NileValleyPeoples: Railroaded 2: how white quotas and special preferences blockade black employment and training

[b]In numerous cities, white quotas and job reservations imposed by white unions froze qualified blacks out of employment in the building trades. White unions used “gentleman’s agreements” with employers to oust black workers or keep them out, confinement to “colored” areas (but whites could displace blacks in these areas at will), denial of apprenticeship training, and second-class “colored” auxiliary unions. Cities like Miami mirrored cities nationwide. [/b]- QUOTE:

“Throughout the first half of the decade, not a single construction-related union admitted black applicants, no matter how highly qualified. This left black craftsmen, who were determined to work as skilled mechanics.. with little recourse but to form their own unions.. Generally these organizations served as segregated auxiliaries of the regular white unions..

These Jim Crow unions had difficulty conducting business. Discriminatory hiring-hall practices, for instance, limited the scope of employment for African-Americans. Invariable, white union bosses enforced “gentlemen's agreements” restricting black operatives to job sites in “colored” districts while reserving all work in white areas for whites. During the mid-1950s, union managers violated these covenants whenever business in white areas tapered off, however, “furloughing” black artisans so that out-of-work whites could find employment in black neighborhoods..

[b]White quota enforcers collected money from black unionists in second-class auxiliaries, but failed to deliver apprenticeship training that would have helped black workers progress. They took the money, then shafted the blacks.[/b] QUOTE:

Workmen in “colored” auxiliaries paid union dues to the main local, but they seldom received voting rights or other privileges.. labor contracts secured for white union members. Furthermore, not one of Miami’s segregated unions allowed its black members to receive apprenticeship training, effectively denying them access to the craft opportunities and vocational instruction that prepared white operatives for career advancement.”

--Eric Tscheschlol, 1977. “So Goes The Negro”: Race and Labor in Miami, 1940-1963. Florida Historical Quarterly, Summer 1997, 42-67

[b]Local white government regimes, working in tandem with white unions even gave them control over some vocational training in schools, which they used to deliver watered down, low-quality training for low-level “negro jobs” [/b] QUOTE:

“..the city's conservative leadership accorded flag-waving AFL organizations carte blanche to tighten racial controls. In the early 1950s, therefore, union officials were allowed to dictate the curricula of black vocational schools in Dade County. Predictably, labor leaders compelled these schools to offer training in traditional “colored” trades only, so that black graduates could not compete in white-dominated fields.’

--Eric Tscheschlol, 1977. “So Goes The Negro”: Race and Labor in Miami, 1940-1963. Florida Historical Quarterly, Summer 1997, 42-67

[b]White quotas not only froze out qualified blacks and blocked blacks from training but intimidated employers who sought to hire blacks, even threatening violence when white employers attempted to give black workers a chance- hampering black progress [/b] QUOTE:

“Unions representing carpenters, painters, tilesetters, sheetmetal workers, and nearly all other building tradesmen held firmly to the color bar, refusing to admit qualified black mechanics.. By the same token, union leaders continued to enforce covenants preventing black artisans from working outside “colored” areas. And not infrequently, union officials maintained this arrangement by compelling contractors to refuse jobs to black workmen. In 1955 for example, when one contractor attempted to employ African-American carpenters on a “white” project, he was informed by the AFL business agent that “he’d better lay off if he didn't want something to happen to his building.” Even the newly integrated bricklayers local adopted a policy prohibiting the use of interracial work details..

In the early 1960s, several state agencies documented the extent of racial bias in Miami unions... The Florida Advisory Committee to the US Commission on Civil Rights made similar observations in 1963.. The committee detected blatant patterns of color-based exclusion in many locals, white reporting that gentleman's agreements remained pervasive in building-trades unions.. A plumber's union spokesman meanwhile, indicated that black apprentices were not welcome in his field due to the “close physical association required for instruction.”

