The 1980s were an important, and too often overlooked, decade for Black worker resistance, according to NC State history professor Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, who recently wrote about the struggles faced by Schlage Lock workers in Rocky Mount in 1988, as well as about their victory.
Dr. Dillahunt-Holloway talks to co-host Leoneda Inge about how organizing in the South among Black workers in the 80s — despite the region’s history of opposition to organized labor — is crucial to understanding social change in the region and country.
Dillahunt-Holloway's article in The Journal of African American History is called "Victory through Struggle: Black Workers for Justice and the Fight for Economic and Environmental Justice in North Carolina."
Dr. Dillahunt-Holloway also sticks around to talk with Jeff and Leoneda about protest songs spanning the last several decades in our Southern Mixtape.
Guest
Ajamu Dillahunt-Holloway, Assistant Professor of African American History and Public History, North Carolina State University
