A Peculiar Condition

White union workers refuse to parade unless black workers can join, because it “is disrespectful to organized labor rather than to the colored people.”

White Unions Will Not Parade Unless Colored People Are Allowed in Line.
A sensation entirely new to this section was sprung here to-day in labor circles. A street fair and trades display will be held here, commencing Monday with a street parade in which the trades unions were to participate. To-day the unions announced that they would take no part in the parade because the parade committees of the Fair declined to allow the colored trades unions a place in the line.
The Streets Fair people and the unions appointed committees to confer and try to arrange matters, but without result.
The white union men take the position that the white unions have contracts with reference to wage scales, etc., with those composed of colored people and that they would not deal with an organization that was not responsible and respectable, that as regularly organized trades union the colored union is entitled to place in the parade and that the refusal of the Fair Committee to give the colored people a place is disrespectful to organized labor rather than to the colored people.

“A Peculiar Condition,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed December 7, 2025, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/1735.