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Transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection, The Louis Round Wilson Library
Citation of this interview should be as follows:
“Interview
E-0012-3, in the Southern Oral History Program Collection #4007,
Southern Historical Collection, The Wilson Library,
University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill”
Jim Pierce grew up near Ponca City, Oklahoma, during the late 1920s and 1930s. Pierce begins by speaking briefly about his experiences growing up in Oklahoma, paying particular attention to his Cherokee heritage (his mother was of Cherokee descent), his education, and his father's involvement in the AFL. Pierce describes how he attended "anti-CIO" meetings with his father during the 1930s, which piqued his interested in labor politics. During World War II, Pierce served in the Navy and developed a world view that tilted his interest in the labor movement more towards the "militant" side he had been indoctrinated against as a child. Following the war, Pierce began to work for Western Electric, and by 1947, he had moved to Fort Worth, Texas. Along with his fellow workers, Pierce joined the small local union called the National Federation of Telephone Workers. Not associated with a national organizing force like the AFL or CIO, this small union was typical of organization for workers such as him during these years. Pierce participated in a six-week-long strike with his union in 1947. The workers were victorious and shortly thereafter they joined the CIO. Around that time, Pierce became a leader in the local union as a strategy to keep his company from transferring him away from his ill wife and their infant child. From there, Pierce joined the staff of the CIO and worked in Texas, organizing local unions for the CIO until 1954, when the merger with AFL occurred. Pierce's growing interest in the civil rights movement and his continuing adherence to the more radical principles of labor politics prompted him to go to work for the International Union of Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers (IUE) at that point. Pierce remained in Texas for several years, organizing locals for the IUE, before taking a more regional approach. During the late 1950s and early 1960s, Pierce spent much time organizing workers in Florida for IUE and relocated to Charlotte, North Carolina. During the 1960s, Pierce continued to work with IUE, but through the jurisdiction of the Industrial Union Department (IUD) for the CIO. From 1963 to 1968, Pierce was the regional director of the IUD's effort to organize textile workers in the Southeast. In particular, he focuses on the brief effort of the IUD to organize migrant workers in Florida. Pierce had become increasingly interested in the problems of migrant workers during his career in the labor movement, and the decision of the IUD to halt its effort at organizing this group was a major factor in his decision to leave the IUD in 1968. Pierce concludes the interview by discussing his disillusionment (and simultaneous belief in) the labor movement, his thoughts on the future of labor activism and organization, and his work with the National Sharecroppers Fund during the late 1960s and the early 1970s.
Jim Pierce first learned about the labor movement while growing up in Oklahoma during the 1930s. By the late 1940s, he had become a leader in his local union at Western Electric in Fort Worth, Texas. During the 1950s and 1960s, he organized unions for the CIO, the IUE, and the IUD. He describes his belief in labor activism but also his growing disillusionment with the movement by the end of the 1960s.
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
Jim, I guess the way to start might be for you to tell me how you got interested in the labor movement in the first place. Was that from your parents or your location?
My father was a union member, a member of the Carpenters Union active when I was young in helping saw mill workers organize in addition to others. Probably one of the very early and moved by the Carpenters Union to do any industrial type organization especially on an interracial basis. So, my background in trade union movement goes back to the time when I was a child and my father was a union member and a business agent for …
Did he work for the Carpenters Union?
Well kind of on a local … he was a local business agent part
of the time and sometimes … well
And that was in the Craft Union, the AFL Union?
That's right.
Where was that?
This was in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
I didn't know there were unions in Ponca City, Oklahoma. How many were there?
Oh, when I was just … it was during the Depression, a tornado came through Ponca City and blew the roofs off the houses. It was the Carpenters Union that put the roofs back on. They were very strong. The Union in Ponca City in the middle thirties was stronger really than the Craft Union in Charlotte today because they built the homes, they built the garages, they built the additions. Now …
Was it an all union town?
Oh, it was very well organized.
Industrially as well?
Well there were only two industries, two refineries. One was Conoco and it had the Oil Workers Union, and the other was City Service and it had an independent company union. So it was a union town. But Ponca City was kind of right in the middle of the old populists area, so you have got a lot of unions and you've got a lot of Norman Thomas, and you've got a lot of …
Now, you got that growing up, or you just kind of became aware of that later?
