There was once a time, not so long ago, when the power of unions kept boss-to-worker pay ratios around 15 to 1 (now it is around 200 to 1) and pushed even Republicans like the awful Nixon to adopt policies that make "moderate" Democrats like Obama look like right-wingers (well, they are...). Today our public goods are privatized, historic wealth inequality widens, a never ending media circus argues in Newspeak, and an alarming climate disaster looms which we seem incapable of addressing. In what Orwellian collective amnesia have we found ourselves? How have we lost our way? How are our most progressive politicians (alleged "radicals"), AOC and Sanders, barely as left-leaning as JFK (an advocate for straight universal healthcare). How did we get here?
American history is deeply complex, but complexity emerges from the interplay of legions of actors operating on the same basic principles, over and over, perpetually unfolding like a bizarre tree bearing strange fruit. In the United States, these principles have generally been of Capital, labor, imperialism, racism, and liberalism (the latter which is repeatedly denigrated by the ruling class, to be clear). The heroic fight for civil rights and labor have been the primary arms of the people, and only over the past century have the two truly started to reconcile. The late AFL-CIO president Richard Trumka synthesizes the problem and history well in a speech in defense of Obama for the 2008 election (Obama would show himself to be no ally of labor - but this of course wasn't known before he was president). There is only one way to challenge Capital, a method the ruling class has helped us forget - to organize. And as Trumka observes, there is one institution which is able to bridge all divides of racism, sexism, and so on, one method capable of making the ruling class tremble - rank-and-file labor unions. United We Bargain, Divided We Beg.
(Big Note: There is a lot of darkness in American history. I'm working on something which will better situate this history. Much of this document is perhaps naively optimistic, writing about the struggle to overcome ruling class hegemony)
(I'm currently reading "Labor's Untold Story" and trying to summarize from that.)
See also this breakdown of the history of the party system, and how we can use it to help the working class
See also The American Yawp: A massively collaborative open U.S. History Text Book (I haven't read it, but sharing here for now anyways :P)
The 1776 declaration of independence kicked off a revolution, "that all men are created equal", which ostensibly ended in 1783, but had some glaring shortcomings. Most notably was the centuries-old genocidal war against indigenous peoples and enslavement of masses of black people in the South. The US, under maniacal generals and presidents like Jackson, endlessly warred with natives to acquire territory, which would then displace the natives and the land often turned over to slaveholders. In this antebellum period, American politics fell into a "stasis" over the issue of slavery, which effectively was a victory for slavery, and the internal slave trade was booming (see examples Franklin and Armfield, Austin Woolfolk). As crystallized in Dred Scott v Sandford (which among other things, required any fugitive slave found to be returned to their master), black people were not safe anywhere in this country, even as they built so much. Enormous political tension built over the issue of which states could have slaves and not in the expanding West. Notably, the obtainment of the West was an imperialist venture - part stolen from Mexico (itself an imperialist residue of Spain - note that we didn't conquer all of Mexico because our leaders didn't want so many non-white/Catholic people), part bought from French colonists, part directly conquered from indigenous people, upon which great evils were committed (such as the Trail of Tears). The abolitionist movement swelled, with the notable John Brown attempting to lead a slave insurrection in 1859 (he was executed for treason - Confederate generals later on were not). The song "John Brown's Body" was a big Union army hit during the Civil War, a song which became "the Battle Hymn of the Republic".
This tension was brought to a boil in the 1860 presidential election. The newly formed Republican party - with a chief goal of abolishing slavery - nominated Abraham Lincoln (interestingly, a moderate within the party). The Democrats nominated Stephen Douglas, who advocated for settlers of each territory deciding if they should have slaves or not. Funny enough for those "The Civil War was over states' rights" types, this Douglas fellow was insufficiently pro-slavery for Southern Democrats, so they nominated their own Democrat, John Breckinridge, Vice President of outgoing Buchanan (and very pro-slavery, and ostensibly pro "states' rights") - the Democrats nominated two candidates (oh I wonder which party will win...). Throw into the mix the xenophobic Constitutional Union's John Bell, and you have your candidates. The results? The very pro-slavery Breckinridge swept most of the south (and Bell taking the rest), and Lincoln swept most of the rest, resulting in a Lincoln victory. Immediately (as in 20 December 1860 to Feb 1 1861), Southern states began to secede. And the Civil War began.
