In 1946 the CIO pushed to overhaul labor in the South by attempting to “organize the disorganized” in a massive campaign drive called Operation Dixie. If it succeeded, not only would southern workers benefit, but it would also strengthen the power of unions across the country. However, northern CIO leadership underestimated southern segregation. To counter organizers, Ku Klux Klan propaganda warned of a “Jewish-Communist” takeover and Black managers overseeing white workers. In a typical attempt to sign up these workers, a college graduate named George Johnston was sent with other CIO unionists down to Georgia to organize cotton mills. In Columbus the Bibb Manufacturing Company operated a “company town,” where it owned its employees’ homes and ran its own police force. Johnston recalled only being able to speak to a single Bibb worker outside the mill, who was soon after threatened by a company guard with dismissal and eviction. When Johnston and his coworkers leafleted the mills, they were chased away. Operation Dixie ultimately failed to enlist large numbers of working men, in part because it couldn’t overcome whites’ deep-seated prejudices, which were easily manipulated by employers who wanted to keep their workers fighting each other instead of their working conditions.

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