--Eric Tscheschlol, 1977. “So Goes The Negro”: Race and Labor in Miami, 1940-1963. Florida Historical Quarterly, Summer 1997, 42-67

Even as they cynically urged blacks to "pull themselves up" whites moved to block them when they did just that. Whites attacked and murdered blacks who tried to go into business for themselves, and white law enforcement stood by while it happened. Ida B. Wells, well known civil rights activist of the first half of the 20th century experienced white greed and violence along these lines first-hand.

"In March 1892, violence struck close to [Ida B.] Wells. Her close friend Tom Moss, along with two of his friends and their supporters, were arrested for defending themselves against an attack on Mossâ€™s store. Moss was a highly respected figure in the black community, a postman as well as the owner of a grocery store. A white competitor, enraged that Mossâ€™s store had drawn away his black customers, hired some off-duty deputy sheriffs to destroy it. Moss and his friends, not knowing the men were deputies, resisted. A gun battle broke out, and several deputies were wounded. Late one night, masked vigilantes dragged Moss and his two friends from their cells, took them to a deserted railroad yard, and shot them to death. Enraged by Moss's death, Wells lashed out at the refusal of Memphis police to arrest the well-known killers."
--Richard Wormser. 2003. The Rise and Fall of Jim Crow

Nixon administration took on discriminatory white unions in the 1970s
QUOTE from one conservative writer:

"The Nixon Administration was eager to guarantee fair hiring practices in construction and chose Philadelphia as a test site. In the words of Nixon's assistant labor secretary, Arthur Fletcher, "The craft unions and the construction industry are among the most egregious offenders against equal opportunity laws.. openly hostile toward letting blacks into their closed circle."
--Phil Valentine. 2016. The Conservatives Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z

Quotas are nothing new, and originated in the 1930s to help white union members discriminated against due to union membership, recognizing that merely saying "please stop" would do nothing to redress the damage inflicted. In like manner Courts have ordered "make whole" remedies using quotas to redress damage done to working people directly impacted by discrimination. QUOTE:

"Backward, redneck segregationists, hanging onto the last vestiges of institutionalized racism in Alabama, attracted the wrath of the Supreme Court in 1987. In United States v. Paradise, the Alabama Stat Department of Public Safety had thumbed its nose at a 1970 federal court ruling orering an end to its systematic discrimination against black state troopers. At the time of that ruling, there was not a single black on the force. Twelve years after the federal court ruling, no black state trooper had been advanced beyond entry level. In response, the federal court ordered racial quotas to end the "pervasive, systematic and obstinate discriminatory exclusion of blacks."
--Phil Valentine. 2016. The Conservatives Handbook: Defining the Right Position on Issues from A to Z

QUOTE:

When it came to "free markets" whites were in no hurry to let blacks exercise their right to buy housing of their choice. Vicious 24/7harassment of blacks seeking housing appeared not on the mean old south but was just as bad in the supposedly more liberal north. The scenario played out n the well known Levittown Pennsylvania incidents, in Chicago, and in numerous other northern cities. Whites in the north often resolutely blocked blacks from "pulling themselves up." QUOTE:

"On the evening of August 5, 1953, nearly fifty white teenagers bombarded Donald Howard's apartment with racial epithets, stones, and paving bricks. By August 9, crowds of between one and two thousand were congregating around the dwelling in the Trumbull Park Homes, a project of the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA), harassing the Howard family and damaging the structure with missiles of every description...

As the first Blacks in the project, the Howard family bore the brunt of South Deering's displeasure. Crowds repeatedly threw bricks, stones, and sulfur candles through their windows, forcing the Howards to replace their living room window-panes with plywood. Another weapon in the arsenal of the anti-Black protesters was the aerial "bomb." Such bombs were fireworks that, according to the Commission on Human Relations, propelled a series of charges, which exploded with a "brilliant flash" and deafening thunder. On the worst nights, one hundred such noise-making devices might be detonated. 13

