Black Workers Remember: An Oral History of Segregation, Unionism, and the Freedom Struggle

The Murray Morgan Prize is awarded annually by the Tacoma Public Library to an outstanding Washington author in recognition of a work published during the previous year that is of high literary quality and wide interest. The work must exemplify the principles of narrative excellence and high standards of research as demonstrated in the distinguished career of author, historian, journalist and educator Murray Morgan."Black Workers Remember expands what we know of the Civil Rights Movement," explained Jack Bregger, a member of the Murray Morgan Prize Selection Committee. "Through the voices and stories of the African American men and women who worked in Memphis, Tennessee's factories, Honey tells of a struggle for freedom that spans the 20th century -- a story which until now was all but invisible. Michael Honey effectively places these moving personal accounts in the more powerful context of social upheaval and, in a sense, cultural revolution. It insists, as Honey writes in the book's Preface, that we think 'about what it means to be poor, black, and working class, and to recognize the unfinished character of the struggle for racial and economic justice in our own time'. The ultimate success of this extraordinary book can be found in its intimacy and immediacy. The book shook me right down to my very core, and I know it did the same to other committee members."

Michael Keith Honey's Black Workers Remember expands what we know of as the Civil Rights Movement. Through the voices and stories of the black men and women who worked in Memphis, Tennessee's factories, Honey reveals a struggle for freedom that spans the 20th century. It shows the conditions that blacks faced in the 30's as they moved from farm work to factory work and their struggles to challenge Jim Crow in the factories, in unions, and in the community. This book is being honored by the Lillian Smith Book Award, the oldest literary award in the American South, and it offers a great deal to the current scholarship on Southern struggles for civil and human rights.