As we celebrate 100 years of Black History Month, it’s essential we recognize the deep and longtime connections between Black history and the labor movement.
Here are six Black leaders who helped to transform the fight for dignity and justice on the job.
A. Philip Randolph
Founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters
April 15, 1889 – May 16, 1979
A. Philip Randolph organized the first major Black-led union – the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters – to successfully negotiate a collective bargaining agreement and be recognized by a large corporation. He helped to force desegregation of the Defense Industry through the threatened 1941 March on Washington – pushing FDR to issue Executive Order 8802. Randolph’s work also shaped the modern alliance between civil rights and labor movements.
Lucy Parsons
Co-founder of Industrial Workers of the World
1851 – March 7, 1942
A revolutionary labor organizer, Lucy Parsons organized unemployed workers, women workers and immigrant workers in the late 19th and early 20th centuries – at an unprecedented time for all these forms of labor organizing.
She helped to found the IWW, which championed industrial unionism across race and skill lines, fighting for the 8-hour workers and defending workers in the aftermath of the brutal Haymarket Massacre.
It is no surprise that Parsons was one of the most surveilled and feared labor organizers of her era.
Bayard Rustin
Co-architect of the March on Washington
March 17, 1912 – August 24, 1987
Bayard Rustin is remembered as having bridged a critical connection between the fights for racial and economic justice and labor rights on a national scale.
A labor organizer, Rustin organized alongside the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and brought together labor unions and civil rights organizations in the 1963 March on Washington.
Dorothy Lee Bolden
Founder of the National Domestic Workers Union
October 13, 1924 – July 14, 2005
Dorothy Lee Bolden organized thousands of Black domestic workers across the South, ultimately establishing the National Domestic Workers Union of America.
Through her work, Bolden elevated domestic labor as a real labor force deserving of protections and dignity on the job, and helped to push labor standards reforms for household workers nationwide.
Addie Wyatt
First Black woman to be elected as an International Vice President of a major union
March 8, 1924 – March 28, 2012
Elected as the International Vice President of the United Packinghouse Workers of America, Addie Wyatt was a fierce advocate of equal pay, anti-discrimination protections and Black worker advancement. She, herself, broke leadership barriers while embedding racial and gender equity into union structures. She also played a key role in merging unions and expanding leadership.
Ferdinand Smith
Vice President of the National Maritime Union
May 5, 1893 – August 14, 1961
Ferdinand Smith was a Jamaican-born labor leader and remembered as one of the most powerful Black labor leaders in U.S. history. He helped to build one of the most racially-integrated unions in the maritime industry, which was unprecedented at the time. Smith’s organizing efforts made him a target of McCarthy era repression and deportation efforts, amassing a large defense campaign – ultimately, however, Smith was deported.
