Q: What's your opinion of what has happened here in the labor movement?

Transcription

1 Clarence Coe Interview Recorded: May 28, 1989 Interviewer: Michael Honey Phone Interview - Clarence Coe - 5/28/89 - by Mike Honey Q: What's your opinion of what has happened here in the labor movement? Coe: Number l, Memphis never has been a labor town. It's just never been a labor town. Back in '39, '40, '4l when labor unions first tried to move in here, old man Crump, old E. H. Crump, Boss Crump vowed that the AFL/CIO, I mean the CIO union would never come to Memphis. He just wasn't going to have it. And he kept it out. When the organizers came in, back in those days, they would try to meet us on the river bank which was technically federal property. The goons were sent down there... I'm not accusing him of having done it, but somebody did... and met some of our organizers. But in spite of that... Q: Can you remember specific incidents of that? Coe: No, that's the reason I didn't want to do it. I want to be accurate, and you can hardly do that. Q: Do you remember Thomas Watkins, and another longshoreman who they took across the river and drowned? Coe: Yeah, but I can't be accurate. I was right into it, and they were telling me not to do it, stay away from it. But it just so happens that... My wife and I were childless; we didn't have children. And I could stick my neck out in areas where some areas that people like Harold and some of those people that you've talked with were afraid to tread. And that's why today, when you visited the homes you found a vast difference in the surroundings because they were moving far, but I devoted all of my young life to betterment of the race and NAACP, and this thing and the other thing. Be that as it may, I kept after it, I just kept after it. I just did not give up. I went to NAACP meetings, so, tried to enlist their support, tried to get the first 500 members in the Memphis area. We had a terrible time trying to get the first 500 members. About 4 or 5 of us worked at the plant to do it. Back in those days, when people didn't know what it was all about, we even signed up some white folks. (Chuckles.) Through those people, some of them had a little grit, you were able to move into industry, 'cause some of them were working in industry. So you solicited that aid; you got some support there, and then we started into this when most of the people at the plant were afraid to wear CIO buttons. It was almost suicide. But we just kept closing out(?), and some of the AFL group during the craft union came over withe us, and right after the war, we began to build a strong union, a strong union. We got dues checkoff, for one thing, once we signed up a person. When we negotiated dues checkoff, then we were headed for a strong union. And, it looked like, seemed like we stayed on strike all the time, people accused us of that, but we began to make progress. And then we had good contact with Akron. They had had some of these benefits. And then in negotiation, you would try to correlate with Acron, Firestone, Acron Goodyear, US in Detroit, I 1

2 mean some of the things they wanted when we combined their delegation with our delegation, I mean, you had to do a lot of swappin' out. If we go with you on this, you go with us on that. I can remember a time when.... Q: This is in terms of trying to develop a national contract? Coe: That's right. You just had to go that route sometimes. I can remember the time when they were trying to ship a lot of the work down here, because they could get it done cheaper. See what I mean? Those people even let some raises go and switched 'em down here and called 'em equity, because once the plant reached a point that they couldn't get it done any cheaper here than there, it kind of helped us all. But, they tried everything in the world to... And then we had this element that, I want the progress, but I don't want to see you do it. You know if you was black. When we first started getting raises for instant, they would give us percentage raises, percentage. So if you're makin' $.87 an hour, and I'm makin' $.45, hell, you get a percentage rate, you see how you're starting to move away from me? Q: So in other words, they'd take the wages where they were and then give you a percentage raise, but it meant whoever had the higher wage would always do better. Coe: That's right. That's right. And they jsut moved plum out of sight of where we were. When I was makin' $12.00 at the plant, they were making $20.00 on account of those percentage rates over 10 or 20 years. And then the next thing I set out to do, steadily got my neck out, and decided to integrate the job. I felt that was the only solution. Because they had us on one seniority board; the whites were on another. And I don't know if you're white or black; I'm tellin' the truth! So finally, through court we had to raise money, hire a lawyer, fight it, take the threatening phone calls and all of the other abuses that came along with it. But, as I said, a few of us who didn't have large families just stayed with it. Q: Did you get a lot of threats? Coe: Oh man, like the world(?). A lot of nights I went to bed and didn't expect to wake up. Really, when you're pushed into a corner, you reach a point where you don't care. The only thing that really bothered me, is that my wife didn't deserve to be blown up. And you can't come home telling your wife what has transpired that day. There's nothing she can do; why worry her? But, you go through these things. So after working... Q: When was this happening, in the '50's? Coe: In the '50's and '60's. All the way through. I finally tranferred out of the mill room to the calender room in '65. I had been at Firestone for 25 years then. So I had worked at Firestone for '25 years before I made $50 for one single day's work. What we did Mr. Honey, back during the war years, during the war we thought that the mill room was predominantly black. The company hired some white boys once and brought 'em over there once, and I admit, we shut the thing down until they moved them. We thought we were gaining some strength, for the fact that we had enough 2

