On July 12, 1964, in a momentous decision, the National Labor
Relations Board decertified the racially segregated Independent
Metal Workers Union as the collective bargaining agent at Houston's
mammoth Hughes Tool Company. The unanimous decision ending nearly
fifty years of Jim Crow unionism at the company marked the first
ruling in the Labor Board's history that racial discrimination by a
union violated the National Labor Relations Act and was therefore
illegal. This ruling was for black workers the equivalent of the
Brown v. Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in the
area of education. Botson traces the Jim Crow unionism of the
company and the efforts of black union activists to bring civil
rights issues into the workplace. His analysis clearly demonstrates
that without federal intervention, workers at Hughes Tool would
never have been able to overcome management's opposition to
unionization and to racial equality. Drawing on interviews with
many of the principals, as well as extensive mining of company and
legal archives, Botson's study "captures a moment in time when a
segment of Houston's working-class seized the initiative and won
economic and racial justice in their work place."
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