New Orleans' Plasterers' Union Local 93: Afro-Creole Identity, Family and Organized Labor, 1898-1954

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

Name thesis:degree_name

M.A.

Level thesis:degree_level

Thesis

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

History

Year

2009

Author dc:creator

• Barthe, Darryl

Contributors dc:contributor

• Mizell-Nelson, Michael
• Mitchell, Mary N.
• Powers, Madelon

Repository record dc:identifier

https://scholarworks.uno.edu/td/970

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:scholarworks.uno.edu:td-1951