SODERSTROM AND THE NATIONAL CIVIL RIGHTS STRUGGLE IN CAIRO, ILLINOIS

Charlie Koen knew what was about to happen, and he was ready. He’d been prepared ever since he traveled to Carbondale the year before to attend an anniversary celebration marking the end of slavery. He still remembered the speakers—including a white-haired, animated labor man from upstate—going on about the importance of Lincoln’s legacy and what it meant for the predominantly black audience. Charlie would later say it was then that he learned there was such a thing as the Emancipation Proclamation.[1] He had stood there in the September heat, transfixed on the charismatic orator, his throat tight with emotion as he listened. It was a transformative moment—that day Charlie knew he’d never be the same.

Nine months later in his hometown of Cairo, Illinois, his moment had arrived. He didn’t fear the insults or abuse; over the past three months, the 17-year-old high-school student had been beaten and arrested (not always in that order) so many times that he’d become numb to the thought of it. Besides, he wasn’t alone; over 70 white college integrationists and black high school students like himself marched by his side as he took to the street. They looked to him for leadership; as President of the Cairo Nonviolent Freedom Committee, Charlie had led this nonviolent fight to end segregation in his downstate hometown from its very start. It had not been easy.

Cairo, sitting on Illinois’ southern tip below the Old Dominion herself, was a “magnolia-shaded old river port” that had more in common with Birmingham than Chicago.[2] It possessed a “social atmosphere akin to the Old South,” complete with a long tradition of inequality and segregation.[3] Still, Charlie had an advantage his southern brothers and sisters did not—the law. Segregation was illegal under Illinois statute, and any business seeking to discriminate had to do so quietly. That’s why Charlie’s protests, which threatened to expose the town’s treatment of roughly 37% of its own citizens, provoked such anger, fear, and ultimately violence.[4]

It started that June, when Charlie and a small group of demonstrators carried signs reading “Help us end injustice in Cairo” and “Jim Crow must go if Cairo is to grow” in front of Mack’s restaurant when it refused service to some of Charlie’s friends. Jim Cox, the store’s owner, and his wife responded to the signs by turning his eatery’s power hose on the group and eventually signing a warrant for Charlie’s arrest on charges of trespassing.[5] Instead of scaring off protest, Cox’s reaction sparked national interest. The national Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) sent Mary McCollum, a white 22-year-old former student of Southern Illinois University, to help Charlie.[6] Together they endured repeated assaults (including at least one knife attack) as they spread the protest across the city and beyond. They filed charges with the Illinois Human Relations Commission against Cox and three other restaurants in Cairo, Herrin, and Mount Vernon.[7] They filed discrimination charges in court against William Thistlewood, owner of T’Wood’s Roller Bowl, after he refused to admit 19-year-old Frank Hollis access to the rink. They protested against a pool operated by the Rotary Club when it turned away black swimmers.

Of course, local forces tried to smear the protestors as outside agitators and “out of control Negro youth.”[8] Even the town’s preachers got in on the act; when the Reverend Richard Smilie of the Cairo Ministerial Alliance slandered the demonstrators from his pulpit, two protestors responded by visiting his church in person the following Sunday for service, politely greeting the congregation and sitting in the front pew so the preacher could see their faces (Smilie had a visiting preacher give the sermon that day in his stead).[9]

This nonviolent approach drew an increasingly violent response. Time and again, and in increasing numbers, the peaceful protestors were arrested on ridiculous charges like “inciting mob violence,” “disturbing the peace,” and “disorderly conduct.” Time and again, they were released on bail and returned to the streets. By that fall, the group had scored an impressive number of victories, desegregating a number of establishments and spurring an investigation by the Governor and State Attorney General.

It was getting expensive, however. Bail could easily cost in excess of $300 plus costs, and while local supporters like African-American undertaker Eddie Ruffian did what they could to cover these expenses, the Movement in Cairo was fast running out of funds. Things got even worse that September, when the local White Citizens Committee of the USA (founded by Thistlewood) pushed a new “anti-parade law” through the city council, effectively banning peaceful protests.[10] The local police had cleared out the jails in anticipation of filling them with Charlie and his friends. The plan was simple—arrest so many demonstrators that the Movement would go broke trying to post their bail.