3 strength to do that. But once they got us segregated, they put the foot on our neck. I mean it's easy to, to get a bunch isolated, you know. Next thing I knew, base rates had changed, CAE had changed,.. Q: What's CAE? Coe: That's classification average earning. When the plant was open, the banbury operators, tuber operators, calender operators, that group had a base rate, a CAE rate. In later years after we were fool enough to get ourselves isolated, the banbury fell to us, the banbury unit fell to us. And, before I knew it, they had changed our base rates. We had some leadership at that time, even though they were black, they were tricky. I don't know how they managed to get sucked into it, but some of them had been there since '37, '38, and I didn't go to the plant until l94l. And, once they got us separated, they just moved away from us. Then the only alternative we had was to try to integrate the jobs and filter out into some of these other departments. And they tried every trick in the world to disqualify you, too. And only a few people had enough education maybe to take the risk of qualifying in some of those departments. I took the risk; I stayed on the broom for six years, but I knew I could make it. And I knew I could set the pattern and open the way for some of the lesser qualified people. And then they started trying to move me into management, supervision, and so forth. But I never accepted it. I would have had a better retirement plan, but I just wanted to stay on with the union and try and get everything I could for them, and we did. We did. Before they left here, we were virtually equal. If you qualified for something, you could just about get it. But my God, man, when you'd given up 30 years of your life fighting for something that should have been yours to begin with, it's a little bit disheartening. And then the very people that got the big promotions, were ones that were never reprimanded, never called to the office, never put on the spot; you know, they went out and found the good boys. (chuckles). But all of that's life, that's life. And we have some Firestone people who are living like kings, and never lost any skin off their butts for any of it. Looked like most of it came off of my butt. And I, but, I'm happy. My wife and I have, the Lord has allowed us to grow old together. When a man's 48 and a half years, no aches, no pains, no arthritus, no nothing, and that's a blessing. But, labor here, labor here. I know I'm rambling; I tried to get the rubber workers convention to Memphis in l973; I was in Washington on something that I had been sent up there to make appointments with the senators and congressmen from Tennessee. And then, I ran into some of our people there at this institute. And I tried to get them to find the convention here. And they just told me straight up that no, we're not coming to Memphis. King was assasinated in Memphis. But they were so sure that that wasn't going to have any impact on the black race, they went and built a convention center here. You've seen it. And that's for the a purpose of entertaining conventions and something. I mean, they never had thought seriously about what happened. Q: You mean the local people. Coe: Yes. They never really thought seriously about it. And that was so unnecessary. So unnecessary! 3

4 Q: Yeah, and why did that happen here? Why was it in Memphis that King was killed? Is there some reason do you think? Coe: Well really, the root of it, they had organized this union, what we call the sanitation union, they done spread to the hospitals and things like that. But you had grown men working everyday, going to bed hungry. I mean grown men working everyday qualifying for food stamps. And they just kind of got tired of it, and just finally said, the heck with it, what have we got to lose, and went out on strike. And Loeb was mayor at the time, and he got on the air and rose to the part, "This is not New York", and "We're not going to have it", and so forth. So over a period of time the churches, the black churches moved in, and our union hall out there, we had a liberal president at the time that would allow them to meet. So they would bring in people like yourself and other folks everyday and talk to those folks. They kept 'em busy listening through that strike. They would bring in somebody, and from church to church raising funds, and so forth, and they weathered that storm. But King came here... Q: When you said union, do you mean the rubber workers or the labor council? Coe: The rubber workers. I mean, we allowed them to use our hall for their mass meetings, and they had mass meetings everyday. Everyday. That's how they got so much solidarity. Everyday. And they met their immediate problems. They didn't allow them to suffer, and so forth. So, later on they called in King; King came and a little radical group we had here at the time called the Invaders really destroyed that thing, because, I asked them at our church the night before. I said not, "I can see what you're trying to do". I said, "If you want to do it, go on and do it, but this is not our program. Go out there and do whatever you want to do, but stay out of this program. This is non- violent", and so forth. But the next day, the mass rally came here; we got about half way through to our destination in the march when all hell broke loose, and police beat up a lot of folks, and just destroyed everything and maced a lot of folks and gassed a lot of folks. King was discouraged and said, "Well, I never lost a march in this fashion. So, I'll come back later". And on the next time around, he was assasinated. He should not have had to, he really should not have had to come back. That was too well organized. Q: You mean,this wasn't accidental. Coe: No no, it was planned, it was a conspiracy. It was well organized. I mean, if you listen to King's last speech, saying "I would like to..." and then he changed it and said "Longevity is important, but... " You know, you know that story. He could see it, but he had just gone to the point that he couldn't turn around. And he knew it was going to happen. He knew it was going to happen. There's somethings I would like to say about that but, nobody has ever listened to anybody on it. Q: I've heard some things like Ed Redditt being taken off duty at the crucial moment, and that makes you wonder right there. Coe: That's right. That's right. How in the world, if he was shot out of a window on Main Street, 4

