THE UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA AT CHAPEL HILL SOUTHERN ORAL HISTORY PROGRAM Interview with ROBERT "CHICK" BLACK Greensboro, North Carolina March 3, 1988 By Chuck Epinette Transcribed by Jovita Flynn
Original transcript on deposit at The Southern Historical Collection Louis Round Wilson Library
START OF TAPE 1, SIDE A 7-13-88 CHUCK EPPINETTE: We just needed your normal release sort of thing, and I need you tell us your name and spelling of the name and your address. CHICK BLACK: You need that now. CE: Yeah. BLACK: Okay. My name is Robert Chick Black. I lived in Winston-Salem the greater part of my life, and I spent many years in the R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company. Before we made an effort to organize.... CE: Let me get you real quick. I just need to do a quick, what's your address here. BLACK: 2216 Delta Place. CE: When you did the interviews with Bob, he had you sign a release saying you could use them. We need to just tape that and say we're going to be using these tapes for a series of video tapes on labor history and on the history of FTA 22 and that you have your permission to use anything we tape today. BLACK: Yeah. And you want the address. CE: Yeah. BLACK: As I said, it's 2216 Delta Place, zip code 27406, Greensboro. CE: Mr. Black, why don't you tell us a little--before the union came in, what the conditions were at Reynolds. Things like wages, the hiring practices, how they made decisions to hire, the power of the foreman at the workplace, if there were any benefits of not. Just so people can have a general understanding of what day-to-day life at Reynolds Tobacco was like. BLACK: Before the union working conditions, pay wages was the worst that you could picture or imagine could happen in a company, tobacco, textile, or furniture or what not. I was hired into the Reynolds Tobacco Company, a young man, for 10 cent an hour. At the time that I was hired the policy of the company was that you couldn't ask the employment department what your wages or where you were going be assigned to work. Once you asked that question your papers were torn up and you were asked to leave the premises of the company. The foremen were worst that Gestapos. You couldn't be a foreman in Reynolds if you was sympathetic to human being. You had to be a slave driver, get the full, maximum amount of work out of each employee, sick or well, day after day. There was no grounds for compromise. Then in 1941 I was sitting on my front porch one Saturday morning and a gentleman approached me. He said his name was Franklin Dobbs. That he was representing a tobacco workers' union under Uka Power, was the name of our union at that time. He
asked if he could talk with me, and I told him yes. We sat down and spent probably a couple of hours talking over the possibilities of building a union. And then I gave him the names of other people that I knew were willing to put forth strenuous efforts to win better working conditions and better pay in the Reynolds Tobacco Company. And we began to have discussions on Sunday afternoons after church. We rented a little union hall, and we would publicize in the daily newspaper about these meetings and who was elected to serve in certain capacities. And the company's executives would read it and laugh about it because they didn't see possibly how we were ever going to get the workers [laughter] together to build a union. After then, Uka Power sent in another international representative by the name of William D. Berry. They were still under the name of Uka Power. Now, these meetings continued to grow in numbers. We had white and black Reynolds workers. We had Mr. Clark Shepherd and Mrs. Virginia Bruce and several other white workers. We named ourselves the R.J. Reynolds Volunteer Organizers. That was the label we were going under. Well, we continued to meet. Let me picture a little more about conditions in Reynolds. People were racially divided. We had situations where whites would be forced to pass through black neighborhoods to get to their place of work or their place of living. The situation was so there that in many of those areas, young blacks would pile up rocks and things and throw rocks at the whites, particularly the younger groups, as they would pass. There were sections of town that blacks couldn't go to. There were sections of town that the whites couldn't go to without the fear of being attacked. Now, this company dominated Winston-Salem. They had representatives on every government body from the City Council on up through Congress. They could have just said we're tried of tolerating this kind of conditions and could have put forth a program that would have brought the blacks and the whites under livable conditions. They didn't want to say that. They had a kingdom of their own. Blacks hating whites; whites hating blacks. Wages low, conditions bad, and all of this, and there were no grounds or no room for the whites and blacks to sit down and discuss their working and economic problems because they had to face the race question. Most blacks and a great majority of the poor whites lived in rat infested houses, and they couldn't pull themselves out of those conditions because of the economics that Reynolds controlled, and the Hanes Knitting Mill and the Wachovia Banks. So we lived in the community in they called, right on the edge of Muddy Bottom. And this was one of the lowest sections of the blacks in Winston-Salem. There wasn't room enough between
