National Reports
ROMER, SAM & KING, LAWRENCE T.
National Reports Atlanta: Joseph R. Fiszman. Boston: Courtney R. Sheldon. Chicago: Albert N. Votaw. Dallas: Biclcnell Eubanks. Minneapolis: Sam Romer. New Orleans: Stephen Ryan. Richmond:...
...Add these two concepts to the third of "power" and the resulting combination means that everyone pays the price for somebody else's sins...
...In good part, the dilemma in which Minneapolis unions now find themselves can be blamed on their own idealistic traditions of "solidarity" and "autonomy"??concepts once highly prized among laboring men...
...The bill to regulate union receiverships may pass in 1955...
...There was a great to-do in labor circles, but there was no official move to revoke his charter or condemn his presence in the city...
...The minister, noted for his enlightened views, did nothing to discourage their attendance, but the congregation proved less enlightened...
...Since then, the South has developed a corpus of pseudo-theology that has sought to give Divine sanction through the medium of Scripture first to slavery and then to segregation...
...Here is an example of how the first two worked in Minneapolis: Gerald Connolly, a fugitive from Florida, came here with a phony local chartered by the Building Service Employes and began his dubious operations...
...Perhaps the exposure of many of today's Southern ministers to higher education, at least among the larger denominations, has made them realize that historic Christianity and racism are incompatible...
...Indeed, some of them may feel that the Government is doing their job for them...
...They objected to the Negroes so strenuously that the minister acceded to their demand: If the Negroes could not otherwise be discouraged from attending a white church, then they should be seated in a special section of the church...
...This is not to say that Congressional investigators have dealt only with half-truths...
...Williams admittedly used union cash (on a temporary but unauthorized loan...
...few of them, however, refused to meet with Connolly and no one moved to oust him from the movement, A similar incident occurred when Gene Williams, a Teamsters business agent, went into the saloon business...
...once accepted, it is difficult to stop...
...Richmond Protestants Attack Racism By Lawrence T. King Richmond On the eve of the Virginia Legislature's biennial session, the Richmond Ministerial Association??composed of clergymen representing virtually every Protestant denomination in this capital??issued a hardhitting statement against racism and advocated legislative action against segregation...
...Most of this was common gossip within labor circles even before the probers dragged it out into the public spotlight, but the twin straitjackets of "solidarity" and "autonomy" prevented any house-cleaning action by labor...
...But until their lofty sentiments can be translated into action on the congregational level...
...Minneapolis labor leaders have had their share of headlines in the past, but they have been honorable headlines, stories of battles for labor's advancement rather than for their own pockets...
...The unions here draw a sharp distinction between their own concepts of right and wrong...
...Unfortunately, they must continue to preach to congregations reared in the tenets of racism??people who have rationalized segregation and religion by making God over in their own distorted image...
...If the unions now face Government intervention, it is mostly because they refused to deflect it...
...Again, respectable labor leaders clucked their tongues and deplored the situation (in whispers...
...This anomaly is pointed up by an incident that occurred during the last war...
...During the Civil War, the issue of slavery divided several of America's biggest denominations into separate Northern and Southern sects...
...The overwhelming majority of union officials and business agents are devoted men with an idealism often lacking in unions elsewhere...
...For now "solidarity" is interpreted to mean that the cause of any single union, just or unjust, must be backed at all costs...
...But Government regulation of labor unions is a costly and dangerous business...
...Paul local has been in receivership so long that even local leaders have difficulty remembering when it began...
...These headlines, despite their apparent truth, will be distortions and exaggerations...
...another who helped finance a trucking firm whose employes were members of his union...
...Racketeers in Minneapolis Labor By Sam Romer Minneapolis A congressional investigation of Minneapolis unions, which has been scheduled, postponed, rescheduled and again postponed, is about to begin...
...The Minneapolis labor movement is powerful, but it is not corrupt or dishonest...
...What one union does affects them all...
...His local union failed, thanks in part to daily newspaper publicity, and he then shifted his activities to a hospitable Teamsters union...
...Since the city's largest church of their own denomination was most accessible to them, many began attending services there...
...Without the support of church-going white Protestants, segregation could not endure in the South, Yet, it not only endures...
...Louis: William Wyant Jr...
...At that time, several Negro employes of the United States Patent Office in Washington were transferred to a large Southern city...
...Further study, however, shows that opposition to racial integration remains as strong as ever in Southern sections influenced by the evangelical-congregational form of Christianity...
...Their morality defends bodily assault on a scab, although undoubtedly unlawful, but condemns financial relations with employers, even if impeccably legal...
...They carry on in great measure the dedicated Socialist tradition in which many Minneapolis unions have their roots...
...it has actually become an article of faith...
...The Richmond declaration, together with similar ministerial manifestations throughout the South in recent years, seems to indicate that the alliance between fundamental Protestantism and racism is at last about to be broken...
...Richmond: Lawrence King...
...It is heartening to find that a group like the Richmond Ministerial Association has the courage to repudiate the South's pseudo-theology of racism...
...And "autonomy" means that it's no one's business what any other local??or leader??does...
...as he paid his dues, he remarked: "Here's some money for another saloon...
...By the time this article is printed, the probers' findings may be the subject of screaming newspaper headlines and stories of insurance kickbacks and shakedowns, ugly threats and "loans" from employers...
...Since most Protestant denominations are run along congregational lines, a minister who displeases his congregation by preaching on unpopular subjects is soon packing his bags...
...a possibility made remote by the absence in their own denominations of the teaching authority that characterized the historic Christian church??it appears that these enlightened men will remain an ineffectual handful...
...Nationally, it was hailed as symptomatic of a significant change in attitudes...
...Many people in Minneapolis??in and out of labor unions??are asking themselves: How did this happen...
...San Francisco: Frank Mankiewicz...
...One St...
...He borrowed $87,000, much of it from employers and lawyers, and he asked for (and got) a $10,000 "advance" in administrative fees from the pension fund for union members...
...In Minnesota, for instance, the Legislature twice has killed a bill for state regulation of receiverships of local unions, but these warnings have gone unheeded...
...a third who pleaded self-incrimination and refused to testify about his role in a series of Florida murder attempts and episodes of violence...
...Even now, more of it is on the way at both Federal and state levels...
...Despite "solidarity" and "autonomy," union leaders know that they live in an interdependent movement, that they need self-discipline as well as mutual protection...
...A quartet of crack investigators, busily at work in Minneapolis for several weeks, now promises to add to this unsavory record...
...Although nothing constructive was finally done by the Legislature, the statement was widely publicized in the South...
...A preliminary hearing last November disclosed one Minneapolis official who "borrowed" money from the union's safe to invest in a downtown saloon...
...Its record in the areas of wages, hours and working conditions is an enviable one...
...Some internationals still use their power of receivership loosely, with complete disregard of membership rights...
...Thus, segregation was perpetuated...
...Last month, a rank-and-file member walked into the offices of a local which has kept itself scrupulously free from scandal...
Vol. 37 • April 1954 • No. 14