5 why would they all run 5 or six hundred yards away, approximately, if he was shot from there, why the hell did every police in that area run to the Lorraine? You've fired a gun, you've heard a gun, seen it fired. The noise is where cap burst, you know. If somebody shoots a gun here, why would you run 5 or 6 hundred yards away? The gun wasn't fired there. Somebody knew what the target was. You know, everybody knew what the target was. That was just so simple. Q: Where were the police when this happened, out in the streets somewhere? Coe: Yes, they were all spotted around in places. But everybody knew; everybody knew. Ed Redditt tried to tell them, he's talked to me about it, but I don't want to talk with you about it on the air. He would still tell you the truth. But even the FBI won't listen. Q: Well they, the FBI probably knows more about it than, yeah. Coe: There you go. They got some sharp shooters, too. They won't even just... Q: You know, there was a funny incident that happened in the early l970's, well right after Watergate. I was living here at the time. They revealed that the police had what they called the red squad, and they had all of these files on people. And when it came out in the newspaper that they had all of these files, they burned them. All of the sudden. And I thought, now what in the heck is so important in these files that they would all of the sudden go burn them. The ACLU was in court to stop them from doing it as they were doing it. And I've always believed that the reason they did that was, they had things in there about King. And that's why it was so serious that they had to burn all of their files. Coe: That's right, most likely. Most likely. My wife had a cousin at the time, has about lost her sight now and retired, but she was working over at the Kimberly (?) Building at the time, over there on Union and whatever, right across from where Louis used to be. And she said that the discussions were open on the switchboard where she worked of what was going to happen, of what was going to happen. I had a friend that got stopped with a speeding ticket that night and Marsh(?) and Lobe were both on the expressway, I think they were going in opposite directions. They seemed to kind of want to be on the perimeter. But from what he told me, they were just kind of waiting for the news on the radio. And everybody knew what was going to happen. But, that didn't help labor at all in this area. It just didn't. Q: What was the effect on labor? What was the aftermath of that for the unions here? Coe: It strengthened the black segment of it, to some extent. As I say, the whites seemed to feel that they were on a different boat. Because I was working second shift, and the crew I worked with that was predominantly white, they would go in one direction to eat, and I went in another one. Not that we couldn't have gone the same place at that time, but we didn't. And when we came back from lunch, they knew that King had been shot. And you know, nobody told me? And at 7:00 the foreman came around said, "We're closing down at 7; a curfew's going on at 8 o'clock" or 7:30 or something. And I said, for what? That King had been assasinated. And I looked over at Nickles, 5

6 and Fortune, and all that bunch, and I swear that did something to you, because they had already got the word, you know. I said, "Why in the world didn't you guys... " They said, "We thought you already knew it". And then I was ready for the worst, I was ready for whatever. Q: You thought it was going to lead to a real violent situation or something? Coe: Well, that's what I was prepared for. 'Cause I drove from the plant, I told the guy that was riding with me, I said, "we'll probably get stopped". I said, "But if anybody comes to this car, between here and home, this is going to be the end of it". And I told some of the other guys out there that we'd probably never see each other again. Now that's what I was expecting, you know. They shined a light on me at Chelsen, but nobody approached the car. Q: The police did, you mean? Coe: Yeah. Now they had the national guard and everything on the streets by that time. They shined on me again at Manassas and Union, and again at Mississippi and McLemore. And again at Parkway and Mississippi. And they had stopped some fellows and roughed 'em up and all that stuff. But I was driving a new car with drive-out tags on it, a new Buick, and I guess that's why nobody ever stopped me. They just say he's somebody, he's not out making trouble, he's just probably trying to get out of the street. But I said though that there were cops all of the way home, and, it just wasn't my time. It just wasn't my time. Q: Now you must have been expecting trouble for awhile to even have that with you. Coe: Yeah, I had been. And I had my plan that, here where I live I got a pretty good little arsenal here. I'd planned to go over to the cemetary across the street and get behind that concrete wall, take me a can of gasoline and burn the bridge down in the cemetary, which is a wooden bridge, and that was going to hem up a lot of certain folk in that, you know. And, because that's what I thought everybody else was going to do. And then, when I found out they weren't going to do nothing, I'm tellin' you, it took a lot of rowing out of me. It took a lot of rowing out of me. Q: It took a lot of what? Coe: Rowing, a lot of it. It just took a lot of... everything. You just couldn't believe guys was going to hell like that... Q: You mean the black community, that there was no response, is that what you're saying? Coe: Yeah, that's right. Yeah, that's right. And that's what I expected. I just expected to go to war. I mean, that's what I came home for, that's what I was planning on. And I thought that would just happen all over the world. But, when they had the next march after King was assasinated, we saw people from all over the world right here in Memphis, in line with us. And then Walter Ruther, and some of those guys came in and.... Some of our senators and congressmen, labor people from all over everywhere, and really financed the strike to such an extent that it was the end of it for that 6

