Atlanta Tribune

Martin Luther King Jr., Union Man

ATLANTA TRIBUNE — In 1961, King spoke before the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest and most powerful labor organization.

Published

5 years ago

January 23, 2019

Oakland Post

By Peter Cole Professor of History, Western Illinois University

If Martin Luther King Jr. still lived, he’d probably tell people to join unions.

King understood racial equality was inextricably linked to economics. He asked, “What good does it do to be able to eat at a lunch counter if you can’t buy a hamburger?”

Those disadvantages have persisted. Today, for instance, the wealth of the average white family is more than 20 times that of a black one.

King’s solution was unionism.

Convergence of needs

In 1961, King spoke before the AFL-CIO, the nation’s largest and most powerful labor organization, to explain why he felt unions were essential to civil rights progress.

“Negroes are almost entirely a working people,” he said. “Our needs are identical with labor’s needs – decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community.”

My new book, “Dockworker Power: Race and Activism in Durban and the San Francisco Bay Area,” chronicles King’s relationship with a labor union that was, perhaps, the most racially progressive in the country. That was Local 10 of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehousemen’s Union, or ILWU.

ILWU Local 10 represented workers who loaded and unloaded cargo from ships throughout San Francisco Bay’s waterfront. Its members’ commitment to racial equality may be as surprising as it is unknown.

In 1967, the year before his murder, King visited ILWU Local 10 to see what interracial unionism looked like. King met with these unionists at their hall in a then-thriving, portside neighborhood – now a gentrified tourist area best known for Fisherman’s Wharf, Pier 39.

While King knew about this union, ILWU history isn’t widely known off the waterfront.

Civil rights on the waterfront

Dockworkers had suffered for decades from a hiring system compared to a “slave auction.” Once hired, they routinely worked 24 to 36 hour shifts, experienced among the highest rates of injury and death of any job, and endured abusive bosses. And they did so for incredibly low wages.

In 1934, San Francisco longshoremen – who were non-union since employers had crushed their union in 1919 – reorganized and led a coast-wide “Big Strike.”

In the throes of the Great Depression, these increasingly militant and radicalized dockworkers walked off the job. After 83 days on strike, they won a huge victory: wage increases, a coast-wide contract and union-controlled hiring halls.

Soon, these “wharf rats,” among the region’s poorest and most exploited workers, became “lords of the docks,” commanding the highest wages and best conditions of any blue-collar worker in the region.

At its inception, Local 10’s membership was 99 percent white. But Harry Bridges, the union’s charismatic leader, joined with fellow union radicals to commit to racial equality in its ranks.

Originally from Australia, Bridges started working on the San Francisco waterfront in the early 1920s. It was during the Big Strike that he emerged as a leader.

Bridges coordinated during the strike with C.L. Dellums, the leading black unionist in the Bay Area, and made sure the handful of black dockworkers would not cross picket lines as replacement workers. Bridges promised they would get a fair deal in the new union. One of the union’s first moves after the strike was integrating work gangs that previously had been segregated.

Local 10 overcame pervasive discrimination

Cleophas Williams, a black man originally from Arkansas, was among those who got into Local 10 in 1944. He belonged to a wave of African-Americans who, due to the massive labor shortage caused by World War II, fled the racism and discriminatory laws of the Jim Crow South for better lives – and better jobs – outside of it. Hundreds of thousands of blacks moved to the Bay Area, and tens of thousands found jobs in the booming shipbuilding industry.

Black workers in shipbuilding experienced pervasive discrimination. Employers shunted them off into less attractive jobs and paid them less. Similarly, the main shipbuilders’ union proved hostile to black workers who, when allowed in, were placed in segregated locals.

A few thousand black men, including Williams, were hired as longshoremen during the war. He later recalled to historian Harvey Schwartz: “When I first came on the waterfront, many black workers felt that Local 10 was a utopia.”

During the war, when white foremen and military officers hurled racist epithets at black longshoremen, this union defended them. Black members received equal pay and were dispatched the same as all others.

For Williams, this union was a revelation. Literally the first white people he ever met who opposed white supremacy belonged to Local 10. These longshoremen were not simply anti-racists, they were communists and socialists.

Leftist unions like the ILWU embraced black workers because, reflecting their ideology, they contended workers were stronger when united. They also knew that, countless times, employers had broken strikes and destroyed unions by playing workers of different ethnicities, genders, nationalities and races against each other. For instance, when 350,000 workers went out during the mammoth Steel Strike of 1919, employers brought in tens of thousands of African-Americans to work as replacements.

Some black dockworkers also were socialists. Paul Robeson, the globally famous singer, actor and left-wing activist had several friends, fellow socialists, in Local 10. Robeson was made an honorary ILWU member during WWII.

