Resourcing Workers' Resistance in the Shadow of the Plantation Economy
I can follow a map of the Carolinas with my finger and identify racial capitalism’s violent expansion. The very stories that commerce chambers and revisionist historians tell about the Carolinas’ generous land hold the evidence of this violence in them. Rice and tobacco fields sit alongside lumber mills and textile factories, and these sites of industrial production then grew to sit alongside chemical plants, data centers, hog farms, research towns, and resorts. Every aspect of this economy was birthed centuries ago. Today’s dominant industries are haunted by the settler’s plantation. They rely on extractive systems of work that snatch the fruits of the land, of people’s lives, and of whole communities’ dreams.
That same map tells another story. It reveals an ecosystem of resistance shaped by laboring people who have always organized to push back against racial capitalism and business common sense. The South is often dismissed as a place where labor movements die or were never able to live to begin with. This is not only false — it’s dangerous. It erases a powerful legacy of Southern labor organizing — especially Black and migrant laborers — and overlooks the varying types of work that people do.
If we want to shift what’s possible for labor in this country, we must start by resourcing those already transforming the terrain.
In this ecosystem, I can smell racial capitalism. Driving through eastern North Carolina to return to my grandparents’ hometowns, I consistently wrinkle my nose as we drive through Plymouth and pass Weyerhaeuser, a pulp mill, and inhale its noxious fumes. As I swallow my disgust, I remember that this smell of death produces fatal and/or chronic disabilities in coastal communities lived in by mostly poor Black and Indigenous folks. In one of the nation’s breadbaskets, hundreds of thousands of migrant workers pick food under horrific conditions and are deprived of sustenance, housing, medical care, and more. City workers are barred from collective bargaining. State attorney generals champion anti-union and anti-migrant lawsuits. Resort chains facilitate human trafficking, exploiting Black and Caribbean folks in the name of hospitality and luxury aesthetics.
In the midst of this violence, laborers in the Carolinas have always organized.
Black and Indigenous communities have resisted from the moment settlers invaded coasts through sabotage, strikes, and revolts. Into the 20th century, Black educators, longshoremen and port workers, tenant farmers and sharecroppers, and hospital workers led campaigns for dignity, better conditions, and outright upheaval. In 1969, Black women nurses led the Charleston Hospital Strike. From the 1980s on, Black Workers for Justice emerged from organizing at Kmart in Rocky Mount, UNC housekeepers organized themselves, and the Farm Labor Organizing Committee has won major battles with food giants like Mt. Olive Pickles.
In 2000, five longshoremen known as the Charleston Five were charged with inciting a riot for picketing and refusing to unload cargo shipped by Nordana, due to them hiring non-union workers. The state sent in cops, tanks, helicopters, and dogs. In the post-9/11 fever, South Carolina’s attorney general called them terrorists. Workers worldwide rallied in solidarity, refusing to handle the company’s cargo. Their actions halted economies and built power.
Today, that legacy lives on in workers with the Union of Southern Service Workers at Waffle House and Dollar General across the Carolinas. The National Domestic Workers Alliance fights for safe and dignified conditions for Black and migrant caretakers. In Garner, North Carolina, “Ma Mary” Hills and the Amazon unionizing effort through C.A.U.S.E — Carolina Amazonians United for Solidarity and Empowerment — made national headlines. In Charleston in 2018, Boeing production line workers successfully formed a union. Black, migrant, and disabled workers, often mothers and caretakers, continue to be the backbone of these formations. When organized and resourced, workers change not just conditions on the job but the future terrain for labor’s fight against capital and its footsoldiers.
At Cypress Fund, we honor this truth by redirecting resources to labor organizers.
We recognize that philanthropy’s endowments, investment portfolios, and landholdings have been built on the extractive labor and land practices that define the South’s economy. We know the wealth of many institutions was snatched from people’s bodies working the land, often in the very geographies they now fund. That’s why we’re committed to moving money differently — toward labor organizers collectively reshaping the conditions of work on a systemic level.
Our grantee partner, the UE Research and Education Fund, launched the Southern Worker Justice Campaign (SWJC) in 2021 to support Black and migrant public sector workers in confronting the economic legacy of Jim Crow. SWJC organizes low-wage workers excluded from traditional protections and centers dignity, leadership, and collective power.
In 2024, SWJC’s impact was undeniable in the following ways:
- Organizing wins: Workers secured back pay, improved safety protocols, and built workplace committees across the region.
- Leadership development: 150 workers trained in organizing, advocacy, and leadership.
- Mass outreach: SWJC reached over 10,000 workers through door-knocking, meetings, and multilingual digital campaigns.
- Strategic storytelling: Workers spoke in public forums and media, challenging dominant narratives.
- Policy impact: SWJC helped push protections against wage theft, extreme heat, and advanced protections for migrant workers.
SWJC built movement infrastructure that stretches what’s possible.
In honor of May Day, SWJC took a delegation of Black workers to Cuba to honor internationalist traditions of solidarity, learning, and liberation. These workers are not only fighting for today’s wages and benefits, they are demanding that their work brings power and wealth — not suffering — to them.
The plantation economy never disappeared. It evolved. So has our communities’ resistance. And in the Carolinas, the future of labor is being written by the very people capitalism is hellbent on killing.
The next victories won by workers’ self-organization could happen in the Carolinas. If you want to move any amount of your money, connections, and power to support labor organizers across a movement ecosystem in the Carolinas, please donate here or email us at info@cypressfund.org.
Thank you to my colleague, Kayla Bacote, who works directly with our grantee partners on the Programs Team and wrote the spotlight for this blog!
