Striking conclusion: celebrating the end of the 1947 strike Photo:courtesy Reference Center for Marxist Studies

Korstad also provides extensive historical context, tracing the growth of Reynolds as part of a larger industrial revolution in the South that began after the Civil War, an era that also saw the rise of a rival tobacco baron in Durham--James B. Duke. Korstad explores the segregated political, business, and social worlds of Winston-Salem and the inner workings of R.J. Reynolds itself, as it consolidated power in the tobacco industry. Korstad says he attempted to get Reynolds' side of the story by asking permission to examine its archives. But company lawyers, concerned that Korstad's research might turn up evidence that could be used against Reynolds in current anti-tobacco lawsuits, denied the request. A Reynolds spokesperson told Duke Magazine that the company is not familiar with the contents of Korstad's new book.

A place at the table: Local 22 representatives, seated in the foreground, attended the sixth Food, Tobacco, Agricultural, and Allied Workers international convention in Philadelphia, 1947 Photo: Parker-Condax, courtesy of Robert Korstad

Union workers at Reynolds went on strike again in 1947. With the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union growing, however, Reynolds and its allies fought back by focusing on the Communist Party's ties to Local 22. Korstad terms the party an "important ally" of the union and notes that it had recruited several dozen of Local 22's leaders. Still, supporting the Soviet Union, Korstad says, was the last thing on the minds of many of Local 22's black leaders, who saw a strong rallying cry in the Communist Party's call for equality among races. Despite the campaign to discredit it, the union won another wage increase. But the taint of Communism and the persistent efforts of Reynolds management to defeat the union ultimately took their toll. Karl Korstad felt that toll personally. He had previously succeeded in organizing support for workers striking against the American Tobacco Company in Charleston, South Carolina. But this time, in Winston-Salem, talk of Local 22's Communist ties scared away many supporters, especially Southern liberals. Karl Korstad "approached labor supporters in New York and Washington but could inspire nothing like the interest that the Charleston strike had stirred,'' Robert Korstad writes. (Karl Korstad's work on behalf of labor later attracted interest of another kind. In 1958, he was called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, which was wrapping up its investigations of "1940s Southern activists.")

In 1950, as Korstad and other union supporters struggled to find support for Local 22, the National Labor Relations Board made a controversial ruling that prevented black seasonal workers--a crucial component of Local 22's base--from voting in a recertification election for the union, but allowed lower-level white supervisors to do so. By that time, Reynolds had also succeeded in cutting enough jobs filled by blacks and hiring enough white workers to forge a 50-50 racial split in its work force, a strategy that dovetailed with McCarthyism to undermine the union. In a close vote that year, Local 22 lost the right to represent Reynolds workers. Never again would the company sign a collective-bargaining agreement. "In the end," writes Korstad, "the breakup of the workers' movement in Winston-Salem and in the United States required an extraordinary feat of political repression. It was the post-World War II red scare that finally silenced dissident voices and contained political debate."

The death of Local 22 and the broader civil-rights and unionism movements across the South had an impact that continues to be felt today, Korstad argues. Cut off from its union ties, the civil-rights movement found itself in the 1950s and 1960s fighting mainly for individual rights, such as the end of discrimination at voting booths and in education and public places. But, he says, the movement never truly attacked or resolved weighty issues of economic inequality that impoverished many blacks then and still do now in Winston-Salem and elsewhere--the very issues Local 22 had tried to advance. Conservative legislators faced little resistance as they enacted labor laws that to this day keep wages in the South low relative to the rest of the country and discourage unionization.

Korstad also contends that McCarthyism separated women's-rights activists from an important ally--the racially diverse, working-class wing represented by the women of Local 22--and left their movement open to accusations of being racially exclusive and favoring the middle class. "All the ills that beset America cannot be chalked up to the outcome of the struggles of the 1940s," Korstad writes. "But that outcome does stand as a watershed. And the United States is distinguished by the lowest rates of unionization and the most miserly social provisions in the industrial world."

For now, Korstad hopes that his book about the union workers and activists at Reynolds can help keep alive a passionate belief passed along to him by his father: that the possibility of change for the better always exists and that courageous people pulling together can make it happen. "We still have a long way to go before we realize the dream of economic justice and political democracy,'' he says. "I think the events in Winston-Salem of the 1940s can better help us understand where we have been, where we are today, and where we need to go."

Martin '95 is the public-relations manager for the Center for Creative Leadership in Greensboro, North Carolina.