Early Unions in North Carolina

The Knights of Labor began organizing in North Carolina in 1884. Considering that the organization was founded in the 1860s, the state’s introduction to the labor movement was long overdue. Like much of the south, North Carolina unions lagged behind the Northeast and Midwest. In 1890, just 0.3 percent of North Carolinians worked in a union, compared to roughly 8 percent nationally.

Some historians attribute this to an inherently reactionary culture and submissive working class, but this is entirely disingenuous and incorrect. Labor organizing was far more difficult in the south for specific structural reasons. One example of this is racism. This divided the working class, as some white-led unions refused to organize with black workers. Additionally, white supremacist laws led to mass incarceration and prison labor that preserved many of the features of slavery. Imprisonment also resulted in disenfranchisement, which limited the electoral power of the working class. As a result, anti-labor politicians found little pushback. These allies of big business passed laws that enabled the establishment of company towns, legitimated the use of force against strike-breakers, and limited workers’ mobility and ability to organize.

Despite the forces arrayed against them, North Carolinian workers did not give up. As this panel indicates, people throughout the state were more than willing to organize for a better life. It would be a hard battle, but they believed it was one worth fighting.

Just like in 1884, many factors still hamper southern unions. In addition to similarly unfriendly politics and structural racism, heavy industrial work, a traditional building block of the labor movement, has become less common in the United States. Now as then, however, the union cause is still an important cause worth fighting for.

Further Reading:

• The Political Economy of Early Southern Unionism: Race, Politics, and Labor in the South, 1880-1953: https://www.jstor.org/stable/2566376