Side A - Karl Korstad Interview

Transcription

1 Side A - Karl Korstad Interview Honey: I don't know what he's like but Korstad: He's full of himself. Honey: Well let's see here. A lot of what I'm kind of trying to get at with this, looking at this period I think, is--which isn't really clear to me from anything I've read, which isn't all that much but Bob and I were talking about this. One is the attitude of white workers in these areas and how ready were they or were they not to organize generally. And then there's the race question. And then on the other hand what about Black workers and what was their attitude toward unions. And I'm getting the impression from things I'm reading that Black workers were king of banging on the doors to get into the CIO in areas where unions would speak to their needs. There is a piece of correspondence I was reading from Copeland, in fact, the other day, and he was writing to somebody and said that Black workers... to organize if you approach them right, which I assume means that if you take somewhat into account the discrimination against Blacks and talk about the CIO position on discrimination and the literature I see on all those files the CIO position... as good but then... after '49 that thing goes down the tubes. Korstad: Well even in '46 they would soft pedal. They would have one local unlike the AFL which had two locals, they would have one local and they would have a mixed officer set up, probably. And they would probably have mixed--they would have meetings together but they would be segregated. And on the whole in most of those locals whites ran locals, had power, had a lot of power in the locals. And they also did not within the local itself raise the question of discrimination. They talk about unity. We must all be together in that abstract level but they wouldn't take on a specific issue of fighting for locally safe or anti-lynching or poll tax, FEPC. The national paper would and maybe the state paper would deal with it, I don't know, but on the local level they wouldn't let that become an issue in the union meetings. They always said that you have to be careful of these whites will drive away. They were very cautious about non- antagonizing the prejudices of the white. Rather doing as we did and we were not leftists in the point of view we came in and lectured the white workers on Blackwhite unity and the need for it and we did two things, one was in every local we had we always watched to see how many white workers were being brought forth into the leadership who regularly met and worked with Black workers. That was one check point. They wanted to have a check list of how the local was developing and every time we had an opportunity like during a strike for instance it was pretty obvious that the welfare committee had to be a joint committee. We usually had cochairman, and Black and white in FTA. Some places we didn't. In Memphis we had a Black chairman because 80% of that local was Black. But we had white participation in the Buckeye plant and I've forgotten if the Buckeye plant had a Black chairman or a white chairman. But we waited until situations arose. Now during that strike, for instance--i was telling you about the Buckeye strike in September '46. We had a large meeting the night before the strike. We sat up picket captains- -Black and white picket captains. We didn't say anything at all about how we were going to organize the pickets because it was a practice in Memphis at that time when you had a strike the white workers picketed in front of the plant and the Black workers picketed at the back gate. They just didn't mix on the picket line and so we obviously didn't make a point of it at that meeting so it became a point to argue. But the plant closed at midnight and we--somebody-- had brought a truck out. We had a loud speaker on the back of the truck, pulled over into a vacant lot and all the workers poured out and stood around the vacant lot and we had lights on so that we could... car lights on... and we told them what was going on and they would have to get organized for picketing from that point until the day shift came on. And we suggested to them that the purpose of the picketing was to attempt to persuade any workers, if there were any who wanted to go back into the plant not to go back into the plant and that from our point of view it seemed much easier--we had a Black picket captain and a white picket captain--if each of them would organize a group of their people for each gate so we would have white pickets and Black pickets at every gate because we thought it would be much easier, much simpler for Black workers to talk to potential Black strike breakers, white workers to talk to potential white strike breakers. That was the reason behind it. Then they agreed to that and that made sense. And so they started picketing and when they started they segregated... you know, 12 guys in the picket line, there would be 6 whites walking and 6 Blacks. By noon they were all split up because they wanted to talk to each other. And so it was all over. They got to know each other. The railroad workers helped us. We caught that Buckeye plant with hundred railroad cars tied up inside the plant. They didn't think we could strike. Honey: OK, so we're at the Buckeye strike.

