Read the excerpt from "finding unity in the alabama coal mines.” the southern state of alabama was a stronghold for jim crow practices. nevertheless, the umwa was able to bridge the racial divide in that state, forming a powerful interracial labor union fifty years before the civil rights movement of the 1950s and ’60s would make racial integration the rule of the land. in the context of alabama in the 1900s, the umwa was culturally and historically significant because it