That’s what had Charlie Koen so vexed that hot September day as he and his fellow supporters took those first fateful steps onto the pavement—that their arrests could break the movement financially. The police and pro-segregationists made good on their word; they arrested 68 protesters that day, all under the new anti-parade statute. Thankfully, the SNCC and the Illinois NAACP offered to provide funds in support, but as October began it was clear to Charlie and his friends that they desperately needed help.

Reuben had watched these events with growing alarm. When the sit-in movement began in 1960, Soderstrom had approached it with some misgiving. While he approved of what the protestors were trying to accomplish, he disapproved of outright civil disobedience. As a labor leader he had generally obeyed anti-labor laws—even those he considered unjust—until he could get them successfully undone in the legislature or in court. He also worried that the Supreme Court would overturn any law challenging the right of private businesses to discriminate.

Much had changed in the last two years, however. In 1962, Supreme Court Justice Felix Frankfurter, the main opponent to the idea that the Court could and should protect the civil rights of minorities, was replaced by former Secretary of Labor and AFL-CIO lawyer Arthur Goldberg, giving the liberal wing of the Court a clear majority for the first time. More importantly to Reuben, the young people in Cairo weren’t breaking the law. They were peacefully demonstrating for protections and rights already granted them in Illinois; rights and protections that Reuben himself had helped pass during his famous Anti-Injunction days in the mid-1920s!

To Soderstrom, the Civil Rights movement was a direct descendant of the struggle labor—and Reub—had fought for decades. In fact, it’s hard to imagine that Reub didn’t see something of himself in young Charlie. After all, when he was the boy’s age he’d participated in his first strike, a scrawny whelp standing alongside his fellow “bottle boys” in the glass factories protesting for safe conditions and fair pay. Just like those in Cairo, Soderstrom and his fellow workers had been unfairly portrayed as violent, unruly, and “other”—foreign-born outsiders who were using threat and intimidation to coerce the “poor factory owners.” Just like Charlie, Reub risked his liberty and personal safety, repeatedly facing arrest and violence simply for exercising his constitutional rights. Above all, Reub understood the value of solidarity, the necessity of having others in your corner when your opponents seem so strong and the odds so great.

Given this, it is hardly surprising that when called upon for help, Soderstrom put aside his past reservations and answered their need. During the 1962 convention Paul Brooks, a union delegate and field secretary for the SNCC, came to Reuben and his fellow delegates seeking support for the fight in Cairo. Calling the situation “more an emergency and more important than any other freedom struggle at this time,” he sought to raise $50,000 in Illinois to carry on the “struggle for freedom.” According to all accounts, Reuben offered his unconditional support to the fight, telling Brooks he had the “complete cooperation of labor,” and pledged the Illinois AFL-CIO’s resources in the battle to “wipe out discrimination.”[11] He didn’t stop there; before the convention closed Soderstrom passed a resolution calling for the discontinuance of labor participation in Southern Illinois, Inc., an area chamber of commerce. He also requested Governor Otto Kerner discontinue payments to the organization’s executive secretary, Jeffrey Hughes, whose salary was subsidized by the state. The next day Reub awoke with satisfaction to read the local paper’s unambiguous headline: “State Union Backs Cairo Integration.”[12] The support helped keep the protests alive well into 1963.

But although the labor president may have initially identified with Charlie Koen, the young man would go down a very different path than the one Reub had chosen. Soderstrom’s experience in the labor movement had led him to value integration. Like his mentors and idols, Soderstrom sought to weave organized labor into the social fabric, making it a fundamental institution of American life. Consequently, he sought public service as a legislator and used his authority as a labor leader to create a “seat at the table” for unions in Springfield. Everything Reuben learned taught him to treasure his “American inheritance,” a reverence he’d driven home when Charles Koen first heard him speak in September of 1961.