those little rat infested houses for a human being to walk, and when one house would catch on fire, it could endanger the lives of hundreds. And the rent owners wouldn't prepare the house. I could lie in bed at night and see more stars than I could if I was outdoors in the yard. And holes through the floor of the house you lived in, rats, open sewers. They had sewer systems there, outside toilets, and those things would jam and the impurities from these sewer lines would flow through your yards. Flies, rats, and the same rats that would run through this filthy conditions would come in your house and on your tables and in your food and what not. The company didn't want to improve those conditions because then, my opinion was, that they thought, well, if we give them better houses to live in, they'll begin to look in other fields and want to better their conditions over here politically. Out of approximately 40,000 blacks, there wasn't a hundred blacks that was registered to vote, other than the big shots. I'm I talking too loud? If I decided that I wanted to register to vote, I had to get the approval of some big white man before they would accept me at the Board of Registrars. And they would tell you how to vote. Well, all right, we knew that the salvation of the workers was first, build a union, and second, to start a program of educating people that you cannot preserve a good union or maintain a good living standard unless you are politically minded, to elect people that would represent your interests. All right, and we told the people during the life of our union that we could win a dollar and a half minimum wage in Reynolds and go home and sit down. And Reynolds could elect representatives to go to Washington to change that. So you fought and won today, but you lost tomorrow because you weren't politically active. Well, all right, then on the 17th day of June, on the day, Thursday, my God, that's the day it started [laughter], there was a Negro man taken ill in 65 stemmery. And he had asked for permission to go home. He was denied that. The nurse told him to go back down on his job and go to work. And on his way back to his job, he had a blackout and fell. And these big stemmery machines were put in on big wide steel bases on prevent the vibration. And he fell and hit his head on the base of one of those big machines. This thing unified the people in that department. Sister Theodosa Simpson, who was one of the top people of this volunteer committee, Reynolds Volunteer Organizing Committee, happened to be in that department. She called the people together. They stopped their machines and they discussed this problem. At that time conditions were so bad, women would go in and
change their clothing and would be forced to hang their clothes on the wall, on the factory's walls, put their lunch boxes down on the floor or a little bench, and rats--not all together rats--but roaches would run over food and all through your clothes while you were out there slaving for the company. Then Mrs. Simpson was authorized by the other workers to present grievances to management, right then and there. Management said we will hear your grievances. We will write them down, and later we'll discuss them, not with the workers, but management is going to discuss [laughter] their grievance. So they wouldn't agree to that. The people decided that the best thing for them to do was to take economic actions against the company. They refused to go back to work. But they wouldn't leave the premises of the company because then the company could have very easily said they refused to work and could have discharged them. This was on Thursday, June 17th. That afternoon the word--now, the truck drivers was a source of information. If anything happened anywhere in the company's factories, the truck drivers would relate it from one plant to another. And the word got around to many of the plants that afternoon that they was having a sit-down in plant #65. So they got together and called an outdoor mass meeting on Woodland Avenue for that Thursday night. I had no knowledge of the meeting. So they met and discussed grievances and how they were going to handle the grievances. So my wife was working in Reynolds, and she said that the word had gotten to them that there was a work stoppage in #65. Now, there was approximately 2,000 black women in these two plants, right next door together, not counting 65. She said some of the people was talking that they'd been reading about you all having union meetings, not union meetings, but workers group meetings, and they wanted to know if they needed you, if they wanted to continue and add to this strike, would you come over and speak for us. Well, she was in that plant, too. And I said, "Ah," you know, just passed it off. I'd been hoping and wishing that something would happen at Reynolds, but I just didn't see it, you know. And I said, "If there's anybody in Reynolds wanting me to come and go with them to point out to the company their problems, their grievances, I'll be glad to go." So that morning there were many of the most influential people, most determined groups of people, was really disturbed about what was going on in 65. So the word got around that everybody would go to their place of work, but nobody would turn on a machine until the company's foremen agreed to get management down there and hear them out. So I was working in Plant 64 in one of the most technical departments of the Reynolds Tobacco Company, processing tobacco
material to go in the cigarettes, and it was a complete secret. And around an hour and a half after we'd gone to work, about 9:30, my foreman came over to my place of work and said, "Robert, Mr. John C. Whitaker, the president of the Reynolds Tobacco Company, along with Mr. Ed Bumgardener, and Lipton, one of the company's lawyers," he was a real alcoholic, "and a nurse would like to speak with you in my office." So I went out there. Now, I had heard of John C. Whitaker. Now, I'll say to you that John C. Whitaker as an individual carried a lot of weight and prestige among black and white workers. He was an honest man, but he was bound by the rotten policies of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. He didn't have the right or the authority to go beyond the wishes and the policies of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. So that left him standing out as an individual. To forget that, he asked me did I know that the company had 2,000 of my women over in 60 and 60-extension that were refusing to go to work. That they wanted me to come over and speak for them. I said, "Mr. Whitaker, I'll be glad to go over and speak with some of the elected representatives." He said, "Now, we'll tell you what we want you to tell them." I said, "Who am I going to represent, you or the people?" He said, "Now, unless you agree to tell them what we want you to tell them, Robert, we can't let you go." I said, "Well, that's good, Mr. Whitaker. I've got no objections to that. But a thought just struck me that my wife and those 1,999 women are sitting down over there in 60 and 60-extension trying to better their conditions, now I'm less than a man to continue to operate this department, and I'm trying to destroy the things that they're trying to do over there." I said, "So in support of my wife