2 Korstad: We told the company we were going to strike and they didn't believe us--they didn't believe we could do it. The railroad tracks ran--the only railroad tracks to enter the plant ran across a public road right at the gate where it went into the plant and we sat up a picket line on that road. It was a public road. And the railroad workers at that time were really mad at Truman. He'd just stopped one of their strikes and so they refused to cross the picket lines. For 10 days we had those hundred cars locked up in there and they tried every way to get them out. You know, they had the FBI come up and talk to us. This was a national emergency and they said well if it had been a national emergency we gave them plenty of opportunity to get them out and from our point of view at that point it was a crucial psychological issue as far as the strikers were concerned and we weren't about to jeopardize the strike. We didn't think it was that important in the first place and the railroad workers had one of these little shacks they used to have along--i guess that the people who worked on the tracks used--there was a little shack and it had a wooden, wood stove in it, or coal stove and some seats around the side which had been built in. And the women, the wives of the workers and some of the women who worked in the plant sat up a soup committee and before long everybody's using the soup committee. You know, the whites and the Blacks, they're all--when they weren't on the picket line they were sitting down there around the fire and talking and having donuts and coffee and soup. That was the kind of situation--that was more or less our approach to building some kind of unity and understanding rather than going into a long political harangue about Honey: Which is kind of the way...approached the issue. Korstad: Absolutely. It's the correct approach. People learn by acting and learn to experience and trust each other because they go together and face the common issue and they can learn to trust each other that way. Honey: How did this compare with this the other CIO unions--were there unions enough that tried to maintain a segregated situation during the strike or Korstad: Yeah, they did maintain it. I think that was the beginning of a... as they said of a non-segregated. We had two plant. They were about 2 miles from each other. And the second plant was almost all Black and we had a group of young white veterans who--and they discussed this before the strike saying that we don't want to leave that plant covered with only Black pickets because they could be attacked by the police or they could be framed and we want to keep some more whites, more veterans--it was a lot more difficult to attack us. So they kept that up with 4 or 5 white pickets on that plant all the time. They missed once, one night about midnight and I- -how did that work? Police cars stopped. I've got it written down, I don't remember exactly. But they tried to frame the Black workers, saying that they were throwing bottles at police and they were about to arrest them and do something. But when white workers heard about it and drove up and said, what's happening here, and they started discussing it and the policemen backed off because it was too much of a frame up. They couldn't make it stick. And one of the white workers stepped in and stopped it, you know. That was the only time we really had any difficulty at all. I don't know what happened to that local afterwards. I know that in the late 40s there was a serious attempt to raid it and to raid it from a political point of view probably. To get the white workers to say these are red you don't have anything to do with them. Underneath the undercurrent of that also underneath say calling them reds they also were saying that they believe in social equality and they believe they are fighting for Black rights and they stand for the things that white south doesn't stand for. And this was carried on by CIO organizers. Honey: Do you remember what union was in then? Korstad: I don't know. I think it would probably be the--i don't know, I should think it might have been the chemical workers because they probably had other Buckeye plants. Proctor and Gamble plants. And that would have been a good union to use to... much more bargaining power you'll have. Now if they had gone in on those terms, that's strictly an economic term but they used this issue. And always hidden behind the race baiting was the... when they were... they were always race baiting at the same time when... it was true all over the south. And they attacked the left unions for that particularly since we had Black leaders and FTA ran a vice- president. In this region we had a Black woman regional director. She worked under me for a year or a year and a half as assistant. And then I went to work in Winston as an organizer and she took over the regional office. And she was the regional director until she died. And she, as regional director, went into many situations. Honey: She was apparently a very dynamic leader, right? Korstad: Powerful leader, good practical experience. The white workers respected her. She was one of them. She came out of the 2

3 3 same kind of background and I saw this in Charleston, I saw in Poplar, Florida, saw her actually work in mixed groups where Honey: Did it seem to you that when these kinds of situations where to come up either a Black person was giving some leadership in a strike or where Blacks and whites were on a picket line together and just kind of developed in the process of activity. Do you think white workers changed their attitudes in terms of general... Korstad: A lot of them did. A lot of them became really militant on civil rights issues. White workers. Because they saw how they had been used and how foolish it was from their point of view how they were being suckered. It was an attempt to keep them apart. They could see through that. Once they saw through the economic uses of it well then they were the ones who were the victims as much as the Black workers. They moved to another level of consciousness politically. Now all of them, but many, many that I can think of became most militant while some of the southern white women were some of the most active people we had. Honey: Later on when the Dixiecrats got moving and when this tremendous attempt to stop what looked like a developing integration movement nationally--it's not clear from what you read where white workers were really at at this period. In Birmingham there was a situation... smelter workers... taken over by... and yet I... get from the things you are saying and the things I have read that the potential of white workers making change in... in 46 and But in the '50s it