Labor Allen became an early activist and organizer in the labor movement. At age 17, he joined the
American Federation of Musicians Local 362 and the
Communist Party, and soon was elected as a delegate to the Huntington Central Labor Union,
AFL. He subsequently worked as a coal miner in West Virginia as a member of the
United Mine Workers, serving as an organizer and president of one Local and later member of another. He also co-developed a trade union organizing program for the Marion County, West Virginia Industrial Union Council,
CIO. for all classes of whites, examining the relation of the working class to white supremacy. He explored this in "White Blindspot" and
Can White Workers Radicals Be Radicalized? (1967, 1967), co-authored with
Noel Ignatiev. After beginning his research on "white skin privilege" in 1965, Allen worked for the next decade to develop more research and writing on this topic. He published
Class Struggle and the Origin of Racial Slavery: The Invention of the White Race (1975). During this time, he also taught as an adjunct history instructor for one semester at Essex County Community College in
Newark, New Jersey. He was described by historian
Jeffrey B. Perry as working "throughout his entire adult life ... for the emancipation of the working class and for socialism." The concept of "race" was also being overturned by work in anthropology, genetics, biology, history and other disciplines. By 1997, historian
George M. Fredrickson of
Stanford University wrote that "the proposition that race is 'a social and cultural construction,' has become an academic cliché," but Allen was not satisfied with that proposition and he emphasized that "the 'white race' must be understood, not simply as a social construct (rather than a genetic phenomenon), but as a ruling class social control formation." == Works ==