Fighting for Racial Justice: Local 6 (1947-60)

The Dispatcher, February 1995
Edited by Harvey Schwartz

CURTIS McCLAIN

‘They called us the Black Caucus. We called ourselves the Frontiersmen.’

In 1946, shortly after I left the military, I was hired on a temporary basis by Schmidt Lithograph, a multi-union house in San Francisco. They had a crew of l6 or 17 warehousemen, but they had a total work force of 600. I was the only black there. When the person who was to return from vacation had an accident, John Munson the company supervisor, asked me to work steady. He also kind of pissed me off by implying that I would either come late or wouldn’t show up. “Don’t forget,” he said, “we always start at the regular time.” I went into the paper seasoning department where work was heavy, hot, and dusty. Although it was the last place I wanted to work I needed the job, so I stayed for 14 years.

I liked working out of doors in the bull gang, which handled freight cars and trucks. This job paid more money on a straight time basis, you had an opportunity to work overtime, and you could operate a lift or a jitney. But when I asked to be sent to the bull gang, I’d be told I was too important to be moved from the paper seasoning department. Someone else would then come in from the hall, would just happen to be white, and would work the bull gang and get the overtime pay.

As I acquired seniority in the plant I tried to get into the trades as an apprentice, but that’s where you really encountered the old runaround. You didn’t get into the lithographer or the printers’ union; you didn’t get into the electrical department. I saw many people come in, begin an apprenticeship, and become journeymen. I had electrical training, but I was never allowed into the trades.

So I was interested when a Black Caucus developed in 1947. We decided to meet on an informal basis to discuss problems that affected blacks and other minorities in the local. We discussed grievances we thought were not being handled properly. We often heard of people being bypassed for jobs; and at that time you did not find blacks in the vast majority of the good classified categories. There were also certain discharge we felt warranted greater attention from the officers. At least we felt this grievance was not being aired quickly enough. I’m not saying the union did not pursue discharges as such. But not all officers pursued them as they should have. So we wanted to band together so it was not just one person approaching the officers or going to a meeting to deal with a problem.

When I say we, I am referring to other black rank and file members of the union. There were no outsiders; all the people who attended these meetings were dues paying members of Local 6. We started very small. There were five or six of us who met first and exchanged ideas. We expanded to 25 or 30 on the San Francisco side of the Bay. We had a close working relationship with white rank and file members in the local, but there were no white brothers in the caucus.

We reached 25 rapidly; I think we could have expanded to a much larger number if we had chosen to. The union was changing. There was a large influx of black people coming into the union. World War II was over. The shipyards were closing down. The warehouse industry offered a means of obtaining employment. Some of the new people had been stewards or had held leadership positions in other unions, and were not satisfied just coming to membership meetings and playing the role of voting rank-and-filers without giving input into policies and programs. So we could have expanded the caucus to most any number, but it remained small because we chose to keep it small; it was a group we thought we could work with.

When we formed we had in mind to get organized for political purposes within the union. The term Black Caucus was really a name white trade unionists called us. We were not too upset because they called us a Black Caucus—after all, it was a group of black people coming together to discuss problems. But we constantly called ourselves the Frontiersmen. This was a club we set up so if we were questioned, there would never be any problem, because we sponsored dance and parties. We tied ourselves in with social activities within the community.

Clearly, though, the purpose of the Frontiersmen was to organize so we could elect an Afro-American to a full-time position and address the grievance taking place. I was the person elected as business agent in 1960. But there were appointments—field representatives, organizers—made prior to my being elected when some of the longshoremen joined with us to approach the International. The first Afro-American organizer appointed was Roland Corley in the Redwood City division of Local 6. Also, the union began to have shop committee push more for promotions by seniority. This had been union policy all along but in reality it had not necessarily worked out in the past.

At the time we formed the Frontiersmen Club, it was sorely needed within the local. We did a great deal of good, not only for the black union members, but for the union as a whole. We learned some of the fears and concerns of the union people, both black and white. After serving its purpose, there was no need to continue with the organization. It dissolved after 14 years. Things had worked out as they should have been, in a more democratic fashion. We were now working together on the job, forming good house committees and a strong steward system, and electing people who were going to work for the whole union.

OLE FAGERHAUGH

‘There is something disgraceful going on that’s a danger to all of us.’

I made my seniority in 1949 at Owens-Illinois Glass of Oakland. I was elected steward about a year later. We were 150 warehousemen in a plant that had 1400 workers. Amongst our 150 members there were three blacks. In the rest of the plant there was one black—in Oakland a city with a large black population. To explain this I’ll give you an example.

I was around the dispatch hall on my day off. This was about 1950. I heard a conversation between our dispatcher and Charlie Kinsey, the personnel manager at Owens. “I need seven men for Monday,” Charlie said, “but don t sent me any n—ers.”

The dispatcher laughed, “Ha, Charlie, I gotta take ‘em off the board, but you know you don’t have to keep ‘em.” That explained everything to me as far as the warehouse went. And, of course, if they could do that with the Warehouse Union, what could they do with the company-oriented glass blowers’ union that had much of the rest of the plant?

