Cigar Makers' International Union

September 1, 2022 - When North Carolina tobacco companies began manufacturing cigarettes in the 1880s, they needed skilled rollers, so they turned to Jewish immigrants on strike at cigarette factories in New York City. The bosses thought the workers wouldn't dare organize in the union-hostile South, but they were proven wrong.

January 1, 1986 - This article originally appeared in Southern Exposure Vol. 14 No. 1, "The Chords That Bind." Find more from that issue here.