AFL Craft Unions Maintain Segregated Locals, Exclude Black Workers from Skilled Trades

Through the 1940s and 1950s, AFL craft unions — the Brotherhood of Locomotive Firemen, the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, the Plumbers Union, and building trades generally — maintain explicit racial exclusion through segregated locals or outright membership bans. Black workers locked out of unionized trades are barred from apprenticeship programs and the high wages that come with them. The building trades' exclusion of Black workers from federally funded construction projects persists into the 1960s and beyond, denying Black men access to postwar construction employment.