I got our committee together. There were five of us including two Hispanics. I said, “There is something disgraceful going on that’ a danger to us all.” I got agreement on a program. I said, “I want you to send me every dispatch that comes out here; I will tell them ‘Look, if you get laid off, ask the foreman why. Then come and tell me’.” We kept a record of it for nine months. The picture was not pretty. No black made seniority although 50 per cent of those dispatched were black. They’d keep them a couple of months, just short of making seniority, and lay them off.

One Monday morning here comes seven new people. There were three blacks and two Hispanics. Later they laid off the blacks and the Hispanics and kept the two others. I said, “Now is when we move.” I called the dispatcher and asked him if there were any calls for new people. He said yeah. Then I got the committee together and marched over to the personnel office and said, “We want a meeting.”

Bud Owens was the president. He and the personnel manager said we better get the warehouse foreman. We said we were charging a violation of the contract. I pulled out the records I’d kept for nine months. I said, “The most recent thing is you hired X number and you sent them all back except two Caucasians, and you’ve got a call in.” “We have a right to do that under the contact,” they said. “We can lay anybody off before 90 days.” I said, “Wait a minute. The contract says the company may for any reason lay off anybody prior to seniority. What we want to know is the reason.”

So they asked the foreman, George Gower, “Why did you lay this one off?” Gower, who was from Georgia, said, “I just didn’t like the man’s attitude.” My committee was riled Al Martinez said, “What do you mean George, you don’t like his attitude? He didn’t take off his hat and say, ‘Yeah, boss’?” Owens’s face got brilliant red. He looked over at Gower! Come to the next guy; I’d started on the three black guys. Gower stuttered, “Damn, he’s too short.” Then I asked, “How tall is Johnny Al?” He was a little Portuguese guy who stood about five feet and had worked there for l5 years. “Well,” Gower said, “we can’t have them all short.”

We got to the third one and Bud Owens interrupted: “Wait a minute, that’s enough. We’ll take these men.” I got on the horn, called the dispatcher, and said. “Wherever these guy are, pull them off the job and send them out to Owens.” They came out the next morning.

We broke their f—in’ back. They never tried it again. And we didn’t just break their back in the warehouse; I was in contact with this guy in the packing room and he started getting busy. Well, it happened so fast after that—they realized the game was up. I put the NAACP on their tail too, and they started a pressure campaign. In one year you wouldn’t recognize the place.

The Dispatcher, February 1995
Edited by Harvey Schwartz

In observance of Black History Month, this issue will focus on two warehouse Local 6 activists who struggled against racial injustice in the late 1940s and early 1950s. Curtis McClain, the first African American to be elected Local 6 Business Agent and later President, went on to become International Secretary-Treasurer, a position from which he retired in 1991. Ole Fagerhaugh served the union for many years as a highly respected—and effective—organizer. Their recollections are strikingly complementary.

CURTIS McCLAIN

‘They called us the Black Caucus. We called ourselves the Frontiersmen.’

In 1946, shortly after I left the military, I was hired on a temporary basis by Schmidt Lithograph, a multi-union house in San Francisco. They had a crew of l6 or 17 warehousemen, but they had a total work force of 600. I was the only black there. When the person who was to return from vacation had an accident, John Munson the company supervisor, asked me to work steady. He also kind of pissed me off by implying that I would either come late or wouldn’t show up. “Don’t forget,” he said, “we always start at the regular time.” I went into the paper seasoning department where work was heavy, hot, and dusty. Although it was the last place I wanted to work I needed the job, so I stayed for 14 years.

I liked working out of doors in the bull gang, which handled freight cars and trucks. This job paid more money on a straight time basis, you had an opportunity to work overtime, and you could operate a lift or a jitney. But when I asked to be sent to the bull gang, I’d be told I was too important to be moved from the paper seasoning department. Someone else would then come in from the hall, would just happen to be white, and would work the bull gang and get the overtime pay.

As I acquired seniority in the plant I tried to get into the trades as an apprentice, but that’s where you really encountered the old runaround. You didn’t get into the lithographer or the printers’ union; you didn’t get into the electrical department. I saw many people come in, begin an apprenticeship, and become journeymen. I had electrical training, but I was never allowed into the trades.

So I was interested when a Black Caucus developed in 1947. We decided to meet on an informal basis to discuss problems that affected blacks and other minorities in the local. We discussed grievances we thought were not being handled properly. We often heard of people being bypassed for jobs; and at that time you did not find blacks in the vast majority of the good classified categories. There were also certain discharge we felt warranted greater attention from the officers. At least we felt this grievance was not being aired quickly enough. I’m not saying the union did not pursue discharges as such. But not all officers pursued them as they should have. So we wanted to band together so it was not just one person approaching the officers or going to a meeting to deal with a problem.

When I say we, I am referring to other black rank and file members of the union. There were no outsiders; all the people who attended these meetings were dues paying members of Local 6. We started very small. There were five or six of us who met first and exchanged ideas. We expanded to 25 or 30 on the San Francisco side of the Bay. We had a close working relationship with white rank and file members in the local, but there were no white brothers in the caucus.

