Sharp-Hughes Tool Company, later renamed just Hughes Tool Company, at its manufacturing building at the intersection of Second and Girard Streets, Houston, Texas.
Photo from the Houston Metropolitan Research Center, Houston Public Library. Public Domain Image.
In the summer of 1964, the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) reached what the Pittsburgh Courier considered to be a “precedent-shattering ruling” regarding racial bias at the Hughes Tool Company, a manufacturer of drilling equipment in Houston, Texas. There, the Board found the collective bargaining contract between the company and the associated union to be in violation of federal fair employment policy. For nearly three decades, the Hughes Tool Company racially segregated all jobs within the plant. As with most southern industries, management restricted Black workers to low-wage menial-level occupations with no opportunity for upward economic mobility.
The Independent Metal Workers Union organized the Hughes facilities in 1941. The union chartered the all-white Local 1 and all-black Local 2. Subsequent to an NLRB election and recertification of the segregated locals in 1961, the union entered a labor agreement with Hughes that prohibited Black workers from participating in training programs for skilled craftsmen positions. The company only required the signatures of Local 1 in finalizing the pact. A year later, Black union leader Ivory Davis applied for one of six apprenticeship vacancies in the plant. Despite having twenty years of experience with the company, Hughes officials denied his application due to the provisions of the most recent contract with the union. Afterwards, Davis brought his grievance to Local 1, but received no consideration. Following unsuccessful attempts at mediation with company and union officials, he led Black workers in filing federal complaints with the NLRB.
On July 1, 1964, the Board deemed the collective bargaining contract between the Hughes company and the Independent Metal Workers Union to be illegal under the 1947 Taft-Hartley Act. Specifically, the NLRB ruled that Local 1’s refusal to process the Black grievances violated section 8(b)(1)(A) of the Act which provides that “it shall be an unfair labor practice for a labor organization or its agents to restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of right to bargaining collectively or the right to refrain from bargaining collectively.” As an affirmative action remedy, the Board issued cease-and-desist orders and rescinded the union’s certification.
The Hughes decision was momentous. Prior to 1964, the NLRB refused to use its authority within the realm of racial discrimination. The NAACP considered the ruling to be a “significant breakthrough” in labor law. Robert Carter, an attorney for the NAACP, told news reporters that he would encourage “any Negro employee who feels he is being discriminating against to try this procedure rather than seek relief under the civil rights act.” For Carter, the Board was an “interim FEPC.” His comments reflected the fact that Title VII or the employment discrimination of the 1964 Civil Rights Act did not go into effect until July of 1965. The law also relies primarily on conciliation before judicial interpretation. Many civil rights and labor activists predicted that the law would not have an instant impact on discriminatory workplace operations.
D. Caleb Smith is an assistant professor in the Department of History and an affiliate of the Critical Race and Political Economy Department at Mount Holyoke College in South Hadley, Massachusetts. He earned his B.S.Ed. in Social Studies Secondary Education from Delta State University and a M.A. in History from Jackson State University. Smith obtained a graduate certificate in community-engaged scholarship and a doctorate in History from Tulane University. His research interests include African American, civil rights, labor and legal history. Smith has received fellowships, grants, and honors from the American Society for Legal History, the Andrew Mellon foundation, the Association for the Study of Law, Culture, and the Humanities, the New Orleans African American Museum, and the New Orleans Center for the Gulf South. His scholarship appears in Africana Annual, American Journal of Legal History, Black Educology Mixtape Journal, Labor History, and Left History.
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CITE THIS ENTRY IN APA FORMAT:
Smith, D. (2025, September 16). Black Labor Fight Against the Hughes Tool Company (1964). BlackPast.org. https://blackpast.org/african-american-history/black-labor-fight-against-the-hughes-tool-company-1964/
“NLRB Rules Against Union Bias,” Pittsburgh Courier, July 11, 1964.
“Bias Results In Union’s Loss of Bargaining Power,” Tri-State Defender, July 11, 1964.
Hill, Herbert. Black Labor and the American Legal System: Race, Work, and the Law. Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985.
Botson, Michael R. Botson. Labor, Civil Rights, and the Hughes Tool Company. College Station: Texas A&M University Press, 2005.
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