Early within the 20th century, the Cuban sugarcane confronted a hard work predicament whilst Cuban and ecu employees balked on the inhumane stipulations they persisted within the cane fields. instead of reforming their practices, sugar businesses received permission from the Cuban govt to import millions of black employees from different Caribbean colonies, basically Haiti and Jamaica. Black hard work, White Sugar illuminates the tale of those immigrants, their exploitation by way of the sugarcane businesses, and the recommendations they used to struggle again.

Philip A. Howard lines the socioeconomic and political situations in Haiti and Jamaica that led males to go away their homelands to chop, load, and haul sugarcane in Cuba. as soon as there, the sector employees, or braceros, have been topic to marginalization or even violence from the sugar businesses, which used buildings of race, ethnicity, colour, and sophistication to subjugate those workers. Howard argues that braceros drew on their cultural identities-from techniques of domestic and relations to religious worldviews-to interpret and contest their reviews in Cuba. in addition they fought opposed to their exploitation in additional overt methods. As exertions stipulations worsened in keeping with falling sugar costs, the rules of anarcho-syndicalism converged with the Pan-African philosophy of Marcus Garvey to foster the evolution of a protest tradition between black Caribbean workers. via the mid-1920s, this id inspired many braceros to take part in moves that sought to enhance wages in addition to residing and dealing stipulations.

The first full-length exploration of Haitian and Jamaican staff within the Cuban sugarcane undefined, Black hard work, White Sugar examines the industry's abuse of hundreds of thousands of black Caribbean immigrants, and the braceros' answering fight for energy and self-definition.