The NAACP vs. Labor
RICH, J. C.
PERSPECTIVES The NAACP vs. Labor By J. C. Rich The present anti-labor campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, accusing wellknown labor leaders of...
...The NAACP has now endorsed this kind of attack, and in my judgment there is no longer any place in it for anyone who believes that the struggle for equal opportunity for Negroes is part of the struggle against bigotry and discrimination in all forms and in all places...
...But who is to judge whether in truth there is discrimination and to what degree it prevails...
...Hill is no Communist, but unconsciously he repeated a charge originally made some 20 years ago by the labor editor of the then Daily Worker...
...Since Marshall's judicial appointment, the NAACP has reverted to Hill's juvenilities and the antiunion bias of some of its directors...
...This statement reveals more about Herbert Hill than it does about union practices...
...Charles Zimmerman, a leader of the ILGWU'S Dressmakers Union who has resigned from the NAACP after years of active participation in its work, pointed to still another barb in Hill's anti-union agglomeration...
...The composition of their constituencies may change, but if they are responsive to these changes they continue to retain office...
...The most shocking thing in Mr...
...Negro steel workers labor side by side with their white shopmates...
...But the national organizations are more sophisticated and more responsive to the call of justice and social equality than their various branches in the South...
...What has happened to the NAACP, it appears, is that it has not been responsive to change...
...the inquisition Powell himself has threatened to pursue-all at base seem to have one finding: Despite the many Negroes and Puerto Ricans among the ILGWU'S New York membership, there are no Negroes or Puerto Ricans in its top leadership...
...Hill seems to believe that discrimination, or any other evil, can be "completely eliminated...
...J. C. Rich is the editor of the HatWorker, a trade-union publication...
...The conflicts and antagonisms of which NAACP spokesmen have made a Federal case are never seen in the market or in the shops...
...the hearings conducted by Congressman Powell's Congressional crony, Representative Herbert Zelenko (D.-N...
...their wages, hours, seniority rights and other perquisites are protected by the union with equal diligence...
...While on lend-lease from his organization to the House Labor and Education Committee, headed by the redoubtable Congressman Adam Clayton Powell (D.-N.Y...
...For the American labor movement has long worked toward the same goals as the NAACP...
...More knowledgable specialists in this sort of infighting saw in Hill's document a diatribe similar to those the Communists used to spread in the market against the ILGWU in the days when they were striving to capture the needle trade unions...
...The charge was that not a single Negro member was to be found in the huge Dressmakers Local 89, managed by ILGWU Vice President Luigi Antonini...
...Notice to the effect that the NAACP intended to drag unions to court came last August, when news stories quoted Herbert Hill, the Association's labor secretary, as saying: "We will not be satisfied until discrimination is completely eliminated and we will continue to make progress in a trade-union way undeterred by outsiders...
...Negroes have joined unions and have acquired status in many communities, but the NAACP remained its old somnolent self until it was prodded into action by its more dynamic members...
...The social attitudes and administrative conduct of Meany, Reuther, McDonald and Dubinsky are so well known they are part of the very air we breathe...
...This should be clear from George Meany's announcement that the AFL-CIO has withdrawn its long-standing support of the NAACP...
...The supporters of the NAACP might well wonder whether it was fair to slander a friend and ally in the cause of civil rights...
...Liberals and labor unions have had long experience with open enemies and know how to deal with a new recruit to intolerance...
...Thus, building a racist-or anti-Semiticcase against the labor movement because of the actions of a particular union violates fact and verity so completely it is nothing less than a trespass on integrity...
...David McDonald, President of the United Steelworkers...
...But it has not granted the same dispensation to McDonald, and certainly not to Dubinsky...
...And by what prerogative does Hill consider himself an insider in the pursuit of justice, while relegating men like George Meany, Dubinsky and McDonald to the limbo of outsiders...
...And it is this violence to integrity, as well as the malice inherent in the NAACP assault on the labor movement, that has disturbed the labor and liberal-minded community...
...This was true 20 years ago, and it is still true...
...The NAACP charges have been made against such men as David Dubinsky, President of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union (ILGWU...
...In the NAACP'S battle against labor, Hill has distinguished himself on another score as well...
...Labor By J. C. Rich The present anti-labor campaign of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, accusing wellknown labor leaders of discriminatory practices, provides Southern yahoos with absolution for their sins from an unexpected quarter...