and all of those other women that you said--i never knew I had 2,000 women." I said, "That's a lot of women. But I will close down this department." He said, "You can't do it." And I called one of my fellow workers and told him to go over and tell the elevator operator--i knew every influential individual by departments in that plant. I asked him to go and tell these people to shut down their departments. And in less than 30 minutes that plant was at a standstill. They wouldn't allow me to go over to 60. And the material that we used in my department was inflammable. It would catch on fire if you left it too long. Then Mr. Whitaker and those asked me, since we were closing down that department, if I would appeal to the worker--and let that damn company walk over us, I tell you, simply because of racism. CE: I'm trying to figure out whether we're running out of tape. BLACK: So we'll go back to that. CE: Yeah, that's right, the inflammable stuff. BLACK: You ready. The workers in my department, there was
only about 40 of us, but they were determined to make any mistakes to prevent, you know, any getting together of the people, we wouldn't say, as a union because we were not organized. But I went to call the co-workers together and I explained to them that we were not trying to destroy the Reynolds Tobacco Company. We wanted to keep Reynolds as Reynolds, but we wanted to share in their profits, and we wanted to have a voice in our working conditions. I said, "If we will all walk out right now or refuse to process what is in those bins out there, this plant will burn down before Monday. I'm going to ask you all to run up, the company's not going to process any more, just run up what they have got in these bins. We're going to ask them to compensate us with extra hours for what we are doing. We're not doing them any favor. We're just trying to preserve our place of work." The men looked into it and they agreed. All right, I said, "Now, I've got a problem that I want to add to this. I want to get a free pass to go out of this office, this place of work, and go to the union hall because I want to relate to the people in the union hall what is going on in this plant." So he said, "We can't do that." So I said, "We're not going to run up the product." So in exchange for me getting a free pass, the men went on and ran the tobacco. I went to the union office and picked up about 3,000 union cards. I went to these plants that was effected and issued out those cards to the people in responsibility in those plants. By that afternoon, these people had signed up more than 2,000 members, and they paid their initiation fees that day. Then you realized that we'd grabbed a hold of something here. Then other plants began to close, plant #97, a cigarette plant. William Malone, Eddie Gallimore, and others were the people who were attending the volunteer organizing groups, closed down those plants as soon as they got word that these other big plants right in their areas had closed down. Well, we had departments like #8 made up of a mixture of operations. Some were stemmeries; some were plug manufacture; different sources, some smoking tobacco. And they got the word. The word really passed around that Friday. So we called a big mass meeting for that Friday night. Now, all the people from the other plants, that hadn't fully participated in the work stoppage, selected certain people to be their spokesman, to guide the people that returned to their place of work on Monday not to enter the plant unless we got a written document signed by John C. Whitaker that there would be no molesting, no intimidation, or no nothing against any of the people who took this action to improve their condition. Now, the police came. There were so many people at this meeting that we had blocked the traffic on the streets. They was
going to make us close the meeting. So we decided that we would just walk up the street about four blocks to a school ground, and there we had ample room to hold a meeting. Then the chief of police sent his top lieutenant to tell me to get those people off of the city's property. I said, "This is not city property. It's the taxpayers' property, and we pay tax, and we're going to meet here." So we held the meeting. Then there was a need for another follow-up meeting on Saturday. We had that meeting in the afternoon. And the police, the FBI, and all the other stooges were around, you know, going to intimidate. We said what we wanted to say, and in some meetings we said a little more, because we found that there was the middle-class black man that lived across the street from the school ground that had often John C. Whitaker and the top Reynolds executives to share his home to listen in on what was going to be said and who was saying it. So someone told us that they were gathered over there. So I gave them a welcome to come over and become a part of our meeting. I said, "There's a lot of questions we would like to ask Mr. Whitaker." But the people laughed it off, knowing that he wasn't coming. So then, by Monday morning we had an agreement and representatives from each plant. The plants were Brother Clark Shepherd and all those. They became a part of this volunteer committee. They were already a part of the organizing committee. So they went into the plants were they worked that Monday and appealed to the people to discontinue work. Now, the main thing that brought about the continuation of this work stoppage.... At the mass meeting they voted that Sunday that Mr. John C. Whitaker and Robert Chick Black--you see, we really didn't have a union representative that could identify his self with the group because the company said we was striking, and that would have jeopardized the international's pledge to the "no strike" effort. So they really sit in the background and advised us as to what to do, but they couldn't come forward and endorse or support the movement [laughter]. Well, it got complicated. All right, the people said, "We don't trust anybody in the Reynolds Tobacco Company but John C. Whitaker to a point. We want to authorize Brother Chick Black to sign to joint statement with Mr. Whitaker on the question of the workers' rights. We sent this document to the Reynolds Tobacco Company. In fact, we met with them, a committee of about 38 that Saturday. So the company position was that Mr. Whitaker would sign the document and have it available for the union's consideration by Monday. But instead of this, now the company in order to safeguard their slavery-time rules, they hired a guy by the name of Chester Davis, was a shrewd editorial within the framework of the FBI. He had been in there working as the head editor of the
