No More Cousin Toms!

...The union leaders do not under stand that it is because they have committed themselves for so long on paper to the Negro cause that Negroes now demand the unions live up to their claims...

...Indignantly, Meany points to the changes made under his leadership: the drop in the number of unions which openly exclude Negroes...

...today, the Negro intellectual has come back, full circle, to where he started: once again he is a black man first who may happen also to be a writer, a painter, or a homosexual...

...So, too, the excuse given by some industrial unions for organizing either segregated locals in the South or not resisting discriminatory hiring and promotion prac tices is that to do otherwise is to run a great risk of losing the entire organizational battle...

...a bitterness shared by many other labor leaders who believe that they are being at tacked solely for demagogic purposes...

...but at the 1959 convention Meany instead of hearing him out and ignoring what he had to say, as had been the custom for 25 years, hit back from the convention platform...

...the need for the NAACP to put itself forward as a fighting organization lest it suffer a loss of prestige within the Negro community, and also Hill's own changing conception of the role played by the trade unions in modern society...

...Inside the AFL-CIO, A. Philip Randolph continued raising the issue of discrimination as he had for 25 years...

...The quarrel between the AFL-CIO and the NAACP entered its third and nastiest phase when the NAACP filed a lawsuit against one union and decertification proceedings with the Na tional Labor Relations Board against three others, including a local of the steel workers...

...But primarily the fight has occurred because of a basic difference about what the tempo should be for eliminating discrimination in the unions...

...The truth about discrimination inside the AFL-CIO lies someplace between what Hill says and what the Federation's defenders claim...

...Pressure began to be substituted for patience, and the second phase began as the NAACP opened its public attacks upon the AFL-CIO...

...The provocation for expulsion has to be great before any union will voluntarily give up a bloc of members and, clearly, discrimination against Negroes seems not to be enough to warrant such action even in the ILWU...

...How True Is True...

...And oriented American Federation of Lathough he disapproved of excluding bor and the AFL-CIO, still dominatNegroes from unions, he believed that ed by old AFL traditions...

...some, especially in the South, which maintain separate seniority lists...

...Following the convention, Randolph organized the Negro-American Labor Council on a national basis, and in Detroit, Negro members of the UAW, including a number of staff personnel, set up what constituted a Negro caucus in that area...

...It could be another extremely difficult one, too, for the success of the Negro in gaining power and status inside the unions will then depend on how quickly competent Negro leaders develop...

...Like Gompers, Meany be eration included the right to carry lieves he is powerless to expel unions out such policies...

...er, maintained that he was opposed An embarrassingly obvious parallel to racial discrimination by unions, but exists between Gompers and George accepted segregation as a necessary Meany...

...Hill may enjoy the role he plays, but he must still be given credit for having been willing to engage in a very unpopular but very important battle...

...if the colored man continues to lend himself to the work of tearing down what the white man has built up, a race hatred far worse than any ever known will result...

...The hard line adopted by the NAACP W had other origins as well...

...Meany believes he cannot expel about organizations which in conven-discriminatory unions without wreck ing the AFL-CIO...

...After the merger of the AFL and CIO in 1955, there was organizational cooperation at the top: convention speakers were exchanged and mutual resolutions of support passed...

...Many union leaders quite honestly feel hurt and indignant that the Negroes fail to appreciate what, in the face of great difficulties, has been done for them by the unions...

...But the NAACP's attitude changed by 1959, as unemployment among Negroes increased 2 1/4 times faster than among white workers, as little progress was made in opening apprenticeship programs to Negroes, as segregated locals still continued, and as several international unions were accepted into the Federation despite "whites only" clauses in their constitutions...

...This step, taken "as a last resort," according to Hill, "when we found that negotiations brought no significant change," brought the relationship between the AFL-CIO and NAACP to a complete rupture...

...Then, goaded by the which still practice discrimination actions of Negroes who became strike-within the AFL-CIO—despite his forbreakers because only in that way mal authority to do so...

...This organization, whose officers are also union officials, visualizes its role as working within the framework of the Federation rather than attacking it from the outside and so endangering access to the unions...

...Hill, after all, is white and outside the unions, while A. Philip Randolph is growing old...

...So it sticks in their craws that they, the friends of the Negro, sometimes the only friends of the Negro, should now come under such severe criticism from the Negroes...

...that pan-Africanism has moved from the gin mills of Greenwich Village to the auditoriums of Oakland, California...

...But the whole truth is that unless unions are organized initially on a non-discriminatory basis and unless they continue to operate on a non-discriminatory basis, they are forced to carry the burden of segregation from then on...

...At some point in the near or, at least, not too far distant future, the pressure of the NAACP upon the AFLCIO will ease up and then the next phase in the complicated history of the Negro in unions will begin...

