Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, & the Courts From Reconstruction to the New Deal.(Review)

Only One Place of Redress: African Americans, Labor Regulations, & the Courts From Reconstruction to the New Deal By David E. Bernstein Duke University Press, 191 pages, $39.95

Jim Crow segregation is widely considered an historical relic, long ago meeting its well-deserved demise. But in the realm of enterprise, there are pervasive laws at every level of government hampering the ability of minorities and the poor to earn a living, almost as if Jim Crow lived on.

Legal scholars and historians have written much about segregation laws and other blatant examples of discriminatory state action against African Americans, notes author David Bernstein, an associate professor at George Mason University School of Law. By contrast, the literature on more subtle discriminatory laws, such as labor legislation that served to restrict African Americans' access to the labor market, is sparse.

Bernstein sets out to fill the gap in Only One Place of Redress, chronicling the blizzard of national, state, and local laws that discouraged enterprise among blacks and immigrants from the Civil War to the New Deal. Many of the laws were not overtly aimed at blacks or other minorities, but their impact was felt most keenly there. Occupational licensing laws, for example, especially hurt blacks and other newcomers. Many such laws remain on the books today. Licensing laws effectively cut off the lower rungs of the economic ladder for people with little capital or formal education.

The Davis-Bacon Act exemplified the protectionist laws of the first half of the twentieth century. The law originally was proposed in 1927 by Rep. Robert Bacon of Long Island, who was alarmed about low-paid black Southerners coming into his district and taking jobs away from white, unionized construction workers. By 1931, when the Depression intensified competition for scarce jobs, the law was enacted, requiring contractors to pay ...