C. W. Rice Family & Negro Labor News Collection

C. W. Rice was born into a farming family in Tennessee in 1897. When he was seventeen, he visited an aunt in Texas and the state remained his home for the rest of his life. In 1917, after a brief stint at Samuel Houston College in Austin, Mr. Rice became a field agent for the Texas Department of Agriculture and quickly established over 400 local orgaizations for Black farmers around the state. Two years later, in 1919, he accepted a job with the Texas Department of Labor where he gained additional familiarity with employment patterns and problems. These remained his life-long concerns. In 1925, Mr. Rice was a founder and first vice-president of the Texas Negro Business & Working Man's Association. He later became president of the organization and presided over its headquarters in Houston. Several years later, in 1931, he began the Negro Labor News, a weekly newspaper which he continued to publish in Houston for over three decades.

Mr. Rice, a devotee of Booker T. Washington, received early and continued support from conservative white businessmen and politicians. Well-to-do whites provided most of the operating money for the Texas Negro Business & Working Man's Association as well as the Negro Labor News. These whites found Mr. Rice's views congenial. Rice, for example, viewed challenges to the racial and the class status quo with suspicion. He believed that most labor unions were racist and radical. He also thought that there was a strong communist influence in the civil rights movement, both locally and nationally. While some Black Houstonians agreed wholeheartedly with Rice, many others did not and vigorously opposed him. C. W. Rice was as controversial as much of the news he wrote about.