See also: The Majority Report (25/4/21): Historian Explains How Slave Trade Shaped America
See also: The Majority Report (18/12/14): An Indigenous Peoples’ History of the United States (w/ Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz)
Thrown into the deadliest American war in history, northerners in general, and notably free black soldiers, trade unionists, and immigrants, fought on the side of the union to reunify the nation and liberate black slaves from the Southern aristocracy (although Lincoln's goal of ending slavery appears more as an ends to a means (reunification), rather than an explicit goal - something that could be expended if it meant success). It was a brutal war, with an enormous human toll. But while the war was prosecuted, major Capitalist figures, such as Rockefeller and J.P. Morgan, began their ascendancy. Capitalist vultures would corner markets to sell to the U.S. government at artificially high prices, while the Republican government of the Union doled out deals giving the capitalists control over the transcontinental rail project. Rail would become (and freight rail still is) critical infrastructure in the future of the nation. Nascent labor movements, gutted by the call of the Civil War, had early spurts [Labor's Untold Story]. The Southern aristocrats were eventually defeated, and Republicans had found themselves the party of Capitalists.
In the wake of the Civil War, the Union sought to support and defend the black population in the South, as they were as impoverished as institutionally possible. There was something of a renaissance for black power in this era, which evoked extremely violent reactions from resentful whites and Confederates, as embodied in white-supremacist terrorist groups such as the KKK. Simultaneously, the labor movement started to take off in the industrious North, notably in the city factories, the anthracite mines of Pennsylvania, and the increasingly sprawling transnational rail infrastructure, among others. There was a standard reaction to labor - the press would smear striking workers as either foreign terrorists trying to end society, and/or they were Communists (generally, the accusations had that they were sent by the International to raise hell). Business interests would propagate these claims, and private police (such as the Coal and Iron Police), local police, local vigilantes, a private union-busting "KGB"/army known as the Pinkertons, state militias (which became the National Guard), and Federal troops would be sicked on strikers. This brutality, along with the insufferable living conditions of the time, contributed to the strength and militancy of the labor movement of the time. Contract labor of immigrants was also used as a cudgel against the labor movement (basically, indentured to a company for bringing them overseas). There were notable political conflicts at the time as well. More progressive (or at least tactically intelligent) leaders, such as Sylvis, pushed for inclusion and collaboration with black workers and women workers, to establish a unified labor movement in the face of Capitalism. This of course was an uphill struggle (most labor unions would remain segregated, although socialists such as Debs would maintain that this undermined the strength of the labor movement and fought against it), and the racial tensions were never completely overcome, as exemplified by the initially inspiring Homestead Strike, which then devolved into a race riot as the bosses brought in black scab workers, the strikers committed great violence against them, and ultimately labor suffered defeat as the Pinkertons slaughtered them.
Efforts at class solidarity were little helped by Republican cynicism (go figure). In 1876, the Republican party secured the support of Southern Democrats for Presidential candidate Hayes in trade for their (Republican) rescinding of active support and defense of black people in the South (prior to this, Republicans were quite potent in fighting racist white terrorist groups such as with the Klan Act of 1871 under Grant). The Republicans (the party of Capitalists) recognized that (A) they did not care about black people enough to take a political risk on them and lose the election, (B) this effort conveniently stymied efforts to transform Democrats as an alternative political vehicle to the Republicans for labor, who would campaign against the excess of Republican decadence (such as the corruption of the Grant administration), securing its fracturing (remember, the Dems nominated two candidates in 1860) along regional lines of northern (Capitalist-aligned Bourbon Democrats) and southern Democrats (and western), which were less aligned with Capitalism but simultaneously carried much racist baggage (sadly but unsurprisingly, everyone was racist against Chinese immigrants, who were subsequently banned largely from immigrating to the US until around the 1960s (!)). The collaboration of the Republicans with Southern Democrats to secure the Hayes presidency, and thus pulling out Federal troops from the South, spelled the end of Reconstruction, and the beginning of Jim Crow. In short, the Capitalists made a deal with the devil.
