# We Must Learn to Think in Terms of Collective Action:" Industrial Democracy and the Civil Rights Establishment of the 1930s

Toure F. Reed examines the influence of labor activism on the civil rights agendas of the NAACP and National Urban League and challenges presumptions about the ideological orientations of these important civil rights organizations. Reed describes how mainstream civil rights activists of the 1930s and 1940s began to perceive racial discrimination as an outgrowth of class exploitation as they were pushed to the left by New Deal labor law and working-class political movements. Afro-American activists during the Depression and Second World War thus frequently identified black participation in the American union movement as a key component to the quest for racial equality.

- Kind: Talk
- Year: 2011
- By: Library Of Congress
- Genres: History, Industrial and advertising
- Archive: [Library of Congress](https://www.loc.gov/item/2021688717/)
- Licence or status: Rights statement at the Library of Congress (as the archive states it)
- Credit: Library of Congress
- Who can watch: Adult profiles and older (the archive gives no rating; placed by Invisible Network from its collection and subjects)

[Watch now](https://invisiblenetwork.ai/watch/archive/loc/2021688717?play=1)