7 local. So they went on and reached some kind of agreement. But, it was encouraging to see the support labor got in Memphis after that. I'll never forget in lines, I ran into people that I know now, Bill Cosby and all those people. They just came in from around the world, from around the world to join in that march. But yet Memphis thinks that they can build a convention center and entertain labor and so forth.... People haven't forgotten. It will never die. Memphis is just anti-labor. Anti-labor. And it doesn't make too much difference in the white community. I notice that a lot of the white boys that left the plant, they took a little training in medical work, in plumbing, construction, whatever, on to somebody else. They never lost much pain. The guy that come around and put up your storms, though, is making $200 a day. But he's white. There's no job in there for a black. These small places, maybe only work for 12 or l5 people. So they don't even need a black floor sweeper, you know what I mean? But... Q: A lot of people have been telling me how bad it is now in the black community that all of these industrial jobs have been shut down, and then there's nothing else to go to. Coe: There's nothing else; there's nothing else. And during the time of, well, the 8 years of Eisenhowe, Nixon kind of messed it up, Carter couldn't pull it out, didn't get a chance, I'd like to explain it like this, Millions, billions, billions, billions of dollars have gone from over here, to over there. See, I mean the black community has just been drained. I went to Nashville... Q: When you say over here to over there, you mean from the black community to the white? Coe: That's right. From the black community to the white. And it's still like that. I mean, we had a guy come in here from the democratic caucus up to Nashville, he was the area political education officer. And I mean he had facts and figures back in, way back, that's been 8 years ago or more, where X number of billions has just moved from one side of the picture to the other. Q: How does that happen? How does that money get transferred out? Coe: Well, with the business world as it exists now in Memphis, you can control wages with no labor union. You don't have any bargaining power anymore on most of these jobs. Some of our major truck lines have closed; those were good jobs for blacks. Firestone left, Harvester left, and some that I can't even think about right now. But most of your strong jobs where the ordinary man could make a decent living.... High tech jobs, guys with certain training can still make a good living. But your ordinary people; the backbone of this country are the ordinary people. Are the ordinary people. I used to say, when you're talking about people on welfare, you know who I see as those who are on welfare? The Fred Smiths, the Mrs. Fred Smiths, and the Mrs. Moe Smiths. Some black woman with 2 or 3 kids minimum wage, I don't consider her on welfare; she's just a victim of circumstance. But what about those rich white women out there that were able to go to Vassar and all of those schools with top notch education, they've finished, they're back home, they're married, and they never had a damn job. We're concerned about the food stamps we provide for the people in the black community that can't get a decent job. Who supports the life style of the rich? That's where your welfare is. We're workin, do something, but some of the best schools in the world puts out people who never will 7

8 have a job, they're not looking for a damn job. Now to me, that's welfare. And anybody, Mr. Honey, any group of people that they want to buy out to put together 6, 7, 8 and up to 20 million dollars to buy out, he's got some of my money in his pocket! See, it's no small group of people, got that money. They havegot some of my money in his pocket. For not having been fair with me over a period of years and accumulated with all of the new millionaires being made every year, those people have got some of my money in his pocket. Working a guy for 3 or 4 dollars an hour, he's got some of the black community's money in his pocket. But what are you going to do about it? If we could just try to tell some of the youngsters that there's strength in organization. There's no way any individual can accomplish very much. You've got to have strength. I go into these new Exxon stations where one little woman is running the pump, the cash register, the hamburger stand, the coffee, and everything, one of the richest companies in the world, with one damn teller! How in the world are we going to survive unless those people get together and.... Mike: You'd better not ask for an oil change or how do you fix a tire. Coe: That's right. We had one full service station in my area. It's closed. They've got another one over on 3rd street. I still buy with the full service station, because, if you let them go out, you're done. You're done. If you're going to tear up more cars for the like of my wife and others having the oil checked when I could get it, that 3 or 4 cents a gallon on self service will backfire on you. I have rambled but,.... Q: You know, you said something right at the beginning about what the mistake was, it had to do with polarization within the labor movement. You were saying that whites have the illusion that one group of workers can do well and let the other group of workers go to hell, and everything will be all right. And you were saying that's not the way things are going to go. Why is the labor movement not as strong here, is it because of that? Coe: It's because of that. You take in this town, and I like to call it East Memphis, and kind of generalize on all of 'em. East Memphis is just anti-labor. When we used to go on strike at the plant, they would holler, they would yell, I mean this is just not a labor town. Q: There's a lot of places where you've got an anti-labor government, or the rich people are anti-labor, but what about the workers, they're the ones that have to organize themselves. There are plenty of working people in this town, isn't there? Coe: Plenty, there are plenty. And most of the truckin' companies still have unions. But really now, Mr. Honey, the (?) have gotten us to the place that there's not that many of us concentrated in one place on one job to do too much. Some of what happened the other week out to the hospital, I mean, 'course I think they made a mistake, but, when you become frustrated, you make mistakes. Except in places like hospitals and things like that, you just don't have the kind of numbers any more unless you can get some white support in organizing the union. And they had taken care of [them], for the most part in such a way that they're told they don't need a union. They just don't need it. But 8

