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especially to the less skilled and to the more recent white immigrant ethnicities.49
Alongside the craft union traditions and organizations, led by the BFL, and
the industrial union tradition epitomized by the ACW, there was a third labor
tradition in Baltimore of a somewhat different type: that of African American
workers. Just as Black workers had a unique distribution throughout the workforce,
they also had a distinct set of trade-union institutions and traditions. Black trade
unionism was not entirely separate from the white trade-union movement, foreign-
born or immigrant, but existed in a semi-autonomous symbiosis to it. This was
because, as the Urban League's Charles S. Johnson put it in 1923:
The history of the Negro laborer and the Trade Union Movement is but
another aspect of his struggle for status in the industries of Baltimore.
Essentially he is a buffer between the employers and the unions. This is an
unfortunate position, for there is no security in either stronghold.
While white unskilled workers and women workers found themselves
opposing the existing craft-based trade-union movement as well as the employers
on many occasions, no other social group had to fight this two-front war as
consistently as Black workers.
The African American labor movement had a long history in Baltimore,
starting with the Caulker's Association organized in the late 1830s by "free" Blacks.
This union was, as historian Bettye C. Thomas has written, "one of the first black
labor unions in the country, a forerunner to the Colored National Labor Union."
From the beginning, the caulkers, and other Black workers who followed their lead
in organizing, were under almost constant siege by encroaching white workers. In
1858 and again in 1865-6 the siege by whites turned into strikes and riots, as
attempts were made to drive Black caulkers, bricklayers, and construction workers
from their jobs. The caulkers, after losing much ground during the 1865-6 struggle.
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