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February is already coming to an end, which is truly strange considering how it felt as though January lasted a lifetime. As this month ends, we would be remiss if we didn’t take a moment to acknowledge that it is Black History Month.

Organized Labor and the Black community have a complex relationship. Where, in some places, white union workers and bosses sought to exclude men and women of color from their ranks, in other places we saw the fight for the working class unite people of all colors under a common goal. One thing that can’t be denied; the Labor Movement in America would not be the same if it were not for men and women of color fighting for their rights.

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING JR.

Many people reading this probably know that the most famous civil rights activist in America, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., was a fervent supporter of union workers and union rights. Dr. King spoke repeatedly about the inherent dignity and improved lives unions brought to all workers. He once said, “The Labor Movement did not diminish the strength of the nation but enlarged it. By raising the living standards of millions, Labor miraculously created a market for industry and lifted the whole nation to undreamed of levels of production. Those who attack Labor forget these simple truths, but history remembers them.”

Many other activists were essential to the Labor Movement but are probably less known to the average American. Let’s talk about a few of them.

ADDIE WYATT

Let’s talk about Addie Wyatt. Addie began working in the meatpacking industry in 1941. She actually applied for a job as a typist for Armour and Company. Black women weren’t allowed to hold clerical positions, so she was sent to the canning department instead. Thanks to a union contract, she made more canning stew than she would have made as a typist.

In 1953, she was elected vice president of United Packinghouse Workers of America (UPWA) Local 56. The following year, she became the first woman to lead the local and was eventually selected to serve as an international representative.

She held that job until the 1968 merger of the UPWA and the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen. In 1974, she became director of the brand-new “Women’s Affairs Department.” She became the first woman ever selected as an international vice president of Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen, and eventually served as director of its Human Rights and Women’s Affairs and Civil Rights departments.

In 1979, Amalgamated merged with Retail Clerks International Union to form a new union called United Food and Commercial Workers (UFCW) union. She became UFCW’s first black woman to serve as an international vice president.

Addie was an ordained minister, and she joined Dr. Martin Luther King in civil rights marches, including the March on Washington and the historic march from Selma to Montgomery, Ala. She was a founder of the Coalition of Labor Union Women – the country’s only national organization for union women — and a founder of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and the National Organization of Women.

Addie retired in 1984 as one of the highest ranking and most prominent black women in Labor anywhere in the country. She was named one of Time magazine’s Women of the Year in 1975.

Addie was a giant in the Labor Movement, and her service and hard work helped shape the Labor Movement as well as the Civil Rights Movement in America.

DOROTHY LEE BOLDEN

Let’s talk about Dorothy Lee Bolden, founder of the National Domestic Worker’s Union of America. Dorothy, born October of 1923, started as a domestic worker when she was just nine years old. Black domestic workers in America faced significant challenges for decades, whether it was the grueling workday that often lasted more than 12 hours, or the systemic and vitriol racism they experienced on the job.

Dorothy was an active participant in the Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and her experiences fighting for justice under the law inspired her to act for domestic workers. She worked in Atlanta, Ga., and utilized the public busses that nearly all her fellow workers used. She quickly turned the long bus rides into de facto union meetings, talking with other workers about forming a Labor group to advocate for their rights.

In 1968, the National Domestic Workers Union of America was formed. While it was not a formal union, it served as an education and advocacy organization that Dorothy would lead for nearly three decades and served more than 10,000 members at its height.

“A domestic worker is a counselor, a doctor, a nurse,” Bolden said in a supplement to The Atlanta Journal and The Atlanta Constitution in 1983. “She cares about the family she works for as she cares about her own.”

And yet, she said, domestic workers “have never been recognized as part of the Labor force.”

Bolden wanted to change that. The National Domestic Workers Union of America engaged in grassroots efforts for national and local legislation and started job placement and training programs that taught workers how to ask, diplomatically, for vacation time or higher wages. All of its members were required to register to vote, and her members were ferociously political, participating in elections across Atlanta and engaging in national campaigns as well.

Congressman John Lewis — himself a powerful activist for civil rights in the 1960s — later said of Bolden: “You had to go through her, it didn’t matter if you were Black or white, but if you were running for city office, or outside, you had to get her blessing.”

Bolden would go on to work with presidents Gerald Ford, Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter as the nation’s most powerful advocate for domestic workers.

A. PHILIP RANDOLPH

Let’s talk about A. Philip Randolph, one of the most iconic Black Labor leaders in America and a founder of the Civil Rights Movement.

Randolph organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) and was elected as its first president in 1925. The effort represented one of the first serious efforts to organize predominantly Black workers across the country.

He was just getting started: in 1941 he was a key figure in the effort to desegregate the U.S. Armed Forces, and he would become one of the most important leaders of the modern Civil Rights Movement. Randolph would go on to lead the organization of the March on Washington in 1963 where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech.

Randolph and Bayard Rustin eventually went on to create the A. Phillip Randal Institute in 1965 and the organization continues to fight for social, political and economic justice for all working Americans to this day.

LUCY GONZALEZ PARSONS

Let’s talk about Lucy Gonzalez Parsons.

She was born a slave in 1851, but over the course of her 91 years of life she would become one of the foundational members of the Labor Movement in the United States.

Once described by the Chicago Police Department as “more dangerous than a thousand rioters” Parsons was a widely known Labor organizer. She was a co-founder of the International Working People’s Association along with her husband, who was arrested and executed during the Haymaker Riots. Despite this loss, Parsons would go on to lead the May Day Labor rallies in protest, which saw tens of thousands of workers walk off their jobs to demand better pay and working conditions.

She spent much of her later life organizing workers against unjust working conditions and defending Labor leaders who were unfairly targeted for their demonstrations. Parsons is considered one of the most important leaders of the early Labor Movement and one of its most influential Black women.

There are many, many more men and women, some known, some lost to history, that saw the intersection of worker’s rights and human rights as essential. These are just a few, but their stories remain important any time of year, but especially during Black History Month.

Today, the Labor Tribune is one of the few remaining labor weekly newspapers in the country. It has a symbiotic relationship with its subscribers: the paper exists because of their continued and unwavering support and the St. Louis/Southern Illinois labor movements are considered among the strongest in America in great part because they have a solid, strong voice that allows their positions to be heard in the general community.