Race and the CIO: the possibilities for racial egalitarianism during the 1930s and 1940s

An essay by Michael Goldfield, identifying what he believes are the most important issues concerning the CIO's racial policies, examining how racially egalitarian the CIO and its various components actually were; the determinants of how egalitarian a union was; what caused many CIO unions and the CIO as a whole to retreat from their early commitments to racial egalitarianism; and the unrealized possibilities for egalitarian, interracial unionism in the United States.

Originally appeared in International Labor and Working-Class History, No. 44 (Fall, 1993)

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