The Great Chicago Waiters’ Strike

Abstract

In the 1890s, restaurant and hotel waiters in Chicago formed a biracial labor organization that successfully challenged their employers. The Culinary Alliance, a rare example of biracial unionism in the late nineteenth century, was produced by, and helped to shape, a dramatic reorganization of urban space with the emergence of corporate capitalism and consumer culture in the city. The Alliance’s rise and demise demonstrates the ways urban space was a powerful force in the complex interactions between race and gender relations in urban labor markets.