This union was a counterpart to the white National Labor Union. In December 1869, 214 delegates attended the Colored National Labor Union convention in Washington, D.C. Black and white workers shared a heightened interest in trade union organization, but because trade unions organized by white workers generally excluded blacks, black workers began to organize on their own. The formation of American trade unions increased during the early Reconstruction period. The General Records of Department of State (RG 59) and the General Records of the Department of Justice (RG 60) contain documentation of the black dock workers in Pensacola, Florida, who, in the winter of 1873-1874, organized a Workingman's Association and successfully defended their jobs against Canadian longshoreman brought in by dock owners. Other record groups are less obvious sources of information. The Freedom volumes were compiled from twenty-five National Archives record groups, including Records of the Bureau of Refugees, Freedmen, and Abandoned Lands (Record Group 105) Records of Civil War Special Agencies of the Treasury Department (RG 366) Records of the United States General Accounting Office (RG 217) the Records of the Adjutant General's Office, 1780's-1917 (RG 94) the Records of the Office of the Paymaster General (RG 99) and Records of District Courts of the United States (RG 21). Luckily, researchers can avail themselves of Freedom: A Documentary History of Emancipation, a multivolume documentary editing project. The National Archives contains millions of documents concerning this transition. 1 Caulking was of great importance in shipbuilding, for a ship was not fit for service unless it was caulked to prevent leaking.Īt the end of the Civil War, ex-slaves had to adjust to freedom and a new labor system. In the early nineteenth century, African Americans played a dominant role in the caulking trade, and there is documentation of a strike by black caulkers at the Washington Navy Yard in 1835. This overview briefly traces the growth of black labor relations and provides an introduction to the research value of several NARA record groups.Īfrican Americans are known to have participated in labor actions before the Civil War. Locating records that document the role of African Americans in American labor history can be difficult because the federal agencies and offices that created these records arranged their indexes and files by name of institutions such as the name of the company or the name of the union involved in a controversy. There are also many other record groups that contain material of interest to students of American labor history even though they document the activities of federal agencies whose primary concern was not the resolution of labor disputes or the control of labor management relations. Thirty NARA record groups (approximately 19,711 cubic feet of documentary material) document the activities of federal agencies whose core missions pertained to labor and labor management relations. The records of the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA) have been, and will remain, indispensable to the study of African American labor history. African Americans and the American Labor Movementįederal Records and African American History (Summer 1997, Vol.
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