...Three phases have characterized reIations between the NAACP and the AFL-CIO...

...And most union leaders have proved incapable of understanding that it is precisely at the moment when unions relax their racial bars, indeed precisely because the bars have been lowered, that they are subject to even more intense pressure from Negroes...

...The same man, Sam-tion resolutions promised them the uel Gompers, wrote all three of those future while depriving them of jobs statements...

...and still more which block the entrance of Negroes into apprenticeship programs...

...In some unions, the relationship of the locals to the central headquarters almost duplicates the autonomy of the international unions in the AFL-CIO...

...But now this Cousin Tom has become a symbol not only of white paternalism but of Negro shame, and there are great pressures in the Negro community to open up the union hierarchy to Negroes...

...Randolph was left standing alone, figuratively and literally, on the convention floor, while the liberal labor leaders were either absent from the platform or apologetically silent during and after the Meany tirade...

...And just as Gompers bitterly accused Negroes of "tearing down what the white man has built up," Meany loses his temper when the AFL-CIO is attacked by Negroes today...

...that the Negroes no longer are prepared to be "patient...

...The leadership of the United Automobile Workers, with more Negro staff members than any other union in the country, cracks down hard on locals which attempt either to maintain separate seniority lists or separate facilities, but until its last convention has resisted the pres sures to add a Negro to the Reuther slate of officers...

...Between these two poles, a very wide range of union practices exists, dependent upon the technical character of the industry, its social composition, the history of the union, the traditions of the trade and the amount of autonomy granted the locals by the international...

...For a long time, when they had nothing else, Negroes had to be content publicly, no matter how they mocked at them privately, with these token Negroes, these if not "Uncle" then "Cousin Toms" who possessed no real power in the unions because their status was dependent on white leaders...

...During this period, the NAACP was content to operate inside the framework of the Federation and to process the complaints it received through the civil rights department established by the merger agreement...

...And when Hill, in his dual capacity of NAACP official and consultant to a Congressional committee headed by Adam Clayton Powell, issued a blast at the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, what had been a parochial squabble erupted into a national issue...

...there is always the fear that, under certain stresses, the liberal will turn white...

...Now, there are differences between the condition of the AFL under Gompers and that of the AFL-CIO under Meany: while many AFL unions openly and formally excluded Negroes, only one in the AFL-CIO still has a constitutional bar against Negroes...

...The NAACP report received widespread press coverage and suddenly the AFL-CIO found itself very much on the defensive...

...It's possible that the war between these two groups will now taper off somewhat...

...But in their personal and organizational relationships with liberal union leaders, it is very rarely that the Negro has any degree of certainty about the white man's behavior...

...Who in hell appointed you the spokesman of the Negro people...

...There is a partial truth to this argument, too, for unions have lost bargaining elections in the South because the company raised the race issue...

...And Bridges' argument is a powerful one when the alternatives seem to be either reluctantly allowing the local union to continue its discriminatory practices or expelling it...

...If Hill does have a tendency, as is claimed, to fire off charges without checking into them too thoroughly, nevertheless he is right about the substance of the situation and about the mood prevailing inside the AFL-CIO...

...his violent reactions to the attacks of the NAACP are shared by many other union leaders, especially men like David Dubinsky, long active in liberal causes...

...the bitterness between the AFL-CIO and the Negroes cut deeper and deeper, aggravated by inflammatory articles in the Negro press...

...The NAACP continued its attacks against the AFL-CIO, filing complaints against companies and unions with the President's Committee on Equal Employment Opportunities...

...Recognition of this fact has been one of the reasons impelling the NAACP, through its labor secretary, Herbert Hill, to mount the bitter campaign against the AFL-CIO which has ruptured relationships between the two organizations in the past few years...

...It is a hard fact that unions have very little area for compromise with principle: only decisive action, not time, eliminates discrimination in unions...

...Confronted with this charge, Harry Bridges is forced, Meany-like, to fall back on the high degree of autonomy given the ILWU locals as a justification for the failure of the international to act...

...to the union of the trade belongs absolute jurisdiction on all matters connected with the trade...

...Union leaders do not understand that today it is a mark of status for Negro students to have served jail sentences for participating in the sit-in movements...

...In this sense Meany is not only a symbol of the AFL-CIO...

...Negroes, for example, are so numerous in some large locals of the International Longshoremen and Warehousemen's Union that they constitute a major political force, but even in this "progressive" union at least one local excludes Negroes...

...It was at this same convention that Meany defended, on the basis of autonomy, the right of unions to set up separate locals of Negroes and whites if the members wanted them...

...This lack of leadership represents a major problem, for when Cousin Tom leaves, someone must take his place...