doesn't look that way because the whites... are just running around.... But Korstad: Well I think potentially was there. You'd have to say that they were effective in '47 and '48, '49, '50, '51. They made inroads. I think if left alone without the tremendous Dixiecrat movement and tremendous--you know the raising of this race issue, there would have been a lot more unity built. It had its effect... it certainly has had its effect and as I said they tied it with red baiting. Red baiting and race baiting were tied together. Although in the rural areas, I don't know, it was such a funny thing in the rural areas you had the terrible stories of the soldiers coming home and the white men making examples out of them to show them that you're home now, boy. That sort of thing, which was going on and happening and which we were fighting against... welfare was raising an issue. The union was raising this as an issue. All of our unions were--and that was a fertile field to sow. Honey: Did that Columbia Tennessee race riot have an effect down in Memphis where you worked? Korstad: I don't remember. I really don't. I don't think so. In Memphis we were developed on the union level, the white workers on the whole except for a very few were developed to... unique... on the union level. They weren't prepared when we left there, most of them, to tackle the social questions. I think they would have taken an anti-poll tax position probably because they could see that they need the support of Black workers if they were ever going to-- they might have taken that position. Perhaps an anti-lynching position. But as far as an anti-segregation question, no, not during those years. Not in the '40s or '50s. You know, it took a lot of struggle to break that. It would be mostly among the white union leaders who had been maybe through a strike. Had been through a situation together and they had developed a kind of Honey: In the rest of the CIO even this position wasn't Korstad: It wasn't fostered. Their position was to go easy on the question. I remember that one of the leaders of the Buckeye plant took a vacation, a Black leader, he's a big strong guy with--at that time we had a lot of white workers attending the meetings and the first meeting we had after he came back somebody asked him to tell us about what it was like. He'd gone up to Chicago. And he told us what it was like in Chicago and he liked it. He particularly liked it because there were--he had certain freedoms up there that he didn't have down here and then he told how he had gotten off a bus at Cairo and had gone into the bus station and the restaurant and they told him, boy, we've got a place for you around back. And he said, so I wanted to eat so I went around the back and he says, you know, that's just where low wages start, right there. That's where the wages start dropping when I--and I remember one of the light workers was kind of looking and he said, you know, I don't think we should raise political questions here in this union. We're building a union and we all want to be together. We are not race questions. And he was very strong. And this is not a political question. This is a union question I am raising. And he said you better believe it because when I have to go around to the back of a restaurant to eat, that's... that's the line. That's when the wages start dropping and he was adamant. He held on and finally it went into something else. That was resistant on the part of

4 4 Honey: That was in a CIO meeting? Korstad: No, it was in a FTA meeting. A Buckeye meeting. Honey: Did the Southern Conference... did that have much tie ins with people in Memphis when you were down there? Korstad: I didn't know about it. There were some, I guess. We went to the convention in New Orleans from Memphis, I know. Honey: There was a big convention down there. Korstad: In '46. Honey: Because I get the impression from reading the newspaper that and particularly that one in New Orleans that they thought at least that the potentiality for sort of the revived new deal coalition which dealt with civil rights and labor rights together as part of the same question. They... potential was great to do that. Korstad: Well, they felt that way all the way through '48 until the Wallace election. Honey:... or what? Do you think they were overly optimistic on this thing or Korstad: I think I underestimated the determination of the corporate leaders to get control in this country some way or another so they had a whole world laying ahead of them. I mean they had the whole world--europe to rebuild and the the Third World they could move into and they were the leaders of the world and you couldn't very well move if you have a militant labor movement setting at your back door. And I think Franklin, you know this is just speculation, but my feeling always was that in '46 and '47 my feeling was that we can bust them. Hundred day strikes. Hundred day strikes. Anyway, they had to retool so that they weren't getting hurt as badly as it sounded... had retooling problems, but after '48 when the Taft- Hartley passed and that really hurt --stopped organizing almost. And they stopped it in a very simple way. Most people don't even realize what hit. Under unfair labor practice charges when we were organizing a plant under the Wagner Act if they fired one of their leaders we could charge unfair labor practice charges--file charges and we could take them before the Board and we could make the charge and the company had to defend. They had to prove--the burden of proof was on them--they had to prove that it was not discriminatory that there was some other good legitimate reason for his being fired. And Taft-Hartley did a very simple thing. They made the unions prove- -the burden of proof was shifted from the company to the worker, and the worker had to prove discrimination. The only way he could prove it would be showing that a foreman said, I'm going to get that guy or he had to have concrete proof of company discrimination. Then it made it almost impossible to organize for a while because they would fire people right and left. I've had people afterwards--even after we moved here in the '50s come in who were organizers, you know, be beaten down--they had to go in and start on a plant because they would say I know I'm going to get these people fired and I know I can't get them back to work. Honey: So did, when after that there was some stuff I was reading the other day where the FTA was trying to, I forget what plant it was now. It was in west Tennessee. Oh, no, it wasn't either. It was the Greenville strike in east Tennessee where they... company and Bush Brothers Company and there had been a lot of activity in '46 and early '47. Anyway, they