A COMMON HERITAGE

The organized labor and civil rights movements are intimately and inexorably linked. They share a common history, morality, and mission—a connection leaders of both movements have been quick to recognize. “The American Federation of Labor came into being to fight for equal justice for all workers, regardless of race, religion or national origin,” President Reuben Soderstrom reminded his membership at the dawn of the civil rights era. “The founder of our movement was an immigrant Jew, Samuel Gompers, and the name we live under was suggested by a Negro delegate from Pittsburgh.”[1] More than a decade later, the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr., echoed that sentiment. “It is not a coincidence the labor movement and the civil rights movement have the same essential origins,” he said in his historic speech at the Illinois AFL-CIO convention. “Each is a movement that grew out of burning needs of an oppressed poor for security and equality. Each was denied justice by the dominant forces of society and had to win a place in the sun by its own intense struggle and indescribable self-sacrifice.”[2]

The fact that both causes carried on that struggle in such similar fashion was no accident. Many of the tools and strategies now most closely associated with the civil rights movement were in fact pioneered by those who first fought for workers’ rights. “The civil rights movement is using the tactics developed by organized labor,” Reuben noted in 1965. “The protests, marches, assemblies and boycotts…focus and attract attention, interest and the effort of the American people, marshalling the moral, physical and spiritual support of an aroused national conscience.”[3] Both movements even faced many of the same enemies. Some of labor’s greatest opponents, men like Vance Muse, author of the anti-labor “right to work” campaign, began their careers as virulent white nationalists and segregationists. Similarly, people of color had long been abused by manufacturers and industrialists, who used workers from those communities as strikebreakers and cheap labor. This practice had the dubious bonus of turning white trade unionists and unorganized black workers against one another, a division labor leaders had long deplored. “Race prejudice is possibly, more than anything else, the strongest influence that the enemies of humanity have been able to wield to keep the working people divided and fighting each other so that they might exploit them all at their leisure,” wrote then-ISFL President John Walker, Reuben’s mentor and predecessor, in 1916. “Until race prejudice has disappeared from this world, exploitation of the people will go on.”[4]

EARLY DIVISIONS

Walker’s words proved prophetic. For decades, the natural bonds which should have united white and minority workers—a solidarity that had long been encouraged by union leadership—was undermined by the same prejudices and racism that poisoned the nation. “In the main, and quite naturally, union members possess the prejudices of the communities in which they live,” wrote the AFL-CIO’s Arthur Goldberg in 1956. Despite condemnation of discrimination by the majority of politicians, preachers, and union officials, Goldberg said, “The rank and file membership has not always been any more ready to follow their union leaders than their religious leaders on this subject.”[5]

This prejudice was compounded by the AFL leadership’s reticence to confront racism within its own ranks. Since its founding, a number of the organization’s affiliate unions had “color clauses” which expressly forbid black workers from membership. Several African American unionists, most notably A. Philip Randolph, organizer and president of the predominantly black Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, vigorously protested this injustice. They appealed to the AFL to require its unions to forbid discriminatory practices. Federation leadership demurred, however, claiming they lacked the authority to compel their member unions to accept members of color.[6]

Soderstrom was deeply opposed to discrimination and believed in the need to take action against it. “There can be no doubt that there are many unfair discriminations against capable and willing Negroes, based on nothing but race,” he wrote in 1941, continuing, “The Negro is one of us who has his rightful place in the life of the Nation, just like other citizens, with the same rights, the same duties, and with many more difficulties to overcome. He is entitled to the sympathetic aid of his fellow citizens.”[7] Soderstrom built ties within the black community during his career as a state representative, working with African American legislators to pass several pieces of legislation, including the Injunction Limitation Act in 1925 and the Anti-Injunction Act a decade later.[8] As president of the Illinois State Federation of Labor, however, he felt constrained by the AFL leadership’s rulings.[9]

Furthering this conflict was the position of Reuben’s Secretary-Treasurer, Victor Olander. Like Soderstrom, Olander believed in equal rights, and had in fact worked hard to help unionize minority workers. Once, when asked by a black union delegate how he could possibly know of the challenges workers of color faced, Vic responded “I know, because I organized them.”[10] Unlike Reuben, however, he firmly denied there was any substantive discrimination within labor, and forcefully rejected any attempt to resolve the problem as at best useless and, at worst, slanderous. When the ISFL delegates advanced a resolution in 1936 in support of Randolph’s efforts, Olander attacked it at length, calling it an “utterly false statement that discrimination prevails throughout the American labor movement, which is the impression that would be created by the adoption of this particular resolution…I have repeated that time and again, and in all the cases the major problem has not been of discrimination on the part of trade unions—though there is something of that sort going on which ought to be eliminated—but discrimination of the public generally and of the employers generally.”[11] Under his advisement, Reuben withheld support from both internal reforms and broader social legislation like the Fair Employment Practice Committee Acts of the 1940s on the grounds that such bills could be used to undermine the legitimacy of unions.[12]

