As we celebrate Labor Day in the midst of an uprising against systemic racism, I want to celebrate how the labor movement has always been most powerful when it’s anti-racist. The Knights of Labor formed after the Civil War as an interracial union, uniting poor whites & Blacks.

Fusion parties that brought white Populists together w/ Black Republicans in the South during Reconstruction were able to establish public education for all, debt forgiveness, & regulation of railroads & other monopolies.

Many white leaders w/in the labor movement went along w/ white supremacy campaigns & segregation in the early 20th cen, but corporate bosses always used racial division to exploit all workers. Black folks w/in the labor movement knew you had to confront racism to get justice.

In the Montgomery Bus Boycott, which launched the nonviolent movement vs Jim Crow, local labor leader E.D. Nixon, who had mentored Rosa Parks, was central to the struggle.

7 years later, when the movement won its first successful city-wide desegregation in Birmingham, national labor unions played a central role in closing the deal that made the win possible. https://aflcio.org/2017/8/1/bull-connor-martin-luther-king-jr-and-labor-movement

Later that same summer, the March on Washington put the alliance b/w labor & civil rights leaders on the national stage as A. Philip Randolph convened the march he had long imagined for jobs & freedom—an interracial labor demonstration.

Racism isn’t just an idea that fell from the sky or sprang spontaneously from the minds of Europeans. It’s a lie that was told & told again to justify the exploitation of labor. The abuses of plantation capitalism were normalized by the lies of white supremacy....

Any labor movement that wants all people to flourish has to challenge the lies of white supremacy. Anti-racist labor movements have pushed this nation toward a more perfect union—a legacy worth celebrating. May we love to gifts they’ve given us enough to defend them. #LaborDay