...What purpose other than an appeal to the basest prejudices of Negroes is there in stating that even the most renowned whites, the most respected labor men, the most articulate spokesmen of liberalism are racist bigots at heart...
...Presumably, the NAACP believes it is entirely proper to maintain a special Negro grouping within a union, although it justifiably condemns racial segregation when practiced by whites in certain unions...
...The NAACP stated that it had not meant to offend Reuther, and regretted that some of its labor activities had outraged him...
...What is more, new Negro organizations have arisen to challenge its exclusive holding on liberal sympathies...
...In at least one instance, the organization found itself so far off base that it had to beat a hasty retreat to the norms of ordinary courtesy...
...Perhaps Dubinsky should apologize to Hill for being Jewish, and to the heads of the NAACP for being president of a union...
...Congressmen dearly cherish the inertial force that propels them to office election after election...
...Negroes may draw their own derogatory inferences from this reflection...
...Scandalized and dismayed, many in the progressive trade-union community are determined to examine the liberal credentials of the NAACP anew...
...The NAACP'S great achievement has been in court procedures...
...In the garment union, the administration of David Dubinsky has been notable for the degree of acceptance and affectionate regard accorded by whites to Negroes and Negroes to whites...
...It was originally founded with the aid of Jewish trade unionists in order to facilitate the unionization of Italian workers who were streaming into the needle trades...
...Who is an "outsider" and who an insider in judgments of this sort...
...This too, of course, is fools' gold when considered as evidence...
...To be sure, some local unions and some union workers, like their nonunion neighbors, have adopted the mores and habits of the communities in which they live...
...Yet according to newspaper speculation-possibly "leaked" speculation-Reuther has been put on notice that there is a Negro caucus within the United Auto Workers...
...and Paul Hall, President of the Seafarers International...
...Dubinsky has been on public view for more than 50 years...
...It is absurd to imply that Dubinsky is no better than Mississippi's meanest bigot, and it is equally absurd to suggest that McDonald runs a Jim Crow union...
...The course which the NAACP has set for itself is a tragic and selfdefeating one...
...Differences occur, but nobody in sound mental health thinks that one has to go to court about them...
...The "ethnic composition" in Hill's bill of complaint is a Nice Nelly way of saying that the top leadership of the ILGWU is Jewish...
...The subcommittee to which the indictment was presented refused to grant it the dignity of acceptance because it lacked substantive evidence...
...Hill's entire statement," Zimmerman recently declared, "is its slurring reference to the 'ethnic composition' of the ILGWU leadership...
...Antonini, a bitter-end anti-fascist even in Mussolini's heyday, certainly deserves better at the hands of libertarians than to be tarred with bigotry...
...Is it really a service to Negroes, really a service to the cause of civil rights to put Dubinsky et al...
...For how could lily-whites of the backwater South be wrong if prominent Northern labor leaders also discriminate against Negroes...
...Walter Reuther, President of the United Automobile Workers...
...The Daily Worker knew this and so, presumably, does Hill...
...Local 89 is a "language" local composed of Italian dressmakers...
...Whatever noble purpose the NAACP may have in mind, one immediate result of its actions has been to cloak racists of the stripe of Governor Ross Barnett and Senator James Eastland of Mississippi in a garment of social respectability...
...If the Association intends to pursue an anti-union course, it will have to do so as an open enemy of labor, not as a member of the liberal coalition...
...Hill composed a bill of indictment against the ILGWU...
...Liberals may well therefore ask: Why vilify a man with fabrications that are as outrageous as they are preposterous...
...on a par with the white supremacists and the ILGWU with the White Citizens Council...
...Ironically, in doing so the NAACP has assailed not the old-line unions which flagrantly impose Jim Crow restrictions on Negroes, but the progressive unions with a leadership famous for social insight and a sense of public decency and responsibility...
...Yet the absence of Negro members in Local 89 has nothing to do with an anti-Negro bias or any other invidious prejudice...
...The impulses that bring leadership to the fore anywhere also have their own inertial force...
...The charges against the ILGWU...
...This was as much the achievement of Thurgood Marshall, the organization's chief counsel for many years, as it was of the Association as a whole...
...He could not, even if he wanted to, keep his behavior a secret from the liberal community which cherishes him as friend of every progressive cause...
Vol. 45 • November 1962 • No. 24
