Interviewer(s): A. Gardner. New Iberia, LA

Affiliation: University of Arizona

Adam Welcome was referred by Susan Lissard. I met with Adam at his home outside New Iberia. Adam is the first black oilfield worker I interviewed, and he provided a glimpse of the race relations implicit in the industrial labor force in the South. At the same time, his work for the Exxon Employee Federation helped illuminate some of the strategies the energy companies sought to avoid outright unionization. This was an interesting, albeit short, interview all around.

Adam Welcome grew up in New Iberia and worked as a schoolteacher in the 1960