried to maintain a segregated workforce, even after the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and what strategies black workers adopted to fight unequal treatment. Strangely, Minchin prefaces his study by using Alan Draper's statement that the question of whether "black trade unionists saw their unions as a 'legitimate or relevant conduit for their civil rights demands' has yet to be explored by historians." Surely the works of Eric Arnesen, Rick Halpern, Daniel Letwin, and Brian Kelly have attempted to address such a question, although as Minchin explains, little attention has been paid to paper workers generally. Approximately 150,000 workers labored in the southern paper industry in 1960, fourteen percent of whom were black (p. 13). 1

Minchin highlights how both the industry and its attendant unions were racially segregated. African Americans were barred from most production jobs and consigned to the poorest paying and physically demanding jobs. As one black worker stated, "you either pulled something or pushed something" (p. 36). Although black workers enjoyed union representation and recognition, they were placed in Jim Crow locals with little voice over their work conditions and wages. The experience of black workers was not affected by the size of paper plants; the result was nearly always the same: large differentials in pay. . . .

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