Victory through Struggle: Black Workers for Justice and the Fight for Economic and Environmental Justice in North Carolina

In 1988, when the Schlage Lock Manufacturing Company announced that it would be closing its plant in Rocky Mount, North Carolina, Black Workers for Justice helped wage a successful worker-led campaign. Schlage refused to give workers, the majority of whom were Black, severance pay or extended health insurance. This article examines the organizing, mobilizing, and workers empowerment strategy that developed in response to the company’s unjust decision to close the plant, move its operations to Mexico, and deny workers severance pay. I argue that the struggle that unfolded at Schlage in Rocky Mount is an important example of and window into African American working-class resistance during the 1980s. Schlage Lock and the struggle it ignited illuminate the importance of North Carolina and the South in understanding the Black experience during the 1980s and the close relationship between environmental justice and workers’ rights.