A Great Moral Crusade? The United Auto Workers and the Fight for Civil Rights in the United States

Abstract

This article explores the relationship between the United Auto Workers, America's largest industrial union, and the African-American Civil Rights Movement. Contributing fresh perspectives, it presents a focused and detailed account of the union's support for the Civil Rights Movement. The analysis shows that the UAW regarded the public fight for civil rights as a ‘great moral crusade’. It played a significant role in the overlooked Detroit ‘Walk to Freedom’ (1963), a predecessor for the iconic March on Washington (1963) and Selma (1965) campaigns. In the 1950s and 1960s, the UAW also helped sustain the national civil rights coalition. In terms of tackling internal discrimination, however, the union's record was limited. Throughout this period, African-American workers remained disproportionately concentrated in low-paying jobs, hurt by corporate practices and union seniority agreements. Into the 1970s, many Black autoworkers turned to the federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, not the UAW, to tackle these deep-seated problems. As such, I argue that the union's response to internal civil rights complaints was motivated by a desire to reduce its legal liability as much as by a moral compass. Overall, the relationship between the union and civil rights was complex, especially when the private and public records are contrasted.

On the afternoon of 23 June 1963, an interracial group of over 125,000 people marched down Woodward Avenue, Detroit's main thoroughfare, in a ‘Walk to Freedom’. ¹ Among them was Dr Martin Luther King, Jr., who later described the march as the ‘largest and greatest ever held in the United States’. ² Wherever he went in Motown, King received a rockstar welcome. ‘I’ve faced so many mobs and hate in the South’, he told the masses, standing on a box to be visible, ‘this was kind of a relief’. The jubilant crowd mobbed the civil rights leader and his entourage, which included United Auto Workers (UAW) president Walter Reuther, local civil rights leader Rev. C.L. Franklin, and Detroit mayor Jerome Cavanaugh. ‘Reuther said his feet sometimes were not even touching the pavement’, reported the Detroit News. ‘At times members of the entourage were shoved aside, finally regaining their place by running down alleys paralleling Woodward to catch up’. In the course of the day, 28 children were lost and found, seven people fainted from exhaustion, and three marchers were injured in falls. There was, however, no violence. ³

At the conclusion of the walk, thousands of Detroiters swarmed Cobo Hall to hear Reuther and King speak. Unable to get seats, many listened to loudspeakers outside. ‘I think this remarkable demonstration is most encouraging’, declared Reuther. ‘It indicates you can provide appropriate leadership in the struggle against discrimination and you can still have a peaceful demonstration’. ⁴ In the 12,000-seat venue, built three years earlier, the crowd were treated to a rousing address by King. After reviewing the acceleration of civil rights protest in America, King offered a compelling vision of Whites and Blacks liberated from racial division. ‘He ended his 48-minute talk repeating “dreams” of a world united in brotherhood’, summarized reporter Anthony Ripley, present in the hall. The remarks produced a ‘wild response’ from the crowd, who mobbed King again before he was escorted to his hotel. The speech occurred more than two months before King's ‘dream’ captured global attention at the March on Washington. ⁵

Worthy of more consideration in its own right, the Detroit march highlights the need to examine the UAW's role in the Civil Rights Movement in greater detail. ⁶ America's largest industrial union, the 1.5 million-member body played a key role in organizing the ‘Walk to Freedom’and thousands of UAW members attended. Taking part in a protest that was more than a ‘sympathy demonstration’ for the protests in Birmingham, Alabama, they walked to call out deep-seated local discrimination in housing and employment, especially at the city's huge auto factories. ⁷ The union was also part of the organizing committee for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, insisting on the inclusion of ‘jobs’ in its title. At that march, Reuther was the only White labour leader to address the massive crowd, and busloads of UAW members were there to hear him. The occasion cemented Reuther's place at the heart of the national civil rights coalition. ⁸

The UAW was involved in other landmark civil rights protests, particularly the Selma campaign of 1965, where Reuther and autoworkers again marched. ⁹ It helped finance – and broker – the movement's activism, especially as a central player in the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, an important national alliance. ‘The UAW has always been a mainstay of the Conference’, NAACP leader Roy Wilkins wrote Reuther in 1966. ‘Your financial help, of course, has always been essential to carrying our programs forward’. Reuther was one of what A. Philip Randolph called the ‘Big Ten’, America's top civil rights leaders. Among the other members were Dr King, Wilkins, SNCC president John Lewis, and CORE head James Farmer. In the 1960s, the group formulated plans for what Randolph called ‘further action and program in this civil rights struggle’, planning pivotal protests. ¹⁰

It was unusual for a trade union to be so involved in civil rights. ‘Labor was never able to appreciate the moral energy that animated the civil rights movement’, notes Alan Draper in a significant study, even though leaders ‘allied politically’ with the movement. ¹¹ Here, the UAW provided an important counterpoint – at least nationally. Its actions reflected the ‘social unionism’ philosophy of Reuther, a key figure in postwar liberalism. Unlike most labour leaders of the time, Reuther envisaged a broad progressive role for his union, including environmental activism and a strong interest in the War on Poverty. ‘The UAW will remain in the vanguard of those organizations which are dedicated to the high principles of freedom and justice for every American’, he wrote in 1963, summarizing his philosophy. ¹² For the former Socialist – who became a Cold War liberal due to the events of World War II, particularly the Nazi–Soviet Pact of 1939 – the civil rights fight was a passion; he called it a ‘great moral crusade’. Under his long leadership – he led the UAW from 1946 to 1970 – the union was integral to the ‘national coalition of conscience’ that produced the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and Voting Rights Act of 1965. These landmark laws finally began to address America's long history of racial inequality. ¹³