No, no, no. This was my life. This was … dad was, as I said AF of L … I remember when the CIO was first formed and the … oh, preachers and people like that were going through the country calling the CIO a communist organization and they had their tent meetings, and they showed films of bodies laying all over the place, and the hammers and the cycles, you know, and everything. Dad would attend those meetings because he was strongly AF of L, and we went … ahh, he took us so we could see these kind of things.
Was this 1936 - 1937?
Oh yes.
So how old were you then?
Well, I was born in 1925. Ten, eleven, twelve.
Your mother was also an interesting part of your background?
Oh yes, mother was I guess half Cherokee. Her ancestors escaped from the trail of tears in Missouri, as they were marching the Cherokees over from North Carolina, and they settled in the Ozark section of Missouri and my father married her in Missouri and they moved to Oklahoma. So we actually … their background was Missouri. I was born there on the Osage Reservation … what was then the Osage Reservation, now is Osage County, Oklahoma.
Your father moved over to the Reservation?
He moved to Oklahoma and then he … the Osage Reservation was
on one side of the Arkansas River and Ponca City was right across the
rives in what they call Kay County, and so we lived part of the time in
How was … was your mother aware of a particular kind of repression as an Indian?
I don't really know. She died when I was about ten years old. I really don't know that much about that. I remember her as beautiful brown skinned, with long hair braided … I remember all of the Indian remedies for diseases … skunk oil she relied heavily on, and the herbs and things she got from her Indian background. She was very much an Indian and proud of it and I am too.
And that stayed with you?
For a long time.
So you went to CIO meetings, what would your father …
No, these were not CIO meetings, these were anti-CIO meetings, conducted
by the people who were fighting CIO. In that area you had the populists
movement, but you also had a very traditionalist fundamentalist type of
church movement, and these preachers at their tent meetings would
… maybe this is why I don't like preachers too
well … would take advantage of the fundamentalists
background, the religious background of the people to preach against
CIO, and they had some of the most horrible
Would they be in union halls or churches?
Usually in tents. The ones I remember were in tents.
Was it at a Revival meeting?
Revival type religious meeting with all of the anti CIO, oh hell, it was no different from what happened in Gastonia in the twenties and things like that. Industry uses religion to beat unions period. It still does, it did then, and will always do it if it can.
So the Carpenters and the other Craft Unions … were they already making some alliances with business at that time? I mean you were so young that …
I don't think they were alliances. It was just that the CIO posed a treat to the AF of L. the CIO posed a threat to the industry. Industry was using the preachers to defeat the CIO, and the AF of L was glad to see it happen, I guess.
Can you remember the first time you didn't feel anti-CIO yourself?
Yeah. While I was in the Navy … I don't remember a
lot about this … the miners went on strike, and they were CIO
and everybody was raising hell about the miners striking during the war,
and I thought they were
You were in high school in Ponca City?
Right. I was in high school, but it wasn't in Ponca City. I was living about two or three miles from Ponca City over in Osage County, and because there were so many Indians they didn't bus us to Ponca City two or three miles away, they bussed us to a little country town about 25 or 30 miles away. So I was actually in high school in a little town called Burbank. It was only in my senior year that they decided to start bussing from our section into Ponca City.
So you went to school with Indian kids … you were an Indian kid?
Of course. Seventy or eighty percent of the … my classmates were Indians, or at least part Indian
Was it a segregated school system?
No.
A separate school system for the Reservation?
No, no. There were whites.
But you felt like one of the Indians more than white?
Of course I wanted to be one of them. Yeah, that's right. You know it only takes a few times for some white to tell you to get out of the way half breed, before you decide that you would rather be a half breed. You know.
What was your father's reaction to that?
I don't know. You know, at that point, it was during the Depression, he had lost his job, there was no construction work. He tried to get a job in the refinery and had one for a little while and apparently because of his union background they tossed him out, and he was cutting wood, you know, out in the forest for a living and so you saw him very very little. I mean during the summer you would take a sandwich down to him or something like that, but … I didn't know my father in those early days. I didn't see him.
Did you have a lot of brothers and sisters?
Just two brothers younger than I. One only a couple of years younger and one was born when my mother died.
When you left high school, did you go straight to the Navy?
