| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 109.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

Ruth Needleman. Black Freedom Fighters in Steel: The Struggle for Democratic Unionism. Ithaca: Cornell University Press. 2003. Pp. xi, 305. Cloth $47.50, paper $19.95.
This book chronicles the history of black workers in northwestern Indiana during the era when the United Steelworkers of America (USWA) dominated one of the most important industries in the country. The story begins in the 1930s and continues through to the present, with the bulk of the tale focusing on the 1940s, 1950s, and 1960s. Ruth Needleman has penned a scholarly page turner, appropriate for workers' education or undergraduate classrooms.	1
Needleman's account joins a rapidly expanding literature on the history of the steel industry in the "union era," that is between the 1930s and the 1970s. Her book challenges the perspective, held by some scholars, that the USWA overcame racism easily and early in its history and emphasizes how bitter and how recent remained the struggles in the "enlightened" North. Needleman joins those scholars who emphasize the importance of racial and political struggles within the USWA, since the outcomes of those battles affected the way the union fought the larger class war.	2
Needleman provides in-depth biographies of five key activists who individually and collectively helped to shape the workplace, union, and civil rights movement in Gary and District 31, the largest in the union. None of these men were "typical" steelworkers, although she emphasizes the extent to which each of these leaders represents a different type of personality and, more importantly, a style of politics. Taken together, their lives reveal an enormous amount about the world of black steelworkers, and the USWA, during the heyday of both union power and America's industrial might.	. . .

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