Since the 1970s, scholars have ably explored the postwar upsurge in civil rights activism, uncovering the richness of what William H. Chafe has termed ‘the most significant social movement in all of American history’. ¹⁴ Works on King – two of them Pulitzer prize-winning – abound. ¹⁵ In contrast, other scholars examined the movement from the bottom-up, exposing the importance of local movements and mass activism. ¹⁶ Chronology provides another focus, with many works uncovering what Jacquelyn Dowd Hall has called the ‘long civil rights movement’. This scholarship challenges the focus on the 1954–68 period, especially highlighting important struggles before Brown vs. Board of Education. Here, labour often played a significant role, especially as McCarthyism later purged most radicals from the movement. ¹⁷ Others have explored the post-1965 efforts to implement national legislation, especially in the South, illustrating the ‘continuing struggle’. ¹⁸

The movement's economic dimensions have been relatively understudied, particularly in terms of the auto industry, a major economic sector. In 1970, one in six of all American jobs was reportedly linked to automaking. ¹⁹ While books by John Barnard, Kevin Boyle, and Nelson Lichtenstein have explored Reuther's support of civil rights, a fuller interrogation of the UAW's civil rights activism is valuable, especially to provide a standalone analysis of the union's public and private record. Given that the literature focuses heavily on Reuther, it is also important to take the story past his 1970 death, when the UAW's history has been largely overlooked. This article offers fresh perspectives, contributing to labour and civil rights historiographies by presenting a focused, sustained, and detailed account of the union's support for the Civil Rights Movement. It exposes the limits of this backing when it came to its own practices, and the tensions and complexities that existed within the UAW, both nationally and locally. ²⁰

Drawing on new research in the UAW's papers, along with related collections, this article explores how the union provided little-known logistical support for key protests and helped keep the national civil rights coalition together. For well over a decade, it was integral to a movement usually told through other actors. It also, however, exposes original details about how the UAW responded very differently to internal complaints of discrimination, often to protect its legal liability. ²¹ This was especially true after 1964, when the Civil Rights Act prohibited employment discrimination by companies and unions. While scholars have explored organized labour's history of racism, especially the AFL-CIO's opposition to affirmative action, the UAW has largely escaped close analysis, especially in terms of how it reacted to Title VII's implementation internally. ²²

The UAW's files expose the limits of its efforts, especially in terms of tackling discrimination within the industry and union. Well into the 1970s, many Black autoworkers turned to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), not the UAW, to tackle these deep-seated problems. Throughout this period, African-American workers remained disproportionately concentrated in low-paying jobs, earning the wrath of critics such as former NAACP official Herbert Hill, who accused it – and other unions – of institutionalized ‘racist practices’. ²³ In June 1963, as the ‘Walk to Freedom’ took place, less than 10 of the 6,200 staff at GM's nearby global headquarters were Black. The UAW had also only placed the first African-American (Nelson Edwards) on its 25 member executive board in 1962, after considerable pressure from Black unionists. On civil rights, the union was happier when the lens turned outward, not in. In this way, the UAW's story also offered broader lessons, especially as it anticipated institutional responses to the Black Lives Matter movement in the twenty-first century, where public statements of support were preferred over policies that tackled systemic racism within governmental and corporate agencies. It also illustrated the wider challenges that social movements and organizations often face when controversial political issues create divisions among members. For the UAW, external action was preferred partly to minimize these fractures. ²⁴

Publicly, it was a different story, and early struggles set the stage. Founded in 1935, the UAW experienced rapid growth in the decade after the sit-down strikes of 1936–37. The first sit-down, at General Motors’ plants in Flint, Michigan, lasted for six weeks, providing the crucial breakthrough in an industry that had violently resisted unionization. ²⁵ Despite Ford holding out with what federal officials called ‘utter ruthlessness’, by 1940 it was also organized. With the ‘Big Three’ (GM, Ford, and Chrysler) under contract, the UAW acquired a reputation as one of America's strongest – and most high-profile – unions. Most of its leaders, including Reuther, emerged from these foundational struggles, imbibing how civil disobedience could produce social change. Indeed, when the sit-ins of 1960 broke out, strategists apparently derived the technique from the strikes that birthed the UAW. ‘The sit-down strike movement of the 1930s’, notes historian Sidney Fine in a classic account, ‘and especially the GM strike, anticipated the civil-rights movement of the 1950's and 1960's’. ²⁶

By the end of World War II, the UAW had bargaining rights over almost all the auto industry and over 1 million members. ²⁷ Elected president in 1946, Reuther carried a strong interest in civil rights. In one early speech, he praised the Roosevelt and Truman administrations as the ones who ‘broke the trail and made the first lasting advances’ for equality, especially through the wartime Fair Employment Practices Committee and the 1947 Commission on Civil Rights. He also blasted opponents’ claims that America needed ‘years of education’ to achieve integration. In the late 1940s and early 1950s, Reuther directed the UAW's Fair Practices and Anti Discrimination Department, which tackled racial inequality at a time when few unions acknowledged the issue directly. The Department allowed Black workers to pursue charges of racial discrimination, yet it lacked power to effect change on the ground. By the early 1950s, the UAW had over 150,000 African-American members, but they were locked into low-paying jobs. ²⁸

With grassroots progress difficult, in this early era the union prioritized the external fight for civil rights. Only later, when the 1964 Civil Rights Act gave legal power to African-Americans to tackle employment discrimination, would the UAW interrogate its troubling record. This produced hard – and inconvenient – questions, generating some change.

