The End of Pretense: Organized Labor Refuses to Desegregate George Meany and the AFL-CIO reject the NAACP’s pleas to open labor’s doors to opportunities for African Americans

The foregoing examples of the NAACP’s efforts to desegregate abroad range of labor unions demonstrate that neither the AFLCIO nor the federation’s constituent unions, with very few exceptions, have permitted any significant progress in opening the American workplace to blacks or other minorities. From its earliest days during the

last quarter of the nineteenth century, the AFL under Samuel Gompers consisted of unions that barred blacks from membership or that relegated Negroes to second-class, segregated status or that simply controlled access to the job site and used this control to prevent the hiring of otherwise qualified Negroes for jobs. That pattern developed early in the history of the American labor movement and has been so impervious to attack and reform that it continues in a variety of overt, as well as subtle forms, today.