Winston-Salem Journal and Sentinel, prepared to beat down any effort, not realizing that anything like this was going to come up. He would write editorials causing workers to believe that if there was any effort or attempt made to organize any plant in the areas of Winston-Salem, that it would be squashed and the people would be blackballed for life, you know, all this kind of old intimidation. Never wrote one article in the editorial about what the people should do or how they should pool their strength and all to better their conditions. They did a job on us in the Monday morning's paper. That these outsiders from Philadelphia had come in there and had poisoned the minds of the workers in the Reynolds Tobacco plants, and all of these years of harmonious relationship and cooperation among Reynolds and its employees and all this bull. And the company didn't sign the document. So we agreed before the meeting adjourned that Sunday that everybody would report to his place of work but nobody would enter the plants unless they were told by their elected representative in those departments that the document had been signed, because they would jeopardize their position once they went inside of that shop. CE: How many workers are we talking about that were refusing to go back to work? BLACK: The entire plant. We had #8 which was represented at this meeting, that signed the document of Whitaker and myself on this stipulation. Let me name some of the plants at that time. CE: All of the black workers who were out. BLACK: Yeah. You see where we had the advantage of Reynolds at that stage of the game, the free fabrication units of R.J. Reynolds was slave labor and blacks worked in those areas, like processing the tobacco that went in the cigarettes. You can't make cigarettes if nobody processes that tobacco. So that's where we held controlling interests. And there were several whites, a lot of the whites that lived out of town in the rural areas, wouldn't come into town to attempt to work--many of them did and most of the whites within the city limits reported for work. But without the first, second stage of the product there was nothing there for them to do. So we effected the company. Then they had little outside units, like the construction workers. They got word of this. They elected representatives to serve on the committees. Then they had a nicotine plant, and it was predominantly black other than the supervisors. We had Reynolds by his tail [laughter], and he wasn't going anyplace unless he settled these 6,000 black workers. We had a few blacks that went on in the plants against the will of the committee. But we effected Reynolds whole
operation. We shut down his whole operation. The company went on the air that Monday morning, claiming that the, what did we call it, the document concerning the people going back to work had been agreed upon. And that Mr. John C. Whitaker and Robert Chick Black had signed and exchanged the documents--one for union and one for the company. And the people heard that on the radio that morning and they were going back to the place of work anyway. And they gathered around those plant gates. The foremen were out there, "All right, everything's been agreed to. Y'all come on in." But nobody went in. They just stood out on the street. They had their lunch bags and their change of work clothes and everything, ready to go to work. I was in bed. We'd had a late shop steward discussion that Sunday night, and I was in bed. A friend of mine, one of my fellow employees, co-workers, knocked on the door about 6:00 that morning. He said, "Brother Black, are you up?" I said, "Nah, I just went to bed." He said, "You've got to come out here." He had a Ford convertible. [Laughter] He said, "Let me open up this seat and let's get up here and talk to these people." So we went before the plant gates. I had really, Friday, Saturday, Sunday, had talked to a point where you could hardly hear my voice. But all we did was just ask the people to stay out of the plants and to go on back home, that nothing had been signed. So in the meantime they went on back home. We appealed to the city administration to close all wine and beer establishments, because you know what can happen in a situation. The people didn't want to go back, and some of them might have set off a spark or something, and we didn't want this to turn into a race riot or a workers' rebellion. We wanted to organize the Reynolds Tobacco Company and better our conditions. The workers didn't agree. Some of them almost got in my shirt. But we said it was for the good of our future that we ask the city to close the beer gardens. This is on Monday but a few of the whites who went in mostly to intimidate the blacks. Then we called a mass meeting for that Monday afternoon, and the company called the union office and said that they would get this document to us before the union office closed on Monday afternoon. So, no document. We closed the union hall and went to the mass meeting. What was the position of the workers. The workers wanted to know has the document been signed. No. Are you all asking us to go back to work Tuesday morning. No. We'll go back to work on the basis of what you agreed to--that after the document had been signed and delivered into the hands of the union committee. This is only way we can protect our members or ourselves. Because each one that was on that committee held a job inside of the Reynolds Tobacco Company. They agreed that they would meet at the plant