As the Civil Rights Movement gathered force in the 1950s, the UAW was at the heart of the public struggle, but there were also internal tensions. For many unions, the landmark Brown v. Board of Education (1954) school desegregation decision produced difficult dilemmas, as angry White members threatened to hurt labour's fragile progress in the South. These winds buffeted the UAW. ‘For some time now we have been attempting to piece together all of the International Unions in the South to discuss ways and means of coping with the ever mounting racial problems prevalent in the Southern labor unions’, Black staffer William Oliver wrote in April 1957, at the height of the ‘Massive Resistance’ era. The UAW secured philanthropic funding, hoping to undertake a ‘coordinated effort’ to investigate the problem. ²⁹ In March, it participated in the Southern Regional Council's Labor Conference, attended by several industrial unions and community leaders. In a confidential report, attendees admitted that pro-segregation organizations were ‘quite active’, possessing ‘substantial financial resources’. Overall, hate groups had succeeded in ‘separating locals from nationals on matters of major policy’. The need for education and training of members was stressed. With more auto facilities moving to the South, where wages were lower and unions weaker, the issue was urgent. ³⁰ In subsequent years, the dilemmas increased. As part of a ‘Southern Strategy’, General Motors built more parts and assembly plants in the South, especially in the 1960s and 1970s. By 1976, GM had six assembly plants in the region, as well as many parts factories, producing further difficulties for the UAW. ³¹

Publicly, leaders strongly promoted civil rights. In 1954, the UAW was ‘proud’ to support the Brown decision, where the CIO – which Reuther headed – submitted an amicus curiae brief endorsing desegregation. The UAW entered a similar brief in the Supreme Court decision on Restrictive Covenants and testified before Congress on civil rights on numerous occasions. Furthermore, Reuther belonged to the NAACP Board of Directors, causing segregationists to label him a ‘Negrophile’. Reuther was undeterred, declaring his deep commitment to ‘this fight to kill Jim Crow’. In 1956, the UAW gave its ‘Freedom Award’ to Thurgood Marshall, the young African-American lawyer who helped win Brown. In the mid-1950s every UAW member was assessed a monthly fee to fund the union's Anti-Discrimination Fund, and the UAW gave US$75,000 to the NAACP, reportedly the largest donation it had received. ³² The union funded NAACP-led voter registration drives, supported multi-group efforts to integrate Detroit's housing, and backed the wide-ranging work of the Jewish Labor Committee and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC). Unlike many progressive organizations, which worked in the North or South, the UAW's efforts were national. ³³

Union papers reveal a particular concern with the costs of racial discrimination. Detailed note cards documented stark racial disparities in employment, voting, education, and life expectancy. Thus, in 1962 cards showed that workplace discrimination cost the US$13 billion, shaving 2.5 per cent off GDP. ³⁴ The union also tracked striking health inequalities, relating them to Cold War imperatives. In 1964, the infant mortality rate for African-Americans was higher than 34 of 40 European countries, on ‘both sides’ of the Iron Curtain (including the USSR). In the 1950s, Reuther travelled to India and North Africa, exposing him to foreign criticisms of American racism. Civil rights, he told the Senate in 1957, was not a ‘purely domestic matter’; it was a ‘world wide issue’. ³⁵

Influenced by the sit-down strikes’ legacy, the UAW also got involved in direct action. On 10 May 1963, it took part in a ‘mass demonstration’ to support the SCLC's Birmingham campaign. ³⁶ This was a precursor to the ‘Walk to Freedom’, an overlooked precedent for the March on Washington. The Detroit Council for Human Rights, an umbrella group that included the UAW, organized the ‘Walk’. It highlighted the significant discrimination faced by Detroit Blacks, over 30 per cent of the population. On 17 May 1963, the Council gathered at the New Bethel Baptist Church, where Rev. C.L. Franklin, father of singer Aretha Franklin and a charismatic leader with a ‘million dollar voice’, was pastor. There, the Council adopted the ‘Declaration of Detroit’, which asserted that 70 per cent of Black Detroiters lived in sub-standard housing. ‘Denied after 100 years of Constitutional freedom the full measure of the social contract, we do hereby declare before God and all men this 17th day of May in the Year of Our Lord 1963, that we will no longer abide, tolerate or countenance this manifest injustice’, they concluded. ³⁷

The UAW was at the heart of what became the biggest protest in Detroit since the labour upsurge of the 1930s. ³⁸ In a 14 June missive, Reuther urged mobilization from the ‘total membership’. ³⁹ Workers responded. At 2.15 p.m, a large UAW contingent gathered at the AFL-CIO's downtown headquarters, near the march route. ‘The entire two block area between Cass and Woodward Avenue will be reserved for local unions to assemble’, instructed the union. Signs, placards, and leaflets were provided, along with parking. Pictures showed that most marchers were African-American, though a small minority were White. UAW signs proclaiming ‘End Discrimination’ were prominent. ‘It's for better jobs right now – like next week’, declared marcher Ronald Turner. ⁴⁰

For workers like Turner, economic issues were the heart of the march. At the time, General Motors sold over half of all new cars in the United States and was a prime target for what Business Week called the ‘Negro militants who are demanding more high-grade jobs for their people’. Activists threatened a boycott, a call backed by Dr King. African-Americans comprised over 25 per cent of GM's production workers but were grossly under-represented in white-collar positions. GM blamed a lack of applicants, angering many. ‘The shortage is the result of years of discrimination against Negroes’, responded the NAACP's Rev. Albert B. Cleage, Jr. ‘Before we educate people to apply at GM, we have to have some assurance that they can get a job’. By supporting the march, the UAW also kept the focus on industry, avoiding a confronting look at its complicity in unequal employment practices. ⁴¹

The weather on the day was perfect, and supporters claimed turnout exceeded the official 125,000. Marchers filled over a mile of Detroit's main street. The Detroit Council for Human Rights claimed 250,000 had attended (the same as the March on Washington). Reuther was in the group ‘spearheading’ the march, locking arms with other leaders, including Rev. Franklin and Benjamin McFall. King, described by the Detroit Free Press as the ‘quiet-spoken, compact vortex of the American Negro's drive for equal rights’, was moved. He proclaimed the march, ‘one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America’. ⁴²