9 coming out of the depression, when I went to Firestone in '4l, the plant had been running for four and a half years, everybody was in the same boat, and realized it. But as the disparity grew in wages and treatment and jobs and so forth... We held good and strong until that plant closed, but this younger bunch that's come along, [they] just doesn't seem to think they need a union. They just don't do it anymore. Q: Do you think there were the seeds of the workers' own defeat in this Firestone situation, so in the '30's, the people knew they were in the same boat, but then the disparities got larger actually as the union got stronger? Coe: Yup. Work was so good, wages was so good, and then the school integration came. That allowed a lot of them to run from the inner city to the suburbs. And they still had it in them, but when you're catching hell together sometimes you see eye to eye a little better. But as they progressed, I told the guy that worked with me, I talked with him daily, he had come out of the navy after about 20 years and he was pretty liberal. But as he mingled with those guys, I could see the change. I could see the change, and finally he moved to the suburbs. And the day before Reagan took over, I backed him in a corner, and he told me what was on his mind. He was going to get his children off of that damn bus. And that Reagan had given, ah, Carter, I was trying to tell him about Carter needin' a chance; Carter went down there and gave away the damn Panama Canal, and I said, man when you've been out in the street for a couple of years, this Panama Canal won't seem so significant. And he has been out there in the streets, so... But it's too late now. It's too late now. Q: I talked to a guy at International Harvester in about l981 right after Reagan, maybe it was '84 around the 2nd election, and they were about ready to close the plant, and of course the Reagan revolution had happened and they were desimating all of the these industries, and he gave me a really good analysis from a union point of view about why the Republicans were doing this, and why it hurt the workers, and plant's going overseas and the whole thing, and then I said, "so who are you going to vote for", and he said, "Reagan". And I said, "Well, why?", and he said, "Well, there's this damn family down the road, these black people, and they won't work; they're on welfare". And I said, "Buddy, you're going to be on welfare yourself the way things are going"; he was about ready to lose his job. And he couldn't see it. I was amazed. Coe: They still don't believe it. I traveled extensively for the church; well, even when I was working, I got a chance to go fishing every week. But last year I didn't pull the boat out of the yard. I'm determined to get it done this year, but right now I can't see it. But in all of my travels, I think I have seen one black family on the road. You know. And it's nowhere I go that I don't see whites hitch-hiking sometimes the whole family; I've seen one black family destitute and on the road. But they still don't believe it. They still don't believe it. I told Jim down in, the guy who works with me, a little tale I tell sometimes, that these two guys went coon hunting, and the dog treed a coon, and they couldn't get the light on him to shoot him like you do, you know. You shine that light up there, and get his eyes and shoot him. But old coon would turn his eyes away from you, so one of the guys said, we know he's up there, Jim. I'm going to take the light and go up there and spot him, and you can shoot him. So, when he got about 50 feet off the ground, as they will do, and tied into him, and he was cutting him to shreads. He was hollerin', "shoot him, shoot him!" The dude on the 9

10 ground said, "I can't shoot the coon without shootin' you!" And he said, "Well God damn it, shoot both of us!" So I told Jim, I said, "You're doing what you're doing to try to hurt me, but when I get in bad shape, you're going to be in bad shape, too. You're going to want somebody to shoot both of us. Hell, we are survivors of the race, or we wouldn't even be here." I know what it's about, (?). I never had nobody to make any special effort to help me or anything like that; I've always had to think for myself. And so forth. But this is really not a labor town. I have given me life to every organizing effort that produced anything. I'm still a member of the Y M.C.A., and the YWCA. If it has any strength for anything as an organization, I support it. It just seemes like young people, I don't know why they think they can get along without it. And they won't buy American made goods. That hurts, too. Q: Looking back over this long history you've had with the union and civil rights, is there a bright spot to it, and how do you evaluate the whole thing? Coe: Mr. Honey, I would think that if the news media, someone could kind of revive the union spirit. It seems that the powers that the powers that be now don't ever push you quite far enough to make you take action in that area. They keep you thinking you're going to make it and they're constantly drowning you. But, we were pushed into it, we just had to do something. But they haven't quite reached that area yet. But as it has always been, I think when people are badly enough oppressed, they'll find a way and do it. And organizing labor is the only the way. It's the only way you can do it. I tell some of the guys from the plant now working part-time jobs on a temporary basis... They won't hire them on a permanent basis. That way, they don't have any benefits, no insurance, no nothing. (end side l; go to Coe2.528) Clarence Coe - Interview w/ Mike Honey - 5/28/89 - Side 2 INDUSTRIAL LABOR IN THE POST-INDUSTRIAL ERA Coe: Everytime I can talk to a group of them, that these are the things that are important. Some of these jobs now will give you a decent wage, but if you're temporary, you're not accumulating any benefits. My income is a little better than $400/week. If you put my monthly stuff together, how many jobs do you know today where a guy can earn that working? But it came from 40 years of solid unionism. And Firestone wasn't hurting. The last thing they did before they left here was (blank spot in tape). Firestone wanted full force 7 days in those places they were running, but they just moved out of Memphis and Akron. But some of those people in East Memphis, when they want to take a lick at the union, they'll say that "Higher wages and unionism ruined Firestone". That's not right! Firestone never bothered with us too much about the wages we made. You had to work for it; you earned it. Firestone could teach you how to work; the average person don't even know how to work or realize what he can do in 60 minutes. They didn't get hurt, but they just decided they were going to move out of Memphis, and make this a distribution point. The old plant in Akron, most of it was obsolete, so they moved out of Akron. Q: I've heard many times, maybe you would dispute this, "Well, the younger workers wouldn't put 10

