Workers, Black and White, In Mississippi

...Union members tell gleefully of a town that resisted over many years but finally had its plants organized, and this year had Ramsay speaking to the Rotary Club...

...Perhaps soon, in some superficial aspects, the skews in the Mississippi perspective will disappear...

...Ramsay cites Litton as the example par excellence of the evils of absentee, "conglomerate" ownership, and of subsidy of private industry...

...This office works with new employees, in cooperation with Litton and the Mississippi Employment Service...

...Before, black and white couldn't get together...

...As early as 1966 he was saying in his speeches: Twenty-six counties in Mississippi have a Negro population majority...

...Since then he has had white support in developing a 300-home cooperative housing project which bears his name and that of singer Leontyne Price...

...You just hire those blacks and let them get out with those peckerwoods in the plant, and it won't be a week before they're matching for nickels and wrestling around with each other"—and sure enough, he said, that's the way it was...

...The same decision had been made, on recommendation of the screening committee, in regard to the governor's race...

...Violence done to organizers, a commonplace in the 'S0s and '60s—beatings, shootings, fire-bombings, police harassment, the whole arsenal used against civil rights workers— these have abated...

...Ramsay's role in the strike was limited to advice-giving...

...Young Mississippians, black and white, he said, tend to go after the quick money of unskilled jobs and to shy away from schools...

...Recruitment for apprentices began in March...

...And if, in a national or in some ways Southern perspective, this makes him old-fashioned and conservative, then the perspective needs to be examined...

...But I sure know how it is to be treated like a nigger by management...

...This compared with a national average of 24.8 percent...

...It has to be more than paying dues...

...Sutton sees change since he left for New York, but won't concede the millennium...

...When he talks about his work in Pascagoula, it is not in terms of black and white, but the total community...

...Now, if my granddaddy was alive and a candidate, I would say the same thing about him...

...I walked in there, and sure enough—the thing we are putting an end to—the whites were all sitting on one side at the meeting, and the blacks on the other...

...I'll get even with you Monday...

...One of the young white apprentice-candidates I met, a native Mississippian, no longer is under the sway of the upbringing he got in the old racist pattern...

...What he has done and does now transcends race...

...But in 1970 it called on him in this new difficulty, and the locals are beginning to drift back into the Council...

...The limitation on corporate holdings had been repealed in 1924...

...Plans for a union housing project, which would, in effect, be a new town in Pascagoula to take care of the drastic housing shortage caused by the shipyard expansion...

...I knew some of our members were involved," he said...

...In the same way, Ramsay's difficulties with elements of black leadership have left him open to attack as being old-fashioned...

...Shorty, who speaks and looks like a Mississippian, grew up in Cincinnati...

...Establishment of a human relations committee in the Metal Trades Council (the first in Mississippi) to handle racial problems...

...Long about 2:30, I begun to see them little red monkeys in front of my eyes...

...He recalled a recent talk he had given to a carpenters' union on strike in a small town...

...In the national and even some of the Southern perspective, this might be described in scornful tones as pitting a set of Uncle Toms against a set of militants...

...The initial response to the apprenticeship program has not been as strong among black and white young people as might be expected...

...Only North Carolina (7.5 percent) and South Carolina (8.6 percent) were below Mississippi among the Southern states...

...In those years he carried a shotgun in his car, warned threateners he would take some of them with him, and told local unions they had better decide whether they wanted to be represented by the Klan or the AFL-CIO...

...Ramsay's leadership has to be credited as the main reason, and another of those tilted perspectives becomes apparent about Mississippi and Southern labor in the fact that Ramsay is the only state president the Mississippi AFL—CIO has ever had...

...Ramsay inveighs against the whole system, urging the need for sophisticated unionization...

...A nigger was a low-rated person...

...He is especially pleased that in the past five years much of the new organization has been in the northern part of the state— 74 the seat of past resistance and repression...

...Industry so lured is almost always antiunion, often running away from a union shop in anWORKERS, WHITE & BLACK, IN MISSISSIPPI other state...

...And he laughed and said, "I'd like to see you try...

...I asked Claude Ramsay, the rough-hewn president of the Mississippi AFL—CIO, himself one of those who came from a Mississippi farm into the labor force and movement (by way of a paper mill in Pascagoula...

