Black History Month 2025: “Black Workers and the Unions” is an open letter by Langston Hughes

In celebration of Black History Month, we’ll be highlighting a diverse range of books, music, and art all written by Black American artists and authors, all of which celebrate and prioritize the 2025 theme, “ African Americans and Labor”.The 2025 Black History Month theme, African Americans and Labor, focuses on the various and profound ways that work and working of all kinds – free and unfree, skilled, and unskilled, vocational and voluntary – intersect with the collective experiences of Black people. Indeed, work is at the very center of much of Black history and culture. Be it the traditional agricultural labor of enslaved Africans that fed Low Country colonies, debates among Black educators on the importance of vocational training, self-help strategies and entrepreneurship in Black communities, or organized labor’s role in fighting both economic and social injustice, Black people’s work has been transformational throughout the U.S., Africa, and the Diaspora. The 2025 Black History Month theme, “African Americans and Labor,” sets out to highlight and celebrate the potent impact of this work. (asalh.org)

Todays work is Black Workers and the Unions an open letter by Langston Hughes

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE SOUTH

By Langston Hughes124

White workers of the South:

Miners,

Farmers,

Mechanics,

Millhands,

Shop girls,

Railway men,

Servants,

Tobacco workers,

Share croppers,

GREETINGS.

I am the black worker.

Listen:

That the land might be ours,

And the mines and the factories and the office towers

At Harlan, Richmond, Gastonia, Atlanta, New Orleans,

That the plants, and the roads and the tools of power

Be ours.

For me, no more the great migration to the North.

Instead: Migration into force and power—

Tuskegee with a red flag on the tower!

On every lynching tree, a poster crying FREE

Because, O poor white workers,

You have linked your hands with me.

We did not know that we were brothers.

Now we know!

Out of that brotherhood

Let power grow!

We did not know

That we were strong

Now we see

In union lies our strength.

Let union be

The force that breaks the time-clock,

Smashes misery,

Takes land,

Takes factories,

Takes office towers,

Takes tools and banks and mines,

Railroads, ships and dams,

Until the forces of the world

are ours.

White worker,

Here is my hand.

Today,

We’re man to man.

Let us forget what Booker T. said,

“Separate as the fingers,

He knew he lied.

Let us become instead, you and I,

One single hand

That can united rise

To smash the old dead dogmas of the past—

To kill the lies of color

That keep the rich enthroned

And drive us to the time-clock and the plow.

Helpless, stupid, scattered and alone—and now—

Race against race

Because one is black

Another white of face.

Let us new lessons learn,

All workers

New life-ways make,

One union form:

Until the future burns out

Every past mistake.

Let us get together, say:

“You are my brother, black or white.

You are my sister—now—today,”

Southern Worker, February 10, 1934.

Stay tuned for a new work tomorrow!