In the following weeks, Reuther worked to create an umbrella group to tackle Detroit's racial problems, particularly in employment and housing. On 5 September, efforts bore fruit when the first meeting of Detroit's Citizens Committee for Equal Opportunity occurred. Members included church and industry leaders, along with labour, civil rights, and community groups. ⁴³ Over the coming months, the Committee and UAW lobbied hard for Kennedy's civil rights bill, which faltered in congress. The union wanted stronger provisions, including a national Fair Employment Practices Commission, quicker school desegregation, and federal voting registrars. ‘There is no half-way house to human freedom’, Reuther asserted. The ‘Walk to Freedom’ was also an important precedent for the March on Washington, further designed to boost the bill. Again, Detroiters responded. ‘Your Citizens Committee in Detroit is far and away the most impressive I know of’, wrote the Justice Department's Burke Marshall to Reuther afterwards. ⁴⁴

The main organizer of the March on Washington, A. Philip Randolph, had himself headed the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters since the 1920s. ⁴⁵ On 5 August, Randolph wrote urging UAW participation. At this stage, he expected 100,000 people to attend. As many were ‘poor workers’, he placed labour issues at the protest's heart, noting that it was designed to secure ‘fair and full employment for all people’. He pressed for more labour funding, especially as the US$75,000 budget did not cover marchers’ travel costs. ⁴⁶

The UAW again mobilized. Writing to staffer Jack Conway on 14 August, vice-president Irving Bluestone detailed extensive plans to use ‘chartered planes’ to bring participants to Washington. Bluestone added that the union had a ‘sizeable number of buses coming in from the cities along the Eastern Seaboard’. Another contingent arrived by train, in cooperation with the NAACP. Bluestone clarified further arrangements. ‘It is our current plan to have staff people on each plane to act as captains and to be responsible for all appropriate arrangements with regard to the UAW group traveling with them’, he wrote. ⁴⁷

Other UAW members got involved through a writing program, targeted at key Congressional representatives. ⁴⁸ On the day, some local unions spent US$2,000 on bus transportation, while UAW signs were prominent in the crowd. ⁴⁹

In Washington, Reuther's passionate address, linking jobs to freedom, preceded King's. ‘We cannot defend freedom in Berlin so long as we deny freedom in Birmingham!’ he proclaimed. The appeal moved progressive Whites, essential to the passage of the federal bill. Writing from Indiana, White marcher James C. Warner noted that he was ‘very impressed’ by Reuther's statement. ‘Have been accused by both family and friends of many foul intentions for having the same basic beliefs of brotherhood and human decency so eloquently set forth in your speech’, he wrote. It was, added Chicago retiree Mrs E.J. Wright, a ‘wonderful talk’. ⁵⁰

Citing the lack of broader labour involvement, some were more critical. Fearing violence, cautious AFL-CIO president George Meany resisted pressure from Randolph to join, even locking the Federation's headquarters on the day. ‘What in the world led the other labor leaders to dissociate themselves from such a “national event” for anyone associated with the labor movement’, wrote New Yorker Chester Sellito to the UAW. ‘Shame on Mr Meany and the others’. Some Black autoworkers that participated were even reprimanded. At Michigan's New Haven Foundry, union president Chris Alston reported that workers who protested racial discrimination faced ‘reprisals’, while those who had marched ‘were penalized when they returned’. The very different internal climate was clear. ⁵¹

After 1963, the UAW remained at the heart of the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights (LCCR) as it pressed for national legislation. Founded in 1950, the UAW helped organize the group and provided some of its office space, assisting its work in pushing legislation and coordinating protests. In May 1965, LCCR secretary Arnold Aronson praised the union's role. ‘Over the years the U.A.W. has been among the most consistent and the most generous of our supporters’, he declared. As the Voting Rights Bill wound through Congress, the group was in ‘continuous contact’ with the union. Between 1963 and 1965, a period of what Aronson called ‘intense and productive activity’, the UAW contributed at least US$11,000. This helped mobilize the ‘broadest possible support’ behind the Voting Rights Bill, which finally passed in August. ⁵²

Direct action was integral to the voting rights fight, and the UAW again mobilized. When the Selma campaign began, Reuther wired President Johnson to protest Dr King's arrest and demand federal registrars in Alabama. ⁵³ Messages of support poured in from UAW local unions, especially after Bloody Sunday (7 March), when police beat non-violent marchers on national television. ⁵⁴ Soon afterwards, one UAW local called for all the union's Fair Practice Committees to be ‘activated and some help be given to Dr. King in the Alabama situation immediately’. Some viewed the protest through the lens of labour conflict. ‘Not only is the right to vote at stake’, urged a group of Michigan autoworkers, ‘but also the right to petition and redress’. ⁵⁵ The union also established a memorial fund for the family of Rev. James J. Reeb, a White minister killed in the protests, raising over US$240,000. ⁵⁶

Activists also noted the limits of labour's support. On 18 March, Michigan unionist Al Barbour wrote that the UAW was involved in this ‘most basic of fights’, but the AFL-CIO was notable for its ‘conspicuous absence’. Writing from Cleveland, member Max Schoenfeld urged labour needed to ‘do more than pass resolutions’. On the ground, stronger action was required. ⁵⁷

Schoenfeld's letter hinted at a broader disconnect between the public and private. While Reuther's public rights record was strong, he distanced himself from internal matters, deferring to the autonomy of local unions. Other UAW leaders recognized the existence of grassroots problems, yet remained nationally focused. In 1959, secretary-treasurer Emil Mazey admitted that the UAW had a lot to do internally. ‘We still have many problems to solve in our Union before we can claim that we have wiped out all discrimination and segregation as regards employment opportunities’, he acknowledged. UAW files, while detailed on national racial causes, provided little evidence of engagement with grassroots discrimination. It was easier to project the issue out. ⁵⁸

