Revealing the central role of Black activists in spurring interracial solidarity in the US labor movement.
Most accounts of interracial solidarity focus on white union activists. In Freedom Train, Cedric de Leon, a former organizer and elected leader in the US labor movement, argues that we can't comprehend the history of workers' triumphs in the United States without investigating the role of Black liberation. This book shows that, from the early twentieth century to the years immediately following the March on Washington and beyond, independent Black labor organizations have pushed the white labor movement toward a fierce and effective interracial solidarity.
Drawing on the minutes, correspondence, and speeches of Black labor activists and organizations from 1917 to 1968, de Leon reveals that Black people have been the most ardent and consistent proponents of racial inclusion, leadership representation, and programs linking economic and racial justice. He also demonstrates how conflict and consensus among Black labor groups fueled the fight for solidarity, as different factions split and consolidated to form successive and sometimes competing Black labor organizations. Freedom Train centers the contributions of Black people to the multiracial unions we have today and demonstrates that internal conflict can be a source of strategic innovation and social movement success.
Cedric de Leon is Professor of Sociology and Labor Studies at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.
“One of the timeliest books of the moment, Freedom Train provides critical context for the current task of mapping a path to multiracial democracy in the United States. Its focus on the role of Black people and labor, both within two dialectical movements and as deeply overlapping—though sometimes antagonistic—forces for freedom, lays a cornerstone for modern-day movement leaders hoping to reconstruct democracy in our shared image.”—Erica Smiley, Executive Director, Jobs With Justice
“A work of original, convincing, and positively gripping scholarship. A novel analysis of the conditions that advanced the cause of interracial labor solidarity, placing Black activists and the Black community at the center of the story.”—Kim Voss, Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
“When important scholarship is gifted to us in perilous times, it is incumbent on us to pause and deeply confront its truth in order to survive the moment and to find and understand our agenda. Dr. de Leon in his scholarly artistry has provided us with the historical and sociological context to (re)define and (re)imagine an intersectional solidarity centered in the challenges and triumphs of Black workers and their visionary organizers. De Leon names, centers and gives a platform to Black labor and laborers so often erased in traditional storytelling of big labor unity. We are left to confront our knowledge of Black workers not only as members of the working class, but also as its architects.”—Tamara Lee, Associate Professor of Labor Studies, Rutgers University
“With remarkable rhythm and texture, Freedom Train excavates the long and dynamic contribution that independent Black labor organizations have made to interracial solidarity within the U.S. labor movement. de Leon mines the archives of the Black freedom struggle, U.S. labor history, and civil rights policy history, even making innovative use of state surveillance records that offer invaluable insight into details about leaders and movements not found elsewhere. This is Du Boisian sociology at its best; more sociology should be written in this fashion.”—José Itzigsohn, Professor of Sociology, Brown University
“Cedric de Leon’s impressive Freedom Train chronicles how independent Black labor organizations transformed the 20th-century U.S. labor movement. An alternative genealogy of interracial solidarity, the book traces the contingent and often contentious interplay between Black “centrist” and “left” factions in conditions not of their choosing. Absorbing and rigorous, Freedom Train further cements de Leon's status as a leading scholar of race, social movements, and U.S. labor.”—Michael Rodriguez-Muñiz, Associate Professor of Sociology, UC Berkeley
"Freedom Train is a timely contribution to our understanding of the role of Black labor activism in advancing the movement for racial and economic justice. Cedric de Leon complicates the popular narrative of a 'golden age' of labor organizing centered on the rise of the AFL-CIO. He demonstrates instead that independent Black labor organizing—beginning with the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the African Blood Brotherhood in the 1920s—was a key driver of the push for racial justice in the labor movement. As Black elites rise to higher positions of mainstream electoral power, Freedom Train provides lessons in how to ensure that they are accountable to the Black working class."—Steven Pitts, cofounder of the National Black Worker Center
"De Leon does what few historians have in centering the Black worker as a player both in the politics of the Black Freedom Movement and in organized labor. This is a remarkable work and one that will be of critical importance to trade unionists and Black freedom activists."—Bill Fletcher Jr., activist, coauthor of Solidarity Divided, and author of "They're Bankrupting Us!": And Twenty Other Myths about Unions
352 pp.6 x 9Illus: 13 b/w illustrations
9780520410244$95.00|£80.00Hardcover
Apr 2025