When not besieged in their apartment, the Howards found venturing beyond its meager protection a harrowing experience. Normal activities-a trip to the store, travel to work, an evening's stroll-were dangerous, if not impossible. Simply picking up a six-pack in the neighborhood necessitated an armed police guard. Such escorts quickly became an omnipresent feature of Black life in Trumbull Park. 14 Freedom of passage through the area by nonresident African Americans also came into question. Prior to the Howards' arrival in the Trumbull Park Homes, many Blacks living in the Altgeld Gardens housing project to the south passed through South Deering on Torrence Avenue en route to jobs in the industrial district north and immediately east of Trumbull Park. Once the issue of a permanent Black presence emerged, nonwhite transients found themselves targeted. From the first week of the disorders, cars driven by Blacks attracted marauding mobs and an occasional shower of rocks. 15

If there was no unanimity among whites in Trumbull Park, there was no visible opposition to the protesters. Some certainly objected to the use of violence, but most condoned it. For those bold enough to break racial ranks, punishment was swift. Less than a month after the Howards came to Trumbull Park, vandals burned a liquor store near the project that continued to serve Black customers. 16 The pattern of resistance quickly became apparent. If Blacks insisted on living in the neighborhood, they would be harassed day and night. Those whites who would have tolerated, if not befriended, them were made to fear for their own safety."
--FROM: Arnold Hirsch, 1995.Massive Resistance in the Urban North- Trumbull Park, Chicago, 1953-1966- JrnlAmHist 82-2

and

https://historyengine.richmond.edu/episodes/view/5272
Whites Riot in Response to Arrival of First African American Family in Levittown, PA
Date(s): August 1957 to 1957
Location(s): Bucks, Pennsylvania

"These questions regarding the neighborhood reaction to the arrival of a black family in what had been an intentionally all-white enclave, were unfortunately answered over the next two weeks. At dusk each evening, crowds of people gathered outside the Myer’s home, angrily shouting and jeering, singing the national Anthem, and throwing stones toward the Myer’s home, as apparently these “spacious skies,” they sang of were not meant to be enjoyed in an integrated setting. Levittown police failed to enforce the court ordered protection for the Myers, prohibiting more than three people from assembling near the residence at once. Mobs consequently gathered in this fashion each night, only finally subsiding due to interference from the state police. After an agonizing fourteen days, the riots ended, but the Myers continued to suffer the anxiety of the consequences triggered by the introduction of integration to Levittown. Harassment of the family persisted for almost three months, as Daisy Myers received threatening phone calls of those who “told [her] they threatened to shoot William down on sight,” the family’s deliveries of oil, bread, and milk stopped arriving, and the more than occasional unfriendly white stroller-by forced the Myers to have constant protection, or at the very least, sympathizing company. Anti-segregationist even obtained property immediately neighboring the Myers’ home, using the location to intimidate the family further, evident by their conspicuous display of the confederate flag.

The resistance seen in the August riots against the integration of Levittown, PA was not uncommon throughout suburban neighborhoods. Quite the contrary in fact, racial discrimination and the subsequent segregated communities were the norm in 1950s suburbia. Yet despite this plaguing harassment, the Myers refused to leave their Levittown home, justifiably feeling entitled “to live where [they] chose,” as William put it. Remarking on the family’s incredible determination to outlast their opponents, Dianne Harris, historian and author of Second Suburb: Levittown, PA, stated, “the Myers endured an ordeal that few could have weathered with such dignity, courage, grace, and fortitude.”

The above are only the tip of the iceberg on how white affirmative action systematically blocked, sandbagged and hindered black progress. They are worth remembering in an era where in many quarters a campaign of distortion and deception posits a pious white concern with "merit", and demonizes alleged "vast quotas for blacks"- when in fact the allegedly vast quotas are non-existent, and it was whites themselves that created and imposed white affirmative action quotas, preferences and set-asides (using violence and intimidation at times) to blockade black training and employment, and sandbagged qualified blacks in numerous fields. Pious posturings of white innocence, cannot hide the record of history.