gates again on Tuesday, and no sign, no work. We repeated the same thing Tuesday that happened on Monday--no document, no work. So during the day on Tuesday we got a call from the company's office requesting that a selected representative group of the people come over to Reynolds Tobacco Company's office. They set the hour, and we agreed to the hour, and we called in these people on this committee, and we went to the Reynolds Tobacco Company. They said that we had too many people. That the company couldn't sit down and arrive at any collective--they didn't say collective because then you're talking about a union [laughter]--to any agreeable solution with all of these people. So then the group met, and they elected a few people from each operation which meant that the operations were similar. They were just located in different plants. We brought the committee down to 38. We went in and discussed this document because that was what was keeping the workers off of the job. So the workers asked me to explain to Mr. Whitaker just how the thing would work. So I said, "Now, Mr. Whitaker, I'll tell you now. We're having problems with our members because of the fact that it's June, the middle of June, and they want some time off. They want to go fishing. They want to go out of town visiting relatives and things, and they don't want to go to work. So if you're expecting to open up those plants again, somebody better start, you better sign this document. And we don't want nobody's name on the document but yours." So he said, "Well, Robert, you and I, let's go in private office." So we went in there. And he wanted to know why we were so strong on this question. I said, "Verbally, you could get up and say to those people, `Go back to work. Everything will be all right.' But what if it ended up in a case before the National Labor Relations Board. What have you got to prove that Mr. Whitaker intended to do that. So we want it in writing." So later on that Tuesday afternoon, they sent over this document. Sent over two. One for me to sign for the company's files, and one for our files. They read that document at the Tuesday evening's meeting. And Mr. Whitaker says, "You're not going to be able to get those people back into the plants." I said, "Mr. Whitaker, we'll make a bet with you that 94% (you don't ever have a 100% attendance even before this happened) of the people that's on your payroll will be at their place of work Wednesday morning at the regular time to go to work." "You can't do it. We say there won't be 50%." "We say 94." And the company.... END OF TAPE 1, SIDE A START OF TAPE 1, SIDE B CHICK BLACK: Assistance to people who were seeking welfare,
employment, and all of those areas because our union became a headquarters for people with problems. CHUCK EPPINETTE: Why don't we do then the percentage of workers who normally came to work, and then what the turnout was. Let's finish the story about your bet with Whitaker. BLACK: So the document was signed by the company and by myself on Wednesday afternoon in the presence of representatives of various departments. On Tuesday afternoon we held another mass meeting. The document was read and approved at this Tuesday afternoon meeting. On Wednesday morning the workers was asked to report for work. Ninety-four percent or more, according to the company's figures, reported to their job at the regular time of work. Now, we requested that the company began meeting the workers' committee to discuss grievances, adjust the wage scales within the company's system, and promotions. On Thursday the company met with the elected group of its employees to begin this type of discussion. There had been elections or no union representation presented to the company. We were meeting as employees under the name of the Volunteer Reynolds Organizing Committee to that time. CE: Before the Organizing Committee had started, a couple of years before, nobody have would ever dreamed, would they, that somebody as powerful Reynolds would have sat down with their workers to talk about how things were going to run in the plant? BLACK: Let me tell you what the rule of Reynolds was. It was an iron-clad rule and nobody broke through it. If a foreman took disciplinary actions against an employee, all he would say to that employee, he or she, "If you don't get the hell over there and do so-and-so, I'm going to send you over to Mr. Bumgardner." They were people who had never seen Ed Bumgardner, only during the time that they went through his office seeking employment, would tremble in their shoes, white women, white men, black men, and black women. But Bumgardner got more stronger resistance from the blacks than he did from the whites. He completely intimidated. If someone had of asked about a meeting in the Reynolds Tobacco Company before the 17th of June, he should have got his hat before he asked for the meeting [laughter] because he was long gone, and his name was put on the blacklist. Nobody questioned it. I had a technique that I used against Reynolds. I knew that I wasn't being paid anything, but myself and Reverend Frank O'Neill were two of the highest paid blacks in the Reynolds Tobacco Company, and the company pointed it out to me on the day of the 17th. They had this thirteen year record of mine, never been off of the job, only to attend a funeral. CE: We need to move to some of these other things real
quick, if we can? BLACK: Okay. CE: And one is the types of activities that you want to talk about that the union did in the community? BLACK: Oh yeah. After we were established and recognized as a union, people on our staff, the workers out of the plants as well as our union paid representatives, began offering services, not only to our union, but to the community. People who were trying to qualify are employment. We put on a register and vote drive. The first year of our union we put more than 4,000 new registered voters on the books. More than 6,000 joined the NAACP our first year around. And people looked to our union for help in securing even welfare, child help. We put on a drive to do away with slum housing, and the city almost immediately began building projects and doing away with the worst of the slum elements of the city. Our union was respected by people in every walk of life because we pointed out to them as the Reynolds' workers are able to gain better working conditions and a higher standard of living, will boil over into the other areas such as maids and bus drivers and shoe shine boys and whatever, laundry workers, and all the others. They caught fire by the job that we did by organizing the Reynolds Tobacco Company. CE: The first election was in '46, I think. Were you ( ) BLACK: Yeah. Our union was the main support of getting a black man to run for public office, the Board of Aldermen. Everybody said it couldn't be done. But we told him that if he would agree to run, that the people would pool the funds and all to finance his campaign. There was a man that lived in Winston-Salem, Marshall Kurfee. He was a white man. He had