11 out". So that's why they closed down. Now is that not true? Coe: We had some of that problem. We had a good strong union, and we had a system, if you had a high school diploma, boy or girl, and didn't want to go to college, you could go to the plant and be put on the job. Now that was good in one sense; maybe not so good in another. But most of them were brought in as utility people. Most of us who were still there when they started hiring those people had six weeks vacation. So, any youngster who came to the plant, within 3 or 4 weeks time could be making 3 or 4 or 5 hundred dollars, replacing somebody on vacation. We had a strong credit union, even when I was working, was worth about l4 million dollars, completely employee owned. So if my son or daughter came in there, and at 6 weeks or 2 months was making 4 or 5 hundred dollars a week, I could take them over to the credit union and co-sign for him, and he could get the new cadillac he'd been wanting. So now that I've got that, I've got to have some time to ride it; I can't work 6 days a week. That was one of the elements at first. We didn't fill a lot of orders we had. If we had a contract calling for 5,000 tires a day, you could have 5,000 tires a day. You see, the tires had to come in consistently. They had to have some system of continuity. You can't store them, and you can't wait on them. So you've got to be consistent. And some of the youngsters would come in and look up at the bulletin board and see they had to work 6 days that week, and man, they would holler to high hell, and wouldn't come in. And you'd fall behind 8 or l0 thousand tires in the run of a week, and they transferred a lot of our work to alternate cities. And you never could quite control it; there were always fluctuations in orders. If you tried to adjust it by sending so much to Albany or some place, and maybe your next order or contract would cause you to lay off somebody. I mean you just never could balance it. They could balance it coming in if you got the orders out. But they couldn't handle that absenteeism. Nobody could ever solve that problem. They made a little bit too much money for young people. You just take a guy who's never had a job and end up making 4 or 5 hundred dollars a week, he's in pretty good shape. You take Harold who you know by now; his boy came out there, and in no time flat, he was driving a damn mercedes. A mercedes at that time cost $40,000! See what I mean? Now he's got to have some time to ride; he can't be working everyday! Q: So that's one aspect, but you say that's not the real reason why they shut down? Coe: That's not, no. The real reason was really a lot of the equipment had become obsolete. And I can remember the time at the plant when maybe we'd meet; this is going to sound funny to you, I can remember a time when we made maybe 20,000 different tires. At least. That included black wall, white wall, large, small, truck, etc.. Firestone attempted to make this the heavy duty plant, to keep from having so many gear changes; to you, size changes. They finally got an appropriation from Akron to spend about $l5 million dollars on this plant. They were going to do heavy duty radials, truck radials; they were going to change from bias to radials. They got about half way through that program and found out that the radials weren't holding up on the highway. Now, you're in between the bias and the radials, and someone just said somewhere along the line, "the hell with it. We're going to close the plant'. That had a big impact, that changeover they were in the process of making. They found out the radials ride good, but they're not good out there with 80,000 lbs. on them on the highway. And they had spent a lot of money. When I left there they had new equipment coming in, and holes dug big enough to put the storage building in for that massive 11

12 equipment. And they had to abandon it right in the middle of the program, and it looked like they just said, to hell with it. Mike: That's interesting; no one's ever explained that to me. Coe: That was among the reasons. They had this new guy take over, Neavens? I can't remember him even ever coming to look at nothing. He looked at Akron's. It was 5 story; he knew that was obsolete. The elevator was just a mess. I held to the last; I had seen all the Firestone plants from traveling. This was the best plant they had as far as lay out was concerned, but it was 40 years old. So that's why they attempted to change it, but no. If you'd have gone in that plant, you could stand in isle after isle and look a quarter of a mile. I mean, you could move stuff in that plant. Most of those plants were jumbled up. But this plant was put up in l936 or '37. And they really made an honest effort to change it over. And right in the middle of it, they found out they'd made a mistake. Q: So, where does all of that production go to now? Coe: They send it to Nashville, to Albany, Georgia, to Oklahoma, Des Moines is still running I think; maybe Falls River, Mass.. They had already sent 2 to Arkansas. They went on 4 full shifts at most of the plants; the plants are running 7 days a week. With 4 shifts, 8 hours a day, you can run a plant 4 shifts, 7 days a week. You don't have that closing down and starting up cost. We used to shut down on weekends. They put in 4 shifts before they left here. I left in '8l. They always told us, it cost $24,000 to close that plant down and start it back up. They closed down on Friday night at ll and opened back up on Sunday night at ll. Maybe I understand it a little bit better than most of the guys. I wish I could have gotten with you. But I had a strenuous week. Mike: (Talks about future possibilities for getting together.) I think now, after getting your views, I would go back to l940 when you first came in, and something about your personal history before you got into the plant, and then more specific things about the conflicts you went through, and how it changed over from blacks being excluded from certain jobs to opening those jobs up. I'm looking for details. Q: Could I call you back later.... Side one: Interview with Clarence Coe May 29, 1989 Q: Tell me again about how this was set up, because I don't know, really. I know it was segregated, but I don't know how it was segregated. 12

