William P. Jones

Sep 30, 2024 | portside.org | William P. Jones |Benjamin Fong

Operation Dixie Failed but Pushed Racial Equality Forward Published September 29, 2024 This interview was conducted for Organize the Unorganized, a podcast from the Center for Work & Democracy and Jacobin magazine about the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Subscribe to Jacobin Radio to listen to the series (and don’t forget to rate us five stars so we can reach more people).

Sep 29, 2024 | jacobin.com | William P. Jones

Interview by Benjamin Y. Fong By the 1940s, the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had made serious progress in its effort to spread unions through the United States’ largely unorganized workforce. But a major obstacle had become apparent: the South, a region rife with union-busting and racial prejudice, was holding the entire US labor movement back. For the sake of workers there and everywhere, the CIO concluded, the South needed to be unionized.