REUBEN FIGHTS FOR CIVIL RIGHTS

Reuben’s position on civil rights legislation began to develop in the 1950s, however. There are several likely contributing factors for this, beginning with Victor Olander’s passing in February of 1949. While certainly a loss, Olander’s absence allowed Soderstrom to move Illinois labor past the secretary-treasurer’s fears and to openly address and acknowledge racial problems. Later that year, Reuben came out fully in favor of the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) Act, putting the full weight of the ISFL behind the legislative effort to end discrimination.[13] When it failed to pass, Soderstrom vowed his continued support, and in the next legislative session testified on behalf of the FEPC bill before the Senate Committee of Industrial Affairs. He called on white citizens of goodwill to embrace the push for racial progress. As he said in a speech the following August:

A lot of thoughtless people are asking today “Why all this clamor for rights? Don’t minority groups know when they are well off?” But—have you noticed how many of the people who say that are those who have never met with discrimination? Before you condemn minority pleadings, just think how you would feel if you weren’t wanted—not after having had a chance to prove your worth, but before and regardless! Remember that America was founded by men and women who were annoyed to action by restrictions—on jobs, on religion, on speech…Can we, therefore, be anything but patient and understanding of those who are trying to achieve what we have been born to—equal treatment, the right to be judged as individuals, not labeled as a minority and held outside the common life?

These minorities want the right to belong. They want the same rights we possess—the right to work and be useful, the right to economic security, the right to freedom from want for their families, and, most important of all, the right to participate on equal terms in our common life.[14]

At the same time, Reuben began working with the Jewish Labor Committee, an organization dedicated to combating anti-Semitism. Before long, Soderstrom was asked to chair the fundraising efforts for Histradrut, labor federation of the nascent state of Israel. JLC Field Director Lillian Herstein, impressed with Reub’s “forthright and eloquent” argument for an end to all discrimination based on race, color, or creed, sent copies of his speeches to various newspapers.[15] Within a few years, Soderstrom had garnered a reputation as a fierce defender of civil rights.

In 1953, the JLC decided to honor Reuben’s work with a testimonial dinner given “in recognition of the work that Soderstrom, as legislative head of the trade unionists of Illinois, has done in establishing equality of opportunity for all people.”[16] The event drew national attention, and even featured a keynote address from the brand-new AFL Secretary-Treasurer William Schnitzler. Like Soderstrom after Olander, Schnitzler had brought new attention and energy to the issue of discrimination in the wake of AFL President Green’s death on November 21, 1952. Speaking at Reuben’s celebration on March 9, 1953, he broke with the national organization’s past acquiescence in the face of racism, telling all in attendance:

Some people who profess to be sympathetic with our aims frequently tell us that our methods are wrong—that we can’t compel people to behave better by law, that we must rely on education to change their thinking. That argument leaves me cold when I consider that segregation still exists in so many schools in American cities. How in the world are you going to educate people not to discriminate when you separate our children in the schools and thereby deliberately make them conscious of racial and color distinctions?[17]

While Schnitzler’s remarks made national news, it was Reuben’s acceptance speech that made the most eloquent case for the union fight against discrimination. Honest and insightful, the address asserted these two struggles were inseparable, and served as a call to arms for union and civil rights activists alike:

The American Federation of Labor has long adhered to the fundamental principle laid down by our forefathers—that all men are created equal…It would be a wonderful thing here tonight if I could say to you that our affiliated unions have always lived up to the principles laid down by the parent body. However, I cannot make such a statement because it would not be true. Despite the American Federation of Labor’s consistent record of working for equality, we have been compelled, at times, to fight bigotry and intolerance in some of our local unions…I can say to you that Illinois is fairly clean, but it is not enough—we must make it 100% clean.