13 A: When I was hired in '41 you had a separate cafeteria, separate locker room. Now the cafeteria was divided but each... gave you access to your side of it but you couldn't go up the other side. You had to come up your side. You couldn't go out of that side. On the gate-- the entrance gate. Q: I'm not sure if I understand you. You mean there'd be--there was one stairway the Blacks went up and one stairway the whites went up and it was inaccessable except through those stairways. A: Yep. But you couldn't go up the one designated for whites. You couldn't go up there. Q: What would happen--did anybody ever try to do that, what would happen? A: Oh, you would get in trouble. Big trouble and whatever a white person said that was it. And if he fabricated something and when you get to the office when you called, said Mr. Smith said that you said so and so and so. No I didn't. You calling Mr. Smith a liar? That's it. I mean that sort of a thing. Q: If you called him a liar, then you are in danger, right? Of physical violence, or something. A: Oh, no. You don't call a white man a liar, even when its true. Whatever he said, that's it. At the main gate they had turnstiles, you know. You go through them but it was understood you didn't go through the one on the south side because whites park up on this end, closest to the gate. We had to park on a certain area north of the gate back to what we called the river. If you parked up here either you were going to be made to move or when you came out your tires were going to be cut. Even after we were allowed to park up there we couldn't park because your tires would be cut. I had my tires cut. Q: Even after the changes had occurred? A: Yeah, even after the plant was integrated. I mean it was an unwritten law that you didn't-- just didn't do certain things. And they held onto it. I had my tires cut once on a car I had 5,000 miles on. Came in one Sunday night and a few people were working. I thought, well, no one's parking across from the gate tonight, so I parked. When I walked over to the gate the first thing the guard asked me, who's car is this you're driving, boy? I say it could be mine. I've been working here 13 years. And he said, well, you better not leave it there, we'll have it pulled in. I said that white guy with that old Hudson he parked there every night but he's not here tonight. And he said, you better not leave yours there. If you do, I'm going to have it pulled in. So I moved it and backed it on the parking lot. And the next morning I came out and all four of my tires were slashed. I mean just for that little exchange. Q: And that would be a plant guard that said that to you? So you think he then just passed the 13

14 word on to some worker, or you think he did it himself? A: He did it himself. And that was a step up that I could drive a new car on the parking lot. When I went to Firestone, a Negro who had a new car, he had to park it down across the railroad track. If you drove a new car, you'd be run out. Q: Because the car was new? A: Uh huh. Q: What's the crime about driving a new car? A: Oh, you just didn't drive a new car on the job. Not only Firestone, anywhere.... And some of them were... brothers and sisters, but they didn't support you... you take where you ate your lunch. They had black and white and you might have to walk as far as from here to Elvis Presley's to eat. But you didn't stop where the whites eat. And you spent all of your good life fooling with petty stuff like this. That's what hurts me. Just nonsensical things. It didn't make no sense at all but you had to live with them. Well, we finally hired a lawyer named Sabella... had to give him $2,500 to initiate a suit [against discrimination]. And we had to go around and collect $1.50 cents at a time over a period of two years and once we got that thing in progress everybody that was involved in it they caught hell. You know... collecting money and doing this and that--i guess for 25 or 35 of my 40 years at this plant I had to dot every "i" and cross every "t" cause they were watching. They knew I was the trouble maker. Q: They knew that from the beginning somehow? A: Yeah, when I first went out there. Our first union president was named Richard Routon. And a chemical I was working in got me down to about 145 pounds. I went in weighing 155. Doctor sent them a note to get me out of that stuff and then they started the process to get rid of me, see. So I had a talk with Mr. William Norton, head of the lab. I had a high school diploma and had done some major in chemistry and I would like to work over in the lab, because I was going to have to transfer from the department I was in. And he said, well, bring your diploma in tomorrow morning and we'll get you over there. So I brought it and went on down in front and waited there til 9:00. The person that I was to deal with, Mr. Edwards, didn't come in that morning but he sent another guy over there, and when I got there they had my money ready. But haven taken a speed reading course in school, I can look at a paragraph. And I shoved it back in the office. I said, I didn't ask for my money, I asked for a transfer. They said, we ain't going to fool with you no more. And I do believe that God intervenes in things. I had been talking to the president, Ray Allen. He was building tires.... He knew the whole thing and it looked like something touched him on the shoulder and he looked back. I said he's supposed to transfer me, but they're firing me. Because the guard had told me I couldn't go back into the plant. He rushed right into Cliff Reynolds' office and as the Lord would have it, Reynolds was not busy. He 14

15 just walked straight in and stated the case. Reynolds said, well, put him back on his regular job for the day and we'll get into it later on. But I couldn't get back into the plant. I had to go back around to get a pass back into the plant.... Man, I was on the hot seat and I never did get the transfer. Q: So what--did you end up just staying in the job you were in and just let it pass after a while? Did Ray Allen support you in this? He did in the sense that he kept you from getting fired. A: That's right. Q: But he didn't take it a step further? A: No. He dropped, it because--even though he was president of the union- -they trained some of us over there to handle our own union business. You've got to handle your own business and you've got to handle it right. So I became so proficient in it until I never even carried a contract in my pocket. If I walked into your office and said Mr. Honey you've done such and such a thing on this job, and article so and so says it's done this way, and that's the union position.... No contract in hand, and that really had an impact on them. They knew you really knew what you were talking about. I didn't lose many cases over there. Q: I imagine that just the fact that you had a contract was very crucial. In order to assert any kind of rights you had to have that. A: Oh, yeah. We had a contract and I knew it. But not where it came to separate departments or racial discrimination. You couldn't get support from the union on that. You just couldn't. They just wouldn't deal with it. And you had to live with it. Q: You started to say a minute ago about Richard Routon. What about him? [Q: Is it Routon or Allen he's talking about? Clarify.] A: That day when he came over when I got back inside cause he went to the superintendent to get my pass out, my department manager wouldn't give me a pass out of the plant. So a guy named George Cruz said something vulgar about me and I heard Routen say plainly, Mr. Cruz, there's some Negroes just don't take that shit. He attended school and that shit it just doesn't work with him. You got guys you can kick in the butt, but don't kick him. You know, some of them are just different, and I don't know where he came from and I don't think it was up north. [Q: These are two different incidents--one was with Ray Allen and one was with Routon? Is that right? A: No. 15