...But most union leaders understand very little of the change in tempo within the Negro world...

...It is the indignation of the union leaders, the hurt tone that has now grown into impatience, which reveals a great deal about the distance between the unions (read liberals, too) and the Negroes...

...But however Hill's private emotions may have adversely affected the way in which he conducted the battle, there is no doubt whatsoever that his self-conscious and planned attacks upon the AFL-CIO have forced the Federation into a more self-conscious, planned and rapid attempt to eliminate discrimination...

...Caucasian civilization will serve notice that its uplifting process is not to be interfered with in any way...

...There is something else, too, that the union leaders fail to comprehend: that the attitude of articulate Negroes toward union leaders in their roles as white liberals is a special one, different from that held by Negroes toward the rest of the white community...

...Finally, in Janu ary, 1961, the NAACP issued a report, "Racism Within Organized Labor," stating that the AFL-CIO Executive Council had made no systematic or coordinated effort to eliminate racism within local unions, especially in most building and construction trades and the railway industries but in other skilled crafts as well...

...What other institution in the country has done as much, voluntarily, for the Negro as the unions...

...Union leaders are discovering it is true that if you give minority groups a finger, they want a hand— as indeed they should...

...At the other end of the spectrum, there are still unions in which Negroes are denied membership, much less office...

...The Packinghouse Workers, incidentally, is probably the only one with a mixed membership that has many elected high officials who are Negroes...

...Charles Zimmerman, an ILGWU vicepresident, resigned from the board of the NAACP's legal and financial fund, George Meany issued a ukase cutting off the NAACP from any more financial help, and even Randolph disassociated himself publicly from the NAACP action...

...In both cases the justification is the same: discrimina tion is better fought if the guilty un ions remain in the Federation than if they are either refused admittance or expelled...

...But there are marked differen ces in how the union leaders see the problem and what steps they take to cope with it...

...Changing Direction The change in the level of aspiration for the Negroes in unions is most marked in the growing rejection by Negroes of the token Negro on the staff, the black man to whose office are directed the overseas visitors...

...Today, no Negro leader can survive without adopting a posture of action against the white world...

...Gompers could they get jobs normally control-thought that the price of survival for led by the unions, Gompers would the young Federation was acceptance angrily lash out at them, failing to of unions discriminating against Negunderstand how deeply Negroes felt roes...

...At the moment no major figure has appeared capable of taking their places as articulate voices of Negroes in the unions...

...Gompers, the AFL's found-in the present...

...the establishment of a civil rights committee by the AFL-CIO and his own efforts to break down discriminatory practices, including even an offer personally to recruit non-union Negro electricians for a construction job in Washington if the electrical workers local there continued to ban qualified Negroes...

...even though discrimination is still preval ent in unions, it is slowly easing under outside pressures...

...Continual charges have been made by the AFL-CIO and its defenders that the NAACP, through Hill, has grossly exaggerated the extent of union discrimination...

...Like Gomthe "absolute jurisdiction" of the au-pers, Meany says he is opposed to distonomous unions affiliated to the Fed-crimination...

...The NAACP will ease up the stridency of its charges in the months to come and the Federation may cease demanding Hill's resignation from the NAACP staff as the price of continued cooperation...

...Randolph, for many years the sole Negro spokesman in the AFL, had protested the failure of the AFL-CIO executive council to take decisive action against international unions which, he said, were still discriminating against Negroes despite the merger agreement prohibiting such discrimination...

...No union is completely free of these tensions, although the United Pack inghouse Workers is uniquely better in this respect than any other organi zation...

...When Negroes deal with open Southern segregationists, the rules of behavior for both groups are well established, even if detested...

...ask the union leaders, pointing to their lobbying for civil rights legislation in Congress, their support of the Supreme Court decision on school segregation, their cooperation with FEP committees, their resolutions of praise for the NAACP, and their financial aid to the Negro cause...

...The AFL-CIO leaders attacked the report as false and even censured Randolph when he issued a statement supporting it...

...But the over-all pattern is closer to Hill's description than to that put forth by the Federation...

...between the craft unioncondition for organizing workers...

...others with segregated locals...

...Once again, no member of the Federation executive council voted for Randolph's position...

...Hill is irresponsible and a demagogue, who incidentally stirs up anti-Semitism, claims the Jewish Labor Committee...

...It is this failure to understand the dynamics of protest that has exacerbated the current dispute with the NAACP...

...The Choice of Moment But it is in the attacks he has made against the NAACP and its labor secretary, Herbert Hill, that Meany has vented his full bitterness...

...Meany shouted in 1959 at A. Philip Randolph, president of the Sleeping Car Porters Union...