ASSASSINATION IN MEMPHIS

The Attempt to Unionize Sanitation Workers in Tennessee

Managing the roiling waters of race within his own membership rolls, Reuben often read the newspapers to follow his friend and colleague, Dr. Martin Luther King. In early 1968, his attention turned toward Memphis, where the city’s sanitation workers—almost of all of whom were black—were waging a desperate and largely unnoticed struggle for basic labor rights. Their trucks were dilapidated; junior workers often had to stand in the back with the garbage when it rained, knee-deep in putrid mash. While not as offensive to the senses, many other insults—meager pay, no sick leave or vacations, and dilapidated equipment—were no less injurious to the body and spirit. Their union, granted a charter by the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees (AFSCME), was still not recognized by the city. The workers had attempted a strike two years earlier but with no success, mostly due to the indifference of the city’s religious and middle-class white communities. Things had only gotten worse under Governor Henry Loeb, who refused to even acknowledge their grievances.

Loeb’s indifference eventually incurred great cost. On February 1, 1968, an electrical wire on the garbage truck carrying sanitation workers Echol Cole and Robert Walker shorted, triggering its compressor. Crewmate Elester Gregory, riding in the cab when he first heard the gut-wrenching whirl, described what happened next:

The motor started running, and the driver stopped and ran around and mashed that button to stop that thing. I didn’t know what was happening. It looked to me like one of them almost got out, but he got caught and just fell back in there.[1]

Cole and Walker met a gruesome end, their bodies crushed by the defective compressor. Their deaths devastated the community and left their families destitute. As author Emily Yellin notes:

The men’s families received no workers’ compensation. The men had no insurance and no pension. The city gave their families back pay, one month’s salary and $500 toward burial expenses. But that was not a legal requirement, only what then-Mayor Henry Loeb saw as a “moral obligation.” It was the way things had always been done in the paternalistic plantation culture of Memphis’s city government. Black workers never got legal assurances. The white boss simply “took care” of his black workers, who did not complain—at least not to his face.[2]

This time, however, the workers would not keep silent. Maybe it was the grotesque nature of the men’s deaths. Maybe it was the early successes of the civil rights movement, or the string of racially-charged riots that had gripped America’s cities. Maybe it was the steady work of brave men like T.O. Jones, who organized the sanitation workers of Memphis. These men—over 1,200 in all—refused to let the deaths of their friends be in vain, using the event as a catalyst to spark a strike for union recognition, better safety standards, and decent wages. The NAACP joined the unions a few days later, and on February 22 the City Council finally voted to recognize the union and approve wage increases.

Mayor Loeb, however, refused to submit to the will of the City Council. He loosed the police on a group of nonviolent protestors in front of City Hall, who used mace and tear gas to instill fear. The attack only made the movement stronger, with ministers and students swelling the ranks. Reverend James Lawson, the leader of 150 local ministers who had formed the Community On the Move for Equality (COME), appealed to Martin Luther King Jr. for support. By the time Dr. King arrived in Memphis on March 18, he was met by a crowd of over 25,000.[3] After an initial delay due to a snowstorm, a nonviolent March was planned for March 28.

But other forces had agendas of their own. Twenty minutes into the march, some in the crowd turned to violence. Just who started the riot remains unclear. According to Taylor Rogers, a striking sanitation worker and future president of the Memphis AFSCME:

Well, the march got violent. Once we turned off Beale Street on Main Street, they started breaking windows—but it wasn’t the marchers. It wasn’t the workers. We was nonviolent, as Dr. King wanted us to be. We don’t know what happened or why it started. But I believe some outside group or someone started it to discredit Dr. King, because he was planning to march on Washington, and they really wanted to stop that. So I think a lot of that was to discredit Dr. King, so that he would turn back and not talk about going to Washington.[4]

The marchers’ vandalism was met by unprecedented brutality, culminating in police chasing demonstrators into churches, releasing tear gas into the sanctuaries and clubbing them as they lay on the ground gasping for air. By the end of the bloody beat-down at least one protestor was dead and Mayor Loeb had called in 4,000 National Guard troops to institute martial law.[5]

While some accuse racist agitators, others believe the Invaders—a black power movement “conditioned by the Vietnam War”—were to blame. While they denied direct involvement, they did not condemn the violence. As Invader leader Coby Smith told a reporter when asked if his group had organized the burnings, “We don’t organize burnings, essentially. We organize people. If people burn, they burn.”[6] After a decade of racial violence at home and war abroad waged disproportionately by black draftees, many young men and women of color had come to reject King’s message of nonviolence, believing him out of touch with their trials and needs.

Dr. King believed the Invaders were the key to ending the violence. He refused to attack them in the press, telling reporters, “We don’t have any problems with many of the young militants who talk in terms of violence. Our method is to communicate with them.”[7] On April 4, King invited their leadership to a meeting at the Lorraine Motel. His Southern Christian Leadership Conference agreed to help fund their “community unification” programs if they would act as marshals for the next march, actively guarding against violence.

