Every September, Americans congregate and fellowship in honor of workers’ contributions and the victories of the Labor movement, including workplace safety, the right to organize, and the eight-hour workday. In a nation designed and built by slaves, Labor Day marks the long struggle to move closer to fair and equitable wages for all of America’s workers. As the dialogue and possibilities of reparations for slavery grow, national holidays are a genuine opportunity to reflect on our shared history and how we can heal the soul of our nation. This Labor Day presents us with an opportunity pregnant with meaningful reparative possibilities through a simple yet profound act: establishing labor acknowledgements alongside the land acknowledgements that have become increasingly common at public events and gatherings. Just as we have land acknowledgments that honor Indigenous communities as the original stewards of the land that is now the United States, it is equally important to introduce labor acknowledgments that honor Black laborers who built this nation with their literal blood, sweat, and tears.
Mapping the blueprint for Black labor rights
The nation was in a pivotal moment in 1894 when Labor Day was established as a federal holiday. Coming just three decades from slavery’s abolishment, Labor Day represented a key American paradox: Even as the holiday served to uplift and recognize workers’ dignity and rights, Black workers were systematically excluded from labor unions and benefits through Jim Crow laws, systemic racism, sharecropping systems, and other exclusionary labor practices. As the nation grappled with embracing and fully enfranchising four million formerly enslaved people and their descendants, it also decided to publicly honor the labor of some but not all Americans. Labor rights were hard fought following Reconstruction, when racists engaged in tactics such as sharecropping, convict leasing, sunset towns, and violence. These oppressive tools were designed to undermine Black self-sufficiency.
Many corporations today misinterpret taxation and paying employees livable wages as threats to their freedoms, akin to how wealthy people in the Confederate states viewed Emancipation. For instance, when Georgia seceded from the Union in 1861, state officials described enslaved people as capital, proclaiming that the Union had outlawed $3 billion of their “property.”
The connection between American labor and slavery runs deeper than historical timing. Slavery was America’s preferred labor system, generating enormous national and international wealth and prosperity through the systemic exploitation of Black labor. Forced and enslaved Black labor contributed to the construction of key landmark structures across the nation, from the White House and Capitol building to military forts, presidents’ homes, and the actual wall on Wall Street. Black people played an unwilling role in the establishment of New York City’s lucrative banking and insurance sectors, as they were viewed merely as assets. These landmarks serve as tangible reminders of a painful history we can begin to grapple with as a country through public labor acknowledgements.
Americans benefited not only from Black people’s physical labor but also from their mental and emotional labor in the fields of science, technology, and academia. Many of their contributions went largely unrecognized, discredited, or uncompensated. They also labored in kitchens, creating the sights, sounds, and traditions that have shaped American culture.
Source: Beyond The Long Weekend: Labor Acknowledgments Repair What’s Been Broken
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