This securing of power by the Capitalist class furthermore ensured their spiraling growths of power, in what is known as the Gilded Age. During this period, monopolists such as Carnegie and Rockefeller secured their power over the economy itself - over coal, rail, iron, etc. With this enormous power, labor reacted in kind, with exploding strength in organizations such as the Knights of Labor, and ensuing conflict as listed above. It was an explosive time with hard booms and busts (such as the recessions of 1873-1876, and 1882-1885), with monopolist Capitalists consolidating more and more capital during the bust times - the Robber Barons (since bust times meant smaller businesses would go bust, and the wealthier robber barons could come in and scoop up their capital). As industry boomed, they started to need foreign markets to expand into - the beginning of the Banana Wars, a 40+ year era (1890s-1934) in which the US military was quite explicitly used to further the interests of Capitalists, deliberately destabilizing the Americas and other foreign nations, with reverberations to this day (oh yes, those migrant caravans...). At home, living conditions for the majority of Americans were of destitution and misery. Labor made spasms of revolt with bursts of success and growing power, but it would take decades of trial and error to mount the ultimate challenge.
Following the 1876 withdrawal of Federal troops from the South, racist legislation, pursued by Southern Democrats, and culture of Jim Crow was booming - which segregated black and white people, underfunded black utilities, and disenfranchised black people from voting (with black voter registration declining to below 1% in many Southern states at the turn of the century); all of this was upheld by the US Supreme Court. This can be attributed to racist negligence for the black population in the legal system at the time, as well as the nature of the laws. There are a few ways these laws defended themselves, I'll go over two of them. The first is "separate but equal" terminology, which claimed that black and white people had to use separate facilities, these facilities would be equal. Of course, black facilities were either underfunded or non-existent. The second was ostensibly race-neutral language that actually targeted black people (a persistent theme!). For example, literacy tests to determine voting access excluded both poor white people and black people. However, they also introduced grandfather clauses which said that if a relative of yours could vote before 1865, then you could still vote, even if illiterate. Of course, no black person in the South could vote before 1865, because they were slaves - clearly a racist outcome (as intended). Yet the language of law avoids explicit reference to race (or else it would be un-Constitutional). The economic side was just as bad. With reactionary president Johnson returning plantation ownership to their antebellum owners in spite of efforts to do otherwise by the Union, they needed a labor force - black people found themselves back on the plantation, although many poor whites worked alongside them (for example, about a third of white farmers were sharecroppers/tenant farmers, and 85% of black farmers the same in Mississippi in 1900). And to top it off, it was a violent time against black people, characterized by lynchings, terrorism by white-supremacist paramilitaries such as the Red Shirts, and even hostile take over of black-governed towns (ie Wilmington coup, 1898).
Socialist ideas began to bloom around this period, manifesting as local electoral movements and connecting with the Greenback and Populist parties, and springing up amongst industrial unionists such as Debs and Haywood. Labor went through waves, with the militant Knights of Labor (KoL) organizing much of American labor in the first few postwar decades, culminating into May 1, 1886 - May Day. A (long planned) city-wide Chicago strike (with many other workers nationwide joining in) which won many workers eight-hour days, but also resulted in police and army brutality and the execution of labor leaders, which ultimately killed KoL. In this vacuum, the American Federation of Labor (AFL) became the predominant labor federation, which made important and practical developments for its members, but it focused on skilled labor (via high dues), which was predominately male and non-immigrant white, leaving millions of unskilled laborers (largely composed of immigrants, non-whites, and a growing female labor force) unorganized or in independent unions without the support of a national labor federation. Further, the AFL organized by trade rather than workplace, craft unionism, which weakens worker bargaining power against a shared boss. Both of these factors undermined the collective bargaining power of the working class. This labor philosophy recieved a first challenge in Eugene Debs through the American Railway Union (ARU), which took an industrial unionizing approach - ALL workers with the same boss should fight together. This power was exemplified in the Pullman strike centered near Chicago, when the ARU managed to shutdown railways west of Detroit, MI - but was brutally busted by the police, National Guard, and the company thugs (who had been deputized by the government as marshals, although they were under the command of the rail companies), resulting in the arrest of ARU leader Debs (and breaking the ARU), yet showing the power of industrial unions. Still, the AFL remained the pre-eminent labor federation, which left millions of workers either unorganized, and/or to fend for themselves in independent labor unions.
