The Anti-Union South: Allendale, S.C.

Except from a 2003 interview with Reverend James Orange, longtime civil rights activist, in which he describes his work for the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers and the JP Stevens organizing campaign of 1977. Courtesy of the Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, Voices of Labor Oral History Project.

William Pollard [Executive Director], correspondence, 1978 [page 56]

William Pollard [Executive Director], correspondence, 1978 [page 55]

William Pollard [Executive Director], correspondence, 1978 [page 58]

Letter from April 12, 1978, by Paul Swaity, Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, to William Pollard, Director of the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department: “We have a serious civil rights problem in Allendale, S.C. . . Black-white tensions in the community are very high.”
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
E.T. Kehrer's response on June 7 to Swaity's letter: ". . . we might want to explore a meeting of the leading black organizations (NAACP, APRI, Urban League, churches) in Allendale to publicly support the 'right' of black workers to join the union and seek political support so as to 'cool' the situation."
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.
Report from Ben Bozeman, the assaulted white organizer, on his experience recruiting plant workers in segregated and anti-union Allendale, S.C. He writes that the town's racial tensions have always been high, and now "many whites in the plant are refusing to hear about a union because a majority of blacks have signed." After speaking with a Black community leader named George Jefferson, Bozeman says that "Industry in Allendale perpetuates racial tension and bigotry. . . Blacks, especially women, are fired at will and foremen appear to be hired because they're white and hate blacks.
Courtesy of Southern Labor Archives, Georgia State University, AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, Southern Office records.

Despite the gains of the civil rights movement, the everyday South remained heavily segregationist. People often lived and socialized in segregated towns, and AFL-CIO organizers still struggled to unionize white workers who were prejudiced against communism and integration. In April of 1978 Paul Swaity, Director of Organizing at the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union, wrote to William Pollard, Director of the AFL-CIO Civil Rights Department, “We have a serious civil rights problem in Allendale, S.C.” A white organizer, sent to sign up workers at the J.P. Stevens textile plant, was punched by a white assailant, and Swaity described the atmosphere in town as “explosive.” The majority of white Allendale was anti-union, and about half of the Allendale plant workers were Black pro-unionists. Town employers purposefully used racial conflict to keep workers divided. “Black-white tensions in the community,” Swaity wrote, “are very high.” As assaulted organizer Ben Bozeman put it in his report, “Many workers, whites in particular, are too busy hating each other to take time to hate working conditions.”

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