Koen’s experiences led him on a much darker journey. When he stood there listening to Reuben speak on the blessings of the Emancipation Proclamation, the emotion that overcame him was not awe or inspiration, but anger. Anger at the fact that there was no Emancipation Proclamation for the black folk of Cairo. Anger that his “American inheritance” had been taken from him. Anger at those who’d denied him that inheritance. Anger that spurred his first steps toward militancy. Charlie eventually discarded the nonviolent resistance of the SNCC for a philosophy of aggression; as he later put it, “There won’t be any peace in town until blacks cut this racist cancer completely away.”[13] By the end of the decade Charles had become the leader of a militant group, was linked to fire bombings, and was eventually convicted for multiple assaults.[14] Koen wasn’t alone; eventually many within the Civil Rights movement shunned non-violence and embraced burning down the establishment they once sought to better. It was a move that threatened to swallow friend and foe alike, including the Illinois AFL-CIO. 1962 may have been the last time Reub heard of Charles Koen, but it was far from his last encounter with men possessed of the revolutionary impulses that threatened to undo the non-violent, progressive legacy he’d spent a lifetime building and protecting.

EDUCATION AND AUTOMATION

Dedication of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois

Reuben’s interest in the Cairo protests was likely driven in part by its roots in the Illinois school system. Reuben had little formal education himself; he never advanced beyond the 7th grade. Despite this, the self-educated Soderstrom demonstrated a deep and loving commitment to education throughout his entire life. Personally, he’d overseen the learning of his younger sister Olga and paid for her nursing school. His own daughter Jeanne was a teacher and school counselor, responsible for art programs throughout the district. His son Carl and wife Virginia were University of Illinois graduates; grandson Carl was enrolled in the pre-medical program there. Professionally, Soderstrom’s first act as an Illinois legislator was a bill providing free textbooks to the schoolchildren of Streator. He’d served as Chairman of the Education Committee in the Illinois House since 1929, overseeing the appropriation of millions of dollars for all levels of education. Reuben also served on the national AFL Committee on Education from 1931-1936.

Of all Reuben’s achievements in the field of labor education, however, perhaps none was greater than the creation of the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations at the University of Illinois. Located on the University’s Urbana campus, the Institute was first started in 1946 thanks largely to Reuben’s efforts in the legislature. The program proved quite successful, and in the winter of 1962 the University formally unveiled a new and improved Illinois Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations Building at 504 E. Armory Street in Champaign, IL. The impressive three-story structure, which featured spacious classrooms, faculty and staff offices, and an amazing library, was largely the product of a massive labor fundraising campaign, and when the building was dedicated that November 29th, Soderstrom was asked to be the first speaker. As always, Reub used the occasion to extol the virtues of unionism, asking those in attendance to expand their view of what labor truly is:

May I say a labor unionist is a most unusual and important person, a pioneer of the American spirit who believes in the fulfillment of democracy’s promise. His belief arises out of the firm conviction of his own dignity and the dignity of all other men and an understanding of the world in which he lives…Among those who have not been in touch with it, the labor union is looked upon as simply a movement to increase wages and shorten the hours of labor, and to achieve these two objectives it is simply a striking machine. Those who have this conception of the Labor Movement have much to learn in connection with it. They should realize that the Labor Movement deals with the things that uplift humanity, and that everything, every step that has been taken to bring about improvements and raise the standards of the wage earners and workers generally, is a part of the Movement of Labor.

This, of course, includes education. I have been exposed to a little education in my time and it was good for me, and I know it must be good for the people whom I have the honor and privilege to represent. Education may be costly, but it is never as expensive as ignorance.[15]

Reuben also took the opportunity to articulate his theory of bottom-up economics. He continued:

Labor unions do provide larger paychecks. Larger pay envelopes mean that the consumer has more money to spend. This creates a mass market for the things we manufacture such as automobiles, television sets, sporting goods and living necessities such as food and clothing. Industry and business thrives, making more money, and this expands the tax base proportionally. This strengthens the Nation and provides revenue needed for our national defense, and to promote freedom and peace throughout the world, and to finance our space programs and to take care of our day-to-day services needed by our population.[16]

In five sentences, Soderstrom drew a straight line from a union wage to sending a man into space; such was the simple yet powerful oratory of the labor leader.