were trying to settle this question of 15 people who had been laid off the summer before in '46 and in '47 13 of them were never rehired and the union, of course, claimed this was discrimination because they were CIO people and this was going before the National Labor Relations Board and FTA had to pull out because once Taft-Hartley was passed they wouldn't sign the communist affidavit... they weren't covered any more. So there is always correspondence between Paul Christopher and Larry Lawrence. Korstad: Larson. Honey: Oh, Larry Larson, yeah. And then after that they obviously they couldn't offer the workers any kind of protection at all. Well, you couldn't offer them even if you signed the affidavit. Affidavits wasn't the key question. That was the smoke screen. An organizer who belonged to the union and signed the affidavit still couldn't get his workers back to work if they were fired unless he could strike the plant because it is a very difficult thing to prove--the burden of proof is on you and you have to prove discrimination. You set down and start thinking how you can prove discrimination. One man's word is not enough

5 and if a foreman in front of two or three other people said, I'm going to fire this man because he's a leader of the union, even if he was that foolish you still have a problem getting those three witnesses, each of whom would be subject to firing so that the organizers just ran into a dead end. It's almost impossible- -in any event, you could appeal and you could go on and maybe a few. I don't know what the statistics are but it would be very interesting because there is somebody to study the statistics as to. After Taft- Hartley and before. And so the number of unfair labor practice charges that were filed for discrimination and how many were processed in favor of the workers not in favor of the company. I should imagine it just turned around from to 10-90, I should say. Honey: It looks like from what I've been reading that there was always activity in '46 and '47. Strikes and the whole works and then by the fall of '47 and spring of '48 it looks like the FTA is having a hard time functioning because there is correspondence from Campbell from well, a group of workers in the... plant in Memphis signed a petition saying that they didn't want the FTA representative any more. And they said cause it was... Korstad: There were a lot of white workers at that time. Honey: Do you remember specifically that incident? Korstad: No because that was after I was there. They struck when I was there. They had them on strike for about 4 hours once. And the company settled right away. Called Chicago or wherever they called and came out and settled. But they never were a very active group. They did not participate in Local 19 leadership or new membership meetings or anything like that. Honey: So there was that and there was about two other examples. Korstad: Yeah, sure we had difficulty and it was difficulty. Especially where you were weak. It wasn't difficult for the strong unions in the left... could hold on. Harry Bridges could hold on. We could hold on where we had Campbells Soup. Where we had strong union situations, big companies, strong concentrations and good local active locals we could hold on. The companies would bargain with us, NLRB or not. But only where you had the concentrations of power that farm equipment workers some places, mine, mill and smelter workers were able to hold on in some places. But FTA was particularly vulnerable because it was made out of 10 or 12 large locals and then 100 or more small locals and lot of them were in the south and a lot of them would be just one plant in one town. During the war I--read about it on Whitfield--he was an organizer during the war for FTA. Oren Whitfield. He helped to organize Memphis and following his tracks from Little Rock down through Montgomery and into Florida--he was a great organizer but he'd organize, I don't know why he left, but he organized spots all over the map, none of which could stand on its own. Planters Peanuts, which was a smaller FTA local in the south, they were able to hold out. Almost all Black local, was strong. Affidavit or no affidavit, they finally joined the... Workers union. Local 15 held on for a long time in Charleston. American Tobacco Company made cigars. Honey: One of the things in this correspondence is that they're saying they have problems getting FTA organizers to come in and service the place. Korstad: I'm sure they were having trouble and difficulty because they were having money problems and were hard to service. They would even have to go in and hold meetings at night and you'd have to drive and probably have an executive board meeting at 7:00 and a membership meeting at 8:00 and you had to go back and negotiate once a year. That usually took two or three meetings to prepare for negotiations to discuss the demands etc with the committee and then with the membership and maybe two or three negotiating sessions. And you'd go back each time and report--a tremendous amount of time tied up in 90 workers in one cotton seed oil mill for one organizer. And the way it suffered was they just weren't serviceable almost the way Henderson said th fuel service workers were almost unserviceable from an organizational point of view. Honey: But if you concentrated on one town like Memphis you'd have a better chance. Korstad: They'd have a better chance to hold it together because they had more strength, they had some strength in those locals. The local was cotton seed oil, cotton compress, I guess you know that, feed mills and wholesale groceries when I was there. Honey: I was puzzled about that grocery stuff. What kind of places were they? 5

6 Korstad: Wholesale grocers where they buy groceries and put them in truck and take them out to retail stores. Canelly and Sons was one of them. He was a wholesale produce man. Had his place downtown. A small local, not very active and he sort of followed the trends, the later trends. There wasn't any possibility of putting the pressure on him. I think there was another place, I've forgotten the name of it. I think it might have been called Memphis Merchandise Company or kind of... it was a much larger and sold all down into Mississippi and over into Arkansas and up in Tennessee. We had a real bunch of strong people there. Young men. They held together. Honey: What happened with distributor workers? Not distributor workers-- the packing house workers. I was reading some of their files up in Madison and there is all this stuff coming back from Grover Pathway... down in Memphis and did you ever run across him? Korstad: No. Was he talking about working with Local 19? Honey: Well, there is some correspondence