African-American workers at the Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company, Coatesville Plant, circa 1910.
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African-American workers at the Midvale Steel and Ordnance Company, Coatesville Plant, circa 1910.
In 1896, William W. Taylor brought the first 200 African Americans into the Midvale workforce. Hired at first to diminish the power of the craft guilds by breaking up the ethnic work gangs, Midvale's black workers soon proved themselves as competent as their white counterparts. In the early 1900s, Midvale treated its black workers with uncommon equality, paying them the going wage and promoting a few to positions as foremen.