The Redbones Are Running the Union: Precarious Whiteness and Racial Contingency in the Lumber War

Abstract: When scholars have discussed the "Lumber War" that shook the South at the beginning of the twentieth century, they have largely focused on the attitudes of Black and white workers who came together to form the Brotherhood of Timber Workers, one of the largest interracial unions in the Jim Crow South. By instead turning to the frequent description of certain white workers as Redbones , a term that suggests mixed-race ancestry, this essay argues that historians have overlooked the significance of local racial meanings during the Lumber War, obscuring the precarity of local claims to white belonging. Beginning in the last decades of the nineteenth century, a history of the Redbones and their presence in the Lumber War demonstrates that in Louisiana, racial performance and ascription relied on questions of residence, profession, and loyalty to lumber companies themselves. The frequent but contextual appearance of Redbones in the Lumber War challenges scholarly depictions of the racial differences of Piney Woods residents as commonsensical and cautions against the uncritical acceptance of the racial meanings ascribed to historical actors by "official" sources such as demographic surveys, company rosters, and newspaper reports.