No I wasn't old enough. I graduated at 16 from high school,
and I traveled. I worked on construction, … well the first
job I had was selling magazines for about a month or two until I found
out that it was a gip, and the people weren't getting the
magazines, so I went on construction and followed construction crews as
an apprentice carpenter, until I became 17, and then when I
That was up to the war years then?
That's right. That was in '42.
In '42. Still without much feeling about unions strongly except about the CIO. I mean you had the AFL background …
That's right.
But you were mostly just a young man out to see the world? Is that the way you did …
Yeah. I wanted to know what was going on, and I thought traveling would do it, and in those few months between the time I graduated from high school and the time I went into the Navy, oh I was in Texas, then I went to Louisiana and from Louisiana to Iowa, from Iowa to Montana, from Montana to Nebraska, from Nebraska to California, from California to Oregon and then back to Oklahoma a time or two in between traveling, working to see what the world was like.
What else happened to you in the Navy that's important in terms of how it shaped your direction … you read about the miners, you read about John Lewis.
What really happened to me in the Navy was … I
don't know, the Navy really did change me. I went overseas. I
was in a bomber group in the Navy, mostly a reconnaissance type group,
but the idea of killing, the idea of war, of working people in Germany
and United States and England and France and Japan killing one another
for the benefit of their governments or industry, which at that point, I
was beginning to think
What did you read to make you think there might be a conspiracy?
I am not sure that I read anything. I don't really remember. In the Navy you talk to a lot of people from different areas, you … I traveled a lot, I traveled all over the world while I was in the Navy. For a long time I was in the naval air transport service, and you never knew; You know, you may be in Africa today, and South America tomorrow and Australia the next day … when you weren't flying … I got out of the war part … I mean the fighting part pretty quick. I didn't like it and I don't think they liked me in it, and they put me in naval air transport … I had gone through a radar, super secret radar counter measure school, and in the process of getting clearance or getting me cleared for that, they did a study back, they did an investigation back home and found that when I was a senior in high school and on the debating team, … I think the question was "resolve that communism in theory is better than democracy in practice," and I probably did more reading getting ready for that debate than I did all the rest of the time put together, but I won the debate.
And the Navy found that out?
The Navy found that out and during the course
So you kind of got some kind of world view, is that what you are saying?
Maybe it was bar view,
What did that make you do when you left? When you got out of the Navy, did you go back to Ponca City?
Briefly. I was quite restless. I had left
In Ponca City you went to work for Western Electric?
Actually I went to work for them in Tulsa. I went from Ponca City to Tulsa, went to the University for a little while, decided that I couldn't go the route, and joined Western Electric there. They shortly, within a few months, transferred to Texas, to Fort Worth and the rest of my life really is tied to Texas more than it is Oklahoma.
You installed what
It was central office equipment. We worked on the first L-Carrier, the first Coaxiae Cable that went across the country, that kind of long distance, highly technical equipment that was being installed right after the war.
Were you a member of a union then?
Yeah, a very interesting little company union that had dues of
$.50 a month and the office was in the telephone building. A
very cozy arrangement called the National Federation of Telephone
Workers. It
Most of the telephone operators themselves were members of the National Federation of Telephone Workers.
That's right. Nearly all of the telephone workers in the country belong to those little unions.
What was your perspective on that little Federation at the time? Were you just making it a part of your job, …
Well, I joined the union because I had always been taught that any union is better than no union, but it wasn't much of a union.
So something happened from Western Electric in that it had a telephone installer and a company union to organize the committee of the CIO.
Yeah, what happened was the union wasn't servicing the needs of the members and the people became more and more militant within this company union, and finally in 1947 against the advice of the leaders of the organization, we went on strike, and we stayed on strike for six or seven weeks, and won it, and won it in spite of the union in many cases.
This was a wage agreement strike within that union, this wasn't an organizing drive by CWA or something like that?
Oh no, no. CWA had not been formed at that
And you won it?
And we won it.
What happened …
Won it without strike being a. Won it without any real leadership because we had the greatest people in the world.
Did you assume leadership in that strike yourself?
Not really. I was active, but not really leadership. The day before the strike I got married, thought the strike would last two or three days and I could go on a honeymoon, and we did. Pat and I went to Carlsbad Caverns we took a bus, we didn't have a car, we took a bus to Carlsbad Caverns and spent two days down there and spent all the money we had and came back expecting the strike to be over, and found that it was going to last another five or six weeks without us having … without any money. So we picked up a little cash here and there and sponged on her relatives, and manned the picket lines. It was a lot of fun.