where FTA Korstad: They at one time may have thought even locally--some of the locals may have thought--that they should go with packinghouse. Now maybe some of the Campbells Soup locals did. You see, the biggest one was in Chicago. The next one was in Camden and they would be close to the packinghouse workers being in Chicago. They were two big, powerful locals. They may have gone, not in the end, with the-- I don't know where they went, whether they went with distributors or with packing house. They could go either way. Packinghouse Workers was a good union. A very good strong union background Honey: Was there cooperation between like FTA and Packinghouse Workers. Korstad: Oh, sure. Honey: Because their policies on the race question... Korstad: Absolutely. A strong Black membership in Chicago developed. Honey: I wonder--there was one incident that... you might have been there when it happened. This was in the spring of '46 at Abraham's Hollywood plant under the jurisdiction of the Packinghouse Workers but there were people apparently from FTA somehow involved as... and there is a guy named Harper Lawn who was organizing this plant, I guess with the Packinghouse Workers and he and Robinson were both picked up by the police... down in Mississippi. Do you remember anything about this at all? Korstad: Cleveland Robinson was a distributor worker's leader, wasn't he? Honey: I believe so. Korstad: Vice President of District 65. That would have been after my time. Honey: Apparently he was down there during this period doing something. District 65 took over Amalgamated. Korstad: We joined them. We actually, theoretically merged but actually they were absorbed. FTA was absorbed and it wasn't long before all of the old FTA leaders--most of the old FTA leaders--were, well they were out, they were not national leaders any more. Honey: Are there any other names of people that you mentioned--this guy Whitfield Korstad: Alone Whitfield was one of the first and Lee Lashley was one of the rank and file leaders you ought to ask about over there. He was head of the Quaker Oats division. Honey: I'll be down in Memphis and maybe I can track some of this down. 6

7 7 Korstad: He may not be living, I don't know. I can't think of any more. I'd have to go back into my memory and I might find something. Honey: Was Larry Larson sort of a traveling guy... Korstad: Larry was a--he was a very interesting guy. I first knew him as a NMU agent in Charleston. He was from Minnesota.... about 12. He worked on the boats on the lakes. Then he went into the National Maritime ocean liners and he was one of the rank and file leaders in NMU before they had a contract, before they could have a vote, they couldn't strike while they were at sea, but they could strike when they were in port and they had a hit and run package. They used to strike the ship 15 minutes-30 minutes-20 minutes and it was real-- that's the kind of thing he came out of. He was a real militant guy. Honey: There is a maritime union in Memphis. Is that... Korstad: Yeah. He was the agent. No, he was the agent in Charleston. There was... in Memphis, too. Honey: Which was one of the first industrial unions, I guess. Korstad: It probably was. It could have been. And then later he became- -after Kearn and after the Kearn turnover Larry was chopped out of NMU and went to work with us in Charleston. And then he came into Memphis as regional director. He worked for a while in Winston- Salem, Charleston, and then he went to Memphis. He was regional director when I was the business agent. And then I left and came here, and Ed McCray who had been the chief organizer at Winston-Salem went to become the business agent of Local 19. Ed McCray is from Tennessee and last I knew he was in Nashville. He is a printer, works in the printing trades. He was quite a character in in the Local 22 situation. He was a war hero, a pilot, impeccable war record and a strong man. Honey: Do you think he is still in Nashville? Korstad: I should think if he is living he is still there. He was younger than I was, I think, or maybe my age. The last I heard of him was probably in the '50s. He was working for a furniture workers union, trying to organize in Thomasville in Highpoint here and he used to come out and visit us and he was very discouraged about Taft- Hartley and the way it affected the workers and he felt that he was really hurting because it was almost impossible to go in and build a secret committee. You have to build it completely underground. The minute they found out somebody was active they fired them. J. B. Stevens did a lot of it but it's nothing new. That was the pattern immediately after Taft-Hartley. That's why they changed it. Most people didn't even read that section of the law. They didn't have any idea that that thing was changed and how important it was. It made organizing almost impossible. If you can't protect a man's job, why-- Honey: There was a leaflet from FTA that I found in the Memphis files where they were talking about the Wagner Act and why people should join the union. It was real clear in the leaflet that you had all these rights and the government would back you up. Korstad: It's patriotic. And a lot of the... and a lot of like the... membership clause which was the compromise between an open shop and a closed shop that was divided by the... labor board actually written by Frank Graham who was a member of the former president of the University of Carolina who was a a member of that board which merely said that one should sign the card you had to maintain your membership for the year and the check-off of union dues. This was was what we called the union security package. We had the maintenance membership clause, the check off, the grievance procedure leading to arbitration. That was our package, our union security package that would allow us to protect our people. The company protection we gave them as we added a no-strike clause during the life of the contract so long as we maintained a arbitration clause. And there was a lot of argument going on--they confused people like the union wants a check-off. They want us to collect dues for them. Too lazy to collect their own dues. I had a young woman over in Duke last year I was over there talking about our union's attitude toward union democracy in the group that Bob had together and one of the young women asked me, wouldn't you have a stronger union if you didn't have a check-off because then you would have to go out and collect the dues from each person each month, which is really specious argument because the company who offers that as an argument is not interested in building a strong union, number one. And secondly, they understand that it's a key part of the union security package. If they aren't willing to deal with this fair and square this means that you are not