always wished to be a politician [laughter]. He had ran for everything but a dog catcher and got his boats licked and got kicked to kingdom's day because he had to political support. We went to Kurfee and told him that we wanted him to run for mayor. He said, "I've given up on that. There's nothing I can do. Big business just crushes me each year I agree to run." We told him that if he would agree to run for mayor that we would see to it that he got the votes. He agreed. We elected Mayor Kurfee and this black alderman, Kenneth Williams, as mayor and as a member of Board of Aldermen that year, '47, through the strength of our union and our political action committee working in the communities. We elected those two people even though Kenneth Williams turned against the union. He'd never been union minded, but he was elected as a City Board of Aldermen. CE: You told us a little about what the work was like and the community was like before the union. Let's go now, the
union's been around for a few years, how did things change? Were there now benefits at work? Were there shop stewards in your community? Were services better now that you had people on the Council? BLACK: Well, community-wise, conditions were improved in all areas of work and in the community as a whole. The churches began more active, the black churches, in community affairs. And our union, as I pointed out before, was ( ) of helping people in whatever walk of life. As I said, about establishing child care facilities and community relationship and many things in that field and in that area. Now, people would come seeking all kinds of help and knowledge from our union. We had people on our staff that was assigned to work, unemployment and areas like that. Helping people, voluntarily helping people that had problems that they had never been able to solve before. And our union became a force in our communities. Our stewards in the various areas where they lived was looked upon and respected as people who stood for something, was fighting for the rights of the under privileged, and had a listening ear to whatever problems the community had. CE: How many stewards were there on the council? BLACK: Now that's going to be a little difficult. We had 200 and some elected stewards who we called chief stewards. Then in each department we had alternate stewards because we saw the need, even if it was only for the purpose of training additional people, to have at least two stewards on each floor to guarantee that the contract would be enforced and that the workers would have ample representation at all times, in case of illness or any other thing. And these names, chief stewards, was on one list, and the assistant stewards were on another list, so that the company would have no excuse of denying an assistant steward the full rights of representing the workers in his or her department. We had a strong steward system. We even had a sergeant-at-arms system that wherever we held membership meetings or executive board meetings, those people were there to execute the rules and regulations of our organization. And they were recognized as a force. They were peaceful but now [laughter] they could get a little rough too. One night we were having a meeting in our union hall and a black real estate business man had an office right near the rear of our office. And he called over there and tole us that there were two or three carloads of Ku-Klukers unloading in the back of our office. Before we could hang the phone up, I imagine there was forty or fifty of those sergeant-at-arms were back there on those cars. And those guys got the hell out of there fast. They didn't do anything that night. So we were recognized in our community. We had never had
anything in the community. You go to church. You listen to a preacher. He's telling you about how Moses crossed the sea and all of this, but they never--we had one or two pastors now--they never brought out the fact that you people are being exploited. Now, we had Reverend R.M. Pitts. From the time that I was child at Shiloh Baptist Church, and when my mother used to carry us, hold us by the hand, and go to Shiloh Baptist Church, that man was preaching to the maids. Organize. You'll never receive fair pay or be respected as maids unless you organize. But the maids didn't hear him. But after our union, laundry workers, chicken picking plants, bus drivers, and people in all walks of life came to us for support. CE: I've got one more question. Can you tell us a little bit about how working conditions actually changed on the plant floor after the union? BLACK: Oh yeah, let me tell you this. CE: This will be the last question. BLACK: In our agreement that we signed with the company, that elected people from the various departments would have the right--now this is before contract negotiation--would have the right to meet with their supervisors in any department to discuss grievances, even without a contract. All right, even before the contract was signed, there was a lady in one of the stemmeries that was complaining about the work that she was assigned to do with all the speed-ups that had been enforced by the company. That it affected her back. The company sent for me to go to that plant, over and above the elected steward in that department, and test that operation and then tell the affected employee and the foreman of that plant what the job was like. So I went to the department. But first I demanded that the steward be present with the affected worker. I went over to this place where the lady was complaining. They had a big conveyor belt that went here. And this machine set here. She had a make a three quarter turn and pick up a armful of tobacco. Turn around and place it on this stemmery machine. And it was back breaking. And I told the foreman right then that the women had a just grievance and that the workload would have to be reduced, or they were going to have problems in that department. The company adjusted the workload. Where they probably had been running, say, six hogsheads a day, they cut down to, say, fifty. Well anyway, the workers kept cutting it until they got it down to where they could live with it [laughter]. This was before the contract. But at no time would we attempt to settle a grievance with the company without first getting proper presentation from the elected person in that department, which strengthened our steward system.
