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directly under the national AFL leadership and presumably had greater autonomy
in decision-making than those Black AFL locals that were directly dependent on a
local white union. Additionally, it should be noted that, whatever the limitations of
membership in locals affiliated with the predominantly white labor movement,
these locals appear to have been more stable than the independent Black unions.
The three independent construction locals and the Railway Men's Benevolent and
Protective Association accounted for 1900 Black unionists in 1923; by 1929 these
unions had disappeared. However, only among the longshore locals, largely
because of the influence of the overwhelmingly African American local 858, were
Black unionists able to enforce substantial equality with their white counterparts.60

It is interesting to look at the economic sectors in which Blacks were union
members. Considering both independent unions and locals within the
predominantly white movement, and again excluding those listed locals under
"Other Industrial and Transport" in Table 4-6, almost all of the remaining locals
were confined to what Ira De A. Reid has called the "racial service" sector
(occupations serving only Black clientele), construction, or railroad-related
employment. The presence of Black unions in the last two sectors is especially
interesting because, on the skilled level, these sectors were highly organized and
had a long history of trade unionism; these factors must have contributed,
intentionally or not, to organization on the unskilled level. However, these skilled
sectors also contained the most aristocratic, most exclusivistic ~ indeed, most racist
- white craft unions. Indeed, a number of the Blacks working as laborers in these
sectors were actually skilled workers who could not work at their craft because of
discrimination. Moreover, as noted above, there was little or no semi-skilled buffer
between the skilled and the unskilled in these sectors. Structurally, therefore, the
contradictions between white skilled and Black unskilled were particularly
antagonistic in construction and railroads.

The state of Black trade unionism was particularly dismal in manufacturing