Soderstrom vs. Kennedy and the 35-Hour Work Week

While education programs like those offered at the Labor Institute fulfilled a union ideal, they also served a very practical purpose—helping workers adapt to the changing labor market. One of the biggest changes on the minds of all workers was the increase of automation. Although the economic crisis of 1961 had passed, many feared the job losses the nation suffered at the beginning of the decade were just the start of a larger trend driven by the mechanization of labor. In a new study released that year (and featured by Reuben in his Weekly Newsletter) Georgia Tech School of Industrial Management Director Dr. Walter Buckingham explored the human impact of automation. He worried that too many were buying into the “myth” that science was creating as many or more jobs than it destroyed. In Ford’s Cleveland plant, for example, 48 men could now do in 20 minutes what used to take 400 men twice as long to complete. Meanwhile, in a Chicago radio plant two workers were now assembling radios at a rate that used to require 200 men or more.[17] Even President Kennedy fretted about the impact of automation on the job market, telling the American people that “the major domestic challenge of the sixties is to maintain full employment at a time when automation is replacing men.”[18]

Reuben believed he had the answer: a shorter work week. Never one to quit, Reuben renewed the push he’d begun the year before, despite his plan’s flat rejection by President Kennedy’s administration. In his opening convention address that year, Soderstrom again made headlines by calling for a shorter work week, telling the crowd:

I sincerely believe as long as there is one person seeking work and unable to find it, the hours of labor are too long. As a matter of fact the 40-hour work week is no more sacred than the 60-hour week or the 44-hour week. After almost a quarter of a century it has become necessary, once again, to adjust the work week to the realities of the economic and technological situation.[19]

Having failed to convince the political establishment, Reub this time addressed his idea to the delegates themselves, calling on them to make a shorter work week a necessary condition of their contract negotiations. As the Mount Vernon Register-News reported:

Soderstrom, president of the AFL-CIO State Federation of Labor, said the best way to handle the (unemployment) problem in Illinois is for unions to reject any labor contract unless it provides for fewer hours. “In some industries it may be necessary to reduce the hours only 30 minutes a day,” Soderstrom added. “In other industries it may be necessary to reduce the hours 45 minutes or perhaps one hour a day.”[20]

Once again, however, the Kennedy administration shot down Soderstrom’s idea at the Illinois Labor Convention, this time sending new Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz to deliver the blow. From the Decatur Herald:

Secretary of Labor Willard Wirtz said today a 35-hour work week is the wrong answer to unemployment…He said the way to balance the manpower budget—to put 820,000 new workers into jobs each year—was to enact legislation for more educational aid, medical services for the aged and for expanded markets…In sizing up how to meet the problem of about 4 ½ million unemployed, Wirtz said: “If we declare war on poverty, juvenile delinquency and the needs of the aged, it will put to the fullest test the manpower potential of our country.”[21]

That was the key difference between Kennedy and Soderstrom; when faced with the challenge of how to return to the job growth of the 1950’s (820,000 new jobs per year), Soderstrom favored controlling the supply of work through limiting hours, while JFK preferred creating a demand for services, particularly through the expansion of social programs. Although not often expressed in such terms, President Kennedy genuinely thought of the government prerogatives and programs that would later take shape as the “War on Poverty” as a jobs program, not unlike FDR’s New Deal public works projects.

Reuben remained skeptical, however. Experience had taught him that government-sponsored job programs were temporary. Legislation limiting the work week, in contrast, had lasting impact. Moreover, he maintained, such changes had never hurt the economy. Just the opposite; providing working men and women with the time and means to pursue leisure had created a robust and hungry market, spurring economic growth. Reuben refused to relent. He took to print and radio to get his message out, calling for shorter hours as the best solution to automation and unemployment. His message predictably drew attacks from critics on the right. Lowell A. Nye, editor and publisher of the suburban weekly The Harvard, sent a letter to Reub after hearing him address the idea during a radio interview, writing:

I call that talk a bit irresponsible, if you really said it. Maybe those of us who are conservative in thinking should discard our beliefs and go hell-bent toward inflation, like you fellows who are kow-towing so supinely to labor leader thinking. Right now this small business (10 employees) is faced with paying $700 to $800 more this year because of a big hike in our unemployment rate. But shortening our work week certainly won’t alleviate this problem. My men and women need every dollar they earn. If they got the same money for a shorter week, I would most certainly have to raise advertising rates… and subscription rates, also. This would be nothing but pure, unadulterated inflation…I hope you are not so completely bought off that you can understand this.[22]