8 8 going to try to break our union during this coming year. We are going to sign a contract with you. You're going to agree to abide, not try to break our union by, number one, firing our people, number two, we used to have special senior shop stewards so that you aren't going to move our shop stewards around and you aren't going to cut off our funds. That's all part of union security if you stop to think about it. That was our package in negotiations. They knew that. The lawyers all knew that. Honey: So... you are trying to maintain, right? Korstad: Yeah, and I think the companies felt that we had gone through War Labor Board, the unions had been built that way, they had lost some of the spirit they had in the '30s. They were soft and if you hit them head on and forced them into strikes right after the war they had a chance. They forced them into two strikes two years they had strikes. Steel, rubber, oil, long strikes and I think they finally realized that they were counterproductive. They were building militancy, they were building unity and all the things that instead of weakening the situation were strengthening it, I really believe it. They could see that because that was what was happening and then in '48 you tied wages to two things: cost of living, productivity and the leadership of the CIO and AFL more or less went along with that theoretically. From now on we'll get cost of living increases and at the end of the year they start signing longer contracts instead of one-year contracts start signing threeyear contracts. It was the intent on the part of the corporate leaders to stabilize the labor situation to give them time to go to work overseas. I really think that's what happened. And we were part of that. We were part of the... and the left wing unions were, this is not assuming that the right wing union leaders, I guess it would be too kind of them to say that they were forced into this situation. They didn't want to do it because I think a lot of them did want to. But it sure gave them a pretty good excuse and good reason to get rid of the militants because the militants did not want to go along with the foreign policy and they did not want to give up militancy in the union... let the union become--well, these people talked so economic democracy they were--you take all the struggle out, it isn't an organization where you have confrontation any more. We based our building a union on the theory that... have confrontation within the company. We had to continually keep the pressure on and they continued--which is exactly what happens in free enterprise system between two competing companies. Why you should expect that works up on top between the companies and wouldn't work that way between the company and the workers, I don't know why. But it's illegal when you could have confrontation there, they call that class struggle and throw it out the door but up here it's confrontation. Honey: Do you think that period of cooperation with the War Labor Board and all that during World War II Korstad: Did weaken the union? Honey: And also changed the attitude of the people about what unions were all about? Korstad: Oh, a whole lot of people got into the unions that never would have gotten into the unions. We organized a lot more people than we would have normally because it was easy to organize. It wasn't easy when you read about the struggles in And Winston, even with the War Labor Board when the company really wanted to make it tough they could make it tough. But it was easier, and once you had the numerical majority of the vote they had to bargain with you. And if they didn't bargain with you the War Labor Board would hand down the decision and tell them this is what you have to give the workers and that's what they had to give the workers or they could go to court. Honey: Well certainly unions advanced a lot in the south because Korstad: Yeah, they were able to because they were in a weak situation with the War Labor Board that end of tape (3) Korstad Korstad: stories just to show you how understanding they were and Chic was talking... women's church and there would be more than one plant in town so they'd have meeting in church and all the workers would come. There would be four or five...

9 9 you see, so there may be people and he was giving them talks on what FTA was. From firsthand he knew what it stood for. It stood for equality, it stood for FEPC, it stood for equal rights and for non-discrimination in the union, that we all work together, where we could we ate together and he introduced Larry Larson by saying that this is a man who will sleep with anyone, black or white. What he meant is, of course, that they traveled around, and he and Larry would share the same room. And all these Black women started kind of snickering and finally he said, so what else is new. That's never been one of our problems in the south, white men wanting to sleep with us. And then the whole place roared. He got embarrassed when he started to explain, and then they said, well don't explain, we know what you mean, which I think is a real rich story, but they understood it. Larry understood, so they had to have a tremendous understanding among themselves to let them kind of thing get by them and they could laugh it off and, no, that's not what he meant. Honey: OK, you would say that the FTA had a big role in the operation dixie and probably the wood workers and Korstad: I don't know much about the rest of them, really, because--i saw what was happening in Memphis and there wasn't too much happening in Memphis, to be honest about it in operation dixie, I don't think, as I remember it anyway. There may have been a few plants... then later International Harvester moved in about that time so that would have been southerner camp, but I know some... in textile would but FTA in North Carolina, I suppose that was the biggest single organizing drive, I would think involved more people and won more elections. Honey: The biggest gains appear to have been in North Carolina, Tennessee and Alabama. Korstad: We worked real well, Bill Smith who was the CIO director and head of the CIO drive, or at least in this state I think he was, in Charlotte, and worked very well with him--worked closely with him. Even after I came in here which was getting late we worked with him. I knew him and he knew Black real well and respected him tremendously. Knew what kind of an organizer he was and what kind of a person he was. He was a terrific leader and as a matter of fact on this time I was telling you we had a "no" vote... ballot over there with transport workers, CIO, AFL