Factory Man Macy Analysis

Factory Man: How One Furniture Maker Battled Offshoring, Stayed Local-- And Helped Save an American Town displayed the incorporation of many African Americans into the workforce of the Bassett furniture factories during the early twentieth century, despite the horrific instances of racism that plagued the American South. During the 1900s, the American South was synonymous with Jim Crow laws and segregated facilities for African Americans and whites. However, since the establishment of Bassett Furniture African Americans were allowed to participate in the economic growth of the factories. In Factory Man, Beth Macy stated, “Unlike the employees in the white-only mills in nearby Martinsville and Fieldale, Bassett’s workforce was 20 percent black from the very beginning” (48). Likewise, hiring African Americans during this time period was a rarity. Many African Americans in the 1900s American South would not dare contemplate working in a factory with white men. For example, Macy expressed, “That was unusual for the time, black and whites working together at industrial jobs. In many Southern cities it was illegal for blacks to live in certain neighborhoods, and Jim Crow laws throughout the former Confederacy prevented biracial gatherings in barbershops and baseball parks, at circuses and domino matches” (49).
This was depicted in Ernesto Galarza’s Barrio Boy, which described the difficulty in regards to the assimilation from Mexican American culture to American culture. Galarza declared, “Although we, the foreigners, made up the majority of the population of Sacramento, the Americans had by no means given it up to us. Not all of them moved above Fifth Street as the barrio became crowded” (194). This signified that Americans displayed no sense of hospitality toward immigrants, and were unwilling to provide them with the basic necessity of