Fifteen minutes after their meeting, Dr. King was killed by an assassin’s bullet.

As the news spread, mourners across the nation reacted with anguish, anger, and confusion. Protestors in cities throughout the country took to the streets to vent their rage, violent demonstrations that left more than 40 dead. President Johnson called for a national day of mourning two days before Dr. King’s funeral on April 9, 1968. More than 100,000 grief-stricken citizens filled the streets of Atlanta as his coffin slowly wound its way along the three-mile journey from Ebenezer Baptist Church to Dr. King’s alma mater, Morehouse College.

In the decades since his death, the American public has never forgotten the emblematic leader or his dream for America. Far less well-known or recognized, however, is the fact that in his final fight Dr. King was battling not against the obvious racism of segregation laws but the subtle, pernicious bigotry found in the war against the working poor, struggling to unionize for basic rights. As Coby Smith described many years later:

It wasn’t the police necessarily beating everybody over the head and turning dogs loose, but it was doing the same thing with sanitation workers, because they were living the absolute worst life in this community. Here were men who worked all day every day who could have still qualified for welfare, and they were willing to put everything on the line, to give up their jobs. And they didn’t have much of jobs to start with.[8]

In Illinois, Reuben Soderstrom read the newspaper and found it no coincidence that Dr. King’s last act was in support of a union strike. Since their inception, unions had struggled not just for better pay or benefits but for the dignity of their members, realized in the conditions of their work and employment. In this, historically black unions like the sanitation workers of Memphis were continuing a tradition that stretched back decades, using the tactics of assembly, marching and negotiation pioneered and defined by the likes of Gompers, Soderstrom, and others.

With the death of Dr. King, the struggle for equal rights grew increasingly confrontational and militant. The end of the decade saw the Democratic Party and the AFL-CIO, institutions responsible for some of the most crucial advances in racial equality, come under direct assault for failing to change society (and themselves) fast enough. In many ways, it was a fight for the soul of progress and protest, and Reuben would find himself and the Illinois AFL-CIO at the center of it.

The Kerner Commission on Race Relations

Soderstrom was devastated by the news of Dr. King’s demise; MLK’s visit to the Illinois Labor Convention just a few years earlier had allowed Reuben to gain powerful sense of the man, and he had remained a friend ever since. Shortly after his assassination, Reuben wrote to Coretta Scott King, Dr. King’s widow, to give his condolences, describing the leader he knew and loved:

He was an eloquent Christ-like personality whose heart was beating with the heart-beats of poor and needy people, a gentle and considerate advocate of nonviolence who ironically became a sacrifice to his quality. He was my personal friend. The lives of many men, women and children will be made happier because he lived…In this sad hour of bereavement the members of organized labor of Illinois are extending their heartfelt sympathy to you and your children, and to all of the family members of Rv. Martin Luther King, Jr., whose life’s work reflected credit on all the thoughtful people of his race and also on our entire world of Christianity.[9]

Others in labor quickly followed suit. Reuben’s old friend CFL President Bill Lee called on unions to continue Dr. King’s work:

Many of us in organized labor shared the privilege of working with Dr. Martin Luther King in his efforts to make life better for those millions to who he was a voice of hope. He was genuinely a man of God…Labor will join all others of good will to take up the burden and the challenge he has left us…to eliminate poverty, blight, and discrimination. The unfinished business of American society and the realization of the American dream for all people is the monumental legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King.[10]

Action regarding the sanitation strike was swift and effective. Even before Dr. King’s death, organized labor had started a committee called “Memphis U.S.A,” headed by Sleeping Car Porters President Phillip Randolph and Seafarers International President Paul Hall, to coordinate relief efforts. “These 1,200 workers in Memphis . . . are fighting for the most basic of trade union objectives,” said AFL-CIO President George Meany. “They deserve and will have the support of their brothers and sisters in the American labor movement. Their fight is the fight of all American labor.”[11] On the same day that Coretta Scott King led 42,000 on a silent march through the streets of Memphis the AFL-CIO contributed $20,000 to the effort.[12] Eight days later the Mayor relented, agreeing to a deal that allowed the City Council to recognize the union and guarantee a higher wage.

In 1967, Illinois Governor Otto Kerner had been selected by President Johnson to chair a Commission tasked with examining the causes of the race riots sweeping the nation. Published in 1968, the Kerner Commission’s report was direct and explosive, clearly identifying the root problem to be that “our nation is moving towards two societies, one black, one white—separate and unequal.”[13] Kerner’s report concluded:

The summer of 1967 brought racial disorders to American cities, and with them shock, fear and bewilderment to the nation…Reaction to last summer’s disorders has quickened the movement and deepened the division. Discrimination and segregation have long permeated much of American life; they now threaten the future of every American…

What white Americans have never fully understood—but what the Negro can never forget—is that white society is deeply implicated in the ghetto. White institutions created it, white institutions maintain it, and white society condones it.