tobacco workers and no union and we were not able to get on the ballot and we carried a "no" vote. He tried to get Chic who was then still co-chairman of the local approach by a local attorney to come down and see him so Chic went down to see him and what they approached him with was, we can make a good position for you if you'll just switch over to transport. There is no question about who the leader is up there. And of course Chic came back and reported to the executive board. Honey: It seems there has been a lot of activity in Virginia among Black workers through similar lines. I haven't tracked this all down yet but in the operation dixie papers they have an index... and the guy, Charles Webber... seems to have been pretty good--much better than any of the other people I have run across. Korstad: I think so. We had a good local Richmond. We had a very good local Planters Peanuts. Strong Black leadership. Black women mostly. A woman named Robbie Riddick. She was typical of the Black women leaders that we had in FTA. Most of the leaders in local 19 were men. Most of the leaders in Virginia, South, North Carolina were Black women. Tobacco, peanuts and even in Richmond where we had a local it was more white than it was Black. The leadership of militant white women. The FFV Crackers--that was the factory we had-- I was setting and negotitating with them once, we had to go to the state conciliation service and so we met in the state capitol building, our committee and the company on one side and we were on the other side and they had just passed the right to work bill in Virginia and then Governor Tuck who later became Congressman Tuck walked by with his big Texas hat on. He's a typical political. He couldn't see 20 people in a room with the door open without walking in to shake hands, and he walked in and shook hands with a Colonel, whoever he was, who was in conciliation services and the people who represented the company, and then he turned to the workers and he turned first to the woman who was president of the local, kind of offer her hand and she says, "I don't care to shake hands with you, Governor Tuck." She says "I am particular about who I shake hands with, and I certainly don't want to shake hands with somebody who favors the right to work bill." And he turned around and put his hat on and strolled out, you know. A white woman. She didn't say it as nicely as I said it. She was a militant. I was embarrassed, I really was. But she's right, I mean she was absolutely right. She had a position... and to her it was a matter of--it was a serious matter, it wasn't just--she was a strong woman. And in Charleston the white and the Black women worked together beautifully and they were the strength of the American Tobacco local. As a matter of fact, once we sent an organizer down there, this is in what I've written, it might come out a little differently--we sent an organizer down there who was old and he finally got to the point where he thought he wanted to stay there. Our position on an organizer was he should go into a place and work as a business agent for a month, I mean for a year, or so and by that time train rank and filers so that they could take over. Take somebody out of the plant and run their own local and he could go on someplace else. We weren't

10 making sinecures for people. An organizer was an organizer. Get them organized and move on. And he was getting tired. He wanted to stay there and one of the ways to stay there was to start settling all the grievances yourself. Don't have a committee settle them, that's number one. Number two is to start some factons going in the local, getting the workers so they distrust each other. It was a terrific local. They went through a five month strike in 1946 and some fine people in it, long good history, and we couldn't figure out all of a sudden what was happening. We were just getting bad vibrations from the local. And I went down there. I was still regional director then. I went down and tried to horse around and find out and I really couldn't find out, I could see what was happening and I just couldn't put it together. I came back and talked to Miranda about it and so Miranda said well, I'll go down there because they knew her well. And she called one of the Black women and they called on the white woman and they said, well come on down Saturday and we'll have chicken dinner together at so and so's house. About ten of them met and had chicken dinner and sat and talked and there was some factionalism among those ten developing and Miranda said let's bring it out on the table. What's going on here? You people have been... together all this time, you can't be distrusting each other now. And finally it got out on the table and they discovered where it was coming from. It all comes from Fred. And they solved it that night. We dumped him, that's all... built the union. Which I think is really a story. From 1946 it shows what could happen. They are normal white workers and Black workers, women under the leadership of a Black woman. They figured it out right away. 10 xxx KORSTAD: one of the things that I sort of remember in detail HONEY:... and stuff sir, KORSTAD: Yes. HONEY: That's the stuff that's hard to find out about. Side B 1st Half of Interview with Karl Korstad KORSTAD: Yeah, in detail just what happened. We got of stories in there about what happened because I was obviously working all the time day and night, you know,... things were happening. We had 26 locals when I went into Business Agent. We had a six months' way drill. That meant 52 negotiations every year. Then as I was saying you just don't negotiate, you have to have a committee meeting first, you have to have a membership meeting draw up the... back to the membership, get that thing typed, get it worked up, meet with the committee again before you go into bargain, do your bargaining, come back, make a report.. you know it takes time. HONEY: When you say you had 26 unions KORSTAD: 26 different plants and each one had a separate contract and each one had a separate membership meeting. HONEY: These were like from Jackson down to Memphis? KORSTAD: No, they were all Memphis. HONEY: All Memphis. KORSTAD: It was Local 19. That's what Local 19 was. There were 26 or 27 different plants under contract. There were 3 feed mills, one of them had only 24 workers. We had the Quaker Oats and we had this allied. There were compresses--the Memphis compress the Federal compress which was on the south side of Memphis. That was the largest cotton compress in the world at that time in terms of acreage and warehouse space. Most of the federal were owned by one of the railroads. They were tied in with the railroads. HONEY:... workers?

