Bringing Class to Labor
RASKIN, A.H.
Bringing Class to Labor bya- h raskin more lor ihe luminosity and the inci-siveness of his ideas. It was precisely this felicity of utterance that made Randolph's admonitions so distasteful to the...
...But Randolph never deluded himself that any constitutional prohibition would provesutfi-cient in itself to insure an end to discriminatory practices or to racial separation...
...My fight, the fight to organize Negro workers, is in the AH...
...Randolph never lost hiscool...
...he bellowed...
...And, secure in their command of the convention machinery, they wreaked their vengeance by holding him up to scorn after he left the microphone...
...His ri rsi v i ram l was ihe single greatest internal factor that produced the progress toward civ il rights inside the AI 1 —w ithout which there would hav e been no merger in 1955, and ccitainlv no plank in the const it in ion ol the reunited lahoi movement commuting it to the banishment of segregation within its affiliated unions...
...No, he said, he was sorry, but he could not walk out with the CIO...
...1 must stay here and carry on that fight...
...Meany blew his fuse...
...Phil w as a t ighiet but not a hatei Ik could not be humiliated because his dignity grew out of an unshaitciable dedi-caiion to the concept ol human broth erhood...
...When 1 talked to him the next morning, Phil was all forbearance toward Meany...
...Halfway through the argument...
...Of course, he was right...
...Meany did regret it, not because of the storm of outside criticism that descended upon him atter the outburst but because hegenuinelv respected Randolph and shared his basic coals...
...Hecalmlv advised Meany that there was no need to get emotional and proceeded with his dissection of the problem...
...1 don't care how mad you get, I will continue to tell the truth...
...he asked...
...They also served notice that they would never abandon the most sacred of AFL tenets—thesoverign right of eachaffil-iated union to determine its own membership rules, no matter how grossly these violated the nondiscrimination policies the Federation itself enunciated...
...They taunted him for bringing into labor's house the polished accents of Harvard and of Washington drawing rooms (blithely ignoring the reality that the polish had been acquired at a black church school in Florida and in night courses at New York's City College...
...The most spectacular such conflict came when Meany exploded at the Federation's 1959 convention in San 1 ran-cisco over a Randolph demand that racially segregated locals be liquidated, even when they were all-black locals whose members insisted they wanted them to stay that way...
...It m.iv hav c been anaiu 'in alv...
...Randolph's response was unhesitating, despite the fact that he had spoken in favor of organizing mass production workers along industrial lines and in personal support of Lewis earlier in that very convention...
...I have no quarrel with your union," he told Lewis...
...Lewis himself would often leave his seat among the AFL vice presidents on the convention platform to sit with the tiny delegation from the Brotherhood, a gesture of solidarity that enraged the craft unionists...
...Who the hell appointed you as the guardian of all the Negroes in America...
...Get as mad as you want to," he would tell his white detractors...
...Randolph took the v iew that blacks had no more right than whites to practice Jim Crow...
...vet it was also the essence ol the man that he biought class to ihe quest toi sLissless societ...
...They resented everything about the leader of the sleeping car porters...
...The imperious chief of the United Mine Workers and his associates in the infant CIO were almost Randolph's only friends in labor outside his own union...
...None of it ever got under Randolph's black skin...
...You organize black workers...
...To Meany, it was simple democracy to let black members in long-established units of this kind make their own decision on whether to integrate...
...It was this determination to stay where the problem was and keep fighting against seemingly hopeless odds that caused Randolph and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters to remain inside the AIL when John I., lewis led the industrial unions out in 1935 to form the Committee for Industrial Organization...
...It was precisely this felicity of utterance that made Randolph's admonitions so distasteful to the practitioners ol Jim Crow among the craft unionists who dominated the old AFL...
...All sepaialist solutions weie alien to him...
...Nor did he shrink from the battle when he felt obliged to take on George Meany and the full AFL-CIO establishment on an issue of principle...
...When he started his long march out of the AFL after punching "Big Bill" Hutcheson of the Carpenters in the face at Atlantic City, Lewis once again stopped at the Brotherhood table...
...When he thinks it over, he'll regret it...
...1 know George didn't mean it," he said...
...and that to accord them that right was just as violative of trade union principles as it would be for the AFL-CIO to let members decide they wanted to be in a union dominated by Communists or crooks...
...By the standards of the rest ol the movement, (he industrial unions were relatively free of racism...
...The spokesmen for the building trades and the metal trades alternated in reviiing Randolph as a "professional agitator" whose arrogance and insolence were unworthy of toleration...
...Vou know you belong with us...
...his towering figure, graceful carriage and cultured, resonant voice left them, thearistocrats of labor, feeling inadquate...
...Phil, are you coming with us...
Vol. 62 • June 1979 • No. 12
