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Atlanta's Civil Rights Movement, Middle-Class “To Secure Improvements in Their Material and Social Conditions”: Atlanta’s Civil Rights Movement, Middle-Class Reformers, and Workplace Protests, 1960-1977 by William Seth LaShier B.A. in History, May 2009, St. Mary’s College of Maryland A Dissertation submitted to The Faculty of The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy January 10, 2020 Dissertation directed by Eric Arnesen James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor of Modern American Labor History The Columbian College of Arts and Sciences of The George Washington University certifies that William Seth LaShier has passed the Final Examinations for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy as of November 20, 2019. This is the final and approved form of the dissertation. “To Secure Improvements in Their Material and Social Conditions”: Atlanta’s Civil Rights Movement, Middle-Class Reformers, and Workplace Protests, 1960-1977 William Seth LaShier Dissertation Research Committee Eric Arnesen, James R. Hoffa Teamsters Professor of Modern American Labor History, Dissertation Director Erin Chapman, Associate Professor of History and of Women’s Studies, Committee Member Gordon Mantler, Associate Professor of Writing and of History, Committee Member ii Acknowledgements I could not have completed this dissertation without the generous support of teachers, colleagues, archivists, friends, and most importantly family. I want to thank The George Washington University for funding that supported my studies, research, and writing. I gratefully benefited from external research funding from the Southern Labor Archives at Georgia State University and the Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Books Library (MARBL) at Emory University. At the Southern Labor Archives, Traci Drummond provided invaluable support and knowledge of Atlanta-related labor archives. I also want to thank the archivists at MARBL, the Archives Research Center at the Atlanta University Center, the Auburn Avenue Research Library on African American Culture and History of the Atlanta-Fulton Public Library System, the Kenan Research Center at the Atlanta History Center, the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University, and the Library of Congress. I have had the privilege to work with an amazing group of teachers and staff while studying at GW. First and foremost, I want to thank Eric Arnesen. Eric’s patient guidance and advice has made me into a better researcher, writer, and historian. Erin Chapman, Andrew Zimmerman, Richard Stott, Katrin Schultheiss, and Ed Berkowitz all provided invaluable teaching and support. I want to thank Michael Weeks for always providing timely support. I want to give a special thank you to the late Leo Ribuffo, whose sharp wit, sense of irony, and probing questions shaped my understanding of American history. While at GW I also had the pleasure to meet and work with a wonderful group of colleagues. Andreas Meyris, in particular, generously provided me with chapter revisions that improved my dissertation immensely. iii Outside of GW, I have had the remarkable luck to work with and learn from an amazing group of scholars. I especially want to thank the members of the DC Working Class History Group, especially Cindy Hahamovitch and Jay Driskell. From my first years in graduate school this group taught me about writing and collegial academic debate. I want to thank this group for the feedback they provided on two of my chapters. I also received invaluable feedback from panelists and commentators at Southern Labor Studies Association, Atlanta Studies, and Labor and Working Class History Association conferences. Finally, and most importantly, I want to thank my family whose support means the world to me. My sister, Jessey, has always been there with support and provided valuable feedback to one of my chapters. My Aunt Jessie, when not globe-trotting, found the time to offer advice and revisions. Thank you to my mother for always being a source of support and to my father whose conversations about sports, music, and television provided a reprieve from thinking about my project. Finally, I do not have the words to express my gratitude to my partner, Niki. Her kindness, generosity, drive, and ambition will always be a source of inspiration. Niki’s unceasing support and valuable advice was the only way I was able to finish my project. This took entirely too long, thank you for being there. I look forward to the next chapter of our lives now that we have Charlie with us. iv Abstract of Dissertation “To Secure Improvements in Their Material and Social Conditions”: Atlanta’s Civil Rights Movement, Middle-Class Reformers, and Workplace Protests, 1960-1977 This dissertation explores how middle-class