Union & Education History
Link to the Past - Bridge to the Future
William (Bill) Lucy (1933 - )
For over three decades William (Bill) Lucy was at the fore-front of the labor movement. As Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of State County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) for 30-plus years, Lucy helped the group grow from 200,000 to over 1.4 million members in 3,500 unions nationwide. He also helped define the role of African Americans in the labor unions when he founded the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) in 1972. Along the way he has stood alongside the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in civil rights struggles and Nelson Mandela in opposition to apartheid. Though his name is not as well known as these famous men, Lucy has carved out a legacy based on living wages, health care benefits, and job safety. And like Mandela and King's, Lucy's legacy lives on through the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families around the world every day.
Launched Labor Career amid Social Strife
Born on November 26, 1933, in Memphis, Tennessee, William Lucy was raised in Richmond, California, after moving there as a boy with his parents Susie and Joseph Lucy. After studying civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1950s, he landed a job as an assistant materials and research engineer for Contra Costa County, California. Though he held that position for 13 years, Lucy's true career calling lay in unions. In 1956 he had joined the AFSCME Local 1675 union of Contra Costa employees and in 1965 he was elected its president. The following year, he left engineering to work full-time for the AFSCME international organization as the associate director of the legislation and community affairs departments.
At the time Lucy began his career in labor leadership, American society was experiencing great changes. The civil rights movement was steadily overturning years of racism and segregation to claim equal rights for African Americans. The news of the day was filled with both violent and inspiring images from such events as the Montgomery bus boycott, federal troops enforcing school segregation, and the 1963 March on Washington, where Martin Luther King gave his famous "I Have a Dream" speech. Meanwhile the Vietnam War was claiming the lives of tens of thousands young Americans and sparking nationwide anti-war demonstrations.
The labor movement was not immune to the tumultuous times. As it struggled to secure collective bargaining rights—the right for employees to negotiate with employers on everything from wages to job safety—for its members, AFSCME chapters country-wide launched marches and strikes. Sadly consistent with the times, those actions were often met with violent police reaction. The history of AFSCME is riddled with stories of members being beaten, tear-gassed, and jailed. Lucy received his own fair share of beatings and jailing over the years.
Worked with King on Memphis Strike
By 1968, the civil rights movement had led to laws banning segregation in publicly funded programs from health care to housing. However, working conditions for African Americans still lagged far behind those for white laborers. It became clear that the goals of civil rights and labor rights movement were intertwined. One of the most potent cases to prove this connection was the 1968 sanitation worker's strike in Memphis. Black sanitation workers had no rights, no sick pay, no health care, and no job security. Pay was so low that many of them qualified for welfare. They also suffered racism and disrespect. "There were two battles being fought in the Memphis march. One of racial oppression and the other oppression of jobs," Lucy told The Philadelphia Tribune. "Those 1,300 sanitation workers in 1968 were a classic picture of the working rural poor, looking for a better life."
The sanitation workers had formed AFSCME Local 1733 in 1964, but the Memphis city government refused to acknowledge the union. In 1968 the workers decided to strike. Lucy traveled to Memphis to lend his support. Pickets and marches were met with police batons and beatings. Replacement workers were brought in. Strikers were arrested. It was chaos. "We didn't have job descriptions," Lucy told The Philadelphia Tribune. "We did whatever had to be done."
The strike's logo was "I am a Man," a sentiment that struck a deep chord within Memphis's African-American community, which supported the strikers by providing meals and raising funds. After two months, the sanitation department still would not budge. Striker morale began to wane. Finally, AFSCME convinced Martin Luther King Jr. to become involved. The Labor Net Web site noted that Lucy said he "saw King bring tears to the eyes of strikers and their families just by walking into a meeting." King assured the strikers that the right to unionize was a civil right. It was also the only way to escape the racism they suffered on the job. On the morning of April 4th, 1968, King was preparing to lead a striker's march when an assassin's bullet took his life. International outcry over King's death brought an intense spotlight on Memphis and the city had no choice but to settle the strike. Lucy was part of the negotiations that led to the recognition of the sanitation workers' union.
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Asa Philip Randolph (1889 - 1979)
Asa Philip Randolph was born in Crescent City, Florida. During his college years at the College of the City of New York, he became interested in workers' rights and organized his first union - a small group of elevator operators. In 1925, Randolph's attention was drawn to the treatment of blacks who worked as porters on the railroad coaches. He organized these men into what is now known as the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters - the first union consisting of predominantly black workers - which was granted a charter by the American Federation of Labor. In 1957, Randolph was elected Vice President of the union, by then known as the AFL-CIO.
In 1960, Randolph founded the Negro American Labor Council, and he served as its President until 1966. Later, he founded and served as President of the A. Philip Randolph Institute in New York City, which continues to promote civil rights and voter registration.