Mandatory reports to the EEOC also illuminated how the UAW had a long way to go in recruiting African-Americans, especially staff. A December 1966 report covering the Solidarity House headquarters showed 1215 international staff. Of these, just 125 were African-American (64 men and 61 women). This was lower than the percentage of Black members. ⁵⁹ The problem was worse at the leadership level, with a compilation of executive officers and regional directors in 1966 revealing that of 61 top staff, just two were African-American. Of 17 regional directors, none were Black. ⁶⁰

Industry patterns were also problematic. Across the sector, African-Americans were restricted to lower-paying jobs, with companies deferring to local managers. At some GM plants in the South, separate seniority lists for Black and White workers existed, hurting Blacks. When they complained to the UAW, results were often unsatisfactory. At the December 1949 meeting, the executive board had an extended discussion of a case at Local 410, where member Earl Lewis charged that his removal from a higher-skilled job had been discriminatory. After considering the situation, however, the Fair Practices Committee concluded that no discrimination had occurred. ⁶¹

By the 1960s, many Black autoworkers took matters into their own hands. After Selma, which did little to help northern Blacks who voted but faced deep-seated housing and employment discrimination, some joined the Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM), founded by a group of Black militant workers following the 1967 Detroit riots. ⁶² In May 1968, DRUM led 4000 workers at the Dodge Main Detroit plant in a wildcat strike against the speed-up, repeating the tactic two months later. DRUM highlighted complaints that dated back to World War II, when the Big Three hired African-Americans for what historian Kim Kelly has termed the ‘dirtiest and most dangerous tasks’. Many aimed their ire at the UAW, dominated by White leaders even though Blacks were nearly 30 per cent of members by this time. As Kelly's labour survey concludes, despite the UAW's ‘strong history of support for the Civil Rights Movement’, on the ground there was ‘still much work to be done’. What Nelson Lichtenstein has called a ‘new color line’ split the industry, with Whites dominating supervisory jobs while Blacks were concentrated on the line. Even within northern UAW locals, African-American unionists were ‘still without real power’. ⁶³

Behind the scenes, the union was defensive, seeking to protect itself from liability under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibited race and gender employment discrimination. This exposed the UAW to potential damages, as it was party to discriminatory contracts on both counts. ⁶⁴ In January 1966, Reuther told the executive board that the union had to take action to eliminate separate seniority lists for African-Americans and women. ‘This isn’t something you can just kind of, you know, talk about and then sweep under the rug and forget about it’, he warned. The union had to ‘follow through’. Action, however, was linked to avoiding financial penalties rather than helping Black or female workers per se, with Reuther warning of the danger of the UAW being ‘liable’ under the law. ‘We can get ourselves into very serious financial difficulties and so can the locals’, he cautioned. This was also a pragmatic approach by Reuther, who, along with other UAW leaders, used economic arguments because he realized they could be more effective in overcoming the racial resistance of many members. As such, this was not completely incompatible with the moral approach. ⁶⁵

On other occasions, UAW leaders worried about their liability, especially in reference to women. In December 1965, Reuther candidly warned his colleagues that, ‘we can have a very serious problem with respect to financial obligations if Title 8 of the Civil Rights Bill in regards to women employees. We have to be very careful because the courts may hold both the Union and Company responsible since they are both a part of the agreement’. He urged all staff to review contracts because, ‘some of the clauses are specifically designed to discriminate against women’. Overseeing proceedings, Mazey called for further discussion. ‘It is a very serious problem’, he acknowledged. ⁶⁶

Subsequent minutes revealed that leaders were aware that separate seniority for African-Americans or women was unfair. ‘The effect of a seniority list which drives one group of people into a pool where they can get other jobs, and another group out on the street when they lose their immediate position, is a discriminatory seniority list in application’, warned UAW General Counsel Stephen Schlossberg in 1966. Title VII threatened to cause ‘serious problems’, especially as aggrieved workers could bring class action lawsuits with the help of the NAACP – a national UAW ally. The issue was so serious that Schlossberg recommended the union thoroughly ‘survey’ its contracts for liability. If seniority provisions were discriminatory, the union should contact the employer to discuss changing them. Overall, Reuther told his colleagues that the UAW had ‘no choice’ but to comply, including with the gender provisions. ‘We have got to carry out the meaning of the law’, he concluded, in a tone quite different to his public enthusiasm for the legislation. ⁶⁷

Internal discussions also revealed how difficult it was for African-Americans to prosecute racial discrimination grievances, even after Title VII. This was especially the case because they had to work through local White officials. In March 1968, Schlossberg described the situation at Local 600 – Ford's Rouge plant – where thousands of African-Americans worked. ‘One of the big issues that the Civil Rights Comm. in Michigan [had] was that these people would come to the committeeman and say he is being discriminated against’, admitted Schlossberg. ‘The committeeman would say there is no grievance and the grievant would insist that he write it up and he would refuse to do it…. The Civil Rights complaints went down to nothing’. If workers insisted on filing, Schlossberg recommended that the committeeman should ‘write it up’. Even then, the union official could – and did – deny grievances. ⁶⁸

Private records also highlighted how high-paying jobs remained dominated by Whites, partly because of superior access to apprenticeship programs. Across the auto industry, skilled trades workers were the elite in the plants, comprising 5–6 per cent of the workforce. They cherished their separate identity and usually voted independently. In 1967, over 100 of GM's 132 North American plants featured separate voting for these workers. ⁶⁹

UAW leaders knew they had to do more to tackle the absence of minority apprentices, but change was slow. In April 1967, the executive board – the union's top decision-making body – candidly discussed the issue. ‘The overall situation, not only in apprentices but elsewhere in EIT and the Skilled Trades generally, is very, very bad’, admitted Leonard Woodcock, who headed the UAW's manpower training program. Nationally, the percentage of African-Americans in auto industry apprenticeship programs was 7.8 per cent, but many failed to land positions. ‘The overall record obviously is not that good’, added vice-president Douglas Fraser, ‘I think it's something like 3 per cent’. ⁷⁰