While AFL president Gompers enjoyed the company of the Capitalists at the turn of the century (even he wasn't left untouched by the anti-unionists though, arrested in 1907), miners out West were fighting (literally) for a better life, culminating in the Colorado Labor Wars of 1903-1904, in which Western Federation of Miners (WFM) struck (notably with Bill Haywood at the fore and with Debs as a political guide), and were brutally suppressed (and thrown into concentration camps) by the National Guard, Pinkertons, police, and local vigilantes (the Constitution was ignored, as General Bell declared martial law). Out of this obscene mess, the union won the eight hour day [LUS ??], and the began to grow, again showing the power of industrial labor action over AFL-supported craft unionism. The AFL in fact had often been an undermining factor, if anything, with AFL leader Gompers collaborating with Capitalist bosses, and representing only skilled laborers, not the masses of unskilled laborers. The successes here inspired Haywood to start a national union - a union for all workers, to unify the working class - the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW), aka 'Wobblies', in an attempt to form an alternative labor center to the AFL - yes, they were smeared as "foreign agents" with an evil philosophy, go figure! Their style was exemplified by the Lawrence, MA textile strike in 1912 - the 23,000 "unskilled" workers (many of whom were immigrants of myriad nationalities) the strikers themselves - the rank-and-file ran the show (notably, one of the first with a woman leader, Elizabeth Gurley Flynn - in the 50s she was sentenced as a Communist). Guess what happened? The National Guard and instigators of violence were sent in, even beating women and children. Disgusted, a Socialist Congressman (Victor Berger) got a Congressional investigation of the strike, and the bosses capitulated - the strikers got their demands (and other textile mill workers got boosted wages as well!).
Parallel to rising labor militancy was a growing awareness of the structural problems of the nation, rather than one's poverty being their own fault, reflected in intellectuals such as W. E. B. DuBois (a socialist, yet skeptical of unions based on the correct critique that they largely excluded black workers), and the women's suffrage (voting) movement, running through the 00s and 10s. Women increasingly joined the workforce to keep food on the table, paid less than men and put in terrible sweatshops (see Triangle Waist Company fire, here's a podcast about it), and organized strikes against these conditions, and organizing across the nation and inspiring male workers (often in defiance of the AFL, as exemplified by the formation of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union in 1915). Under this great social pressure "progressive policies" couldn't be put off - child labor laws, food and drug laws, laws that declared that labor unions were not some evil conspiracy, workmen's comp, and laws limiting the work day were passed. These laws were passed due to the enormous social pressures and immense organizational efforts of labor unions and the women's suffrage movement. It's in this context that broader American politics of the time should be understood - a reaction to social pressure, not a reflection of the moral character of, say, an outright imperialist like Teddy Roosevelt or a racist segregationist (and imperialist as well) like Wilson (presiding over the re-birth of the white supremacist KKK). Still, Capital was to make a mockery of the law, and who went to great strides (and succeeded) to keeping their enterprises union-free, and controlling American minds through the press.
In the South, there was a brutal culture of violence and intimidation against black people, masses of Confederate statues erected (The peak between 1897 and 1918, 30 to 60 years after the war), swathes lynched, and the KKK coming back. This brutal world, coupled with labor demand in the industrial North during WWI, compelled around a million black people to migrate North, seeking work. Race riots would become a persistent issue, and a major wedge in organizing labor, although black integration into the labor movement was developing quickly (reviewed more in the next section), helping establish black media such as The Messenger magazine, in tandem with the Harlem Renaissance. This was a seminal moment, an inflection point in black (and more broadly, American) culture; jazz, for example, really started "to become its own" in this period (a little bit of a detour from the topic of this post, but I'm a big jazz fan so deal with it :P). Up North, discriminatory practices, which would become known as redlining, were developing, undermining the capacity for (largely) black people to access services such as loans and insurance, while also systemically dropping the value of their real estate. All of this systemically hindered the capacity for black people to maintain intergenerational wealth. And even in the North The klan was present, now with an expanded hate list, reflecting the paranoias of the nation at the time - Catholics, immigrants (extensively working as peons, the US Immigration Commission found in 1910 [LUS 222]), and trade unions added to the list; all of them dirty spies here to degrade America, of course! Its tendency for "preposterous vocabulary" echoed today in the ridiculous language of the alt-right (ie "Boogaloo bois"). Notably, offshoot brands from the KKK, such as the Black Legion would specifically include public officials (such as police chiefs) and target the labor movement and non-WASP (white anglo-saxon protestant) people.
