Founded in 1869, the Colored National Labor Union (CNLU) was the first national organization to represent Black workers and remains a testament to the resilience and determination of Black laborers striving for dignity and fairness in the workforce.
The union sought to improve general working conditions for Black laborers, create a national public education system with equal opportunities for Black communities and eliminate discrimination within trade unions. Its establishment was a direct response to the systemic exclusion of Black laborers from predominantly white labor unions at the time.
In 1865, white shipyard workers went on strike, protesting the employment of Black caulkers and demanding their firing. After one month, shipyards in East Baltimore agreed to fire their Black employees by the following spring.
This unjust treatment inspired Isaac Myers, one of the affected Black caulkers, to purchase a shipyard and railway alongside Frederick Douglass in 1866. They named it the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company and successfully employed 300 Black caulkers, garnering an invitation to the National Labor Union (NLU).
At the 1869 NLU conference, Myers pleaded with attendees to include and accept Black workers into its union.
“I speak today for the colored men of the whole country… when I tell you that all they ask for themselves is a fair chance; that you shall be no worse off by giving them that chance,” Myers said. “The white men of this country have nothing to fear… We desire to have the highest rate of wages that our labor is worth.”
After rejecting his plea, Myers and other Black laborers organized the CNLU, which advocated for fair wages, stable jobs and legal protections, while emphasizing the importance of education and vocational training. This sense of self-determination and economic empowerment unified the Black working class and inspired future labor movements like the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, which unionized Black railroad workers in the 1920s.
During the CNLU’s first convention in 1869, 214 delegates gathered in Washington, D.C. to write a petition to Congress requesting land in the South be split into farmland to be used by low-income Black farmers. While this petition may not have improved working conditions for Black people in the South, the delegates’ commitment to improving conditions for African Americans workers across the nation showed their unbreakable will.
For so long, Black people had fought for their right to life and liberty, but the CNLU’s establishment highlighted the necessity of championing respect for their labor.
“The most we can hope to effect at this gathering is a crude organization; the formation of a labor bureau to send out agents, to organize colored labor throughout the land, to effect a union with laborers without regards to color,” said the CNLU’s temporary chairman, George T. Downing, at the 1869 convention.
Despite ceasing its operations in 1873, the CNLU was a prime example of self-sufficiency and unity in the fight for fair treatment and representation.
The organization may have been short-lived, but its legacy remains, as it pioneered the labor activism present in the Civil Rights Movement by persistently advocating for workers’ rights, economic justice and racial equality.
“The watchword of the colored man must be ‘organize,’” Myers famously said.