It is time now to turn with all the purpose at our command to the major unfinished business of this nation. It is time to adopt strategies for action that will produce quick and visible progress…[14]

The strategies that the commission called for centered around massive government action, specifically the creation of programs “on a scale equal to the dimension of the problems.” These initiatives had to be sufficiently funded, by new taxes if necessary. This, Kerner and his commission maintained, was the only way to alter the current course of the nation.

Soderstrom agreed with the commission’s findings, and supported new government action to address the problem. Reuben had long been a supporter of an active, interventionist government. In his estimation, it was the power and will of government, not simply union-management negotiations, that had brought about labor’s most enduring successes. He had no reason to believe any less would be required in the arena of civil rights. In his presidential address that year, Reuben told the assembled delegates:

One of the most vital issues of American domestic policy in the Sixties is civil rights. The Illinois State AFL-CIO has always been a strong supporter of civil rights. Our convention has a standing Civil Rights Committee . . . Labor in Illinois can point to a proud record of effective support of programs in the War on Poverty, and School and College building projects. We have constantly backed legislation to provide better education and participate in programs to educate and train both young and old. We are a progressive-minded organization and with our parent body can justifiably claim credit for almost all legislative and economic progress made in our state and nation.[15]

Soderstrom’s faith in favorable legislation and government programs as the primary motivator and measure of accomplishment can be seen in his presidential remarks. This was not unique to civil rights; when it came to old age pensions or working conditions, for example, Reuben looked to legislation passed—not concessions wrought at the bargaining table—as the marker of his successes. Even in the case of workmen’s compensation and occupational safety, the innovation of which Reuben was the proudest was his “Agreed Bills” process, a format which brought legislators directly into labor-management negotiations. This outlook melded seamlessly with his role as Illinois AFL-CIO President, where his primary duty and efforts centered on legislative lobbying. As he drove home in his remarks:

What labor is trying to do is build good government and make progress—legislative progress, political progress, and above everything else, economic progress…The greatest tragedy, of course, is the fake promise of some lawmakers who are in such a hurry to do nothing…Why do some lawmakers talk about welfare and then refuse to vote for a cash program, like the one outlined in the Kerner Report which would take thousands of men off relief rolls and put them in meaningful jobs, and make of them tax-paying citizens? Why do some lawmakers want to investigate riots and then refuse to vote appropriations to cities which would prevent riots? Why do some lawmakers want to investigate crime and then refuse to vote for programs which would wipe out the cause of crime? Why do some federal lawmakers vote 73 per cent of the nation’s tax money into war programs and space programs and then try to cut down the 1 ¾ percent allocated to prevent poverty? Why do some of our lawmakers go to church on Sunday and pray to the Great Ruler above and then turn their backs on humanity? It is difficult to believe that these kinds of lawmakers are in the Legislature and Congress representing you and me, and it should not be so, but there they are.”[16]

Black vs. White in the UAW and Chicago Teachers Union

Soderstrom thought in terms of legislative action and opposition. While this made him a powerful lobbyist, it arguably left him with a limited view to some of the racial problems within his own organization. While the workplace was desegregating, many Illinois unions remained separated along racial lines. While not as obvious or deleterious as the outright southern brand of hostility, the racial biases of northern unions had an enormous impact on the type of jobs and advancement available to workers of color. As author Kevin Boyle notes in his history of the UAW:

The elimination of racial barriers in northern auto plants in the 1950s…had greatly expanded the number of black UAW members in the region. By 1960, African-Americans accounted for 21 percent of production workers in Illinois UAW plants, 20 percent in Michigan plants, and 19 percent in New Jersey plants. Even in the heart of UAW country, however, blacks could still not penetrate the citadel of skilled work. According to local records, although 65 percent of the production workers at the Ford Rouge plant in 1960 were black, only 3.5 percent of the skilled workers were black. The difference was even more pronounced at the Detroit Dodge Main plant, where blacks accounted for 45 percent of the production work force but for none of the plant’s 1,500 skilled workers. Nationwide, blacks made up 1.5 percent of the union’s skilled members in late 1963.

Even on integrated jobs, blacks continued to experience discrimination and harassment. Officials of Detroit Dodge Main Local 3, for instance, refused to correct management’s practice of promoting white workers with little or no seniority ahead of black workers with up to twenty-two years in the plant. When a manager at the GM plant in St. Louis promoted two black workers to the loading dock, the white workers walked off the job…A handful of white workers at the Ford Ypsilanti plant, just west of Detroit and a stronghold of white southern migrants, burned a cross on the plant lawn.[17]

The struggle within the National AFL-CIO to combat UAW-style discrimination partly led to the rise of the “black power” movement in 1966, which in turn put further stress on the labor-civil rights coalition. The seeming breaking point, however, came in the form of the New York Teachers Strike.

