The Battle against Wage Slavery

The Great Depression hit African Americans with the force of a sledge-hammer. It exaggerated previous economic liabilities and created newer, potentially more dangerous ones as well. “At no time in the history of the Negro since slavery,” concluded T. Arnold Hill of the Urban League, “has his economic and social outlook seemed so discouraging.” ¹ Historically, the location of blacks in the occupational structure defined their economic, social, and political status in the United States. Their role in the economy was to furnish an endless supply of cheap labor and to serve as members of the nation's reserve army of labor. ² So when slavery ended, a color-conscious occupational system was established to keep blacks chained to the bottom rungs of the occupational ladder and to make them a perpetual source of cheap labor and members of the labor reserve. Robert C. Weaver, the Harvard educated economist, coined the term and defined it this way:

In the place of slavery we have substituted a color occupational system. That system perpetuates the concept of the Negro as an inferior being and establishes institutions to assure his inferior status. It serves to conceal the basic nature of economic problems and covers them with color situations. Whenever necessity or national policy dictates modifications in color occupational patterns, the resulting changes are sure to be opposed violently by those who have a real or assumed vested interest in maintaining the color line. ³