Black Women and Organized Labor

The Woman’s Party sought to secure equal rights for all working women in the United States by passing the Equal Rights Amendment. Yet, who did the phrase “all working women” apply to? Generally, most black women performed the lowest paying, dirtiest jobs that had the most unstable hours including meat packing plants, textile mills, and the tobacco industry. Working-class Black women were limited to the jobs white women refused. However, from the inception of the Equal Rights Magazine in 1923 till 1929, Black women were primarily excluded. While the Women’s Party aimed to attain for women the ability to equally compete, to earn, and to control her money, this applied only to white women. The Woman’s Party failed to acknowledge the intersections of race, gender, and labor which were vital in order to create equal opportunities for marginalized peoples. The movement for equal rights in the United States focused mainly on preserving the status quo of whiteness in organized labor, especially work deemed important or successful.   

For white women, work experience raised their expectations about work, money, and quality of life. They aimed to “have it all,” working for a company that supported policies allowing them to balance career and family. This was a privilege only white women enjoyed. In contrast, wage discrepancies between whites and blacks made it a necessity for Black women to work outside the home as two incomes were needed to support most households. While white women fought for equal treatment in organized labor, Black women fought to simply be included in all organized labor. 

Their failure to consider Black Women’s experiences in organized labor implied that white women’s struggle for equal rights in organized labor rested on notions of white women’s racial superiority, implicating the current stereotype that Black women were lazy, simple, and less deserving. Some elite white women opposed equal rights in organized labor because it carried the possibility of granting political equality to non-white, non-elite women. True equal rights meant relinquishing white privilege and dismantling the “white savior of the lesser races” mentality which was dominant since the fifteenth century.