...The old-line union members in Pascagoula have come to despise Litton with more than ordinary antimanagement spleen...

...Ramsay relishes telling how agricultural interests in the state discouraged the rise of industry in 1910 with passage of a law forbidding any corporation to own more than $1 million in assets, and how, when Governor Hugh White in 1936 made the necessary turn to `Balance Agriculture With Industry" (the BAWI program), it was in terms of allowing government agencies to float bond issues to build plants for private industry...

...Why not land reform...

...In its inner liberal and black strugglings Mississippi, more than any other Southern state, is a close community, in many ways like an extended small town...

...The 236 representatives were to make endorsements for the year's political contests in the state...

...But more sophisticated antiunion tactics continue, including efforts under the righttowork law to discourage blacks from joining unions—a new version of the old divisive strategy...

...This suggested some of the deeper difficulties, still, of the union movement with Mississippi's racial struggles, and the personal dilemma faced by Ramsay...

...Attempting to win more friends in the legislature is only part of the union's political strategy...

...If they met with us, they wanted to make sure it was in a secluded area in the woods or in somebody's cow barn...

...Not on your life," the man replied...

...Its political strategy demonstrates the Mississippi union movement's potential...

...Like businessmen themselves, Southern labor leaders, by the nature of what they do, cannot face the question of whether industry is really a desirable goal...

...A worker whose farm home sits between two paper mills and catches the wind from one if not both may have his doubts...

...Another part is the effort to elect a House Speaker who is a friend of labor, because in many ways (partly because of the state's antiquated constitution) he has more power than the governor...

...Sutton dresses and speaks as though he might always have dwelt in Harlem...

...In all of this, he has stressed support of Negro rights on moral and constitutional grounds, but with appeals to the self-interest of whites as well...

...Not a few of the nonorganized were black workers who were told the company's own race-relations committee could represent their interests better than local unions with a racist background...

...Ironically, the most dramatic and most publicized black-and-white organizational effort the South has yet seen, a "strike" of pulpwood cutters in Mississippi and Alabama this fall, was not an AFL-CIO undertaking...

...76 Bob Sutton, the man on loan from the Harlem office, said the only difference he could see between such work in the Northern ghetto and among the black youth of Mississippi is the necessity to indoctrinate the latter more in the meaning of unions...

...Perhaps that's the way the man wants to believe it turned out to be...

...In an industrialized Northern state, he would be considered conservative...

...But I told my friend here [gesturing to a black officer in his local] I might not know what it is to be black...

...Raised on a farm and conditioned in the graces and disgraces of early twentieth-century white Southern ruralism, he has been buffeted during the past decade between the racist dogma of official Mississippi and the sane racial policies of his union...

...Speaking of these difficulties, Ramsay expressed hope that a new black local leadership will emerge from such organizations as the Voters' League...

...We fought each other for a long time, with the company egging us on...

...The state also accommodated the plant with highway construction, and the federal government has done its part for Litton (despite some feeble liberal protest) with river dredging and more than $2 billion in defense contracts...

...whether absentee balloting should be available to all and not just to special groups such as servicemen...

...She voted one way, he the other, and when he sat down, she said in the same bantering tone she would have used to a white man: "You just wait...

...It turns out he grew up in nearby Gulfport...

...Alabama, with aero-space and steel, had the highest percentage in the South, 20.1...

...Litton did expand—building a highly automated assembly-line shipyard (called the "West Bank") on the Pascagoula River, across from the old yard...

...Ramsay drew on resources of the International unions to develop a model program for the plant...

...Similarly, the union has established a relationship with a local Black Coalition and other civil rights organizations...

...Ramsay's stand on race is an integral part of his goals for the labor movement in Mississippi...

...But all that Ramsay has done, whether correct or not in specific situations, has been to stay consistent with his primary values--constitutional rights in regard to race relations, which to him means integration, and the rights of labor in economic and political matters (which in a few instances has pitted him against some blacks who would be willing to sacrifice organized labor's economic advantages to prevent it from being an influence on masses of black workers...

...He got to know a lot of "spades" when he was a racing-car driver and during his time in a Mississippi small-city "head-scene...

...WORKERS, WHITE & BLACK, IN MISSISSIPPI 77...

...whether the state maximum weekly unemployment benefit might not be increased from $49...