Probing the imbalance, UAW leaders largely passed the buck, blaming industrial hiring patterns and the poor standard of education received by most African-Americans. ‘There are more (blacks) in the foundries than there are in the Skilled Trades Department’, Reuther admitted. To change this, he suggested tests that were less abstract, greater effort by the labour movement to improve Blacks’ education, and more support inside the plants for minority apprentices. The situation, he insisted, could be turned around. ⁷¹

Others were less optimistic. ‘The prior practices in our Union just have not done the job’, thought California director Paul Schrade. ‘Not because we don’t want to do it, but because there are roadblocks in this Union to a fair practice program’. Without fundamental reforms, the UAW would be ‘under attack’. These roadblocks included the union's tripartite structure, which had international officers at the top but ceded much of the power – especially in policy implementation – to the second tier of regional directors and the third tier of local unions. In terms of apprenticeships, the eligibility requirements in the union's skilled trades programs were partly responsible, as many Whites had secured positions without taking tests, often through patronage and contacts, including deals with supervisors from their own ethnic group. ‘In the past all you had to be was warm and have a birth certificate, particularly during the war years, and you could have gotten a job’, acknowledged Schrade. ⁷² Others agreed, at least privately. ‘Eighty per cent of our people never served an apprenticeship’, admitted Mazey, describing nepotism and in-plant deals from personal experience, ‘and why should we not take a good look at the idea of taking qualified Negroes who have some mechanical aptitude and teach them the jobs the easy way, the way most of these guys got their jobs in their trades? I think that's what we ought to do’. ⁷³

The task ahead was huge. Discussions revealed that the Fair Practices Committee did not meet frequently and lacked knowledge of what was going on at the grassroots, especially outside Detroit. Furthermore, the executive board rarely interrogated equality issues. ‘I think this discussion has been very good’, noted Mazey, referencing the apprenticeship debate, ‘and it has been a long time since we have had a session on this subject’. Another issue was the decentralized nature of the union and the focus on local struggles, especially within the regions. ‘I think the problem here is that we all work in a little sphere of our own’, summarized E.S. Patterson, ‘and we don’t know what's going on in the whole picture’. Regional directors serviced the ‘present membership’ rather than recruiting outside. The April 1967 meeting ended with Woodcock's report accepted – but few concrete changes. ⁷⁴

The reaction of White members to Black advancement was another challenge. The UAW's papers show that complying with Title VII generated tension on the ground, where some Whites disliked the leadership's support of civil rights. Resistance was visible even in executive board discussions, which occasionally aired these problems.

At the Allis-Chalmers Company in Gadsden, Alabama, for example, the international union told Local 487 in the spring of 1965 that ‘they were not in compliance with the policy relating to plant seniority transfer agreement’. Following Title VII, the international community pressed to eliminate departmental seniority, which locked minority workers in segregated departments, but there was grassroots resistance. Minutes even reported that in Gadsden ‘it was also the colored vs. white in the plant’. After the international union, working with federal agencies, implemented the required changes, the local union appealed. When a UAW representative went to a grassroots meeting to resolve the situation, he reported ‘chaos, threats, etc.’. The local then asked for a hearing before the executive board in Detroit, but leaders refused. ‘There were problems and in fact at the meeting that I attended in Gadsden I was threatened and personally attacked by several of the individuals in the meeting’, reported southern director Mike Michael. ⁷⁵

The case was representative, showing how the UAW's public support of civil rights produced member pushback, especially in the South. After Selma, these complaints gathered force. In April 1965, 1755 members of Local 34 in Atlanta – over half the membership – submitted a petition demanding that the union stop its civil rights work. ‘We are angry because part of our union money has been spent on controversial, self interest, politically aligned power groups, such as the NAACP, whose aim appears to be dedicated to sowing discord and discontent throughout our country’, they declared. ‘The union has absolutely no business interfering with problems such as these’. Other UAW members in Georgia submitted similar petitions. ⁷⁶

In April 1968, widespread racial violence after Dr King's assassination, including in the auto centers of Detroit and Atlanta, further split the membership. Meeting on 10 April, six days after King's killing in Memphis, the board discussed the riots and the ongoing struggle of the ‘Garbage Strikers’. Reuther called for the fight to continue. ‘Unless this country moves now’, he urged, ‘we will forfeit the opportunity of moving tomorrow…. It was in this spirit that we went to Memphis’. ⁷⁷

Reuther gave strong support to the Memphis Sanitation workers strike, which fused together the racial and economic justice at the heart of his ‘moral crusade’. Reacting to the city's refusal to recognize the predominantly Black local union, Reuther joined an April protest of over 30,000 people. There, he walked alongside civil rights leaders and celebrities including Harry Belafonte, Sidney Poitier, and Ruby Dee. The campaign gained momentum after King was killed while campaigning for the strikers, who were paid just over US$1 an hour and suffered on-the-job racism. Following the assassination, the UAW donated US$50,000 to the strike fund. ⁷⁸

This backing was unpopular with many White members, and not only in the South. After King's killing, racial divisions within the ranks were acute. ‘Some Local Unions in my Region were complaining about the fact that I was in the march in Memphis and that I attended the funeral yesterday’, reported Michael on 10 April. ‘They say that I must have a lot of time on my hands to be able to do this’. Others described similar resistance in other regions. ‘We have as much viciousness in the north as we do in the south’, admitted Ray Ross, a northern regional director. ‘The problem is deep within the membership of our Union’, added Reuther. ‘Our membership is a typical cross-section of all the bigotry and hate in our country’. ⁷⁹