Martin Luther King, union member

In 1967, King walked in Robeson’s footsteps when he was inducted into Local 10 as an honorary member, the same year Williams became the first black person elected president of Local 10. By that year, roughly half of its members were African-American.

King addressed these dockworkers, declaring, “I don’t feel like a stranger here in the midst of the ILWU. We have been strengthened and energized by the support you have given to our struggles. … We’ve learned from labor the meaning of power.”

Many years later, Williams discussed King’s speech with me: “He talked about the economics of discrimination. … What he said is what Bridges had been saying all along,” about workers benefiting by attacking racism and forming interracial unions.

Eight months later, in Memphis to organize a union, King was assassinated.

The day after his death, longshoremen shut down the ports of San Francisco and Oakland, as they still do when one of their own dies on the job. Nine ILWU members attended King’s funeral in Atlanta, including Bridges and Williams, honoring the man who called unions “the first anti-poverty program.”

This article originally appeared in The Atlanta Tribune.

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PRESS ROOM: SunTrust Foundation Awards $2.7 Million in Grants to Winners of the 2019 Lighting the Way Awards

ATLANTA TRIBUNE — The SunTrust Foundation announced the winners of the 2019 Lighting the Way Awards, giving a total of $2.7 million in grants to 36 nonprofit organizations across the South and Midwest, including four in Atlanta. The awards support the work of the organizations to build self-sufficient families and more financially confident communities through financial education, financial counseling, career readiness/workforce development and small business/entrepreneurship. Each nonprofit was awarded a $75,000 grant.

Published

5 years ago

September 3, 2019

Oakland Post

(From left to right) Bill Rogers, Chairman and CEO, SunTrust Bank, and Chairman, SunTrust Foundation; Monica Kaufman Pearson, renowned Atlanta television broadcast journalist; and Stan Little, President, SunTrust Foundation, honor the winners of the SunTrust Foundation’s Lighting the Way Awards. (Photo by: newsroom.suntrust.com)

By The Atlanta Tribune

The SunTrust Foundation announced the winners of the 2019 Lighting the Way Awards, giving a total of $2.7 million in grants to 36 nonprofit organizations across the South and Midwest, including four in Atlanta. The awards support the work of the organizations to build self-sufficient families and more financially confident communities through financial education, financial counseling, career readiness/workforce development and small business/entrepreneurship. Each nonprofit was awarded a $75,000 grant.

“Every one of these nonprofits has created impactful programs to support specific needs of their communities, and it is a privilege to recognize their efforts,” said Stan Little, president of the SunTrust Foundation. “The Lighting the Way Awards illustrate our commitment to Lighting the Way to Financial Well-Being in partnership with organizations that make a difference in the lives of those who need
help the most.”

The SunTrust Foundation also is committed to helping nonprofits improve their organization’s financial well-being by providing workshops, case studies and training on organizational economic sustainability. Following the Lighting the Way Awards event, winners participated in collaborative sessions about using the power of storytelling to engage their stakeholders better and demonstrate their impact in the community. Speakers included Kate Atwood, founder and CEO, B.Essential, and founder, Kate’s Club; David Eidson, president and CEO of Coxe Curry & Associates; Lucy Hall, founder and CEO of Mary Hall Freedom House and Grant Millsaps, lead consultant, The Frontier Project.

There were four Atlanta nonprofits included among the winners: Start: ME, Trinity Community Ministries, North Fulton Community Charities and Communities In Schools of Georgia.

This article originally appeared in The Atlanta Tribune.

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Morehouse College Launches Student Success Program As Strategy To Improve National Student Loan Debt Crisis

ATLANTA TRIBUNE — Morehouse College is launching a ground-breaking program that will enable graduates to pursue advanced degrees, start careers, and build wealth without being tethered to undergraduate student loan debt.

Published

5 years ago

August 19, 2019

Oakland Post

Morehouse College (Photo by: atlantatribune.com)

Gift fund is established to pay loans, offer scholarships, and provide financial freedom for graduates

By The Atlanta Tribune

Morehouse College is launching a ground-breaking program that will enable graduates to pursue advanced degrees, start careers, and build wealth without being tethered to undergraduate student loan debt.

The new Morehouse College Student Success Program, a fund-raising and research initiative, was established by the Board of Trustees as a national investment strategy to curb student loan debt and help graduates to prosper faster. Under the Student Success Program, Morehouse will solicit and accept donations made specifically to reduce or eliminate the student loan debt of Morehouse Men, thus creating an opportunity for greater financial freedom for new alumni and their families.

Morehouse will study the impact of the cost of higher education on Morehouse Men, and the freedom of choice that alumni experience in their careers when their student loan balances are paid in full or reduced to manageable levels.