...In the face of such facts, Ramsay extolls the state's real advantages for industry (natural and human resources) as boosterishly as any industrial council spokesman...

...At the COPE meeting, it was reported that one candidate for lieutenant governor, Cliff Finch, had said he would appreciate labor support but preferred not to have an open endorsement...

...The State Council was not formed until 1959, with Ramsay working after-hours to get it organized...

...whether the state should enact, since it does not have it, a compulsory school attendance law...

...But now we are—some of us—fighting together...

...I decided at the outset," he said, "we were going to put the labor movement on the right side of crucial issues...

...and British flags, and "Visit Your AFL—CIO Union Barber" and "Keep America Beautiful, Get a Haircut...

...The driver, a white man, stretched out his hand, then saw that it was a black hand extended to help him, and refused...

...Most are low-pay...

...Only North Carolina, with its union-busting textile plants, is a tougher state to organize...

...Mississippi's racial antagonisms are so deeprooted and the weight of the past so much against blacks that it is no more reasonable to expect the millennium there than in the rest of the South—or the rest of America...

...What about all this talk about ethnics in the labor movement...

...none of the black men or women had an Afro...

...In Mississippi this could mean the difference between those blacks who view all the Mississippi AFLCIO has done in the racial struggle as valuable, and those who see it as meaningless...

...The young people want to talk about what the union can do for them...

...Ramsay's leadership has centered on such matters as trying to end in Mississippi the South's old story of separation of black and white...

...Department of Labor manpower grants, with cooperation of the AFL-CIO Human Resources Development Institute and the Joint Apprenticeship Program of the Workers Defense League—A...

...Neither fulfills the expectations one might have of labor, of the working class—or for that matter, of the Mississippi white he is...

...But if Ramsay's value system continues to prevail in the Mississippi labor movement (and the same might be said for most of the rest of Southern labor), it will be more capable of coping than most of American labor with the kind of complicated problems that will come with success and largeness and power...

...Philip Randolph Educational Fund...

...Other dimensions are suggested by the example of Pascagoula...

...He might have added that in dealing with blacks just as he does with whites, Ramsay treats them with ultimate respect—as worthy adversaries...

...He likes to tell of dramatic moments of change within the unions, like the time after the murderous riot following the admission of James Meredith to the University of Mississippi, when a bunch of Pascagoula men organized what amounted to a Klan— burning crosses, shooting into the newspaper editor's home, and the like...

...The seating was admirably intermingled...

...whether 18-year-olds should be allowed to vote—and whether, in the year 1971, Mississippi might not find it desirable to establish (not now having one) a state department of labor...

...The big, middle-aged man, wearing his hard hat and heavy boots, breathes a long sigh as he pours himself a cup of coffee in the union hall (with such signs on the wall as "SST—Ours or Theirs...

...He has a black secretary and two white field workers, and a black expert in recruiting and tutoring who is on loan from the Harlem Joint Apprenticeship office to help get things organized...

...Many of the white men had crew cuts, none long hair or a beard...

...Ramsay's dilemma revolved around the black candidacy of Charles Evers for governor...

...All have come into the labor force less by choice than by the compulsions of cultural and economic change...

...The large number of new workers who did not join the union presented another serious threat to the Metal Trades Council...

...And he knew that this principle was more important than immediate practical gain for the union...

...He wasn't talking, as so many liberals and labor people, about black people per se when he insisted on adherence to the Constitution as the guiding principle...

...Allen Johnson, a labor supporter and civil rights leader (now president of the Voters' League), was bombed...

...Ramsay is no more likely to capitulate to them on the basis of color than he was to whites...

...There, in 1965, the state of Mississippi put $130 million worth of BAWI PAT WATTERS bonded indebtedness into expanding the shipyard Litton Industries had acquired from Ingalls, a local firm...

...Blacks and whites, both, have been "reeducated" by recent union and civil-rights history in Mississippi, he says...

...If such a plant is finally organized, owners simply pull out, as like as not to another town eager to float a bond issue to build a new plant...

...If one-ninetieth of what workers at the plant casually accuse management of in wasteful, ignorant, corrupt practices should prove true, Litton would be a national scandal to make Lockheed look respectable...

...Nor are all the locals affiliated with the State Council...

...it can be expected that most of his recruits will be so, too, before he is done with them...