At Junior High School 271 in Brooklyn’s Ocean Hill-Brownsville, a predominantly black neighborhood had been granted “community control” by Mayor John Lindsay in the spring of 1967. The following May, Principal Rhody McCoy fired nineteen teachers, almost all of them Jewish. McCoy claimed he was attempting to fire ineffective teachers who had been foisted on them because they were black and poor. The United Federation of Teachers fought back, charging that many of those fired were in fact good teachers who were terminated because they voiced opposition to the community control plan (and, it was hinted, because of their faith). In the end, what began as an isolated impasse at this local school resulted in a massive strike involving nearly 60,000 teachers that shut down New York City’s public schools for months.[18]

Over one million school children were negatively impacted by the strikes, and the damage incurred by the progressive coalition was just as deep and long-lasting. The strike pitted an array of interests against one another—upper-class intellectuals versus working-class labor versus black communities versus Jewish minorities—in a complex, and in many ways irreparable, fashion.

In Chicago, a separate set of teacher’s strikes furthered these divisions when the mostly-black Full-Time Basis Substitutes (FTBs) conducted their own “wildcat” strike after concluding that the leadership of the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) was working with the school system to block their certification. Instead of desegregation in labor, new racially-drawn unions, like the Black Teachers Caucus (BTC) began to form.

Reuben had always kept the CTU at an arm’s length. In his personal account of Soderstrom, then-Secretary Robert Gibson noted that his mentor had steadfastly refused to allow the organization—which comprised over 25,000 members—to be represented in union leadership, despite direct and repeated requests by President John Fewkes. The move perplexed Gibson; when he confronted Soderstrom on the matter, the latter demurred that as an Association, the CTU could not be allowed on the Illinois AFL-CIO Board, an answer Robert found unconvincing[19]

While there are distinctions between unions and associations, they are relatively minor—certainly not large enough to warrant keeping a major organization out of leadership. Gibson’s account hints that other, deeper factors may have been at play. As wealthy as it was, the CTU would have likely hindered the civil rights movement had it been given authority within the Illinois AFL-CIO. As historian John F. Lyons writes, Fewkes and the majority of his board were known to be openly hostile to the civil rights movement, “devotees of segregation to the bitter end…Fewkes used every opportunity to deny that there was a deliberate policy of segregated schooling in Chicago, defended its neighborhood school policy, argued against transferring students, and remained silent on the issue of a segregated teaching force.”[20]

Even before the 1968 strikes, Reuben had seen the potential divisions that the CTU could visit upon labor, and had actively limited their influence. Now, however, events had finally overtaken him. The fight between the CTU and the FTBs was largely understood as fight between white unions and black workers, pushing both sides to bitter extremes.

POLITICAL MAYHEM AT THE CHICAGO DNC

“If Blood is Gonna Flow…”

This growing divide was on full display in the protests of the 1968 Democratic National Convention. The August Chicago event was ripe for chaos; the sitting Democratic President, Lyndon Johnson, had declined to run, and the popular favorite Robert Kennedy had been assassinated that June. While Johnson’s Vice President Hubert Humphrey entered the convention with the most delegates, he had not won a single primary (all his delegates were acquired through caucuses). Eugene McCarthy, a Senator who, unlike Humphrey, was a pro-peace candidate, led the opposition to the traditional Democratic Party leadership. Meanwhile, a sea of demonstrators amassed outside the International Amphitheatre, representing a number of groups including the Students for a Democratic Society, the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam (the “Mobe”) and the Youth International Party (the “yippies”). The stakes were unbelievably high, and after a year of strikes, riots, and assassinations, tensions were on a razor’s edge both within the convention and without. The days that followed were marred by some of the most horrific violence the city had seen. Mayor Daley, the long-serving boss of Chicago, could not countenance the motley crew descending on his city. Roger Wilkins, Johnson’s Director of Community Relations Service, later described the Mayor as “the embodiment of power wrapped up so tightly in its own righteousness that he can’t hear any words but those echoing out of his own mouth.[21]” In a show of force, he called in thousands of National Guardsmen to join his police platoons. A force of 23,000 authorities was mobilized to control a crowd of roughly 10,000 demonstrators. For days on end after the 11pm curfew, the armed forces engaged in regular rounds of clubbing and tear-gassing, pushing both protestors and police closer to the breaking point. This mentality of violence even infected security guards on the convention floor, one of whom belted CBS correspondent Dan Rather in the stomach as he reported from inside the event, prompting legendary TV anchorman Walter Cronkite to muse on live television, “I think we’ve got a bunch of thugs here, Dan.[22]”

