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docks. Longshoring was a highly desirable job in the Black community, and Black

?Q

longshoremen were, in the context of their community, a labor aristocracy. y

Longshoring was not the only relatively desirable area of work in
transportation for Black men. Among the chauffeurs, the truck and tractor drivers,
the draymen, teamsters, and carriage drivers (and, as noted above, among the
deliverymen of the commercial sector) there were significant concentrations of
Blacks (35.1%, 48.5%, and 31.7% respectively). As Charles Johnson pointed out in
1923, there was a long tradition of African American men working as drivers and in
delivery, and they were to maintain some hold on these occupations as motor
vehicles replaced the use of livestock. All in all, the transportation sector, more
than the manufacturing sector, offered opportunities to Black men beyond the level
of laboring jobs. "

How did with the racial-ethnic division of labor articulate with the gendered
division of labor, particularly in terms of the distribution of women to working-class
places? The answer is that the employment profile of Black women contrasted very
sharply with that of both immigrant and native white women. To begin with, 55.8%
of all Black women over the age of 15 years worked for wages, compared to 29.9%
of all white native-born women and to only 17.2% of all foreign-born women.
Furthermore, Black women represented a remarkable 37.5% of employed women
workers, compared to 57.2% for white native born and 53% for white foreign:
African American representation in the female portion of the employed working
class was far greater than in the working class as a whole. There was nothing new
in this, for Black women — and, parenthetically, children — had for decades had a
much higher work force participation rate than white women. This differential
lessened somewhat in the early twentieth century, though, as larger and larger
proportions of white women, especially white U.S.-born women, joined the ranks of
wage labor. By 1930 the employment rates of single women in the white and Black,
foreign-, and native-born groups were very similar. Nevertheless, through marriage,