You never had any doubts though at the time?
That we'd win?
Having been married a week.
No, No.
So after you got the contract you went back to work for Western Electric?
Went back to work for Western Electric and a lot of us got together and decided that we needed a real union and decided that the CIO was the union that we wanted. There was a movement at that point among some of the guys to … and this was the installers, a movement among some of the people to get a charter through AF of L and others through CIO. AF of L would not offer a charter, they wanted to put us in the IBEW, which already had a few telephone workers scattered across the country. We didn't want a charter … I mean we didn't want to be a part of an existing union, we wanted our own telephone union, and when they were unsuccessful, and I wasn't in this negotiation because I was leaning towards the CIO. But when they were unsuccessful in getting anything moving with AF of L, we went to CIO and formed the Telephone Workers Organizing Committee. We got an Organizing Committee Charter. Allen Haywood was put in … appointed by Phil Murray as the, you know, temporary Director, and we started organizing telephone workers in the CIO. There wasn't any full time staff to amount to anything, maybe two or three people. The rest of us were doing it on our own time.
When you all went on this strike, and this was '48, I guess.
'47.
'47. Were you in contact with other telephone workers in different parts of the country doing the same thing? Was this just a strict …
No, it was all over the country. It was a large national strike …
You didn't want to have this in your plan, that was my …
Oh no, no, no. It was a national strike.
So you had gotten candid instructions (?) from other people? What was the network like, I mean who coordinated that?
It was most uncoordinated, as you would think of coordination now, the trade union was. It was just people on strike. Each of the telephone systems had a … well, Southern Bell had a union, the Western Electric Installers had one union called the National Federation of … anyway it was Local 77, I can't remember what the name was … Local 77, that was the Installers, the Long Lines people in Western had a different union, the factories had a different union, the operating company, Southern Bell, Southwestern Bell, all of these had a different union, and they were loosely a part of the National Federal of Telephone Workers, but it was so very loose that any local could do anything that it wanted to, and our local covered about five or six states and had five or six thousand or maybe two or three thousand members, a pretty good size local in those days.
But Allen Haywood hadn't worked with telephone
That's right. Now, as the strike progressed, we got help. When I say help, it was mostly in the form of just coming by and supporting you on the picket line, talking to you and things like that, but CIO and the people I knew who were CIO members are very responsive to some of our needs. Some of us got part time jobs during the strike. Some CIO planner, maybe an AF of L, I don't know, but the CIO people, I think, took a good look at this group of militant telephone workers … I think when we went to them later asking for a charter, I think they responded to that request as a result of the strike and the militancy shown in the picket line.
I was asking some details about that because that was your first taste of a real strike … I mean yourself.
That's right.
And that seemed to push you personally from working as an installer to a more avid interest in the CIO as an organization.
That's right.
How did that happen? What kind of interest did you take after the contract was signed?
I became an active union member. I helped organize, but I was still just
a local guy … as we traveled, and the installers did travel
from telephone location to telephone location we talked to the operators
There was a strong move among all the workers then.
That's right. Our installers had found their way. They knew
they wanted to go CIO. We already had a charter, but we were working in
buildings where the telephone operators, lineman, and so forth were
members of … well after that strike, the National Federation
of Telephone Workers was reformed into the Communication Workers of
America, CWA, and they were trying, I guess, to strengthen CWA and move
it away from this company domination. We were trying, and they wanted to
stay independent, we were trying to move these people out of the CWA
into the CIO Telephone Workers Organizing Committee. So, it was that
kind of organizing effort that I engaged in there for a while. But even
at that point, I wasn't really dedicated to a life in the
trade union movement. I was an installer. I would do most of my
organizing on the job. I had not really decided that that is what I
wanted to be … It just wasn't that strong. There
was no question in my mind that … the CIO was the way for the
people to go, that we needed a strong union, that we needed all of that,
but I made no decision at that point to be an active strong leader in
trade union movement or anything like that. It didn't happen
that way then.
What union was this?