The discussion reflected broader challenges facing progressive groups. The period after 1965 was a challenging one, as a loss of White support, increasing radicalization in the African-American community, and competition with the war in Vietnam robbed civil rights of the national attention – and legislative success – it enjoyed from 1960 to 1965. For Reuther, a Detroit resident, the major race riot in the city in July 1967 was also devastating. As well as 43 fatalities, US$500 million in property was destroyed, in a city that writer Sidney Lens described as ‘the home-base of the liberal United Auto Workers’. It was a confronting time, exposing the depths of what Roy Wilkins called the ‘anguished culture’ of inner-city Blacks. ⁸⁰ The union was wary of ‘Black Power’ – SNCC's official slogan after June 1966 – instead endorsing ‘the broad Civil Rights Coalition’ that had existed until 1965. Still, after the riot it was impossible to maintain this unity. ‘These fellows do great harm because they stir up the same attitude on the other extreme and this just means that those people who share our point of view have to work that much harder’, a worried Reuther told the board in 1966, referring to Black Power advocates. ⁸¹ Highlighting the fracturing of the liberal coalition, in 1968 Reuther pulled the UAW out of the AFL-CIO, the umbrella federation that had been largely cautious in supporting civil rights and more hawkish on Vietnam. There were also deeper personal and ideological differences between Reuther and gruff AFL-CIO president George Meany, especially over organizing and anti-communism, where Meany was more conservative on both counts. ⁸²

The rise of Black Power was symptomatic of a broader disconnect between the UAW's ageing leadership and the young. In the auto plants, the workforce was changing; at Chrysler in 1970, 42 per cent of members were under 30. Leaders related a growing inability to connect with workers who were less willing than their parents to tolerate arduous conditions and racial discrimination. In a November 1966 meeting, Reuther noted off the record, ‘We have the question of how do we improve the instruments of communication to the mass membership? We have to use all the modern tools, but I think the key is through the secondary leadership. There is also the special problems of the youth. They want to build a bright, better, exciting tomorrow’. Although leaders recommended a Youth Department to ‘bridge the generation gap’, the problem remained unresolved. ⁸³

Highlighting this disconnect, in the late 1960s and early 1970s Black workers confronting discrimination increasingly turned not to the UAW but to the EEOC, set up to enforce Title VII. After Reuther died in a plane crash in May 1970, the union became more defensive as it faced a tide of charges. ‘We have received an ever increasing number of notifications from EEOC alleging charges of discrimination’, Bluestone reported to new President Leonard Woodcock in 1973. ‘Currently, we must have at least twenty in the hopper’. In particular, the UAW worried about federal courts ordering retroactive seniority for minority hires on the basis of past discriminatory treatment, necessitating seniority credits to new minority workers. Rulings at A T and T and Bethlehem Steel had involved this question. Retroactive seniority was unpopular with White workers and had, Bluestone concluded, ‘serious overtones for us’. ⁸⁴ In the 1970s, the union worried about what Oliver termed ‘fictitious seniority’, pressing the EEOC for ‘past discrimination’ cases to be resolved through ‘the application of pension credits rather than fictional seniority’. Still, new complaints arrived. In April 1974, Oliver referred to Title VII charges against UAW locals across ‘several regions of the EEOC’. ⁸⁵

The Commission also took broad action against the industry and union. In September 1973, chairman William H. Brown, Jr. III filed national charges against Ford and the UAW. Brown accused both of discrimination in ‘wages, benefits, terms and conditions, promotions, training and apprenticeship, layoff, qualification and testing, recall, seniority and union representation’. Oliver termed it a ‘class action’ against every Ford plant in the United States, along with every Ford-UAW local union. ⁸⁶ Around the same time, the Commission brought similar charges against GM. The New York Times reported that the EEOC had thousands of charges against big automakers, including 1800 at GM. The UAW felt under fire. ‘Evidently the EEOC, after having investigated Ford and GM for months, is now turning to us’, staffer John Fillion complained in 1974. ⁸⁷

The UAW documented the charges as African-American workers complained about lower pay, job insecurity, racial harassment, and lack of representation from union officials. Overall, records revealed the gap between national policies of non-discrimination and reality on the ground. ‘General 1 Foreman told me he was going to make an example out of me for running down to the EEOC office and told me there was nothing EEOC could do about it’, charged Robert L. Warner, a worker at GM's Atlanta plant, in 1972. ‘I have not been represented by the Union. Every grievance I filed they threw it out’. Others spoke on behalf of the group. ‘I feel that I and other Negroes have been discriminated against because of our race in that the Respondent employer will not hire or promote Negroes and maintains segregated job classifications’, wrote Willie Gardener, another Atlanta worker, in 1971. Blacks who spoke out were ‘retaliated against’, with the union ‘joined’ in the discrimination. Across the South, such complaints were common. ⁸⁸

Similar grievances arrived from the North. Many argued that the union failed to represent them on the ground, particularly when discharges occurred. ‘GM-Chevrolet Manufacturing has continually harassed and disciplined me’, summarized Flint employee Carey Tigner in 1972. ‘I have continually requested UAW Local 659 to pursue my grievances, but UAW Local 659 has never taken any of my grievances beyond the plant level’. Seniority violations were also common. ‘Although I had more seniority in my classification, I was reclassified to a core-oven attendant with a loss in pay’, charged Hurcle Sheard, a worker at Ford's Dearborn operations, in 1972. ‘I filed a union grievance with UAW Local 600 but it was pulled in the second step. Seniority rights of White employees are accepted by the company and the union and they are not treated in this manner’. ⁸⁹

As the industry contracted from the 1970s on, Black workers – with less seniority – were disproportionately affected. Some were laid off while still on probation, the UAW insisting it could not help. ‘The Union has no jurisdiction with respect to probationary employees unless they present evidence of an overt act of discrimination’, summarized Oliver – who tended to defend the union's institutional interests – in a 1972 letter to the EEOC. Such cases spotlighted broader dynamics. ‘As you know, the current economic crisis impacts most severely on women and minorities who are excluded from many of the benefits of our society and are the first to suffer in times of trouble’, EEOC chairman John H. Powell, Jr. wrote Woodcock in December 1974. To build on the ‘gains of the past decade’, Powell called for ‘better communication and more effective communication’ with the union, which needed to do a ‘better job’. ⁹⁰

