Hiring the Black Worker - by Timothy J Minchin (Paperback)

About the Book

Hiring the Black Worker: The Racial Integration of the Southern Textile Industry, 1960-1980

Book Synopsis

In the 1960s and 1970s, the textile industry's workforce underwent a dramatic transformation, as African Americans entered the South's largest industry in growing numbers. Only 3.3 percent of textile workers were black in 1960; by 1978, this number had risen to 25 percent. Using previously untapped legal records and oral history interviews, Timothy Minchin crafts a compelling account of the integration of the mills.
Minchin argues that the role of a labor shortage in spurring black hiring has been overemphasized, pointing instead to the federal government's influence in pressing the textile industry to integrate. He also highlights the critical part played by African American activists. Encouraged by passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, black workers filed antidiscrimination lawsuits against nearly all of the major textile companies. Still, Minchin notes, even after the integration of the mills, African American workers encountered considerable resistance: black women faced continued hiring discrimination, while black men found themselves shunted into low-paying jobs with little hope of promotion.

Review Quotes

Minchin presents a careful, well-researched, clear, and subtle study of the breaching of the all-white world of southern textiles.

Thomas Terrill, University of South Carolina

Minchin's book is a genuine contribution to labor, civil rights, and political history that will generate further scholarship.

"Journal of American History"

"Minchin presents a careful, well-researched, clear, and subtle study of the breaching of the all-white world of southern textiles.

Thomas Terrill, University of South Carolina"

A first-rate work of labor history.

"Choice"

An impressive piece of craftsmanship that complements Minchin's earlier study of the failure of trade unionism in southern textiles.

"Ethnic & Racial Studies"

About the Author

Timothy J. Minchin is author of What Do We Need a Union For?: The TWUA in the South, 1945-1955. He teaches American history at St. Andrews University in Scotland.