Can a New Labor Institute Advance Black Workers’ Rights in the South?

The world is looking at the US South…because it is an epicenter for the entire global economy, from manufacturing to filmmaking. We aren’t the only ones who can see that expanding democracy here means expanding democracy everywhere. It is not just a theoretical framework. Building democracy here is possible, especially when we see it not simply as a political project but also as an economic project.

Erica Smiley, Executive Director, Jobs With Justice, April 2025

The US South has long played an outsized role in US politics—and in the labor movement as well. As I wrote in NPQ years ago, “Famously, it was the failure of Operation Dixie to unionize the South in the postwar period that set the stage for the gradual—and later rapid—retrenchment of unions nationwide that followed, leading to today’s extraordinary levels of economic inequality.”

But these days, labor may be making a comeback in the South. Among the developments, all in 2024:

• Workers at Volkswagen plant in Chattanooga, TN, voted overwhelmingly (73 percent in favor) to join the United Auto Workers (UAW), the first time the UAW had ever won a non-“Big Three” auto assembly plant union election in the South.
• In Fort Valley, GA, 1,500 workers at the bus manufacturer Blue Bird, who recently joined the UAW, won their first contract.
• Organizing by the Union of Southern Service Workers helped an estimated 20,000 Waffle House workers win pay raises.
• Alabama workers at New Flyer, a manufacturer of zero-emission buses, joined the International Union of Electrical Workers-Community Workers of America or IUE-CWA) and won their first contract.

None of this is to suggest that union organizing in the South has become easy. Unions still face many losses. Moreover, the administration of Donald Trump has acted to make labor organizing more difficult throughout the country.

Still, Southern labor organizing shows new vitality. This spring, Jobs With Justice and the W.E.B. Du Bois Southern Center for Studies in Public Policy at Clark Atlanta University joined forces to create a new academic labor institute focused on supporting Black organizers in the South known as the Labor Institute for Advancing Black Strategists.

The Institute, the first in the nation to be based at a historically black college or university (HBCU) and the first to focus on Black leadership in labor specifically, aims to “equip students to lead worker movements.” Jobs With Justice is seeking to raise $6 million over three years to support the effort financially.

To learn more, NPQ spoke with Joseph Jones, the Du Bois Center’s executive director; and with Sherman Henry, a longtime union local president who directs the institute.

Creating the Institute

The institute may have officially opened in 2025, but there has been an eight-year process behind its formation.

Henry told NPQ that the effort started at a Labor Research and Action Network conference held at Howard University in 2017. The network’s website explains that at that conference there was a “workshop about the dearth of Black researchers in the labor movement and how our movement was weakened by this lack of Black strategies and perspectives.”

As Henry elaborated, “There has to be a paradigm shift in dealing with the South.” He added, “The labor movement would benefit from a pipeline leading the charge….We want to reimagine the South, organize in the South, and put the emphasis on Black leadership.”

Three years later, in 2020, Jobs with Justice launched its Advancing Black Strategists Initiative. Moving from an initiative to an academically housed institute took another four years, with the public opening only taking place this spring.

To launch the institute, Jobs with Justice needed to find an academic partner. Fortunately, Jones noted, there was a high degree of alignment with Clark Atlanta University, which is part of the Atlanta University Center of HBCUs in the West End neighborhood of Atlanta.

Clark Atlanta, Jones explained is home to “the first Black graduate institution of higher education in the country.” It was also home to the center’s namesake, Du Bois, who, Jones emphasized, “taught here off and on for almost 20 years.”

“We want to reimagine the South, organize in the South, and put the emphasis on Black leadership.”

The center runs a number of programs, with a focus of conducting research on “the material conditions of Black people in the US South and in the Global South,” Jones said, adding that the labor institute’s focus on improving working conditions for Black people in the South resonated deeply for him.

He noted that taking on a project that seeks to build labor power in the South is no small matter: “It does take a courageous partner to commit to this kind of work.” But he also said Clark Atlanta has a long history of socially informed research going back to Du Bois and even earlier. Jones added that “the chair of my department, the dean, the provost, and the president were all in agreement that this something the university wanted to get behind.”

What Does the Institute Do? 

Due to its long development period, the institute already has projects underway, such as the Movement Fellowship program. The first group of four fellows served in 2022 and 2023; the second cohort started in 2024.

Fellows, Henry explained, get a 15-month full-time paid position with benefits. They are assigned to a partner union—for instance, one fellow served on the New Flyer union campaign mentioned above—and do academic work that matches their area of interest.

The point, Henry added, is for fellows to “learn the ins and outs of what it means to be unionized how you exercise voice and democracy. And because the Amazon campaign is ongoing, the Starbucks campaign is ongoing, they also get a taste of reality that the corporate agenda is to not necessarily to have a decent wage, have benefits, or a voice in the workplace.”

“If this is done right,” Henry elaborated, “we are creating a pipeline for a significant number of Black workers—and this benefits non-Black folks too because once [the Black] population gets power, a rising tide lifts all boats. So, these campaigns also benefit future union workers as well.”

Building for the Future

The fellowship is the first part of the institute to get off the ground, but Jones and Henry see many areas for growth.

“For me, the litmus point for success, and I think it would pay dividends for generations, is if we at Clark Atlanta are able to institutionalize labor studies.”

Jones, in particular, sees the potential for the institute to play an important educational role: “For me, the litmus point for success, and I think it would pay dividends for generations, is if we at Clark Atlanta are able to institutionalize labor studies, by offering a major, by offering a degree, teaching students the importance of labor studies matters. We are part of the Atlanta University [Center Consortium] which includes Morehouse, Spelman, Morris Brown, Morehouse School of Medicine, and the Interdenominational Theological Center. Cumulatively we have close to 25-30,000 students in our proximity.”

Jones also spoke about a growing research agenda, which includes an ongoing study of the working conditions of Waffle House workers and a study that looks at “success factors” behind organizing campaigns and measuring the salience of Black leadership to organizing Black workers.

Broader institute goals, Jones said, are to “inform public policy and to teach the public about what’s going on.” Henry added the institute is also working with high schools and encouraging construction unions to show up at high school career fairs to help students access union jobs.

Henry noted, too, the importance of having a labor institute at all at an HBCU. The fact that “it’s the first HBCU speaks volumes,” Henry said. He emphasized that an estimated 56 percent of African Americans live in the South, so reaching these workers requires organizing in Southern states.

“We are now establishing a pipeline through HBCUs to center workers and their needs in political economy and teach them about labor studies, arbitration, and grievance handling,” Henry said.

Henry noted too that the institute is looking at intervening in public policy to add Black workers’ “voice and critique through their lived experience and community needs.”

The institute, he said, “hopefully will create a shift in research and practice. Unions educate their members. But if you don’t belong to a union, this is ultimately a great place to become informed about issues and get educated.”

Jones concurred. The work ahead, he said, remains “to support, move forward, and fill this research gap around the material conditions of Black people.”