All this came to a head on August 28, when the police and National Guard, weary and enraged at a protestor who lowered the American flag at a permitted protest at Grant Park, finally converged on the crowd with fury, beating on the demonstrators with seeming abandon. They broke formation and charged into the mass, some of them hunting for the protest leadership. According to later testimony by Mobe leader Rennie Davis:

The police formation broke and began to run, and at that time I heard several of the men in the line yell, quite distinctly, “Kill Davis! Kill Davis!” and they were screaming that and the police moved on top of me, and I was trapped between my own marshal line and advancing police line. The first thing that occurred to me was a very powerful blow to the head that drove me face first down into the dirt, and then, as I attempted to crawl on my hands and knees, the policemen continued to yell, “Kill Davis! Kill Davis!” and continued to strike me across the ear and the neck and the back. I guess I must have been hit thirty or forty times in the back and I crawled for maybe—I don't know how many feet, ten feet maybe, and I came to a chain fence and somehow I managed to crawl either under or through that fence, and a police fell over the fence, trying to get me, and another police hit the fence with his nightstick, but I had about a second or two in which I could stand and I leaped over a bench and over some people and into the park, and then I proceeded to walk toward the center of the park…

Well, I guess the first thing that I was conscious of, I looked down, and my tie was just solid blood, and I realized that my shirt was just becoming blood, and someone took my arm and took me to the east side of the Bandshell, and I laid down, and there was a white coat who was bent over me. I remember hearing the voice of Carl Oglesby. Carl said, “In order to survive in this country, we have to fight,” and then—then I lost consciousness.[23]

Yippie leader Tom Hayden, shaken and angry over the brutal beating of Davis, leapt to a microphone and whipped the protestors into a fury of his own making, declaring:

This city and the military machine it had aimed at us won't permit us to protest...Therefore we must move out of this park in groups throughout the city and turn this excited, overheated military machine against itself. Let us make sure that if blood is going to flow, let it flow all over this city. If gas is going to be used, let that gas come down all over Chicago…If we are going to be disrupted and violated, let this whole stinking city be disrupted and violated.[24]

Hayden led the demonstrators straight to the Hilton, where the TV crews sat covering the convention. All the cameras turned as the police beat protestors in a seventeen-minute melee. The event, later described in the famous Walker report as a “police riot,” was broadcast on national TV at the very moment Humphrey was securing the nomination. The scene broke the Democratic Party in the eyes of the nation, leaving them to question how a party so divided could possibly manage a country.

At Reuben’s own labor convention that fall, opinions about the debacle were sharply divided. Many Democratic career politicians like Secretary of State Paul Powell decried the actions of the protestors, claiming he had seen “hippies tearing up park benches,” and “protestors with razor blades in their shoes to kick at the police.” He charged that pre-event intelligence from the FBI warned of an assassination attempt. He insisted the American people “owe a debt to the Chicago Police” for their handling of the protestors.[25] Many union delegates—particularly those of color—disagreed sharply with Powell’s assessment. In the words of one minority delegate:

As for the convention in the city of Chicago, we the black community in Chicago feel that this is some of the tactics the police have been using on the black community for the last 300 years. It is a disgrace, and I am afraid, sir, that you might lose some of the Negroes, some of the black votes…This is the reason some of the people in the labor movement are going to vote for Mr. Wallace. They know the Democratic Party is doing the same thing, and why not go with a man like Wallace, who tells it like it is, and quit playing both sides of the fence.[26]

Reuben Endorses Hubert Humphrey

George Wallace, the former Democratic Governor of Alabama, was now running as a “law and order” candidate for the segregationist American Independent Party. While he knew he couldn’t win outright, Wallace and his supporters hoped to win enough votes to prevent either Humphrey or Nixon from winning a majority in the Electoral College, allowing him to act as kingmaker. Many in labor worried that he would do just that, using white outrage to wring votes from blue-collar Americans only to turn around and implement a raft of southern anti-labor policies. At the Illinois AFL-CIO convention that year, Reuben emphatically called on delegates to reject Wallace’s message, repeating the political and historical connections between the labor and civil rights. As Addie Wyatt, a delegate from Meat Cutters No. 247, told the audience:

We have talked about some of the supporters of Wallace. But as you talk with some of these people, it is not because they think Wallace is going to be favorable towards some of our economic problems. But they will tell you they are in support of him because they think Wallace will halt the speed of the civil rights movement. Now this is very regrettable. I want you to know I didn’t learn to sing “We Shall Overcome” in the civil rights movement. I learned it in the labor movement. I learned from labor leaders singing, black and white together. We feel that our fight is right. We feel that God is on our side and every good intended American person is on our side. It is a struggle for human dignity and decency for all people, no matter whether they are black, white, male or female. And God help us if we can’t understand it.[27]

Wallace didn’t get the chance to play the spoiler, but his interference—along with the convention riots—helped hand the election to Richard Nixon. Interestingly, while Nixon dominated in the Electoral College (301 to 191) he only narrowly won the popular vote (Nixon beat Humphrey by only 0.7%). In fact, in the immediate aftermath of the election it appeared as though Humphrey may have won the popular vote.

