The June 22, 1959 issue of Life magazine celebrated the success of the steel industry in the United States: “Steel was never bigger,” it states, “the spectacular and efficient steel production and the members of the 500,000-man army that keep it rolling were the foundation of the overall U.S. business boom: one third of all the factory workers process steel products.” The opening paragraphs were accompanied by dazzling color photographs taken by Gordon Parks at the Jones and Laughlin Steel Company’s mill in Aliquippa, Pennsylvania. Yet this bright picture was clouded by an impending labor strike, spurred by the end of a union contract, demand for higher wages, and fear of a subsequent rise in steel prices. Indeed, steel has played a major role in the history of the U.S. economy. But as the article indicates with its too-subtle descriptions of labor inequities, the American steel industry also carries with it a history of industrial and environmental racism.
African Americans represented a large and critical part of the labor force of the steel industry for over 100 years, particularly in places like Chicago, Gary (nicknamed Indiana’s “Steel City”), and mill towns such as Braddock along the Monongahela river in Pennsylvania. The expanding market for steel in the first half of the twentieth century brought the promise of industry, which encouraged population growth in these small towns. By the 1920s and 30s, Black southerners in particular flocked to these regions looking for work in the fast-growing steel industry. Following World War II, the U.S. produced approximately 40% of the world’s steel, seizing on the collapse of industrial mills in Europe and Japan and feeding on the post-war industrial growth and consumer appetites for technology.
With the boom in the steel industry, came a cycle of discrimination and inequity whose scars are visible to this day: Black workers were often confined to the most backbreaking, dangerous, and low-paid work. And just as the steel industry led to the development of small towns, it also spurred their downfall once the industry collapsed in the 1980s—similarly to the auto and oil industries.
By the 1980s the American steel industry took a few missteps that led to its demise: Companies stubbornly stuck with outmoded technology as Europe and Japan adopted more efficient and less expensive methods. Alongside turning a blind eye to innovation, big companies aimed to turn themselves into conglomerates, taking financial gambles that proved catastrophic. By the 1980s, steel mills downsized or closed, and thousands became unemployed in towns that offered no other job opportunities. In towns like Braddock, Pennsylvania, for example, the population dropped from around 20,000 in 1920 to just 4,600 by 1990. What the industry did leave behind, however, was irreparable environmental damage, specifically to the air and water, that didn’t become entirely clear until recent decades. The negative health effects of living in these environments are especially palpable to these towns’ residents, many of whom are Black.
Untitled, Weirton, West Virginia, 1959
In recent years, artists such as LaToya Ruby Frazier have chronicled the aftershocks of the collapse of the steel and auto industries in towns such as Braddock, Lordstown, and Flint, bringing attention to the ongoing struggles and triumphs of the towns’ residents and making their voices heard. This work is a direct descendant of the work Gordon Parks published in the pages of magazines such as Life. The 1959 assignment at the Aliquippa mill was not his first photographing industrial labor. Notably, from 1944/46, Parks was commissioned to photograph the Penola, Inc. Grease Plant in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania for The Standard Oil Company (New Jersey). Employing his signature style, Parks photographed the plant’s Black and white workers and the range of their activities, divided by roles, race, and class. The images were used as marketing material and made available to local and national newspapers, as well corporate magazines and newsletters. For the Standard Oil Company, Parks’s images helped humanize and soften the corporation’s public image. However, his images, now and then, served as much more than documentation of industry—enduring as an exploration of labor and its social and economic ramifications.
Untitled, Aliquippa, Pennsylvania, 1959
Untitled, Mon Valley, Pennsylvania, 1959
Untitled, Mon Valley, Pennsylvania, 1959
Untitled, Mon Valley, Pennsylvania, 1959
Untitled, Weirton, West Virginia, 1959
Untitled, Mon Valley, Pennsylvania, 1959
Untitled, 1959
Untitled, 1959
