Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality

Meatpackers: An Oral History of Black Packinghouse Workers and Their Struggle for Racial and Economic Equality. By Rick Halpern and Roger Horowitz. (New York: Twayne, 1996. xviii, 176 pp. $28.95, ISBN 0-8057-9120-5.)

From World War I through the 1970s, meatpacking was one of the major industrial employers of African Americans. It put tens of thousands of men and women to work in such centers as Chicago, Omaha, South St. Paul, Kansas City, and Fort Worth. While most of the job opportunities were in the dirtiest and harshest departments of an already dirty and harsh industry, and many of the African Americans gained their first employment as strikebreakers, over the years black workers made impressive progress through their participation in the unionization of the industry, which helped them improve the wages, benefits, and working conditions they initially encountered and helped...