This is Local 77 Telephone Workers Organizing Committee
You are still working in this …
Oh yeah. I was very much a part-time Secretary-Treasurer, you know, and I didn't know anything about it. I took a correspondence course in bookkeeping so that I could be a good Secretary-Treasurer, and I stayed Secretary-Treasurer of that local until I went on the staff of CIO.
What made you want to go on the staff of CIO?
I don't know what made me want to. I got an offer. When I got
back to Fort Worth, they had not
They must have … did they observe you while you were forming that Industrial Union Council?
Oh sure.
Is that what precipitated the offer?
I am sure of that.
That was the only evidence of the kind of work that you did.
Well that plus helping other groups in strike. We had set up …
there was a strike in Pangburn Candy Company, two or three hundred women
mostly horribly abused by the company, organized in a union, and I
helped the packing house workers organize them, you know, part time, in
my spare time actually, and they went on strike. Now, you know, I was an
installer for the telephone company, I was Secretary-Treasurer of my
local, but I helped on a picket line and we set up, even before we got
the Industrial Union Council with the help of … oh some very
liberal
Small Town.
Oh yes. The labor movement, we really got all the labor movement involved in this.
Other parts of the community too, or just …
Oh yes, other parts, sure.
Which ones?
Oh, we had … I'll never forget a lawyer and his wife, Jack and Margreat Carter, Willard Barr, was the editor of the Little paper, a few people in the black community became involved in it.
Did you do that kind of coalition work, or were you working with the labor?
At this point, we had formed … the League for Social Justice
evolved out as a kind of coalition that was going there between unions
and liberals and blacks, and we had regular monthly dinner meetings
upstairs over a Chinese restaurant. We couldn't meet in the
restaurant, we couldn't meet in the hotel, we
couldn't meet anyplace because it was interracial. But there
was a Chinese Restaurant He wouldn't serve us in his
restaurant, but he had a place up over his restaurant that he let us use
And then you got hired?
And then I went on the staff.
Who hired you?
Bob Oliver. Bob Oliver was Regional Director of CIO then. It was the old CIO Southern Organizing Committee. Van Bittner was in charge of it. The CIO Southern Organizing Committee …
John Riffe?
John Riffe was maybe Vann's assistant or something. John was up above way up above me.
Texas was then in the Southeast region?
Well the CIO Southern Organizing Committee started over here, I guess, and went all the way to Texas. In fact, we had a few campaigns over in New Mexico during that time.
What's your first impression of going on CIO on the Southern Organizing Committee?
Elation, I guess, at the thought that I could do full time what I had nearly been doing full time anyway.
What about your perception of the organization. They had just been through two tough years with Operation Dixie.
I probably didn't know that much about that at
You said locally, when you worked for CIO, …
When I first worked for CIO, it was all within the state of Texas. At that point, it was all within Texas. Later, I did some work in Oklahoma, some work in New Mexico, some work in Louisiana, but at that point, they hired me, set me up with another guy in Fort Worth and we started organizing Fort Worth.
Who influenced you, or maybe it wasn't a person, maybe it was events to call yourself a devote socialist in 1948 or 1949?
In the coalition right after I became Secretary-Treasurer of my local and
started to … got back to Fort Worth and started attending the
meetings of the coalition with people like the Carters and Willard Barr
and Ross Mathews, business agent for the Machinist Union that had the
big Consolidated plant, aircraft factoryx … These
They were older?
Much older. I won't say much older. Yeah, they were older. None of us were real old. There were a few people down through there that had come with the CIO from the sit in strikes and were very active trade unionists back in the thirties and then when they started to set up an organizing committee they brought a number of those people South … there was a guy named Joe Sahan who was an UAW organizer …
A lot of the people came from the Mine Workers.
A lot of them came from the Mine Workers, a lot of them came from UAW. The real backbone of the old CIO Southern Organizing Committee, though were the miners. And you know this is normal, Phil Murray was President of CIO, the steel workers had been organized by the miners, there … they had done a pretty good job of organizing their industries and there were representatives now available to go help other people.
Plus John Lewis's influence too among a lot of people.
Oh sure, sure.
Was there anyone in Texas at the time though of the … I don't know caliber or influence of the way people talk like that about Van Bittner or John Wright or Walter Reuther for that matter. There wasn't one person like that who influences you.
No. Bob, Joe, an old gentlemen named Andy
Andy?