World War I (WWI) - Wall Street had gotten into the business of loaning extraordinary amounts of money to the "Allied powers", such that a German victory would have jeopardized their repayment and put the economy into panic (note that World War I was not an ideological war, like WWII - it was more-or-less traditional European empires trading blows). To prevent this catastrophe, Wilson sent us to war. Yet a capitalist's war was unpopular amongst the working class, with peace a huge issue for Socialists. The period was characterized by brutal violence against anyone trying to organize labor - kidnappings, frame-ups, vigilante hangings, killings. [LUS, 197]. Still, labor was restless, with up to 2,300,000 workers involved in strikes in 1917 [LUS, 198] - even the AFL rank-and-file was involved. The result were raids, arresting thousands of IWW Wobblies, mass trials, most found guilty and imprisoned for 10-20 years [LUS 198]. Eugene Debs was sent to prison for giving anti-war speeches [LUS 200] (he ran a presidential campaign in 1920 from prison, winning 3.4% of the vote). When a strike wave overtook the nation in 1919, involving up to 4,000,000 workers, in response to economic disparities, red scare tactics (in the wake of the Russian Revolution) were used to discredit them [LUS 203]. America was firmly in the grasp of the monopolists, its imperial reach growing the wake of faltering European imperial powers. Steel strikers faced state violence, company spying and AFL-undermining were defeated in 1919. Many unionists (especially immigrants) around the country would be rounded up and arrested, tortured, and put back on the streets or imprisoned in the Palmer raids (which was lead by J. Edgar Hoover, who will again resurface as the diabolical leader of the FBI between 1935 and 1972); this hysteria was exemplified by the Sacco and Vanzetti case (itself resulting in a worldwide strike and protest wave).
See also: Behind the Bastards (podcast) (18/5/21): Part One: How the Dulles Brothers Created the CIA And Destroyed Everything Else
Tulsa Massacre (May 31-June 1 1921), Battle of Blair Mountain (Aug 25 - Sept 2, 1921), Green Corn Rebellion (Aug 2-3, 1917)
first trust industrial unionizing - 1917 meatpacking union [LUS 208]
Wilson had alienated much of the voter base in the wake of WWI, and the Republicans took back the presidency in 1920 with the scandalous Harding, securing government positions for campaign contributors, supporters and industry allies - the so-called Ohio Gang. From 1920 to 1932, the Capitalist Republicans would attack organized labor, cut taxes and regulations, and aid business in general - all presiding over declining wages amongst the working class, and new money and new industry emerged, such as the auto industry. The AFL became entwined with capitalists interests, investing in the market, riven with gangsters, and aiding the Ford speed-up work style [LUS 232]. These policies and milieu opened up the wild boom times (for the wealthy) of the Roaring Twenties (simultaneous to the Prohibition Era - ironically Prohibition was a policy supported by the left - which fueled graft due to mob interests). This title is a myth though, nearly 60% of the population made less than a living income, and millions were impoverished, and were working longer, harder, and dangerous hours; farmers were hit especially hard [LUS 237-238]. On the market, predatory and deceptive financial practices had virtually no regulation, leaving the masses of investors suckers to the monopolist capitalists like J.P. Morgan conspiring, resulting in their further securing of control of the American economy (and increasingly, other nations' and colonies' economies, installing puppets, aided by the US military, etc. - the beginnings of neo-imperialism, and largely part of the so-called Banana Wars, which were greatly accelerated in the 1910s and 1920s) [LUS 240]. With the IWW shattered by government oppression, this madness was answered by the new Trade Union Education League (TUEL), which lead multiple strikes throughout the 1920s, and an organization with strong membership of both men and women, immigrants, and increasingly black workers as well [LUS 246]. Still, the people were on the whole broke, unable to consume the tides of goods produced by the "speed-up" economy, and this glut underpinned the oncoming catastrophe. It all unraveled on September 4 1929 into the Great Depression. The economy fell apart, and then Republican president Hoover's approach (do nothing) didn't seem to be working.