black activists and reformers participated in protests to open up and improve workplaces for black workers in Atlanta in the 1960s and 1970s. While middle-class activists and reformers achieved some limited victories in these workplace protests, just as often the campaigns ended in defeats. There were significant obstacles to improving black worker rights and benefits in the form of recalcitrant employers and business-friendly politicians in Sunbelt Atlanta, but there were also important limitations in how middle-class activists and reformers approached these campaigns. This dissertation considers how middle-class activists understood issues of workplace and economic injustice and what strategies and tactics were best to bring about change. This dissertation also pays particular attention to the relationship between middle-class reformers and labor unions, both in the private and public sector. At times, black activists attempted to form a civil rights-labor coalition, at other times activists challenged discriminatory policies of labor unions and viewed unions as a hindrance to their goals. Scholars working in the framework of the Long Civil Rights Movement often emphasize how little the fight for economic justice played in the classical period of the civil rights movement (1954-1965). This dissertation, however seeks to add to a growing body of scholarship that emphasizes the persistence of the economic dimension of the civil rights movement by focusing on protests, boycotts, and strikes to improve Atlanta’s workplaces. Middle-class black Atlantans led boycotts to compel employers to hire and promote more black workers and supported strikes by v workers seeking better working conditions, improved pay and benefits, and union recognition. Middle-class black activists and reformers, however, rarely viewed workplace protests as their number one priority, nor were workplace issues or labor organizing campaigns alone a real concern for these activists. Instead, activists and reformers acted when they viewed a workplace campaign as fitting into their larger vision of the black freedom struggle. vi Contents Acknowledgements …………………………………………...…………………………iii Abstract of Dissertation …………………………………………..………………...……v Introduction………………………………………………………………………………..1 Chapter 1: “If We Buy Their Products Then We Want Some Jobs”: Operation Breadbasket’s Selective Patronage Campaigns in Atlanta, 1962-1964……….................36 Chapter 2: “A Model Project for Labor Unions and Civil Rights Cooperation”: The Promise and Peril of Coalition Building…………………………………......................103 Chapter 3: Strike Fever, Hosea Williams and the Struggle for Workplace Rights and Community Power in Atlanta, 1972-1973…………….…………………………...184 Chapter 4: Civil Rights Unionism and the Public Sector: The 1968 Atlanta Sanitation Strike, Poverty, and Community Support……………………………….......253 Chapter 5: “A Hang Up About Unions”: The 1970 AFSCME Strike and the Limitations of the Civil Rights-Labor Coalition…………………………….……...…..334 Chapter 6: “It Was a Blow to the Coalition”: The 1977 AFSCME Strike and the Response of Atlanta’s Black Communities…………………………………….............379 Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………...427 Bibliography……………………………………………………………………………439 vii Introduction The July 6, 1963, issue of the Atlanta Inquirer , a newspaper founded in 1960 to publicize the black student movement, ran the headline “Civil Rights Protests Take New Twists Here.” 1 Underneath the headline were two articles: “Students Protest Jobs Ban on Negro Liquor Buyers” and “Dobbs House Strikers March,” which described two examples of civil rights activists’ protests on behalf of black workers in the Georgia capital. The first article examined a boycott that the Committee on Appeal for Human Rights (COAHR), the student-movement group in Atlanta, organized against a white- owned liquor store located in an African American neighborhood that disproportionately employed white staff.2 For the activists of COAHR this was not a one-off protest; one spokesperson promised that “We will carry our protest to every store in town where Negroes can buy but can’t work.” In fact earlier in the same issue, the Inquirer reported on a COAHR goal of “opening up at least 5,000 new jobs this year in areas now closed to Negroes.” 3 The other article described a three-hundred-person march of COAHR and Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) members and black striking employees of the Dobbs House restaurant, coffee shop, and catering division at the Atlanta Municipal Airport. The workers, who were members of Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union (HERE) Local 151, had struck two months earlier in the hopes of forcing union 1 “Civil Rights Protest Takes New Twists Here,” Atlanta
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