On July 12, 1964, in a momentous decision, the National Labor 
Relations Board decertified the racially segregated Independent 
Metal Workers Union as the collective bargaining agent at Houston's 
mammoth Hughes Tool Company. The unanimous decision ending 
nearly fifty years of Jim Crow unionism at the company marked the 
first ruling in the Labor Board's history that racial discrimination by a 
union violated the National Labor Relations Act and was therefore 
illegal. This ruling was for black workers the equivalent of the Brown v. 
Board of Education decision by the Supreme Court in the area of 
education.

    Botson traces the Jim Crow unionism of the company and the 
efforts of black union activists to bring civil rights issues into the 
workplace. His analysis clearly demonstrates that without federal 
intervention, workers at Hughes Tool would never have been able to 
overcome management's opposition to unionization and to racial 
equality.

    Drawing on interviews with many of the principals, as well as 
extensive mining of company and legal archives, Botson's study 
"captures a moment in time when a segment of Houston's working-
class seized the initiative and won economic and racial justice in 
their work place."

_________________________________________________________

MICHAEL R. BOTSON, JR., who has taught history at Houston 
Community College since 1999, holds a Ph.D. from the University of 
Houston. His interest in labor history also draws on a decade of 
experience as an apprentice and then journeyman millwright.


Number Sixteen: Kenneth E. Montague Series in Oil and Business 
History


What people are saying about this book

This fine book is an important contribution to the literature on the 
relationship between organized labor and the civil rights movement. 
It will be of great interest not only to those who study labor and civil 
rights in Texas, but also to scholars who focus on the broader social 
movements of the twentieth-century America."—Southwestern 
Historical Quarterly, October 2006

"Michael R. Botson, a steelworker turned historian, has written a 
tremendously important book . . . his study offers fresh fodder for the 
continuing historiographical battles about race, employment, and the 
labor movement . . . Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool 
Company is a compelling read. Botson is an excellent historian and 
storyteller. The book is rich in detail, and he more than adequately 
recaptures the monumental struggle for justice at this Houston 
factory . . . In summary, Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool 
Company is an exceptional case study that might act as a 
springboard for the further investigation of larger historical and 
historiographical questions concerning the race and the labor 
movements."—The Journal of Economic History, March 2006

"Botson weaves together this tapestry of history with considerable 
skill and nuance, all the more heartfelt since he spent nine years as 
an industrial union worker, where he encountered some of the same 
problems he later discovered in his research of Hughes Tool. This 
story is a substantial contribution to the growing body of literature 
that focuses on civil rights and the labor movement, and is further 
evidence of the importance of Texas events in making that history."
—George N. Green, Professor of History, University of Texas at 
Arlington

"This is an important new book on a still neglected topic: civil rights 
in the workplace. Botson uses the case study of Hughes Tool to 
examine the confluence of two of the great social movements in 
twentieth century American history, the struggle for independent 
unions and the struggle for civil rights. Black workers in the large 
Houston factory of Hughes Tool finally won a landmark case before 
the National Labor Relations Board that effectively challenged their 
separate, but not equal treatment as workers in the company’s all-
black labor gangs."—Joseph A. Pratt, Cullen Professor of History 
and Business, University of Houston

" . . . a very worthy study . . . [that] makes an important contribution 
to the literature. . . . [and] there are no comparable studies on labor 
in the state of Texas."—Emilio Zamora, Center for Mexican American 
Studies, University of Texas at Austin