By 1933, around 12 million to 17 million were unemployed; farmers and workers faced mass evictions, and due to persistent racism, black workers were hit the hardest [LUS 253]. "There was food, millions of tons of it. But people soon were starving as the food was destroyed or left to rot because it could not be sold at a profit. There was clothing, warehouses filled with it, and millions were shivering for lack of it as the depression continued but hte clothing could not be used to keep the people warm because the people had no money to buy it." - LUS 249
Throughout the nation, Unemployed Councils started popping up (started in 1930), which fought against evictions and for unemployed insurance, organized hunger marches, and forced by the conditions of the time, overcame many issues of racism, itself quite integrated [LUS 261] - notably, this was a Communist Party organization, laying the foundation for the activism of the CIO, and showing that the communists were no bogeyman to fear (at least, for the people). Unsurprisingly, the police responded with violence against these actions. Farmers stood in solidarity, buying dispossessed properties for pennies at auction and returning them to their owners; preventing food from getting to market when the price was too low. Hunger marches were made on cities, and unemployed workers were massacred in Dearborn and Detroit, MI, fired upon by Ford gangsters. Around 20,000 veterans (the "Bonus Army") of WWI marched on Washington DC for payment of their bonus (which they would otherwise recieve in 1945). At the behest of President Hoover, they were violently dispersed by the US Army under generals MacArthur, Eisenhower, and Patton - machine guns, tanks, and cavalry arrrayed against veterans and their wives and children. Of course, it ended in a proud victory for the US Army, killing two among the Bonus Army beggars! It was a time of class awakening and highly exposed class conflict.
FDR became a candidate to channel the anxiety, this class-awakening, of the Depression into reform to avoid the explosion in Russia - a progressive and forceful Democrat, without the explicit racism of a southern Democrat such as Wilson (FDR was a New Yorker). While his "first 100 days" are much lauded, it was actually his work throughout the whole of the 30s which transformed the United States and formally protected unionization - the whole of the New Deal. The labor movement would draw strength from, and further drive, this program - millions joined the picket lines and unions almost immediately, 1933, 1934, and onward (although police/Pinkerton/company thug violence (armed with tear gas to machine guns), spying and killings against strikers didn't stop - and neither did the branding of Communist "plot") [LUS 276-280]. Emerging from within the AFL, and later splitting off, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) embodied the rank-and-file industrial organization techniques, driven by Socialist and Communist organizers, building on the tradition of the ARU, the TUEL, WFM, and IWW. CIO boss John Lewis famously remarked, when chastised about the Socialist presence in the CIO, "Who gets the bird? The hunter or the dog?" Lewis was far from a Socialist, but recognized that they were highly effective at organization and generating class morale. The successes of industrial organizing during this era were so evident that the AFL itself was finally compelled to change its labor philosophy after nearly 50+ years, adopting the industrial organizing strategy. This, among other things, resolved the differences (there was a lot of conflict in the interim period) with the CIO, and the two re-united in 1955 as the AFL-CIO, and remain the pre-eminent labor federation to this day.
The rank-and-file organizing approach was critical for the watershed changes of the New Deal era. This style recognized that the true power lies with workers, as the whole economy runs on them working. They further recognized the value not just in strikes, but strategic striking, exemplified by the sit-in strike at the GM "nerve center" by the United Automobile Workers (UAW) (a CIO union) in Flint, MI sit-down strike. They pursued these strategies, in spite of being risky and illegal, because they had the power to, and a world to win by exerting said power. There were setbacks and battles in this era, but it was characteristically a victory for the working class. We still enjoy the fruits of this era - Social Security, for example, although a lot has been gutted in the neoliberal years (~1980 - Present [2021]). While the New Deal had many shortcomings for the black population of the US, it still provided enormous benefits to many, and was strongly supported by black labor leaders such as Maida Springer and Philip Randolph (both socialists, the latter would later be one of the lead organizers of March on Washington where MLK delivered the "I Have a Dream" speech).