16 Q: Wasn't Routon the president first and then Ray Allen after him? A: Yeah, Routon was the first president. No, I had had trouble with him when Routon came over and told him, don't try some of this stuff on me so when he got a chance to get rid of me that was his... that was two different incidents. Q: So the first incident you were talking about was with Ray Allen and the second one was really the first time around. A: The first one was with Routon and the second one was with Ray Allen. Q: So we just covered them in the opposite order.] A: But you have always had some white people in Biloxi, Mississippi, or wherever, who would be fair. If you were decent and intelligent they would be fair. But you didn't have no voice, no say, no anything. I meant whatever the white person said--after the initial group began to go back to Akron that I told you earlier they came and they were fair. They would hear your side and they would hear the white man's side. But after this, management began to shift over to local whites, and you didn't have a chance. And your union, the CIO, just didn't support you in some areas. What are you going to do about it? They just wouldn't go to bat for you. Q: Because they were afraid they would lose office or what do you think was the reason? A: Lost office, and they could get bombed or anything. We had a lot of Klu Klux Klan. I've had guys that called here right at this house and identify themselves as Grand something. But I never was afraid of them. I remember one New Year's night about 20 minutes to 12:00, you know, when you go out and shoot your gun. I got this call, and I knew who he was even though he had been drinking. I could distinguish his voice. And he said, we're going to get you nigger, starting right on this New Year, and so on. And I said well I'm just in here waiting til 12:00 to load up some ammunition. I said, now you said if you knew where I stayed... you would come over and do such and such a thing to me. I said you don't have to come over here. I said the supermarket they're closed tonight... I said at 12:00 the lot's going to be vacant--nobody out there but you and me. Meet me over there. So he hung up the telephone. But it's pathetic when a young man has to live ready to die all the time. All the time. Wouldn't make no difference now. I'm 71 years old. But a young man, 35 years old, got to live daily ready to give it up. No progress, no nothing. It was just tough. Q: And it went on that way for years and years? A: I got out of that department and out of some of that situation after I had 25 years seniority. The last 15 years I worked I worked in different departments. They kept me on the broom 16

17 six months. They had vacancies that they kept in their pocket, but they wouldn't tell you about it.... They would call people in around the clock working overtime on a job that I could do, but they wouldn't call me. And one day I was over in the tire room sticking up some liners and the treasurer, who was a young one at that time--tracy, I don't know what provoked him to ask me the question, but he asked, said, Coe, how are you getting along in the calender room? I said fine. He said, Coe, how are you getting along in the calender room? I said fine. Coe, how are you getting along in the calender room? And I said, not worth a damn, Tracy, and you know it. And the next day my job was on the board. Q: Why did he ask you that question three times? A: I don't know. I don't know what provoked him because he had been seeing my situation. I was picking up liners, something that we used in my department that he was using in the tire building and he saw me all day everyday and he knew I had 25 years seniority and could do something better. But when I transferred over there we had a guy named Vic Bourgenni, an Italian that had been a calender operator, and he had been vice president of the union and I had worked with him and supported him. He had a seizure one day on the parking lot and Mr. W. W. Law he was moving from that department and he moved Vic up to department manager of the calender room temporarily. But Vic knew the calender room so well even though he didn't have any education, he retired in that position. So when I was transferred over there, I had to work with Vic and I asked him, I said do you have any suggestions and he said no. Just go on and do your work. And he stood there a while, and on the second thought he's saying, have as little to say to them [the whites] as you can. And I just followed that, I didn't complain. I didn't say anything about anything, but for some reason Tracy asked me... and what happened a white man had transferred from the tool room because they had transferred... and they had him scuffling in order to keep me down, see. So he immediately signed the job when it went on the board. Once he got it he could choose his shift and somebody will sign it and pick his shift, and so I signed it. And I went to the third shift. From that day on I had to watch, watch, watch because they try to hurt you. They would do anything in the world to get you off of the job. Anything. Q: You were working side by side with these guys and they can do things to mess you up. A: They can hurt you. Q: Like how would they do it? A: Well, in the first place let me give you an example. On the tandem calender was a great big machine as big as from here across the street. You couldn't see everybody in the group. They had signals and if the operator chose to give the wrong signal for what area the problem was, the others knew where you were, you know. He could give you the wrong signal and get you. I remember one day a guy gave me a reverse signal to back out the cold rubber and put in a new strip of warm rubber in order to keep from getting a vacant space on the fabric, and it took off forward as fast as the damn calender would go. I'd have 17