Hardesty. There is guy named Don Ellenger who is now dead, but at that time was very active in the trade union movement, but these people together with the Carter's and the Barr's and other people like that, they were older, they had read more, they had a much better education, and they kept pressing books at me. Books, ideas, you know …
People took an interest in you?
Yeah.
It sounds like local people, not …
That's right it was local people. Local people and the organizers who were down with the CIO at the time.
Did you know Walter Reuther?
Then? Oh no, no, no.
You were just in Texas.
That's right, that's right. I met Phil Murray about two years after … or maybe a year after I went on staff, the first time I had ever met him … Allen Haywood about the same time. It wasn't until I became coordinator of the Industrial Union Department that I had been able to sit down with John L. Lewis and talk.
So you are still cutting your teeth?
I still am.
What are some of the other things you remember.
Yeah.
Five years you were with the CIO Organizing Department?
Right. In 1954 the merger talks between AFL-CIO were under way. I had five years of fighting the AF of L, I had five years of thinking about where I wanted to go. I didn't want to stay with a merged AFL-CIO. I had become very active in the Civil Rights struggle. I just couldn't see going off to merge the organization because I knew the AF of L representatives or at least the AF of L representatives that I knew did not share my ideas and dreams. I didn't want to be associated with them so, Jim Carey was Secretary-Treasurer of CIO and of the CIO Organizing Committee, I had met him a time or two. He, or somebody in his office called and asked me to transfer over from the CIO to the IUE. We had organized two or three plants for IUE at that time. It was a brand new union created out of the … as a result of the expulsion of UE from CIO, and it didn't have any representatives in the state. We had successfully organized two or three plants for IUE, and they needed a service representative and somebody to continue their organizing efforts. They were on their feet by this time financially, and they could afford to hire a couple of representatives, so they hired me and Red Purcell. We transferred over from the CIO to the IUE.
Are they now a member of the merged AFL-CIO?
They were a member of the merged AFL-CIO.
But you were uncomfortable working for them.
No, because, you know, it was an international union. It made its own policies; just being a member of the AFL-CIO doesn't …
[END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A]
[START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B]
Before we go on with IUE because I think that is an important story, how UE was expelled and how IUE was formed. A few more questions about the CIO.
Okay.
You were on the organizing committee, or were you under the Regional Director or was there a difference?
There was no difference. I was a member of the staff of the CIO Organizing Committee. Each state in the South had a Director and Sub-Directors and I worked directly under Bob in Texas.
Who did Bob report to?
Well, Van Bittner until he died, and then for a short period of time a guy named Baldanzi was Director. He was camped, he was trouble.
Well he finally went to AFL, right? United Textile?
He went to UTW, right. Then John Riffe became the Director of the Southern CIO Organizing Committee.
So the State Director Bob Oliver reported to the Director of the Southern Organizing Committee.
Right.
And then he reported to Al Haywood and Phil Murray.
That's right.
Who were … well there are a couple of names I could throw at you … I'm interested in this … at this particular time, the role of liberal intellectuals like Lucy Rendolph Mason, for example, was a trouble shooter, she worked out of the Atlanta office, she went around to hot spots and she walked in … she was 55 or 60 years old and she did various things. Other intellectuals wrote like David Burgess. Were you aware of those kinds of roles a few played?
Oh sure, because they, in many cases, became involved in our organizing campaign as you know. We'd start an organizing campaign, we'd run into trouble, all kinds of trouble, then we'd have to call on these people … the specialists from the Atlanta office … the writers were always in and out. We had one guy who did publicity for just Texas but many times … I can't remember the guys name from the Atlanta office that helped me to write. Lucy would come in.
Lucy who?
Mason.
She came into some …
Yeah, into the area into the specific campaign … There was …
Is it amyth about her Virginia heritage in helping her get around to places you couldn't get. Is that the way it really was?
She made some beautiful contacts for us. There was another guy. He headed up a Department called Religion and Labor.
Wasn't …
Ramsey. What was his first name? Anyway, he would come in and try to muster church support for the organizing campaign. You were always getting somebody from outside to come in and help on things like that.
Besides assisting, did you feel like they were essential?