...To bring the two together on mutual economic interests has been from the beginning a fundamental goal for Southern labor, and Mississippi labor has been a leader in the South in seeking that goal...

...Anybody, black or white, who thinks otherwise is either mistaken or out to exploit people...

...He tells how politicians, by making race the paramount issue, have failed to confront these crucial problems...

...They have both learned they can't move by themselves...

...It's the greatest challenge I've ever had...

...Manufacturing still employs only 120,000 of the state's more than 2 million people...

...The work force is being expanded from 5,000 to 20,000...

...He started in the union movement in Memphis "when the CIO was born, when they opened up the unions for black people and said, `Come all ye ....' " He knew what it was to be "run out and shot at" during the civil rights movement...

...From the start, he has presented his analysis to the membership in plain, uncompromising language...

...A bunch of Choctaw Indians...

...The separation of the two yards was used by the company as an excuse for trying to avoid seniority obligations under the contract and, more important to the unions, to try to blur jurisdictional distinctions— a complicated wrangle that wound up before the National Labor Relations Board...

...Ira B. Harkey, Jr., printed his speech as an editorial on the front page of the Pascagoula Chronicle and, sure enough, the trouble quieted down...

...But Shorty is confident that careful screening is necessary and diligent seeking (in the swimming holes, beer joints, churches, wherever young people go) will pay off...

...Out in the shipyard in Pascagoula, he is working under a merciless sun in murky air...

...Because of that episode, and an early attempt by Ramsay (later successfully pursued by other groups) to force Federal Communications Commission action against Jackson TV station WLBT for racist practices, and because of the hysterical general violence of whites during the 1964 Freedom Summer when hundreds of civil rights volunteers worked in the state, Ramsay has been a frequent target of abuse...

...It took me some time," he said, "to realize that not all blacks are sympathetic with labor, with our economic interest...

...Bob Thomas, the black man in charge of the Pascagoula Human Resources Development Institute, has his own perspective...

...There still is the grave lack of fuller industrialization in Mississippi...

...The strikers, independent contractors, are not technically considered hired labor...

...Shorty thinks all the trouble is over...

...Bob Thomas, a black veteran of the Mississippi labor and civil rights movements, is in charge of the Joint Apprenticeship Program office...

...The best of this tilted racial perspective was expressed by another worker at Pascagoula, a younger man raised in northern Mississippi (where racism is stronger than down on the Gulf Coast) : White against black is just not as strong in the state as it used to be...

...A mark of resistance to organization: according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, 13.8 percent of nonagricultural employees in Mississippi belonged to unions in 1968...

...One of the white recruiters is B. M. (Shorty) Carnell, a union man since 1944 and a machinist in the shipyard since 1958...

...Against all this, Ramsay points to organization results—a doubling of union membership in the 12 years of the State Council...

...Litton, at an unusual White House conference held in January 1971 (in part because of liberal congressional criticism of the Litton situation), was ready to accept Ramsay's program because its own employment program was encountering a dismayingly high turnover...

...And blacks can see that whites are getting the same old shaft blacks get...

...Part of their perspective is suggested by the list of questions each candidate had been asked by a COPE committee—whether public employees have a right to collective bargaining...

...Personalities figure large and personal relationships are incredibly complicated...

...In one way or another, this had hurt his image with the most powerful of the black organizations, the NAACP, the Freedom Democratic party, and the Delta Ministry...

...He knows and loves shipbuilding, knows all the union and management ropes, and has an inexhaustible fount of contacts...

...whether workmen's compensation (among the least advantageous in the na tion) should be increased...

...Ethnics, hell...

...No one demurred...

...If the housing program goes through, recruitment can become statewide—including the Delta of Mississippi, which exports to Northern and Southern cities virtually all of its black and much of the white youth...

...And it's the greatest opportunity that community has ever had...

...In Mississippi the appearance of things is often deceptive...

...Ramsay pointed out that when discussion of the project first got started, he casually told the Pascagoula union people that he assumed they realized such a building program and such housing would have to be integrated...

...The Metal Trades Council had been one of those to withdraw 11 of its unions (all but the office workers) from the State Council in criticism of Ramsay's racial policies—some time after it had taken his advice about the Klan...

...In 1967, the Laurel home of the Rev...

...I've never seen anything like it...