Reub didn’t pull any punches in his response. He mocked the idea that higher wages would lead to inflation, charging that Nye and his colleagues were far more concerned with their profit margin:

Those who work for a livelihood are bedeviled and slugged with high mark-ups and a variety of questionable merchandising methods. Perhaps legislation should be enacted compelling merchants to put two price tags on each article, containing the price they paid for it and the price they are selling it for. This would let the customer know the amount of profiteering on each transaction. If you are competent to edit a newspaper you will understand that larger pay envelopes give the consumer more money to spend. This creates a mass market for the things we manufacture… Business and industry thrives, makes more money and the tax base is increased proportionately. This strengthens the nation. Thus the union worker when employed steadily becomes a social and financial force due to his success in raising wages and shortening hours sufficiently to keep wage-earners fully employed.[23]

Reub also attached a copy of his keynote address at the state convention, adding, “I don’t like the way you use the word ‘bought.’ I’ll match my personal integrity with any newspaper editor in the business.”

POLITICAL INTRIGUES

George Meany Visits “My Friend Reub”

While Reuben failed to convince the Kennedy administration of the value of a shorter week, the idea resonated with AFL-CIO National President George Meany. That summer in a speech to the Ladies’ Garment Workers in Atlantic City, N.J., Meany said the AFL-CIO would “seriously consider” a nationwide campaign to reduce the standard workweek from 40 hours to 35 hours, an announcement that was met with cheers by the over 1,000 workers in attendance. He later told reporters he would present the proposal to the AFL-CIO Executive Council when they met in Chicago that August.[24]

The announcement was a major boon for Reuben; it also appeared to help re-establish the connection between himself and Meany. Ever since the troubles surrounding the Illinois AFL-CIO merger, the relationship between the state and national presidents had appeared somewhat strained. Meany had not attended a single Illinois state convention since the consolidation, despite repeated invitations. According to AFL-CIO records, most of the national president’s communication concerning Illinois labor during this period was conducted with and through personal envoys, rather than state organization officials like Reub or his lieutenants. Meany also appeared to offer little or no support to Reub in dealing with the post-merger challenges to his leadership. While there is no direct evidence of a break between the two, and each of these issues could have alternate explanations, a broader look at these facts taken as a whole suggests a chilling of relations in the years after the two organizations merged.

That began to change in 1962, however. Finally, after meeting with Reuben in Chicago, President Meany agreed to speak at the Illinois AFL-CIO Convention for the first time in the joint organization’s history. During his address, Meany praised the Illinois leadership, especially the man he described affectionately as “my friend, Reub.”[25] His speech to the Illinois faithful repeatedly stressed the need for unity and political action, calling on labor to keep their energies focused on their shared goals and to keep a clear eye on who the enemy was; after reciting the long list of labor victories he reminded the crowd:

Each and every one of these things I mention were placed on the statute books as laws to protect American workers over the unyielding, undying opposition of the organized employers of this Country. This is one thing about the N.A.M. (National Association of Manufacturers): I read in the paper where they were going to start a campaign against us. Well, one thing about them—they are consistent. Each and every item that has come into being and been placed on the statute books for the benefit of the little people of this Country for the last 62 years has been uncompromisingly opposed by the National Association of Manufacturers. They have a consistent record.[26]

The lines were met with warm applause. Meany’s convention appearance was positively received, and his return to the convention helped to reaffirm Reub’s stature, not to mention his personal friendship with the AFL-CIO president.

