Black Women and Labor

• In Event: Intersectional Perspectives on Race

Abstract

This paper examines the theoretical consequences of Black women’s labor and thought on labor movements in Guyana, Trinidad and Tobago and the United States over the twentieth century. In these spaces, labor movements were substantively challenged by women of color and Black women in particular. Compares the condition of women in labor movements in these three countries, the paper assesses the labor movements’ larger struggle against labor exploitation in a transnational perspective as they seek to address the specific issues contributing to that exploitation in particular contexts. These include racial, gendered, and ethnic conflicts and concerns that confound the efforts to achieve social justice. In the two Caribbean countries, there was also the anti-colonial struggle that became an important part of the labor movement, and in the United States, the Civil Rights era complemented this striving for fuller emancipation. The paper examines women’s contributions to addressing these conflicting imperatives by analyzing the roles women played, the published material they contributed to the formulation of demands, and the conflicts these engendered inside and outside the movements.

Author

• Anand Bertrand Commissiong, California State University, Long Beach