"No Union For Fascists": Why The Sioux Falls AFL-CIO Banned White Supremacists | Sioux Falls Trades and Labor Assembly

19.8.18

"No Union For Fascists": Why The Sioux Falls AFL-CIO Banned White Supremacists | Sioux Falls Trades and Labor Assembly: The following is a message from Sioux Falls AFL-CIO President Kooper Caraway.

As we approach the 1 year anniversary of the atrocity in Charlottesville, Virginia, it seems to be an appropriate time to reflect on the historical role of the Labor Movement as an inherently Anti-Fascist Movement and on the future role of Labor in combatting the growing threat of Fascism, Bigotry, and White Nationalism.

On a late night in 1924, in Greenville North Carolina, 40 masked members of the Ku Klux Klan (KKK) approached organizers of the Industrial Workers of the World International Union (IWW) and ordered them to leave town in the next 24 hours. In response over 170 Union Members, mostly Woodsmen from the local Lumberyard, began patrolling the streets, keeping an eye on the KKK threat. When asked by a local a reporter why the KKK would oppose them, the local Union Organizer responded, "Because we want good wages, eight hours a day in the lumber camps and clean linen on our bunks.". The Greenville KKK had been bought by the local bosses and were acting as Union Busters on behalf of the Lumber bosses.