Bad Blood with Governor Kerner

While Reuben’s connection with Meany grew stronger in 1962, his relationship with another important political figure began to rapidly deteriorate. Reuben had never been overly fond of Illinois Governor Otto Kerner. True, he was a Democrat, but he had taken the office from George Stratton, a man Reuben considered friendly to labor and worthy of his personal respect. Labor’s endorsement of Kerner was given over Soderstrom’s objection, the first time that had happened to him in his three decades of leadership. Despite this rocky start, the two men should have been able to maintain an amicable relationship. They largely shared the same agenda, and Kerner possessed a reputation so sterling that it earned him the nickname “Mr. Clean.” According to the Chicago Tribune:

[Otto Kerner] had a gold-standard political resume. Educated at Brown, Cambridge and Northwestern universities, he was the son of a former Illinois attorney general and federal judge. He served with distinction during World War II, and rose to the rank of major general in the Illinois National Guard. He married Helena Cermak, daughter of the late Chicago mayor. He served as U.S. attorney for Northern Illinois and as a Cook County judge.[27] Still, Reuben didn’t trust him, and the gulf between them seemed to widen as the year progressed. First came Kerner’s attempt (like Governor Green before him) to fill traditional labor posts with non-labor men. Soon after his election Otto attempted to install Chicago lawyer and department veteran Samuel Bernstein as Director of Labor, despite the fact that Bernstein did not belong to a union. Although Kerner eventually placed Robert Donnelly of the Electrical Workers Union to the post, his initial resistance led one “top labor leader”—likely Soderstrom himself—to describe the governor in the press as “uncooperative, aloof, inaccessible.”[28]

Then came a series of rumors that Reuben received about the governor’s plans to allow cities to merge fire and police departments in Illinois. When Reub confronted Otto, the governor denied any knowledge of the plan.[29] This was soon followed by speculation that Kerner intended to separate the Unemployment Division and Unemployment Services from the Department of Labor. Again, Kerner denied any knowledge or intent.[30] It is not clear where this talk was coming from, or whether Reuben believed the denials. What is clear is that Reuben took these rumors seriously.

It was an argument over taxes that ultimately soured the relationship between these two men. In November of 1962 Kerner called a special session of the legislature to transfer $15 million from the motor fuel tax fund for use in public relief. Although Republican opposition to the measure was high, Kerner should have been able to rely on support from his Democratic power base—until Reuben got involved. The Decatur Daily Review reported:

Democratic leaders sought without avail to dissuade Kerner from pushing his request for this bill. They were influenced in part by a letter from Reuben G. Soderstrom, president of the Illinois state AFL-CIO, to all members of the House and Senate, urging them to oppose the proposed funds for transfer. Kerner persisted, however, and inserted a section in his prepared message in which he lashed out at “special interests” that are opposing the transfer. These groups, he said, are putting special interests “ahead of people.”[31]

Reuben certainly believed in providing adequate funds for public relief. As he testified before the Advisory Committee the Illinois Public Aid Commission that May:

Unemployment is our greatest problem. It causes almost all of our economic trouble. When the breadwinner is out of work, home conditions become bad, the wife is in a terrible state of mind, there is no income. If unemployed wage earners have not earned enough credits to be classified as wage earners, they are not eligible for unemployment benefits. They then must turn to Public Aid for a helping hand. The same is true if their unemployment benefits have run out or become exhausted. Revenue is needed to provide bread for unemployed needy people and the legislature should be called upon to produce the necessary appropriations. It is a safe assertion for me to make that the Illinois labor movement will support the state administration in its efforts to provide the money necessary to tide recipients of relief over the present emergency period.[32]

Still, Soderstrom opposed the governor’s plan for good reason—he was worried that the diversion of funds would wreck construction activity by slowing down projects, costing jobs. He called for the money to be borrowed instead from the Agricultural Premium Fund, which was plush with unspent cash.[33] The governor would hear none of it, however. From that point on, he considered Reub just another “special interest,” no better than any other lobbyist in Springfield. The break was complete; Soderstrom and Kerner would forever remain at odds.

Despite some setbacks, it had been a good year. Reuben had joined the fight for Civil Rights in Illinois and got to celebrate a new era of labor studies at the state’s premiere university. But he was still out-of-step with the Kennedy administration, first by vociferously opposing Lyndon Johnson, and then by butting heads with the Kennedy administration over the 35-hour work week. However, the state of Illinois was won by Kennedy with the narrowest of margins in the 1960 election, and a massive 1.2 million labor votes sat at Reuben’s fingertips. For that reason it is perhaps not surprising that our protagonist soon found an elegant, ivory white invitation in his mailbox...

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