The Color Line in Trade Unions
A letter to the editor challenges the claim that Seattle trade unions exclude Black members, arguing that class solidarity transcends racial barriers.
The story, cleaned up
A cleaned-up reading of the newspaper page: spelling and layout repaired, one story lifted off a crowded page. It follows the original closely but it is not a transcription. The original page is below; read it if a detail matters.
Your issue of this morning contains an article from H. T. Cator, by 'Afro Americans as Republicans.' I do not wish to take issue with the gentleman, but I wish to correct a statement he makes in relation to trades unions which I know is not correct in one particular. He goes on to say, 'What is the attitude of these trades unions toward the negro race, etc. Not one of them but what strictly prohibits the colored men from joining them; that’s a clause found in all their constitutions and by-laws.' In the constitution and by-laws of the Journeymen Stonecutters of North America there is nothing prohibiting or tending to prohibit a man from becoming a member by reason of the color of his skin. There is a branch of the same in this city and has been for more than three years past. Within that time there have been two colored men, and we have one today in our midst who worked side by side with a white member on a certain stone front in this city who is now and has been for more than two and a half years a member in good standing with the Seattle branch. I don’t profess to know or undertake to say that all other trades unions do or do not exclude the colored man. I do know that this one doesn’t. Neither does the Granite Cutters National Union. With these two unions the gentleman is surely wrong. So far as my observation goes, it’s not the toiling masses who draw the color line, but in the aristocracy of our land.
“So far as my observation goes, it’s not the toiling masses who draw the color line, but in the aristocracy of our land.”
This rare voice in the P-I archives provides a counter-narrative to the era's pervasive exclusionism, highlighting the agency of Black workers in 1890s Seattle unions. It remains a poignant reminder of the persistent, unfinished struggle for racial equity within organized labor.
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