I don't know that I had a feeling there. I was told … I was young, and I was told that they were coming in to help, and I accepted it as help and in most cases it was help. The most help it was to me, it broadened my view of labor movement and the liberal movement because they weren't organizing, you were sitting around in the motel or a room someplace talking about the old times.
So besides affecting the campaign, they affected you personally?
In my individual life, that was their biggest contribution. I think they helped me a lot more in developing my ideas than actually on the organizing campaigns.
Can you remember say on Lucy Mason, how many times she came to Texas?
No, I have no idea. I came in contact with her maybe two or three times in those five years.
What about during those years any rank and file people that were part of campaigns. Do you remember particular people very vividly then for one reason or another?
Sure. You know I can hardly remember my own name, but I can recall numerous instances of extreme courage and dedication on the part of people inside the plant and people in the community. I am sure you don't want individual experiences, but …
Maybe we'll get some of those later.
But there were a lot of people …
You remember specific people?
Oh sure. In many cases they eventually became staff members during that period. I kept a lot of the old leaflets and old records and reports from that time because I just like to go back and look at them and think about the campaign in Louisiana, or in Corpus Christi. You know, you just like to look back occasionally.
Did you happen to … this is just kind of off the top of my head, but did you ever run into a fishermens strike during the early fifties that was being run by … I guess, by the fur and leather workers.
Down in Louisiana.
All around the coast, John Russell told me about a two year …
Yeah, I read about it. I wasn't involved in that. But I did read about it. In fact, it was during that period, and I don't remember where or when, I first met H. L. Mitchell, and I think he might have been involved in that.
I think he was working for the Meatcutters but maybe …
I think so. I don't remember.
Your transition to IUE-it makes sense the way you were disturbed by the merger within the organization and you went to work for an international. What kind of residual influence was there from UE. Were all the communist party people … they weren't around, right?
Well, they had no locals in Texas. I think they may have had one or two small units. You know, like electric, you have a master contractor, you have little tiny units scattered that come under national agreement. There may have been one or two UE units in Texas at that time that I wasn't aware of. One that I was aware of because somebody had wanted me to … asked me to go over and try to raid it, get out of UE and into IUE, and I told them I wasn't interested. There were too many unorganized people to organize, instead of raiding a union that was already established, and I just didn't do it.
So your primary commitment then was still to trade union work. I mean, it wasn't that you had gotten so involved with Civil Rights and other things that you were working more with coalition? You were working for IUE.
I was working for IUE, yes, I was involved in the Civil Rights thing, and
one of the understandings we had was that I could continue that
completely as a staff member for IUE. In fact, Carey encouraged
What kind of involvements would this kind of work mean?
Well, during the CIO days we worked real hard … most of it was just getting money together for the legal defense funds fight on what eventually became the Brown case. But then after that, oh in '55 and '56 actually trying to integrate the unions, insisting that we have our conventions, our State CIO Conventions in an integrated facility. There were just all kinds of … like, we organized a plant that was a former AF of L plant that had separate seniority lists, and we forced them to integrate the seniority list. I, you know, … putting non-discrimination clauses in union contracts for example and encouraging others to do it.
But you did start at home. I mean you started with your locals.
Absolutely.
Was the IUE, were most of those locals mostly white?
Most of them, yes. Remember, IUE now as factory workers go, was among the
better paid, more skilled workers, and there was an awful lot of whites
in the IUE plants. In fact a great majority.
Did you try to bring some of those people onto your staff with IUE?
We didn't have a staff. The only staff we had was me and Red Purcell.
You became Regional Director though, right?
Yeah, much later and over here.
But you were in Texas for say how long?
I was in Texas for about a year or a year and a half with IUE then they started picking me to more or less involve myself in other states, to trouble-shoot. I had got some experience at that point in negotiating, handling NLRB cases, arbitration cases, so they started lifting me out of Texas and sending me to Mississippi and Louisiana and Florida and places like that.
But you were still organizing and servicing locals and negotiating contracts.
That's right.
And grievances?
That's right.
You had full …
You weren't doing all of these at one time, but it was interesting. I thought, … they gave me an opportunity to get a very good trade union education because they allowed me to involve myself so much.
Were you aware of things in Texas similar to that League of Social
Justice on a state-wide level, like a Texas coalition, the Texas Observer.
Oh sure, sure.
Did you meet Larry Goodwin during those years?
