Unions in the South; a Personal View from the Bottom Part III

I was 18 when this incident occurred. I knew people on both sides of the issue who worked at the plant. It spilled over into fights, arguments, and family squabbles that lasted for a whole generation. Some families still don't speak to each other today over things that happened during the strike. After the burning of the car, the local law enforcement was on site permanently for the duration of the strike. There were no more violent incidents at the plant but they did crop up other places where the union members and the non-union members ran into each other. There were numerous fights in local nightclubs, pool halls, and even a couple on the public square. It was not unusual to hear people yelling "SCAB" at cars driving by in any part of town. Two people had their barns burned and numerous incidents of cars being defaced and tires slashed occurred.

The violence occurred on both sides, as no self respecting southerner tends to allow other people to degrade them personally. I think this is largely the reason why unions failed to find a foothold in the south. As manufacturers moved south the unions seemed to think they could just follow along behind them organizing plants in the same manner they had in the north in the beginnings of the labor movement there. The part they didn't really understand was the southern psyche.

In the south there is a very fine line between criticism of any kind and a personal insult. Constructive criticism is acceptable under most conditions; personal insults must be met with a defense of personal honor. It is largely the same code that fostered dueling over personal insults. It is also the same code that led southerners to attempt to secede in 1860 over an issue that most of them had no personal stake in to begin with.

I was reading a sociology book recently in which the author participated in a study during his college years on people's reaction to perceived personal threat. The participants in the study didn't know what the intent of the study actually happened to be. They were simply asked to come in for an interview. Immediately previous to the interview they were asked to fill out forms which asked their place of birth, where they went to school, and where their family was from previous to their birth. When they were actually called back for the interview, they were called down a narrow hallway. In this hallway a very large, very fit man would purposefully stride down the middle of the hallway directly at them, brusquely forcing his way past them.

The purpose of the study was to study their reaction to this incident. Most people simply turned aside and let the person pass with little or no notice. Rudeness is not especially deserving of notice of comment in today's world by many people. A small percentage of the people reacted with obvious anger, usually not saying anything but showing body language of confrontation. Angry looks, tensing of shoulders and arms, and sometimes actual clenching of the fists. After the interview, everyone was sent back down the same hallway where the same large, rude man approached them from the other direction. Almost all the people who had initially ignored his rudeness and stepped aside did the same thing on the return trip. Most of those who had physically reacted the first time repeated their reaction. Some of them actually physically bumped into the man and more than one called him out on his rudeness.

When researchers began looking for a pattern as to who reacted with anger, they were amazed to learn that all of those who reacted with anger in both instances were either born in the south or raised in the south. The researchers took a while to make that connection but it seemed to be the only thing these people had in common. They were from different races, different social classes, and different backgrounds of financial wealth. What they all had in common was the fact that they had spent many of their formative years in the south.

Personal honor is a major consideration in the south even today amongst people who are raised here. It extends to what can seem ridiculous measures to people not familiar with it but make no mistake; it is a strong and constant presence in every facet of interaction in the south. There are many unspoken rules associated with this system and some people not familiar with this concept never grasp what is going on before they find themselves violently confronted with someone they have managed to cross this line with. It manifested itself very quickly in the confrontation at the plant that day and it spilled over into a cycle of violence that permeated every part of the small community I grew up in.

I don't think union organizers ever understood this basic reality. All requests, demands, orders, or suggestions put forward to keep the strikers from reacting with violence at the plant went out the window immediately as soon as someone was personally insulted. When that spilled over into actual force both with the driver of the car and those attempting to stop it from entering into the plant what happened afterwards became inevitable as it was no longer just about a job or economics, but something much more closely held; personal honor. I have seen the same thing happen several times since that day in similar situations. People often become the worst enemy of their cause when they are provoked to respond to personal insult anywhere, but in the south this is especially prevalent.

Add to that the fact that southerners also tie their own innate sense of self sufficiency to their personal honor that overrides everything except familial tendencies and the prospect of organizing a union becomes even harder. It is not acceptable on many levels to have anyone outside of family take up negotiating for your own personal interests. It is a sign of weakness to many. Anyone who can't fight their own battles (which is how this is perceived) is also without personal honor. It is also why southerners will usually react against anyone trying to force them to do something with resistance. This can include joining a union when taking on a new job. The relative merits of joining the union pale in comparison with the perception that they are not being allowed to make their own choice.

Local plant management understands this system. Union organizers from other parts of the country seldom do; so they are immediately at a distinct disadvantage in the struggle for support. It is why questions about unions and "rights to work" are put forward in the way they are by those opposing unions and it is why they are effective in doing so. To this day unions struggle in to get a foothold in the south and employers take advantage accordingly. I expect this will not change until conditions get much worse but I also suspect we will by that time have lost all major industrial jobs to cheaper labor elsewhere in the world.