STRUGGLES IN STEEL

“The mills were hot and dirty, but they had the best-paying jobs a black man could get.” This blue-collar oral history suggests that much of the Civil Rights movement was forged and tempered in the steel valleys of Pittsburgh and Youngstown, where many ex-slaves and their children found employment. Initially trucked in to break strikes, pump up the War Effort or do the “man-killing” work that whites didn't want, African-Americans spent decades building the nation's industrial might, yet found themselves barred from management positions (“If I could change color I could have been foreman here”) or fair wages; by the time these prizes were won, domestic steel itself had lost out to recession and foreign competition. Vital, heartrending, gossipy and long, long overdue, STRUGGLES IN STEEL is a tribute to these men (and women) of iron. – Charles Cassady