Unity between races, a fraternal brotherhood, is the essence of trade unionism…Regardless of race or religion we address each other as brothers. Discrimination against any person because of his or her race or creed is wrong, because discrimination itself is wrong…We, each of us, stand as individuals, jealous of the rights and determined for the freedoms of every individual both here and across the sea. We, each of us, stand united, too, knowing that there is no greater strength than that of union brothers and sisters, working against intolerance and discrimination, hand in hand and shoulder to shoulder. Unionism and the fight against evil and prejudice are a necessity fifty-two weeks each year. What we preach here tonight we must practice every day throughout the year, and the years ahead.[18]

THE CIVIL RIGHTS ERA

It wasn’t long before Reuben’s words were put to the test. On May 17, 1954, the US Supreme Court unanimously ruled that segregating public schools by race was unconstitutional, sparking a fierce nationwide fight over the legality of institutionalized racism. A little over 18 months later, Rosa Parks was arrested for refusing to relinquish her bus seat to a white passenger, an act of nonviolent civil disobedience which soon blossomed into the Montgomery bus boycott. The civil rights movement had begun in earnest.

Reuben helped lead the legislative fight for civil rights in Illinois and beyond. He made repeated trips to Washington, working alongside Illinois Senators Everett Dirksen (R) and Paul Douglas (D) to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1957, a landmark voting rights bill, along with subsequent amendments in 1960.[19] Soderstrom took care to adopt a bipartisan approach throughout, stressing his Republican bona fides even as he pushed for Democratic legislation. As he wrote to President Eisenhower:

In discussing this legislative session last week with US Senator Everett Dirksen, the thought occurred to both of us that perhaps the President of the United States could add his influence…this is an election year and the Illinois Republicans could make use of such a lift from the President of the United States…This is a sincere suggestion. I am a registered Republican. My son is a Republican member of the Illinois General Assembly. Our political alignment is perfect.[20]

In 1961, Reuben was finally able to pass the Fair Employment Practices Committee Act through the Illinois General Assembly, making it illegal in Illinois to deny a job to anyone because of race, color, religion, national origin, or ancestry. Privately, Soderstrom also worked behind the scenes to eliminate discrimination within specific industries. When African American Rep. J. Horace Gardner reached out for help in ending discrimination in race track employment in 1959, for example, Reub went directly to Arlington Race Track President Ben Lindheimer to resolve the issue, urging him to replace out-of-state workers with qualified black Illinoisans.[21] In all such dealings, Reuben focused more on persuasion than provocation or threat, even as he insisted on resolution.

In 1960, Reub hosted the AFL-CIO Midwestern Advisory Committee on Civil Rights in Chicago, on which his second-in-command Stanley Johnson served as chair. Welcoming his fellow brothers, He encouraged them to enact lasting legislative change, and not to relent until the job was done:

All of you have stood firm against the forces that have been hurled against you during the time I have served as president of the AFL-CIO. Yes, you have been hated by those who seek your destruction but you have been admired and loved for your loyalty and devotion by all of those who knew about your struggle for justice, right, and equality in the civil rights field…Be not provoked or discouraged, but close your ranks tighter than ever before and support the candidates who are in sympathy with your cause.[22]

Four years later, Reuben welcomed many of those same labor officials back to Illinois, along with the illustrious Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to celebrate the momentous passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act at the Illinois Rally for Civil Rights held at Chicago’s Soldier Field. The following year, at Reuben’s request, Dr. King returned to speak at the Illinois AFL-CIO annual convention.

While Reuben supported protests and legal challenges to injustice, his support of civil disobedience was varied, particularly when it could result in violence. His position can be traced back to organized labor’s fight over the CIO’s use of “sit-down” strikes in the 1930s. These strikes, wherein workers locked themselves inside their factories and refused to leave, were meant to provoke violent confrontations like the "Battle of the Running Bulls," a 1937 that left 13 workers and bystanders shot and 11 officers injured.[23] Reuben condemned such tactics at the time, warning “The public press of the United States, because of the illegal sit-down strike, has turned against the CIO.”[24] Indeed, the CIO’s actions cost them broad support; as President Roosevelt told CIO chief John L. Lewis when asked why he refused to publicly back the organization in its struggles with the authorities, “The majority of the people are just saying one thing, ‘a plague on both your houses.’”[25]