...A prim and proper-speaking middle-aged white woman and an older black man were seated side-by-side at a table...

...In 1960, the law on bonded indebtedness was amended to allow equipping as well as building plants...

...He told the older man he was going to put the order on the bulletin board and asked him to organize a protest over it...

...The personnel manager got the order to hire blacks and was afraid to...

...He has just come oft the shift in the shipyard, and in some sense he is typical of the American labor force, just as in some way his union is typical of the American labor movement in the beginning of the 1970s...

...He was incensed, as were many Mississippi hard-core white liberals, over Evers's urging black voters to support segregationist Jim Swan in the primaries on 72 the dubious theory that he would be easier than the other white candidates to beat in a two-man general election race...

...But there had been bad blood between Ramsay and Evers for some time (though Ramsay claims an AFL-CIO voter registration drive had been essential to Evers's election as mayor of Fayette), and this came to the surface during the gubernatorial race...

...In private, Ramsay accused Evers of being of the monied interests...

...Finch supporters got up in consternation to say that they had advised him it might be better not to have a public endorsement...

...Under the 45 percent black hiring policy, the program offers to thousands of blacks in the area opportunity superior to any previously available, and probably unsurpassed in the South...

...A nonprofit corporation took out an option on 1,000 acres of land and sought federal funding to build houses, which the union would WORKERS, WHITE & BLACK, IN MISSISSIPPI 75 erect as part of a training program for the building trades...

...Race, politics, and economics—these, as across America, are the concerns of his union...

...The vote was, finally, to endorse none of the candidates for lieutenant governor...

...We ain't got nothing but black and white— and a few Indians and a couple of dozen Chinese families up and down the Delta...

...how taxes might be increased (the sales tax in this lowest per-capita–income state now stands at 5 percent...

...whether state employees should be put on civil service...

...Then Ramsay was still living in Pascagoula, and he went to the Metal Trades Council and warned that they were going to lose the shipyard if this kind of thing didn't stop—because of the yard's dependence on government contracts...

...Many blacks, Henry said, feel that Ramsay wants to be the white voice for the black community—something not now, if it ever was, acceptable to blacks...

...But Henry himself didn't agree—and felt the thing about Ramsay that alienated some blacks was just his natural way, his loud and boisterous argumentative manner, for example, of the kind that often is second nature to a man who has fought his way up in labor...

...He was talking about the rights of individuals—all people...

...Where he is makes a difference—most of all as regards race...

...whether teacher salaries (among the lowest in the nation) should be increased...

...Since Ramsay became state president in 1959, he has been a spokesman for racial equality within the union movement and for racial and economic reform in Mississippi society...

...For Ramsay and many of his counterparts in the Southern labor movement have, indeed, been real radicals within a truly conservative society...

...The majority of the members of the Mississippi AFL—CIO (perhaps 90 percent of all who are over 40) come from a similar background— though the conditioning of the black members has been different...

...So far as I am concerned, we have had it with that kindof candidate...

...Describing how conservative most of white Mississippi still is, a young International union representative said, "Why, they think Ramsay is a wild-eyed radical...

...Though it has grown considerably in recent years, union membership remains around 85,000, by Ramsay's estimate, out of a total population of 2,216,912...

...The delegates sat at long tables in a narrow, badly ventilated room...

...It is doubtful that Ramsay could have delivered the white labor vote for Evers even if he had wanted to...

...Beat up and told to get out of town not too long ago, one organizer went to the county sheriff and was told laconically that he probably had better follow his assailants' advice...

...To a large degree our legislative program is dependent upon our ability to form a political alliance with these people...

...PAT WATTERS A man in his fifties who works in a unionized paper plant tells how the thing worked out there...

...He has nothing against "spades," he says, as long as they respect his right to be an individual, too...

...But where he is puts these concerns in a tilted perspective...

...In the past, his rapport with such leaders and his influence on the increasingly strong black vote had been one of the assets (like the labor vote itself) on which the labor movement depended...

...An organizing campaign built union membership up to 70 percent, and the contract was reopened for ongoing negotiations on the wage scales...

...Of such talk, point and counterpoint, is being built the real racial understanding of the future—in Mississippi and all over the South —outside the "liberal" and de rigueur radical bastions, among the people of both races who have suffered most from racism...

...More impressive was that it remained so when the delegates went to lunch...