CE: Thank you very much. [Interruption] BLACK: In some predominantly white departments, after the signing of the contract, we were bound to represent union members as well as if they were non-union members. And a white worker in #12 came up with a problem. Now, the company was dumb. They should have settled the problem right then. They threatened to discharge this individual because they knew he wasn't a member of the union. The union shop steward in that predominantly white department, who was one of our white union executives, filed a grievance in behalf of this man. As far as he was concerned, he was out. We paid to arbitrate his case. And the arbitrator rules that the man had been unfairly discharged, with back pay, was reinstated on his job. This happens in a plant that was, I'd say, 90% non-union. The people saw the power of the union but many of them, on account of the race question, and then Reynolds spread this propaganda. This union is going to fight for black foremen, supervisors. And once the company is forced to agreed to it, these black men are going to be patting your wives on their fannies, directing their work schedules, and having intercourse and things like this with your wives and your daughters. Do you want this? They race baited and red baited the white workers to stay out of the union. We opposed it. We offered them certain concessions to the white workers in the meetings to try to win the white workers to the union. But the policy of our international union was non-segregation. And we wouldn't give in because we knew over the long haul that this separate members and things like that would lead to the destruction of our union because the company would have saw to it that the stooges got into the leadership of this white membership. We would have never have been able to have brought them into a legitimate, bonafide union, and we didn't fall for that. But I want to say again on this question of community, you would have had to have lived in it before and four or five years after before you could have grasped the reality of forming this union and how the outstretched hands and strength of this union benefited the community as a whole. We're not talking about the lawyers and all of those kind of things. We're talking about the working people, black and white. The living conditions, their housing and things like that are not as good as we would love to see, but from back there to what it is today, you just wouldn't believe it. We held meetings with the city Board of Aldermen and began fighting on this question of improved housing. City said it couldn't be done, didn't have the money to do it. Take some of those millions that Reynolds Tobacco Company is making and Hanes Knitting Mill and Wachovia Bank and build those projects. I
don't know where they got it from but they built them, not enough, but they built them. CE: Well, thank you. That has just been great. BLACK: But of course, then I could sit here and tell y'all a story that would make the hair raise. Sometimes I think about that thing. CE: ( )'s son? BLACK: Yeah, yeah, he invited me over to his home. We were downtown on.... CE: Bob didn't know that and I just remembered. BLACK: I thought I told you. SPEAKER: Didn't he come out here? BLACK: No. [Interruption] CE: The only thing that we're going to keep on tape is what you say. So if I ask you a question, you need to question it so it kind of incorporates the question. Why don't you tell us a little about the early days when the Volunteer Workers' Organization got started. The sort of thing that you did to try to build the organization, and finally once the sit-down started how having that organization allowed you to be successful. BLACK: If my memory serves me right, it was in the year of 1942. Our international union was known then as Uka Power out of Philadelphia into Winston-Salem to interview some of the Reynolds employees on the basis of future organization. His name was Franklin Dons. On one Saturday morning I was sitting on my porch reading the paper and he walked up and introduced himself and told me what his purpose was. And he sit there and I guess we talked for better than an hour. He convinced me that that was the kind of organization that we needed to build an union in the Reynolds Tobacco Company. After talking with me, I gave him the names of other people I knew as friends, not as volunteer organizers because we had no such movement at that time. And he interviewed and talked with some of these same people, and he came back a few weeks later and suggested that we began having weekend meetings to encourage other people to sit up a volunteer organizing committee and on each weekend, after our meeting, we would release a report or statement to the press. The press carried our names and our positions on the committee, secretary-treasurer and all this kind of stuff, and the company read it. Mr. Whitaker told me he read it on several occasions but not realizing the power of such a small group, they laughed about it. ** So this Volunteer Committee grew, and by the time that this incident happened in Plant 65, we had enough people in different plants that we could depend upon to support any action
that we had to take to bring our grievances to the attention of management. On June 17, 1943 this brother, fellow worker, had an illnes, and he asked permission to the foreman to go hom, and they denied him that. They told him to get the hell back up on his job and go to work or get outdoors, and on his back to his assigned place of work he had a seizure, and in falling--he was unable to stay on his feet--his head hit the base of a big, huge machine, and he was dead under they would get help. Theodorsa Simpson and Geneva McClintock was the two most trained people in that building, and the people went to them and asked what should we do. Mrs. Simpson told them that it may necessiate a work-stoppage to bring these things to the attention of the supervisors, and that they agreed upon. They agreed to support any action that was agreed upon by the workers to bring further adjustments to such grievances. This was on Thursday afternoon. Now, the company trucks that was hauling products from one plant to another was spreading the word as they would go from this plant to the other buildings about this work-stoppage situation. Well now, that word got to the people in most of the departments who were serving on the Volunteer Organizing Committee. So they called a meeting for that Thursday night on the corner of Eighth and Woodland Avenue. That was our first public meeting. All of the people in the various plants was not notified about the meeting, but some of us got the wind of it, and most of us