Soderstrom knew the civil rights movement drew from the past practices of labor. He worried the 1960 “sit-in” protests, which began when four black students in Greensboro, North Carolina sat at and refused to leave a whites-only lunch counter and soon spread across the South, could result in similar violence and a souring of public opinion. His fears deepened when the police began making mass arrests and one of the protestors’ lawyers had his house bombed.[26] As he had done with the CIO decades earlier, Reuben advised civil rights advocates that “the most effective method, whenever tried, has been the resort to quiet counsel, to discussion between the races, to careful community planning…It is in the thoughtful conference, the meaningful discussion and planning that the moral appeal and the ‘conscience of America’ can do its work in the hearts of the people.”[27]

Such caution came with costs. “I must confess that over the past few years I have been gravely disappointed with the white moderate,” wrote Martin Luther King from a Birmingham jail in 1963, “Who is more devoted to 'order' than to justice…who constantly says: 'I agree with you in the goal you seek, but I cannot agree with your methods of direct action'; who paternalistically believes he can set the timetable for another man’s freedom…'”[28] Dr. King was particularly frustrated with AFL-CIO leadership, which had withheld its support from his 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, even though it was organized in part by Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters head A. Phillip Randolph. King and others worried the success of labor leaders like Soderstrom had dulled them to the “fierce urgency of now”—in his historic speech before the Illinois AFL-CIO, King directly confronted the issue, telling those in attendance:

I want to discuss with you this morning, honestly and frankly, some of the challenges facing the labor movement and some of the challenges facing the civil rights movement, and the opportunities that we have in the days ahead. And I say, I want to discuss the problems with you frankly and honestly because I think if we are to be friends, we must be honest with each other…Despite the striking similarities in the origins of the labor movement and the civil rights movement, there are features today that are markedly different. The civil rights movement is organizationally weak, amateurish, and inexperienced. Yet, it has profound moral appeal; it is growing dynamically, and it is introducing basic democratic reforms in our society. The labor movement, on the other hand, is organizationally powerful, but it is stagnating and receding as a social force. As the work force has grown substantially in the past twenty years, the ranks of organized labor have remained stationary, and its moral appeal flickers instead of shining as it did in the thirties.[29]

Ironically, a similar critique would later be levied against King’s approach by those in the “black power” movement, a collection of organizations which eschewed his idealism and trust in the “long arc of the moral universe” in favor of what King described as “a nihilistic philosophy born out of the conviction that the Negro can’t win.”[30] In 1969, one of these groups rushed the stage at the Illinois AFL-CIO annual convention in Chicago, threatening to “tear the whole place up!”[31]

A COMMON BOND

Despite their differences, these two powerful movements shared an abiding bond that lasted throughout the era of civil rights. The relationship between organized labor and communities of color was and remains a symbiotic one, driven by necessity as well as affinity. “The labor movement needs the Negro, and the Negro needs the labor movement,” said Rep. Corneal Davis, author of the Illinois FEPC Act, in his 1965 Illinois AFL-CIO convention address. “My plea to you is to join hands…For only as the Negro becomes a full citizen can the promise of the American dream come true.”[32] As Dr. King wrote in a letter to Reuben later that year, “It is my firm conviction that the civil rights movement and the labor movement must be staunch allies. The forces that are anti-labor are usually anti-Negro and vice versa. So in a real sense, the labor movement and the civil rights movement are tied in a single garment of destiny.”[33]

For Soderstrom, respect—both for the movement’s leaders and those they represented—was central to this all-important partnership. Reuben held Dr. King in particular esteem, praising him as “A man whose voice rings loudest and clearest in this great civil rights movement…a man who is, I believe, through all of these multiple and overwhelming labors, animated not by consideration of sordid gain but by the loftier purpose of serving his race and honoring God by uplifting and blessing the toiling millions of His children.”[34] He was devastated by news of Dr. King’s assassination in 1968, writing in his condolences to Mrs. King that her husband 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.”[35]

Throughout his presidency, Reub never wavered in his support for the civil rights movement. His steadfastness was rewarded; over the years, many civil rights leaders of state and national importance came to Illinois labors’ union halls and conventions to inform, give encouragement, and seek support. All of them considered Reuben a friend. From legal minds such as Chicago ACLU Executive Director Ed Meyerding, who cheered Reuben as “one of these giants who has struggled long and manfully against the forces of intolerance and oppression,” to religious figures like Father Joseph Donahue, who considered him “little less than a hero” for his defense of human rights, to advocacy groups like the Jewish labor committee, which honored him as “a lifelong foe of prejudice against race, color, or creed,” civil rights leaders in Illinois and the nation knew Reuben Soderstrom as a powerful defender of civil as well as labor rights, an advocate for two of the most important and intertwined movements of the 20th century.[36]

* * *