In contrast with the more conservative AFL during this period (although not to say they had no progress - Randolph's Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was founded in 1925 and AFL-chartered), the CIO made early and deliberate (yet still uneven) strides towards combatting racism within the rank-and-file, recognizing the power of a united working class (strides were also made towards further integration of women [LUS 316]). While this struggle was not always successful, it was a significant progress from earlier unions, garnering the admiration and endorsement of DuBois (who had prior opposed unions on the grounds of their segregationism). This tension (and perhaps the errors of the CIO) was exemplified by the failed attempt to unionize the South in the post-war era (Operation Dixie), characterized both by their reluctance to fully commit to fighting racism, such as the Jim Crow laws (even as they made a racially equal unionization effort near-impossible), while also recognizing the importance of unionizing with black workers. Of course, many CIO unions failed to tackle the issue of segregation, but those that did found more success. The United Mine Workers of America (UMWA), the core union of the CIO (it was Lewis' home union), fought ideologically less for racial equality and more for worker equality - still, in the South this set it in direct opposition with the KKK and white supremacist policies as early as the 1910s and 1920s (although funny enough, racism amongst the UMWA was more persistent amongst its Northern members), but ultimately failing their black workers in the post-war automation. Socialists and Communists generally were more pro-integration (and had more black support), and their gutting in the late 40s and 50s tracked with the faltering of unions in their defense of black workers, although not completely. CIO unions were often strong supporters of civil rights, and many AFL-CIO unions (such as the UAW) were powerful allies during the Civil Rights Movement.
WWII was a turning point for the US. It opened up a world for the ruling class, and in the wake of independence movements around the world, the US ruling class would establish it's rule. It would do so by exploiting indebted nations to force them to liberalize/privatize their economies, opening them up to the ruling class of America: the capitalists.
In the postwar era, rank-and-file labor received a heavy political blow. These were namely red scares (which purged unions of the best organizers), the legislative weakening of organized labor (ie the Taft-Hartley act), the increased implementation of multi-year contracts with no-strike clauses (which helped concentrate power into the hands of union bureaucrats, and away from the rank-and-file), and the increasing entwining of union bureacracy with the Democratic Party [1]. The consequence of the aforementioned contracts meant that if workers got upset with something midway through a contract, well, they couldn't strike - they would have to let the union (and the NLRB) handle it through the legal operation of arbitration. Its through this shift of the means of negotiation away from the rank-and-file and into the hands of bureaucrats and politicians that the unions became shackled to the legal and political system, and yoked to the Democratic Party, deliberate or not. This, along with the gutting of strong organizers via the postwar red scare, and the McCarthy Red Scare, killed the rank-and-file spirit of the unions, and transformed the union leaderships into so-called "economic police of the working class"; defusing worker rage through legalese maneuvers, and subverting rank-and-file mobilization attempts. And this set up organized labor for the death blows that neoliberalism would deal it following Carter and Reagan. (!!) It's import to note (!!) that while some may argue this is a capitalist-bureaucrat conspiracy (which I won't say is necessarily wrong), there are a lot of historic forces here that make this trend appear quite likely (I tend to err away from conspiracy, and towards structural explanations). While Left Voice (in the linked article above, [1]) argues that cutting ties with the Democratic Party is essential, I see (based on their analysis) these ties are more incidental, consequences of of the centralization and legalization process that has taken place. A rank-and-file movement within American organized labor need not rebuke the Democrats whole sale (although should avoid yoking themselves so deeply - the unions have remained yoked BECAUSE their post-strike strategy of legalism has required being docile to the Democratic Party, but this is a structural issue, not as much a social one, it appears (especially if fresh faces, with shallow roots in the Democratic Party, join union leadership)).
