New Orleans' Plasterers' Union Local 93: Afro-Creole Identity, Family and Organized Labor, 1898-1954
Date of Award
8-2009
Degree Type
Thesis
Degree Name
M.A.
Degree Program
History
Department
History
Major Professor
Mizell-Nelson, Michael
Second Advisor
Mitchell, Mary N.
Third Advisor
Powers, Madelon
Abstract
The Operative Plasterers and Cement Masons International Union Local 93 was founded as a racially integrated union in New Orleans at the turn of the twentieth century. The Union was established by Irish Americans and New Orleans Afro-Creoles and represents a continuation of an Afro-Creole protest tradition that had existed since the eighteenth century in Louisiana. The cooperation between these Irish and Afro-Creole plasterers represented a social sodality of working class whites and bourgeois Afro-Creoles who defied social convention for mutual benefit. Through Local 93, Afro-Creoles were able to assert their political equality with whites and Irish Americans were able to engage in a sophisticated trade that had been traditionally dominated by Afro-Creoles in New Orleans. After almost a half-century of restricting union membership to whites and Afro-Creoles (typically restricting membership to the family of current union members), Local 93 experienced more thorough racial integration, allowing African Americans to join the union
Recommended Citation
Barthe, Darryl, "New Orleans' Plasterers' Union Local 93: Afro-Creole Identity, Family and Organized Labor, 1898-1954" (2009). University of New Orleans Theses and Dissertations. 970.
https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/970
Rights
The University of New Orleans and its agents retain the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible this dissertation or thesis in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. The author retains all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis or dissertation.