Racism In The Railroad Unions

Racism in the Railroad Unions term paper due and don't know how to start it? How about like this?

This paper needs to be focused on the time period known as the Gilded Age. This paper's theme is "Racism in the Railroad Unions". It's about how unions actually hurt the African Americans instead of helping people like unions are ideally supposed to do. All citations must be in footnote form.

Early Labor Unions

Include the following. It was the Introduction from my draft:

From the beginning of Labor Unions, the idea of equality was an overwhelming and reoccurring theme.

• The idea of providing equality for those that no one else is providing for was the backbone of the ideas that helped smaller unions merge into things like the ALF, and later AFL-CIO.
• Labor unions originally looked like they would be created for the lower socio-economic classes, however it would seem that in fact there was once significant group that would actually be hurt by unions, not helped.
• That group was African Americans and the base of this text will look at the railroad and railroad unions.

Many historians pay little attention to racism in early labor unions, but unions not only allowed racism, some promoted it. Tens of thousands of African American sought well paying jobs on the railroads of America, but instead many found racism blocking those jobs or at least upward mobility in those jobs. Unions were supposed to be somewhat of a fraternal organization giving the members a better sense of community and belonging not exclusion. However, that is in fact exactly what many African Americans experienced on the railroad.

The Nature of Railroad Jobs

Many jobs on the railroads required a high skill level and many of those jobs were for some time limited to whites only because of racism sentiment. Even though numerous African Americans had worked for several years at a certain position and had mastered it, they would be halted in excelling or being promoted within still that field or to a more prestigious, higher paying, more responsibility filled position. This would continue through the early history of labor unions on the railroad and would last for some time in other unions as well.

To understand these unions, you must understand the history behind them. Mostly in the middle to late 1800s, the unions were smaller and based on actual skills or position on the railroads.