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Labor Day parade,
Main St., Buffalo,
N.Y., ca. 1900.
Touring Turn-of-the-Century America:
Photographs from the Detroit Publishing
Company, 1880-1920
On September 5, 1882, some 10,000 workers assembled in New York City to participate in America's first Labor Day parade. After marching from City Hall, past reviewing stands in Union Square, and then uptown to 42nd Street, the workers and their families gathered in Wendel's Elm Park for a picnic, concert, and speeches. This first Labor Day celebration was eagerly organized and executed by New York’s Central Labor Union, an umbrella group made up of representatives from many local unions. Debate continues to this day as to who originated the idea of a workers' holiday, but it definitely emerged from the ranks of organized labor at a time when they wanted to demonstrate the strength of their burgeoning movement and inspire improvements in their working conditions.
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Shirley Chisholm (1924 - 2005)
Shirley Chisholm attended Brooklyn College on a scholarship and then earned a master's degree in education from Columbia University. After becoming an expert on early childhood education, she worked as a consultant to New York City's Bureau of Child Welfare, from 1959 to 1964.
In 1968, Chisholm became the first black woman to win a seat in the U.S. House of Representatives. In 1972, Chisholm declared her candidacy for the office of president of the United States. She was the first black and the first woman to make this bid - an effort described in her book The Good Fight. She later published an autobiography, Unbought and Unbossed.
Chisholm retired from Congress in 1983 and taught at Mount Holyoke College in Massachusetts. She spoke out against the Vietnam War until it ended, and she continued to speak out for the interest of the urban poor.
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Margaret Murray Washington (1861 - 1925)
According to a report by Anna Thankful Ballantine, Dean of Women at Fisk University, Margaret Murray was "of good mind, of conscientious religious convictions, of unusual power in gaining influence over those younger than herself, and of ability to direct them." While working her way through Fisk in pursuit of a teaching degree, Murray became president of a literary society and associate editor of the campus newspaper, established a friendship with W.E.B. Du Bois, and met her future husband, Booker T. Washington - for whom she would be wife number three and stepmother to his three children. An outstanding organizer and activist in her own right, Margaret Murray Washington also demonstrated unwavering support for her husband's goals, both at Tuskegee Institute and nationally. After his death in 1915, she continued to be a vital force in the Tuskegee community.
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Cottrell Lawrence Dellums (1900 - 1989)
Cottrell L. Dellums made significant social contributions as a pioneer in the union movement and as a key officer in the California chapter of the NAACP. As a young man, Dellums took a job as a Pullman porter and soon afterward began speaking out for his rights and those of his fellow porters -- much to the dismay of the Pullman Company. He was fired for his union activity in 1927. Undaunted, Dellums organized a union for porters on the West Coast. After meeting A. Philip Randolph, Dellums joined the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and was elected its national vice president.
In 1940, Dellums and other civil rights leaders organized what would have been the first march on Washington -- but the march never occurred. The impetus for the march ended when President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered the defense industry to hire minority workers.
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Dr. Patrick Francis Healy (1834 - 1910)
Patrick Healy was one of five children born to Michael Healy, a transplanted white Irishman, and Mary Eliza Healy, a former slave. By Georgia law, their children could have been sold as slaves - an action once suggested to the Healys by a group of white planters, who were subsequently run off the Healy property by dogs on Michael's command. He and Mary Eliza dedicated themselves to providing an education and opportunity for their children, and their efforts were well rewarded.
Patrick Healy became the first black in the United States to earn a doctoral degree. He was the twenty-ninth President of prestigious Georgetown University (1873 - 1882). Patrick Healy's influence on Georgetown was so far-reaching that he is often referred to as the school's "second founder," following Archbishop John Carroll. Healy helped transform the small nineteenth century college into a major university for the twentieth century. He modernized the curriculum by requiring courses in the sciences, particularly chemistry and physics. He expanded and upgraded the schools of law and medicine. He also broke the color barrier in Catholic education by becoming one of the most world renowned black Jesuit priests of his time. As a tribute to his outstanding leadership, the Healy Building was erected. It served as a center for administration, a classroom, and a dormitory.
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William C. Adamson (1854 - 1929)
US Congressman. He was elected as a Democrat to represent Georgia's 4th District in the United States House of Representatives, serving from 1897 to 1917. His most significant piece of legislation was the Adamson Act, which proposed an 8 hour workday and overtime pay for railway employees. President Woodrow Wilson signed it into law on September 3, 1916. Although it was an emergency bill intended to head off a crippling railroad strike, the legal precedent it set eventually became standard for all American workers and helped improve their quality of life. Adamson was born in Bowdon, Georgia, and graduated from Bowdon College in 1874. Settling in Carrollton, Georgia in 1876, he was admitted to the bar and maintained a law practice there for over 50 years. He was a delegate to the 1892 Democratic National Convention.