Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company

Botson traces the Jim Crow unionism at Houston's Hughes Tool Company and the efforts of black union activists to bring civil rights issues into the workplace. He also examines the National Labor Relations Board's 1964 decision that racial discrimination by a union was illegal--the equivalent for black workers of Brown v. Board of Education. "Dr. Botson weaves together this tapestry of history with considerable skill and nuance, all the more heartfelt since he spent nine years as an industrial union worker, where he encountered some of the same problems he later discovered in his research of Hughes Tool."--George N. Green, University of Texas at Arlington