Organized labor and the black worker, 1619-1981

As always Foner provides an excellent history on a critical topic. The focus here is on Black labor movements and trends from Reconstruction to ~1970, although there's a bit of content outside that. What is continuously hammered home is how terrible working conditions were for Black labor and how real wins largely materialized with strong federal support and solidarity from large unions. Foner doesn't always show his work - statements such as "high unemployment" often aren't accomplished by hard numbers - and he makes the common error of treating the statements of intellectual luminaries such as DuBois and Marx as Truth. Still, Foner mostly reigns in these tendencies later in the book (and serves up some absolutely laugh out loud zingers at the expense of George Meany). Highly recommend