11 11 KORSTAD: Not that many because they don't take that many... couple of hundred. HONEY: Now the records of some of these companies are in the stuff that the southern, well, Operation Dixie papers and the way I've got it broken down is I have correspondence between Paul Christopher and... which would be Larry Larson. KORSTAD: Larry Larson. HONEY: So there's that and then there's all these companies... there's not 26 of them but there's but there's 8 or some of that has KORSTAD: They obvious lost some locals during the '50s, late '40s and '50s to various parts of the CIO. We were in a very untenable position, almost untenable position when we came to an election. In Winston for instance, the Reynolds thing we went outside the affidavits so we couldn't get on the ballot and the CIO petitioned and got enough votes and called an election and so the election read "Do you want to be represented by the AF of L or the CIO Transport Workers or no union." And we carried a campaign on that it's better to have no union than it is to have a union that' going to be a company union. In fact which was a very difficult campaign. Here we are union organizers telling people... we had a tremendous "no union" vote. No neither one were certified. HONEY: In what way did you have to...? KORSTAD: Collected dues. The company respected the contract although it wasn't written with... with no terms. People were still able to settle grievances concerning.... We had that strength in there and they weren't going to challenge that strength. We still had HONEY: Through the NLRB procedure there was no way KORSTAD: No. There was nothing we could do at that point. Then we did sign the affidavit and we petitioned for election. That was held in '50 or '51. We lost by 64 votes out of about That was a... kind of thing.... They had everything they threw the books at us [50] HONEY: That's when they brought you back in, right? KORSTAD: That was in the '47 strike. Right in the middle of the strike they brought that in. HONEY: Were there any other unions in Memphis that, well for instance, that KORSTAD:... would work with them very closely and I guess they were there all the time. A guy named Red, there were two of them, Red HONEY: Davis? KORSTAD: Yeah, Red Davis. HONEY:..St. Louis KORSTAD: He was... agent.... workers we worked with wasn't much... out of there [58]. We were pretty well isolated otherwise. The farm equipment workers came in just as I was leaving the International Harvester came in to build a cotton picker there. Put in a big new factory. I don't know whether that went UAW or Farm Equipment because at that point they were UAW and they were fighting. HONEY: So actually the idea you get from the correspondence between Christopher and Larson is that there is a lot of cooperation going on. Is that deceptive? Or is that just that in an earlier period there was cooperation? KORSTAD: No, I think it went on until we finally were, we continued to function... until we were kicked out of the CIO. But we

12 12 didn't take any steps to withdraw. We didn't withdraw. We participated in CIO meetings, State Council meetings, State conventions. We didn't participate very actively because... [71] we attended them to the bitter end, you know. HONEY: But like when you would go to the CIO meetings and people from FTA would sit in the back and did the CIO people more or less ignore you? KORSTAD: No, we were part of the discussion. We raised our voice. We were given the floor all during '46 and '47. I'd say about '48 or '49 you weren't given the floor. I guess it would be '48. When was the Portland convention? Wasn't that the one that finally expelled them? HONEY: Yeah, '49. KORSTAD: '49. Well in '49, '48 and '49 you wouldn't say much. First, you probably wouldn't get the floor or secondly there would be some goons around HONEY: They would actually use force to keep people out? KORSTAD: No, not that I know of. Not here. We had a good, I had a good personal relationship with Copeland. When the National Negro Labor Council started moving and getting active up north in Detroit and all the rest of these places the national CIO decided they had to do something they couldn't just sit there and so they all of a sudden decided that they were going to support the campaign for membership in the NAACP. HONEY: As an alternative. KORSTAD:... really it happened a lot like that. And I remember the first Council meeting we had when Copeland had to make this announcement It was on the agenda, believe me. And I was sitting up in the front. I don't know why that night we didn't always make... so they sat up front. I was sitting up front and he started talking about the NAAPC and he said it about five or six times and I could see the Blacks in the place were, and so I raised my hand when he was in the middle of his report and I said "Brother Copeland," and he said "Carl what do you want?" and I said "It's not PC, it's CP," and he looked at me and laughed and he said, "You're trying to get your fellows mixed up in this league aren't you?" He said "You're trying to get your outfit mixed up in it, aren't you?" Everybody laughed. "You're trying to get the communist party mixed up in it, aren't you?" And I said "No, you know better than that, I just think that we ought to, it's the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People," and he was very embarrassed and he got it right after that. Which shows you about the level of, you know, his understanding. He got a memo on his desk. HONEY: What about this stuff about the was telling me that there was a mistake really KORSTAD: Well I think the left unions HONEY:... Memphis... KORSTAD: All right HONEY: What happened there was apparently after the '48 thing... he says that Memphis was the worst area of repression of any place in the country as the result of the Wallace campaign people who organized around the Wallace campaign that was after you left, of course, just literally got run out of town and I talked to some people when I was down there and they told me similar types of things. KORSTAD: Well you ought to talk to Ed McCray about this. Cause he'd be, he was there. HONEY: The FTA prominent in supporting that and then I found some leaflets where FTA is being... well Copeland is sending stuff up to Paul Christopher where he's more or less supporting Wallace. KORSTAD: He wouldn't have to do it even subtly, he could do it openly, you know, and