We reached 25 rapidly; I think we could have expanded to a much larger number if we had chosen to. The union was changing. There was a large influx of black people coming into the union. World War II was over. The shipyards were closing down. The warehouse industry offered a means of obtaining employment. Some of the new people had been stewards or had held leadership positions in other unions, and were not satisfied just coming to membership meetings and playing the role of voting rank-and-filers without giving input into policies and programs. So we could have expanded the caucus to most any number, but it remained small because we chose to keep it small; it was a group we thought we could work with.

When we formed we had in mind to get organized for political purposes within the union. The term Black Caucus was really a name white trade unionists called us. We were not too upset because they called us a Black Caucus—after all, it was a group of black people coming together to discuss problems. But we constantly called ourselves the Frontiersmen. This was a club we set up so if we were questioned, there would never be any problem, because we sponsored dance and parties. We tied ourselves in with social activities within the community.

Clearly, though, the purpose of the Frontiersmen was to organize so we could elect an Afro-American to a full-time position and address the grievance taking place. I was the person elected as business agent in 1960. But there were appointments—field representatives, organizers—made prior to my being elected when some of the longshoremen joined with us to approach the International. The first Afro-American organizer appointed was Roland Corley in the Redwood City division of Local 6. Also, the union began to have shop committee push more for promotions by seniority. This had been union policy all along but in reality it had not necessarily worked out in the past.

At the time we formed the Frontiersmen Club, it was sorely needed within the local. We did a great deal of good, not only for the black union members, but for the union as a whole. We learned some of the fears and concerns of the union people, both black and white. After serving its purpose, there was no need to continue with the organization. It dissolved after 14 years. Things had worked out as they should have been, in a more democratic fashion. We were now working together on the job, forming good house committees and a strong steward system, and electing people who were going to work for the whole union.

OLE FAGERHAUGH

‘There is something disgraceful going on that’s a danger to all of us.’

I made my seniority in 1949 at Owens-Illinois Glass of Oakland. I was elected steward about a year later. We were 150 warehousemen in a plant that had 1400 workers. Amongst our 150 members there were three blacks. In the rest of the plant there was one black—in Oakland a city with a large black population. To explain this I’ll give you an example.

I was around the dispatch hall on my day off. This was about 1950. I heard a conversation between our dispatcher and Charlie Kinsey, the personnel manager at Owens. “I need seven men for Monday,” Charlie said, “but don t sent me any n—ers.”

The dispatcher laughed, “Ha, Charlie, I gotta take ‘em off the board, but you know you don’t have to keep ‘em.” That explained everything to me as far as the warehouse went. And, of course, if they could do that with the Warehouse Union, what could they do with the company-oriented glass blowers’ union that had much of the rest of the plant?

I got our committee together. There were five of us including two Hispanics. I said, “There is something disgraceful going on that’ a danger to us all.” I got agreement on a program. I said, “I want you to send me every dispatch that comes out here; I will tell them ‘Look, if you get laid off, ask the foreman why. Then come and tell me’.” We kept a record of it for nine months. The picture was not pretty. No black made seniority although 50 per cent of those dispatched were black. They’d keep them a couple of months, just short of making seniority, and lay them off.

One Monday morning here comes seven new people. There were three blacks and two Hispanics. Later they laid off the blacks and the Hispanics and kept the two others. I said, “Now is when we move.” I called the dispatcher and asked him if there were any calls for new people. He said yeah. Then I got the committee together and marched over to the personnel office and said, “We want a meeting.”

Bud Owens was the president. He and the personnel manager said we better get the warehouse foreman. We said we were charging a violation of the contract. I pulled out the records I’d kept for nine months. I said, “The most recent thing is you hired X number and you sent them all back except two Caucasians, and you’ve got a call in.” “We have a right to do that under the contact,” they said. “We can lay anybody off before 90 days.” I said, “Wait a minute. The contract says the company may for any reason lay off anybody prior to seniority. What we want to know is the reason.”

So they asked the foreman, George Gower, “Why did you lay this one off?” Gower, who was from Georgia, said, “I just didn’t like the man’s attitude.” My committee was riled Al Martinez said, “What do you mean George, you don’t like his attitude? He didn’t take off his hat and say, ‘Yeah, boss’?” Owens’s face got brilliant red. He looked over at Gower! Come to the next guy; I’d started on the three black guys. Gower stuttered, “Damn, he’s too short.” Then I asked, “How tall is Johnny Al?” He was a little Portuguese guy who stood about five feet and had worked there for l5 years. “Well,” Gower said, “we can’t have them all short.”

We got to the third one and Bud Owens interrupted: “Wait a minute, that’s enough. We’ll take these men.” I got on the horn, called the dispatcher, and said. “Wherever these guy are, pull them off the job and send them out to Owens.” They came out the next morning.

We broke their f—in’ back. They never tried it again. And we didn’t just break their back in the warehouse; I was in contact with this guy in the packing room and he started getting busy. Well, it happened so fast after that—they realized the game was up. I put the NAACP on their tail too, and they started a pressure campaign. In one year you wouldn’t recognize the place.