Progressive outlook of the Fur and Leather Workers Union
Russell addresses the progressive nature of the Fur and Leather Workers Union during the late 1940s and early 1950s, leading up to its merger with the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union. According to Russell, the Fur and Leather Workers Union envisioned a broad organized coalition of workers—white and black, men and women. He describes how he and other organizers were well-researched in the history of their primary base of support in western North Carolina and eastern North Carolina and that the workers they organized were in line with this progressive outlook. In addition, he addresses how the Fur and Leather Workers Union, particularly its leader Ben Gold, began to experience red-baiting during these years.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with John Russell, July 25, 1974. Interview E-0014-2. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- WILLIAM FINGER:
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That was helping you get this strength … these strong unions,
you got them together and they seemed to be pretty …
- JOHN RUSSELL:
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Well, basically, our program and policies flowed out of the policies of
the international union. And of course, both Hardy and myself, and some
other people we knew, were pretty well aware politically of what was the
score around the world, you know, and in the country. And I think
probably that between our policies and political positions which we
thought were correct, which helped to at least orient us toward building
the kind of progressive trade union, that united black and white and
women, all elements, in a way that we wouldn't have, I am
sure, if we hadn't had that kind of understanding and
influence and background.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
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Do you think much of the … besides strength that you brought
from your awareness of the international situation and the Fur and
Leather Workers positions, any kind of, you know, ground swell from the
local people, say in Andrews of Hazelwood … did you have to
build everything that you got, or did they want that kind of progressive
trade union?
- JOHN RUSSELL:
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No, I think we, you see, we understood … it. I did a lot of
reading, Hardy was really up on the history and traditions of the
mountain people, he did a lot of studying on this. And what we did, you
see, is we used the progressive role of mountain people during the Civil
War, and other times, to help their learning and
understanding in that period of time there too, you see. For instance,
you know that the mountain country sent a lot of troops to the Union and
were anti-slavery, and these things we were able to use, this past
history and tradition, to begin to develop some understanding on the
current problems of black and white issues, for instance, and the
red-baiting going on, and all these things. So that we were able at
least to soften the impact of outside attempts from the outside to split
and divide our people.
- WILLIAM FINGER:
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Local people knew you were being red-baited?
- JOHN RUSSELL:
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Oh yes, yes, sure, sure … in practically every issue. For
instance in 1950, when we left the CIO, before I even got back from the
convention, the CIO had organizers into Asheville and into Newport,
Tennessee attempting to take them away on the grounds that we were a
bunch of communists and that Ben Gold had been found guilty, or had been
charged with lying under oath about the Taft-Hartley law, and things
like this. And they came in making a big issue out of the red issue, you
see, and offering to lead these workers out to the good sane, as they
say "sensible" american trade union … that
wasn't going to have all that foreign dominance and
influence. But I think that certainly it was a credit to our union, to
our policies and programs, as well as to the terrific understanding of
these people in the mountains, not only as far as tolerance
is concerned, and things like that, but real understanding,
that the red … I don't say it didn't go
right over their head, we had some problems with certain people, but
basically, they just shook it off and said, "This is our union,
it fought for us, and by God we are in it, we don't give a
damn what they call them." And that is probably as good, in
that period of time, as you could expect from any group, you know.