The Red Scare, followed by the Taft-Hartley Act opened the door to "right-to-work" legislation (which allows workers to opt out of unions at their workplace, in spite of the massive benefits of being in a union and undercutting the solidaristic power of the union), forcing unionists to swear they weren't Communists (and they could be sentenced for perjury if a corporate spy said they were lying), and made secondary strikes illegal (among other things). That's when you strike at a place that isn't the site of the primary grievance, to apply pressure on supply chains and networks. It's HIGHLY effective, and the ruling class wanted to end that. Furthermore, in the opening days of the Cold War was McCarthyism, in which a hysterical Red Scare resulted in the purging of leftists, on account of being Communists (and therefore anti-American, pro-Russia, LoGiCaLlY), from the unions. Remember how the Socialists were the main organizing engine of the CIO? GONE. Taft-Hartley and McCarthyism were a one-two punch which transformed labor unions into what they are today - still great institutions for workers, but far far weaker. Labor's power base shifts from rank-and-file to an institutional voice within the Democratic party [a], an approach still with sufficient inertia to maintain much of the New Deal framework for a couple decades.
Simultaneously, in the 1940s was part of the Great Migration, partly driven by the war. Millions of black workers, who had been tied to the land via Jim Crow laws (and generally destitute) were more-or-less forced off the land by increasing mechanization in farming and made to seek better work. Where was work? The cities. So to the cities they went. Yet the United States during the 1950s began heavy investment in suburbia. Thus predominately white workers (who generally had more wealth compared to a Jim Crow indentured servant, obviously) moved to the suburbs in the 50s and 60s, and Capital followed their workers and investment. This opened an enormous problem - an economic hollowing of what would become "inner cities".
Erupting through extensive grass-roots organization, such as amongst black churches, was the Civil Rights movement, challenging the gross injustice of the Jim Crow system which oppressed millions of southern black people. Through ceaseless effort, the Civil Rights movement was able to secure the institutional equality of black people throughout the nation through Federal political action. Notably, the labor movement largely stood with the Civil Rights movement. Furthermore, Martin Luther King Jr., far from the whitewashed vision of him we have today, was more-or-less a Socialist. As a black socialist, a charismatic figure standing on the shoulders of America's powerful labor and Civil Rights movement, he was an enormous threat to the ruling class. On the precipice of the Poor People's Campaign, MLK was assassinated.
In the wake of this was enormous grief and violence. Of course, the discourse on this was extremely racist as to why, certainly from the right. Yet we should heed MLK's warning here - "the riot is the voice of the unheard". Millions of black workers had found themselves in cities which were now gutted of industry - there were no jobs to be had. In fact, the lack of any tax base with wealth meant that cities alone were incapable of raising the funds to deal with the social woes of their populations (federal action would be required). Much of the black population had very little wealth either, because they and their families had been indentured Jim Crow workers/serfs for so long (or if they had lived in the north, their intergenerational wealth was hindered by redlining laws), and so they had no way to get out. Poverty and despair results in crime, and liberal Democrats such as Johnson realized this was a serious problem, and that the only path to fix this required an enormous social welfare program. That was the purpose of the Great Society program.
The main problem? Johnson was also waging a war in Vietnam, costing not only American lives but enormous sums of money. And thus Johnson was unable to sufficiently address the requirements for the Great Society, falling short. After this, the program faded, and the inner cities were left to poverty and despair. Following this failure, broke locales turned to the only other option (besides doing absolutely nothing) - rather than deal with the underlying cause, they'd deal with the symptom (crime), which was relatively cheap and easier to do locally with police. As crime rose (because of poverty), so did rates of incarceration, resulting in the mass incarceration we know today (with the Drug War adding fuel to the flame). Couple this with our 13th amendment, saying that slavery is unconstitutional unless they're prisoners, and you have a nasty reminder of our racist roots. This is, by the way, systemic racism - barriers from the past restricting the possibilities for black people in contemporary times, trapping them in terrible conditions which recapitulate their disproportionate suffering and sustain racist attitudes and policies towards them, a vicious cycle.
See also Behind the Bastards (podcast) (4/5/21): Part One: Excited Delirium: How Cops Invented a Disease
See also The Dig (28/7/21): Inflation Politics with Tim Barker
A lot more to put here
Riding on big-money fueled propaganda in the 70s (along with general apathy, New Left ideals that started to veer from traditional labor, and stagflation), Ronald Reagan ushered in a new era. (Dark Ages of the 90s, when the Left retreated from its core class politics ([a])