To Soderstrom, the entire 1968 election was a sad, sorry mess. He personally liked Humphrey, a man he had known since his days as Mayor of Minneapolis. Reuben keenly felt Hubert’s loss, and wrote to him after learning of the election results:

Dear Vice-President Humphrey:

I never did like the Electoral College. It can and did defeat the will of the people in this November 5th election.

Projection of votes rolled up last Tuesday indicate that you have a majority of individual votes cast. That should be the law of the land because it is the will of the people. Maybe with your help the wiping out of the Electoral College can become an immediate A. No.1 project so that today’s miscarriage of election returns can never again turn victory into defeat.

I have always admired you. No finer friend of labor and humanity ever aspired for the Presidency of the United States. The fortunes of political warfare in this instance ran against the best interests of wage-earners not only in America but the world over, and labor in Illinois mourns.

The officers and members of the Illinois State Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations are hoping you will be available to run again in 1972 and that our Heavenly Father will grant you the health and strength to carry on. Labor is fortunate to have such a brilliant champion.[28]

Although Reuben endorsed Humphrey for the Democratic nomination, his personal policy positions by 1968 were more progressive than those of his preferred candidate. Although initially supportive of the war, Soderstrom had grown to believe a military solution in Vietnam was not viable. “Peaceful solutions must be found for Southeast Asia and the Near East,” Reuben warned in his annual address that year.[29] He also pushed for a stronger civil rights agenda than Humphrey, particularly after the Kerner report. While Soderstrom broadly agreed with the Committee’s findings and call for expanded investment in minority communities, Humphrey came to attack the report as “dangerously close to a doctrine of guilt.”[30]

Soderstrom also strongly disagreed with the police tactics employed at the 1968 convention. This was only natural; the labor leader had himself been on the wrong side of a policemen’s baton during the labor strikes of his early years. These experiences resulted in a lifelong suspicion of police force—a sentiment that led him to strongly oppose police unions. As former Illinois Senator Paul Douglas reminded everyone from the podium of the Illinois labor convention that year:

I can remember years back, Reub, when you led the fight against a state police force. You were successful in confining the state police in the main to the highways. You prevented it from being used like the coal and iron police of Pennsylvania who were used to break up strikes.[31]

Nationally, the Democrats lost seats in the Senate and House. Their losses were even greater in Illinois, which voted in a Republican President, Senator, Governor, and General Assembly. Soderstrom took a fatalistic tone in his private correspondence. More than a month before Election Day, he acknowledged the “rising tide of Republican popularity” that he predicted would hit the state despite labor’s “all-out effort” to the contrary.[32] There was simply nothing more that could be done; as he wrote to AFL-CIO President Meany in the election’s wake:

Nothing was overlooked or disregarded by labor officials participating in the campaign. The tactics and advertising used by labor campaigners were effective and perfect. The industrial sections of Illinois were for Humphrey and Muskie, in response to your pleadings and our supervision. Defeat is tough to take, but George, in Illinois it really was a good try—superb![33]

Still, the Democratic defeat did not mean political exile for Soderstrom. Just the opposite; as one of the few labor officials still registered as Republican and purposefully nonpartisan in his endorsements, Reuben’s counsel was sought after by the new Republican President. In the weeks following his election, Nixon wrote to Soderstrom seeking recommendations to his administration.[34] Reuben dutifully responded, sending the names of three worthy Republicans, including Illinois House Speaker Ralph Smith. Speaker Smith was touched by Soderstrom’s nomination, responding, “As always, I am very grateful for the fact that you and I have been friends over the years. Thank you so much for this as well as your other many courtesies to me.[35]” While Nixon did not select Smith for his administration, the new Republican Governor Richard Ogilvie did heed Reuben’s advice, selecting him to replace Everett Dirksen in the U.S. Senate when the latter died in office on September 7, 1969.