...The general program now is in effect...

...This attitude went strongly against him in the screening committee and resulted in its approval of his opponent, William F. Winter (who later won WORKERS, WHITE & BLACK, IN MISSISSIPPI in the November 1971 election...

...Setting up a recruiting and training office with U.S...

...Aaron Henry, one of the most powerful black leaders, acknowledged some of Ramsay's difficulties, but said Ramsay still had considerable rapport with black leadership in such matters as voter registration...

...He recites the dismal statistics of Mississippi's low social and economic standing (nearly always below the other Southern states, which means 50th in the nation) in per capita income, education, health care—all the indices...

...His disinclination to support Evers was one of several recent episodes that lost him prestige and support among black leaders...

...I ask them what they can do for the union...

...How limited the strength of the Mississippi AFL–CIO is in state politics was evident in the discussion of some candidates, which made it clear they did not consider a COPE endorsement entirely an asset...

...Shorty indeed is an ardent union man...

...Average nonagricultural pay in the state is still a low $2.43 per hour, which includes an increase of 910 since 1960...

...But if a man like Ramsay is judged conservative in the standard national perspective, something is wrong with that perspective...

...It was pointed out that Winter had taken the same stand when he ran unsuccessfully for governor four years earlier, but had since come to realize it was a bad mistake...

...Shorty tells about the black man who got trapped by machinery in a shipyard accident and a white man who gave him mouthtomouth resuscitation until he could be freed, saving his life...

...The industries Ramsay deems desirable include paper mills whose stench and wastes befoul much of the South's air and water...

...showing the U.S...

...if these people are removed from office, it will have to be done with the Negro vote...

...Currently the program is confined to the Pascagoula area...

...But in the tilted perspective of Mississippi (and PAT WATTERS most of the South) this merely describes a reality, a natural sorting among blacks between those willing to try to wrest more reform (which has been considerable in the South) from the system, and those who despair of the system entirely...

...This required that 45 percent of all future employees be black, and it required advancement of 340 blacks then in dead-end jobs...

...The two don't quite agree about race relations in Mississippi...

...Other BAWI inducements to industry have included tax exemption to plants for given numbers of years, a right-to-work amendment to the state constitution, weak workmen's compensation laws...

...But in other, perhaps crucial ways, neither he nor his union is typical...

...Previously, Ramsay had been involved in the development of black political strength in the state—such affairs as the Freedom Democratic party, the Democratic Conference, a coalition of white and black regular Democrats, organizations of the state-wide Voter Registration and Education League, and the election of a black legislator, Robert Clark...

...We have very few members residing in those counties...

...He gives to the job the same intensity and activity he gave, earlier, to an assortment of other union offices...

...This was probably the strongest stand among Southern AFL-CIO state presidents, and certainly a performance superior to that of labor on the race issue nationally...

...It helps when they understand this program will help them all the way through...

...If nothing else, it shows that for many of them self-interest matters more than racism...

...That he has been able to be reelected during the 12 years of the Council's existence—sometimes with his racial policies challenged by opposing candidates—demonstrates that white Mississippi workers can resist the racist conditioning of their society...

...Ramsay's program included: • A nondiscrimination clause putting the plant in compliance with federal contract regulations...

...But its most significant program is the recruiting and coaching of apprentices...

...One speaker at the 1970 convention said of political candidates seeking clandestine labor support: "They wanted our vote, but they didn't want to be seen with us...

...Sutton tells of the time when he was a boy and he and his father came upon an automobile wreck, and his father, a big man, literally muscled the car door open and reached his hand in to rescue the driver...

...And who do you think had to stand up in the back...

...clothing manufacture predominates...

...The Pascagoula Metal Trades Council did its part, too —accepting a five-year contract in 1967 with top pay of $3.62 an hour (low even for ship-building) to "encourage" Litton...

...Some tilted economic and political perspectives were on display at the 1971 meeting of the Mississippi AFLr-CIO Committee On Political Education (COPE) in Jackson...

...But the difference in Mississippi, more than in the rest of the South and the rest of the American labor movement, lies in the groundwork Claude Ramsay has laid during the formative years of the Mississippi AFLCIO...

...Many of labor's worst enemies in the Mississippi Legislature live in these counties...

...One does not come around asking glib questions in the latest catchwords...