Clark Luvernal Labor Movement 4

Luvernal Clark was born in Lonsdale, a working-class section of Knoxville, Tennessee. She describes her experience going to school at a time when the local black and white high schools were merged to comply with desegregation. Clark married and had her first child when she was eighteen and soon began working at a non-union factory where she recalls the poor working conditions. She talks about finding out through the Knoxville Urban League that a local seat belt factory was hiring African American workers and getting a job there. Clark discusses the working conditions at the seatbelt factory and her decision to join the union. The majority of the interview focuses on Clark’s role as a union organizer and her trip to investigate labor conditions in U.S.-owned factories in Matamoros, Mexico.