gathered over there. Now, there were people there from other plants that wanted to know since you all have taken such action and seemingly if we handle the situation right, we will get results. We want to know what are the chances of our plants. This was on Thursday night. So we planned another meeting but the streets where we were holding these meetings was on bus routes and heavy traffic so we decided that it was too dangerous on the part of someone getting hurt or maybe killed. So I suggested at the meeting that we meet on the city schoolgrounds at the Woodland Avenue School. So someone raised a question, "That means that you've got to get a permit from the school." CE: I don't want to break in here, but the last tape we talked about that strike. BLACK: Oh, we did. CE: Yeah. If we could talk more now about the types of things that you did in that two year period before the strike with the Volunteer Workers' Organization and how many people you had, how it grew, the sort of things y'all would discuss. That would be real helpful. BLACK: Well, to go back to the committee, we met as a committee for more than twelve months with no powers or no great organizing movement or anything. But we would constantly talk
with the other workers and urge them to attend the meetings. Some weeks we would have twenty; some weeks, twelve, but there were always the faithful. But there were many people that wanted to know what did you do at your meeting, what did you decided? Now, all of this was before the work stoppage. So it was a slow process but we never gave up the idea or the possibility of building a union from the small movement. And it was all volunteer. The international sent in, to work with the committee, William Deberry, who was an international vice president. De Berry would sit in the meetings with us and we would always have broad discussions about how unions were built, how they were operated and etc. But there was no broad movement until the 17th of June. There was no disciplinary actions taken against any of us whose names were published several times each year and our positions that we filled in the Volunteer R.J. Reynolds Organizing Committee. That's how we named it. So we would go from week to week under those situations. We never had a high elected officer from our union to sit in on any of those meetings because DeBerry had the ability to guide and assist us in every way that we needed up until the time of the work-stoppage and even beyond that. But after the work-stoppage, just a few days thereafter, the union flew in other elected officers to assist. And as we know, all organized labor had taken a non-strike pledge. The officers couldn't come in and recognize our work-stoppage as being a part of the international union because there were federal penalties and all against our international. So the burden was on this volunteer committee with verbal assistance from the international to guide us as to what step shoud be taken next. And with that help and assistance, we stayed in a strong position. SPEAKER: Did the people of the committee do much talking with--when you went back into the plant, you talked among yourselves, what kind of work were you doing in the plant, organizing work? Were you spreading the word? BLACK: Well, yes, we would make reports sometimes on the basis of how many people, Black, did you contact during the week or ask to come to the meeting, ask to get other people? We were even offereing the workers in Reynolds the opportunity of getting people in their homes and sending in one of the people who were members of the Volunteer Committee to discuss organization with them. They were all kinds of efforts and all kinds of offers, but there was always this feeling of warmness and welcome among the workers in Reynolds before the big day. SPEAKER: Did you do any work in the community at all? BLACK: Well, Theodosa was assigned, she and Brother DeBerry, to do public relations work among the other people that
were not employed by Reynolds. But there wasn't too much that they could discuss because we were still in a volunteer organizing situation. CE: There was some work done with some ministers and through the Smith Choral Club, wasn't there, in the early days? Could you tell us a little about that? BLACK: Well, Theodosa's husband was a member of the Smith Choral Club, and during the year it was a very good drawing card wherever they would appear to sing at churches and groups. They would offer us the opportunity of having someone to give a talk. There were also talks being given by some local black ministers from their pulpits, Reverend R.M. Pitts, for an example. He preached organization from the kind I was a small kid and the people respected him. But he was not dealing with the Reynolds Tobacco situation, he was trying to get the black maids, domestic workers, to build an organization to force the people that they were working under slave conditions to recognize their ability and to make stronger efforts to see that they earned a living wage and was treated like decent people. But there weren't too many ministers at that time that supported his cause. They were more concerned about keeping their church and the collection plate [laughter] going. But we didn't run into any adversaties because we were serving on this committe, but we were recognized where the people knew about what we were trying to do and what we were preparing ourselves for. And had not it been for the work of this Volunteer Organizing Committee, it would have been absolutely impossible for us to have maintained and gone on with the organizing drive in Reynolds. CE: Were there times during the period from when the Organizing Committee got started and the strike when people started getting impaitence that not enough was being done, and, if so, how did you all deal with that? BLACK: Well, the issue of not getting enough done was never brought before the committee in such terms, but there was no discouragement among the people because most of the members of this Volunteer Committee recognized what a tough job lay ahead in organizing Reynolds. Because Reynolds had representatives from the city, Municipal Courts, through the state senators, and those kind of people, all the way into Washington, and we knew that we were going to have to fight not only the Reynolds Tobacco Company but the city of Winston-Salem, the state of North Carolina, and the United States. That all of those forces would try to bear and bring pressure on such an organizing drive. That didn't dim our sight on the goal that lay ahead. It strenghtened us and it made us prepare ourselves to go wherever we needed to go to further increase our demands. And that was the kind of