Yeah, yeah, and Ronnie Dugger … Ronnie is still a good friend of mine, and Larry … Larry is at Duke isn't he … yeah, yeah.
He keeps doing the same work …
Sure, I knew all of those guys. Mrs. Randolph, who was the financial
angel for the Observer, is a great old lady. We had
quite a thing going then. It was during that period that the Democratic
party in Texas deserted the Democratic party and the only real tie we
had with the national party was through the various coalitions we had
going at that time.
So, you represented labor in the different coalition meetings. You along with other people.
Sure.
Were you becoming a spokesman in their eyes?
Oh gosh, I don't know. I was heavily
You were working under Red Purcell?
Well not really at this point with IUE. We … in CIO he was over me, when we transferred to IUE, we were just two representatives, that's all it was. We'd organize a plant, and he would negotiate a contract; the next one he would organize and I would negotiate the contract. In fact, it was kind of a co-worker kind of thing. But I was more active in the Civil Rights movement. I was more active in the State CIO Council. I was more active in the political action arm of the CIO. Red pretty well limited himself to organizing, and I went on the board of the State CIO Council, for example, and he did not. You know, things like that. At this point I was involved in a lot more different things than he was.
Were you still living in Fort Worth at the time?
Right.
So, did IUE grow in Texas?
Very much. It's a nice big solid union over there now.
You and Red Purcell took it from scattered locals …
From nothing actually. See there were no IUE locals when we first became
involved with IUE. While we were still with CIO we organized a few
plants for IUE
Did you find it harder … I mean, these were the fifties when things were tough, certainly tough in this state.
They were tough.
What was harder about organizing in the fifties than say in the late forties. You were younger in the forties so your perceptions have changed … but, I mean, was the political atmosphere tougher, or was the mood of the workers not as much pro union or what were the factors?
I found it very easy to organize the workers. Your opposition from the companies were … was horrible. They used a lot of goon squad tactics. They attempted to turn a community and the churches and you know groups like that against you. You were denied facilities, you know, for meetings. We held a hell of a lot of meetings under trees and in the dark and out in the woods and out on the roads … well in Texas too. It was hard and particularly since we were under direct orders and certainly agreed with these orders not to have segregated meetings. It is pretty damn hard to have an integrated meeting in East Texas or Louisiana in 1952 or 1953, when you were organizing a saw mill out in the middle of a rural area … it was hard, but fun.
Was it dangerous?
Looking back, I guess we were pretty stupid.
Yeah, it was dangerous, darned dangerous.
Did Pat ever tell you why don't you skip that one under the trees?
No, she was with me all the way. I guess I wouldn't have made it if she hadn't of been. She was tough … but there was a standard number of arrests for everything from … well, the arrest would say one thing, the arrest would really mean an integrated meeting or putting out leaflets or something like that … a few beatings along the way.
Were they Klan?
We ran into them occasionally. Not too often where I was.
But the mood I am trying to get at is different than Mitchell and those guys in 1934. I mean they met under trees, but it sounded more dangerous when they talk about the kind of meetings they had in 1934.
I don't know.
You weren't there in 1934?
I wasn't there.
It's a big jump to 1963, but I want to move along because I think … you were in Texas then for about 15 years.
We lived … I went to Texas in 1946, I guess, the latter part
of '46 probably. Pat and I were married in 1947. They lived
… Pat and the kids lived in Texas until we moved over here in
1961. From '56 to '61, I worked for IUE throughout
the South. For a number of years I spent nearly all of my time in
Florida. They were
Why so much concentration on Florida? Were you Regional Director of IUE?
I was kind of in charge of the organizing efforts in Florida at that point. There was a lot of industry and a lot of heavy electrical industry moving into Florida and they asked me to go down and you know organize the plants like GE and Westinghouse, and Sperry and Strombery Carlson and people like that.
Did you know Jim Carey?
Yeah.
So he was still …
Oh sure, he was President all during the time that I was with IUE. But it was virtually an impossible place to take your children. You know, the school situation was bad; the living conditions were bad. Florida was going through a real boom in population growth, and schools were like half-day things. You'd go half days to school, and it was just a bad situation.
Secretary Treasurer of IUE, Al Hartnett, at the time, tried many times to get me to move my family down there, but I just couldn't see it.
You didn't work with migrants or black workers