ConCon and Convention Contest

The chaos and upheaval that defined 1968 was not limited to the national political arena. Closer to home, the fight over whether or not to hold a new Constitutional Convention (ConCon) was fully underway, and Soderstrom was soon in the thick of the fight. Although a rather arcane matter to modern observers, the ConCon consumed Reuben for most of 1968—most of his writings that year, including almost the entirety of his Labor Day address, were focused on persuading voters not to approve the convention when they stepped into the voting booth that November. Decrying it as a “tax dodge” and a “fraud,” Reuben relentlessly warned the public:

Frustrated wealthy tax dodgers, who tried to place a lighter tax burden on themselves and a heavier tax burden on the poor want a new Constitution to enact basically the same revenue article which Illinois voters rejected in 1966. This article was designed to place a disproportionate share of the tax burden on the average blue, white, and gray-collar worker, the small farmer, and those on limited fixed incomes, while wealthy special interest groups are allowed to get by, virtually scot free![36]

In this he was virtually alone. Nearly every politician, paper, and professional organization was in favor of updating the 19th century constitution (Illinois’s third). “Aside from certain segments of organized labor, notably Reuben Soderstrom, president of the Illinois Federation of Labor, little organizational opposition has developed,” noted editorial writer Richard Icen.[37] Even labor seemed to abandon him. That February Robert Johnston, the regional director of the United Automobile Workers union (UAW), came out loudly in favor of the ConCon, joining the governor’s “blue ribbon” committee formed to support the effort. “I’ve talked to a number of people interested in this and they tell me they’re interested in getting the state’s finances straightened out and not in right-to-work bills,” Johnston said.[38] Johnston was just the first. Soon after, reports surfaced that the State Federation of Teachers (FTU), the County and Municipal Employees union (AFSCME), and others intended to join the UAW in support of the ConCon.[39]

Upon closer examination, however, it becomes evident that these unions’ ConCon support had little to do with the matter itself. All the unions that supported the ConCon were also opposed to Soderstrom’s leadership. The Illinois AFSCME executives deeply resented Reuben’s refusal to support legislation that would formally recognize public employee unions at the expense of their right to strike (a concession Reub feared could later be used to hurt all unions) and had unsuccessfully tried to unseat him as president. The teachers’ union, meanwhile, was bitter over Soderstrom’s refusal to give them more authority within the Illinois AFL-CIO (Reub, a civil rights advocate, was likely motivated by the organization’s pro-segregationist sympathies, particularly among the Chicago leadership).

As for Johnston, his Illinois UAW broke off relations with Soderstrom’s organization after their national president, Walter Reuther, resigned from the AFL-CIO executive council. By July of 1968, the national UAW had formally disaffiliated from the AFL-CIO. Although his actions were clearly driven by national events, Johnston—who had been a reluctant supporter of the Illinois AFL and CIO merger from the start—tried to cast his actions as his own personal rejection of Soderstrom’s leadership. “I really don’t think [Soderstrom] understands the needs of our time,” he told the press, “and that’s the big reason the UAW has left the federation and formed its own state-wide organization.”[40] Johnston was clever; he knew that the ConCon enjoyed broad support, particularly among the political and editorial elite. By publicly coming out in favor of the initiative, he gained both the goodwill of the governor and a potent weapon against Soderstrom, whose longstanding opposition to the ConCon was well-known.

Reuben’s political enemies within the Illinois AFL-CIO were likewise able to paint Reuben as weak and out of touch. All throughout 1968 they used the issue like a cudgel, stirring up new calls for Reuben’s resignation. In a year already pregnant with resentment and rebellion, they found a willing audience. Once again, they focused on his age. “The only objectors to a review of our state constitution,” one critic sniped, “(is) an octogenarian and a determined group of persons fearful of metropolitan government.”[41] At the labor convention, the Municipal workers once again mounted an attack on Reuben’s leadership, re-introducing a resolution for compulsory retirement from the Presidency at 65. Several of Soderstrom’s allies pushed back ferociously; Delegate Henry Coco of the Allied Printing Trades Council spoke for many when he argued:

If this provision was put into effect at the time our president was 65 we would have lost 13 years of valuable service given to the federation. I have seen our officers functioning in the general assembly, and I tell you I have never seen a man more efficient, with more knowledge, more influence in the General Assembly. Many jobs are important because of the people you know, the influence you carry, and you do not gain that overnight. You gain that over a period of years and this is particularly true of the legislature.[42]

This time, however, the AFSCME insurgents had a coalition of support, not only from the Teachers’ Union but from the more radical elements of labor who, inspired by the events at the Democratic Convention the month prior, were anxious to sow some chaos of their own. As the press described:

In the closing session of the AFL-CIO convention Thursday the delegates defeated, by a narrow margin, a resolution barring persons over 64 from election to the offices of the state federation. Had the resolution passed, the 80-year-old president of the state AFL-CIO, Reuben Soderstrom, would have had to step down in 1972 at the age of 84.[43]

The victory did little to quiet the calls for Reuben’s resignation. Shortly after the ConCon initiative was approved by popular vote that November, Johnston pressed his advantage, writing publicly to Soderstrom:

If you (Soderstrom) and other IFL officials such as Vice President Stanley Johnson still insist on boycotting the convention, in continuing fear of the electorate, both of you should resign and make way for a more modern leadership that believes in participatory democracy.[44] When asked by the press about Johnston’s letter, Reuben responded that he hadn’t received it (the main audience were the reporters, not Reuben, after all) and couldn’t comment on it specifically. However, he continued, “These acrimonious charges after the thing (election) is over are crazy.”[45] Soderstrom and Johnson would of course participate in the convention. Of course, that really wasn’t Johnston’s purpose or point. He smelled blood in the water, and he wasn’t about to stop.

