The Bible Speaks to Labor

This chapter focuses on religious resources that the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) utilized to offer an alternative to Christian free enterprise and bring collective bargaining to the South. In the summer of 1946, the citizens of Danville, Virginia rallied behind a local minister and the local of the Textile Workers Union of America to create a Citizens' Committee to fight for economic justice and defy charges that they were led by outsiders “with Communistic leanings.” There were also allies in the Southern Conference for Human Welfare, at Highlander Folk School, and in the industrial department of the YWCA who sought to fuse Protestantism's social message to the organization of southern workers. These pointed to a reservoir of prophetic Christianity upon which the CIO could draw when it mobilized for its crusade to organize Dixie. Perhaps most important, the CIO had a cadre of men and women with ties to Protestant churches whom it could send to build favorable community relations.