Black Power at Work chronicles the history of direct action campaigns to open up the construction industry to black workers in the 1960s and 1970s, with case studies of Brooklyn, Newark, the Bay Area, Detroit, Chicago, and Seattle.

By the time Congress passed the 1964 Civil Rights Act, 98 percent of non-southern blacks (40 percent of all blacks) were already covered by state-level 'fair employment' laws which prohibited labor market discrimination. This paper assesses the impact of fair employment legislation on black...