UNIVERSITY OF ILLINOIS HONORS SODERSTROM

It was tumultuous year for Reuben and the nation. Rocked by riot and death, chaos and confusion, the 80-year-old labor leader never appeared to consider giving up. If he did, he never admitted to it; when asked by a reporter at the convention that year if he had any plans to retire after his current term ends, Reub replied, “unfortunately not.[46]” He believed that labor needed him, and he was determined to give every last ounce of life he had left to the cause which had filled it with so much meaning.

Many appreciated his sacrifice. That year Springfield Mayor Howard recognized Reuben with a key to the city, a work of art etched with the home of Lincoln, which he said “not only represents the intensions and desires of the people of Springfield, but in my own behalf, after having served about ten years as Mayor, (is one) of the most important keys to (one) of the most important recipients I have ever observed.[47]” While others paid their respects to Reuben’s past lifetime of service, Soderstrom himself focused his message on the country’s future, telling the delegates:

Our economy today demands an educated workforce, and our scientific advances demand that all youngsters be given a complete education. Why do they refuse to vote aid for education and training programs for the young when they know full well the future of the nation depends on the youth? Our cities need clean air and clean water, and adequate housing and proper care for our aged people. They need this sort of good government and progress now, not ten years from now, or even five years from now. That may be too late.[48]

That summer, Soderstrom’s hometown held a celebration of its history, called “A Salute to Streator,” and the local newspaper chronicled various residents and events. Reub wrote a lengthy article which recounted the contributions of organized labor. As he concluded:

The writer believes that every good idea that has been enacted into beneficial legislation was first discussed in some union hall by courageous rank and file members. Organized labor can justifiably take credit for all social legislation, for Social Security Retirement benefits, Medicare, unemployment insurance, workmen’s compensation for those injured or killed in industry, for public education and for many other programs which have made this the greatest nation on earth, and today’s three thousand union members of Streator are among those responsible for this fine progress and good government. They are still doing their part in trying to build a better day and a better life for all the people in this blessed land.[49]

Perhaps Reuben’s greatest honor came in December of that year, when he was recognized by the University of Illinois at a testimonial dinner given in his honor. The celebration, hosted at the Illini Union Building on December 6, was a grand affair, held in conjunction with the 20th annual Central Labor Union Conference with over 100 in attendance. University of Illinois President David Henry and Illinois Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations Director Melvin Rothbaum delivered the keynote addresses. President Henry payed tribute to Soderstrom “for his years of service to all of Illinois and to the University of Illinois,” while Director Rothbaum gave praise “for his vision, dedication, and work in developing labor’s role in our society…for his perseverance in initiating the Institute and the follow-up to make the Institute an integral part of the University of Illinois.”[50] They then presented him with an award in appreciation of the crucial role he played in establishing the Institute of Labor and Industrial Relations. Reuben, seated at the speakers’ table alongside his son Carl and granddaughter Jane, accepted the recognition with humility, and was quick to note in his remarks that while he was “personally better than well pleased with the comments and honors showered upon me, the credit should be shared by a large number of other people without whose cooperation and help there would be no Labor and Industrial Relations Institute at the University of Illinois.”[51]

While it was a touching gesture, many of Reuben’s friends and family thought the honorific did not adequately reflect the scope of service the labor leader had rendered to the University. Soderstrom, they argued, should be awarded an honorary degree. In the words of Illinois AFL-CIO Executive Vice President Stanley Johnson:

As a citizen of Illinois for 69 years, spending 60 of his 81 years fighting injustice, projecting ideas and causes which have helped to make Illinois the progressive state it is, it would seem to me the great University of Illinois could complete the cycle and bestow upon this sturdy son of Illinois another honor he so richly deserves. No, he is not a university graduate. He is self-educated through his thirst for knowledge. An eloquent spokesman, gifted with voice and the drive for equity for the least of our fellow Illinoisans to share in God’s bounty, makes his life work for all the people of Illinois deserving of what the University of Illinois has in its power to bestow. I commend to the attention of the Trustees of the University of Illinois, its executive officers and the sacrosanct group which selects individuals for honors at commencement time to consider President Soderstrom’s total contribution to the good and welfare of our State and its people during sixty vigorous years of activities.[52]

Despite all the heartache of 1968, Reuben remained optimistic, certain at least that the next year would be better than the last. Little did he know what 1969 would have in store.

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