Gradually, the UAW responded. In 1973, it negotiated the first affirmative action clauses in Big Three contracts. ‘These new innovative steps’, Oliver wrote Powell, ‘have been taken by the UAW in a further assurance to minorities that their grievances alleging a practice of discrimination will be expeditiously resolved by the Union’. The UAW National Advisory Council on Anti-Discrimination also worked to tackle problems. In July 1974, Powell praised these efforts, especially a ‘fruitful visit’ he made to a recent Council meeting. Under the 1973 Chrysler agreement, both sides agreed on an ‘Equal Application of Agreement’ clause, setting up an affirmative action program to give ‘definitive remedies’ to aggrieved workers. A union-management committee liaised with the EEOC to implement terms. Oliver stressed that with the Fair Practice Department the UAW was one of the few unions with anti-discrimination machinery – but elided how effective it was. ⁹¹

On the ground, there were other restrictions. In dismissal cases, the union often pursued complaints to the national level, yet if the corporation refused to reinstate the UAW withdrew the case, claiming it could do no more. Behind the scenes, union officials pressured the EEOC to allow it to settle charges internally, yet its investigations often failed to get workers recalled or seniority violations corrected, with officers blaming corporate resistance. ‘The Union's efforts unfortunately, were not successful as the investigate report discloses’, Oliver claimed to the EEOC on one discharge case. The Fair Practices Department also looked to get some charges dismissed as ‘untimely’. In correspondence with EEOC officials, it argued that it had investigated and met its obligations, adding – somewhat reluctantly – that it would participate in pre-decision conferences if ‘you deem necessary’. ⁹²

There were other limits. In the spring of 1975, the UAW covertly lobbied the EEOC not to issue national ‘guidelines’ for layoffs. Its efforts showed how it sought to protect the seniority rights of its 1.5 million members, especially older Whites. ‘The matter of layoffs is a painful and sensitive fact of present industrial life’, wrote union lawyers Schlossberg and John Fillion to EEOC Chair Ethel Walsh. ‘Any attempt to guide companies and unions should be done only after the most careful legal, technical and practical study’. Requesting a public hearing, the UAW urged the EEOC to wait before proceeding on this ‘delicate subject’. ⁹³

Publicly, it remained a different story, leaders seeking to maintain the union's progressive reputation. On 1 June 1970, days after assuming office in a closely contested election dominated by shock over Reuther's sudden death, Woodcock wrote that, ‘the policy of our organization of supporting and cooperating with the NAACP will certainly continue’. He served on the NAACP's Board of Directors – as Reuther had done since 1946. ⁹⁴ Woodcock also sat on the LCCR's executive committee and was a leader in the National Committee against Discrimination in Housing. Early in his term, Woodcock addressed the NAACP's national conference. ‘The convention delegates expressed how impressed they were with your statement’, wrote a grateful official. Relations with the Association's Detroit branch were similarly cordial. ⁹⁵

In the years that followed, civil rights work was overshadowed by the chief challenge facing the union: industrial decline and membership loss. This was caused by automation, increasing import competition, and the rise of foreign-owned auto factories that avoided unionization, often by locating in the South. UAW membership, which reached a peak of 1.5 million in the 1970s, tumbled to 400,000 in 2023. ⁹⁶ Although deindustrialization consumed the union's energy, into the twenty-first century its civil rights heritage guided its work. Again, the blend was one of public activism and defensive internal work, especially concerning EEOC charges. As of August 2001, it was party to over 300 federal and state EEOC cases. That November, the Civil Rights Department's Miriam Poe reported that staff continued the ‘customary assignments of responding to EEOC and State civil rights charges brought against the UAW and/or local unions’. In addition, the department ran specialized training programs, with Poe admitting that, ‘workshops and training sessions are needed now more than ever, given the large number of cases we are receiving concerning alleged civil rights violations’. ⁹⁷

The UAW also continued outreach work. It was a key member of the Pride at Work coalition, which in 2000 raised over US$2 million for the Democratic Party. Starting in 1989, it took part in Career Day activities at schools, educating children about the union's ‘social, political, and economic achievements’. Staff also consistently mobilized minority voters, especially locally. ‘Again, many of our members from the civil rights community participated in this GOTV effort’, Poe reported in 2001. That August, the union also held a National Civil Rights Seminar at its education center in upstate Michigan. ‘We had it chuck full of major speakers and dynamic presenters’, it noted. ⁹⁸

The UAW's involvement in America's long Civil Rights Movement was rich and complex, with strong public activism contrasted with limited internal results. The record spoke to the promise of labour unions but also their decentralized nature and local conservatism, with entrenched member rights privileged on the ground. It was also important in anticipating how many corporations, universities, and other entities responded to the Black Lives Matter movement in the twenty-first century, privileging external rather than internal action against racial discrimination. In both cases, the barriers to internal progress – financial and institutional – were considerable. ⁹⁹ Black activists who worked with the union understood both labour's transformative potential and the limits of internal action. In 1967, Bayard Rustin, a close aide of Dr King, called America's ‘immense’ labour movement ‘the largest organized social force in the country’. Although union members were ‘not always obedient’, the contribution of labour to the equality struggle was considerable. ¹⁰⁰ Like Rustin, A. Philip Randolph argued that the ‘alliance of the labor and Negro movements’ was crucial for wider advance, especially given the stubborn nature of economic discrimination. Although the UAW's flaws were considerable – and the moral crusade was always more public than private – its role in America's Civil Rights Movement was significant. It was a contribution that was integral to the union's identity, dating back to its foundation during the Great Depression. ‘It is the UAW way to help the disadvantaged and discriminated against – white or Negro’, summarized a 1969 document, referencing the 1930s. ‘We were once the disadvantaged and dispossessed’. ¹⁰¹