Union stockyards - Black workers

CTL-E-2641 · Practice · other · 1909-1940

PROVISIONAL evidence grade of this record

Black labor in Chicago's Union Stock Yards and packinghouses: from about 3% of the meatpacking workforce in 1909 to 29.5% by 1928 (10,000-12,000 Black workers in 1917), drawn by Great Migration-era wartime hiring; central to the 1919 race riot's geography and, by 1939, the militant backbone of the Packinghouse Workers Organizing Committee.

The record

• Also known as: Black packinghouse workers (Chicago), Black workers in the Union Stock Yards

Notes

RELP62 new entity (2026-10-06).

Relationships

• Chicago Race Riot of 1919 — related to
  The 1919 riot was especially violent around the Yards, where Black packinghouse workers - hired as strikebreakers in 1904 and concentrated by wartime hiring - were central to the conflict's geography.

Sources

• The Free Library - 'Part of the Loaf': Economic conditions of Chicago's African-American working class during the 1920s

Record CTL-E-2641 · CultureTechLens Knowledge Graph · evidence grade: PROVISIONAL · 1 source · 1 mapped relationship · CTL research: RELP-001.
Directory: all entity records · the knowledge graph

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