According to UNCF research, 80 percent of HBCU students use federal loans to fund their education, compared to 55 percent of their peers at other private and state institutions. HBCU graduates also borrow nearly twice as much—$26,266 on average—than non-HBCU students. And one in four HBCU students borrows $40,000 or more to attend college. At Morehouse, the student loan debt threshold at graduation is between $35,000 and $40,000.

“The Morehouse College Board of Trustees believes that student loan debt can be an obstacle in the path of Morehouse Men that can cause them to delay enrolling in advanced degree programs, working as K-12 teachers, or pursuing other interests that they are passionate about,” said David A. Thomas, President of Morehouse College. “The Morehouse College Student Success Program will provide students with a liberating gift that will wipe away or greatly reduce their student loans, allowing them to pursue their dreams and lead lives of leadership and service immediately after graduation.

“We, at Morehouse, see the Student Success Program as an important step toward improving outcomes for our graduates and addressing the income disparities that people of color experience when they are overburdened by debt.”

America’s student loan debt—now more than $1.5 trillion, according to the U.S. Department of Education (more than the nation’s $1.3 trillion in auto loan debt)—can exacerbate the wealth gap that exists between black families facing generational poverty and other groups. Black households nationally have the lowest median net worth, lagging behind Asian, white, and Latin Americans respectively, according to the U.S. Census.

In its study of student loans in the HBCU community, the UNCF’s Frederick D. Patterson Research Institute found that HBCU students are more likely to seek loans from more costly sources and encounter more difficulties in repaying their loans in the seven years after leaving college. Repayment of student loans can be aggravated by the economic status of borrowers, labor market conditions, and factors such as a student’s educational program choice.

The Brookings Institute projects that based on current trends in student loan defaults, two in five of all borrowers—nearly 40 percent—will default on their loans by 2023.

UNCF officials agree that offerings such as Morehouse’s Student Success Program could become a new model for HBCUs and other liberal arts institutions seeking strategies to offset the stress of student debt on alumni and their families.

“Morehouse’s program to provide debt relief to new graduates is a fund-raising opportunity that should be studied and duplicated nationally,” said Michael L. Lomax, president and CEO of the United Negro College Fund. “The impact of such a gift, particularly for minority or economically disadvantaged families, could accelerate the growth of a more diverse and robust middle class.”

The Morehouse College Office of Institutional Advancement is in talks with a number of philanthropists, corporate partners, and other supporters who have expressed interest in donating to the new Student Success Program. Gifts are tax-deductible and will be disbursed directly to designated students or graduating classes.

“We look forward to charting the progress of those who receive generous support from the Student Success Program,” Thomas said. “We encourage those who receive gifts to pay it forward and help upcoming classes to enjoy a significant level of financial independence from student loan debt.

This article originally appeared in The Atlanta Tribune.

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On Our Radar: Leadership Conferences in Atlanta

ATLANTA TRIBUNE — According to a 2017 SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, 93% managers need training on coaching employees. Consequently, many surveyed said they felt ill-equipped to lead their peers because they were never properly trained. Studies suggest that when an employee is being led by someone who lacks efficient leadership skills, productivity in the workplace decreases and the likelihood that an employee will leave the company increases.

Published

5 years ago

July 14, 2019

Kadejah Brathwaite

By Kadejah Brathwaite, Editorial Intern

Fine-tuned leadership skills in the workplace are what separate the good from the great in business.

According to a 2017 SHRM/Globoforce Employee Recognition Survey, 93% managers need training on coaching employees. Consequently, many surveyed said they felt ill-equipped to lead their peers because they were never properly trained. Studies suggest that when an employee is being led by someone who lacks efficient leadership skills, productivity in the workplace decreases and the likelihood that an employee will leave the company increases.

Perhaps you are in this same boat and want to develop better administrative skills to boost your business. Atlanta will host some leadership summits that you should attend.

Boost Leadership with Ian Cron

Best-selling author of “The Road Back to You,” Ian Cron, will discuss the usefulness of the Enneagram personality test and how it can help professionals learn about themselves and their development as leaders. This free function will take place at the Renaissance Atlanta Waverly Hotel and Convention Center on July 17, 2019.

Building Better Organizations One Individual at a Time

This one-day seminar is created for new managers who need guidance and tips on how to make a smooth transition from a successful team member to a successful manager. Attendees will discuss ways to give constructive criticism to their peers and how to effectively add value to their teams. The event will be at Cobb Galleria on July 25, 2019, and tickets can be purchased here.

Management and Leadership Skills for First-Time Supervisors and Managers

Attend this workshop on July 30-31, 2019 and learn the ropes on successful leadership techniques. This highly interactive event will provide feedback on how to build supervisory skills through self-assessment tools, checklists and a Leadership Style Analysis. Register here.

This article originally appeared in the Atlanta Tribune.