Perspectives of African-American History

Part V

The 12^th and 13^th Compromises

By

Paul Nehru Tennassee*

The American Federation of Labor (AFL) effected a rupture with the trade unionism of the Knights of Labour at various levels. Business unionism was introduced as the new form of unionism. Additionally, whereas the African American worker was excluded from membership under the pretext that he was industrially unqualified, from the 1890's onwards into the 20^th century, many AFL affiliates wrote into their constitutions “Caucasian Clauses/Whites Only.” The trade union movement was gutted of its idealism. It was the “triumph of craft individualism over industrial brotherhood and business unionism over equalitarianism”.⁽⁴⁷⁾ The AFL fearful of competition, emphasized craft pride and exercised job control. African Americans could not be employed simply because they were not members of AFL unions. In many cases there were strikes by Caucasian American workers against the employment or promotion of African Americans. The AFL affiliates became structural impediments to the advance of African Americans.

The problems for African Americans in search of employment particularly in the cities worsened. Caucasian Americans used the AFL as a vehicle to ensure their dominance in the labour market. The migration from the South intensified as terrorism against African Americans escalated, peonage and new forms of slavery deepened. By 1903, according to one writer, New York had 3/4 (three-quarters) as many African Americans as New Orleans; Philadelphia twice as many as Atlanta; Chicago had more than Savannah. In 1910, New York and Washington, DC had 90,000 African Americans, while New Orleans, Baltimore, Philadelphia had 80,000. The 1910 census reported that 12 cities had each over 40,000 African Americans; in 27 leading cities African Americans were one quarter or more of the population, and in four of them over 50%. Between 1900-1910 Southern cities saw increases in Birmingham, 215%; Jacksonville, 81%; Atlanta, 45%; New York 51%; Philadelphia, Richmond and Chicago increases over 30%”.⁽⁴⁸⁾ How could the African American live in industrial cities without the possibilities of being apprenticed in the various skills or debarred from practicing his craft? It took one plumber in Chicago seven years to obtain a license to be able to work. In Philadelphia the licensing board refused licenses. If perchance, an African American was able to establish himself and attempted to purchase fixtures from a plumbers shops would boycott the “guilty” company.⁽⁴⁹⁾

The excuse given was that “...the Negro was customarily believed to be unfitted by racial temperament for skilled mechanical work”.⁽⁵⁰⁾ The racist propaganda bandied about at the time was that the African American was only capable of doing physical work. It was the policy of Euro American employers and the trade union movement to keep the African American unemployed. Euro American employers often departed from the policy when there were strikes and employed African Americans as strike breakers. Of course, as soon as the strike was over, the African Americans were dismissed. The underclass of African Americans which make-up the ghettoes in the cities of America in the twentieth century was fathered by the Caucasian American AFL and employers.

⁽⁴⁷⁾ Ibid, Page 53.

⁽⁴⁸⁾ Ibid, Page 274.

The unions which were affiliated to the AFL were autonomous and were very zealous of their independence to manage their own affairs. These unions had the power to decide who can become or not become a member. One labour journal carried an editorial in 1903 which made it explicitly clear that “we do not want the Negro in the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers”.⁽⁵¹⁾ There were a number of unions which prohibited membership to African Americans. Among them were the Brotherhood of Railway Carmen, Switchmen of North America, Railway and Steamship Clerks and Freight Handlers, the Order of Sleeping Car Conductors, Order of Railway Telegraphers, National Organization of Masters, Mates and Pilots of North America, Railway Mail Association, Wire Weavers Protective Association and Commercial Telegraphers. The National Rural Letter Carriers Association and National Federation of Rural Letter Carriers’ constitutions read “only white members are eligible to serve as delegates to conventions or to hold office”.⁽⁵²⁾ By ritual, the Boilermakers, Iron Shipbuilders and Helpers Union and the International Association of Machinists did not accept African American as members. By tacit agreement the Granite Union, Electrical, Flint Glass, Plumbers, Iron Workers did the same. The Maintenance of Way Employees Brotherhood was explicit that “...colored workers...are to be represented in the union by white delegates...they may maintain separate lodge for social purposes...”.⁽⁵³⁾ The leadership of the AFL, unlike the leadership of the Knights of Labour was not actively engaged in pressuring its affiliates to change their policies. Faced with this situation only two options were opened to the African American worker: strike breaking and/or separate unions.

Spero commenting on the issue explained that “...there is hardly an important industry in which colored labor has not at one time or another been used...(as strike breaker)...but when all is said and done, the number of strikes broken by black labor have been few as compared with the number broken by white labor. What is more, the Negro has seldom been only or even the most important strike-breaking element...the bitterness of American race prejudice has always made his presence an especially sore point and not infrequently a signal for exceptional disorder...”.⁽⁵⁴⁾ B.T. Washington observed “...not only have the Negro strike breakers been savagely beaten and mobbed by strikers and their sympathizers, but in some instances every Negro, no matter what his occupation, who lived in the vicinity of the strike has found himself danger...”.⁽⁵⁵⁾

Meanwhile, the Euro American trade union leaders adopted the position of John Fitzpatrick, President of the Chicago federation of Labor that “The Negro sets himself up as a destructive interest in the community, and leaders are trying to get his mind in such condition that he will continue to do that. Now the other races do not do that...The leaders of the Negro race advise the Negroes not to have anything to do with whites, to keep themselves separated, and when the white workers go on strike to wipe out a bad condition of employment and to bring about increase wages, that the Negro jump in there and prevent the white from accomplishing his purpose...” ⁽⁵⁶⁾ The truth is that African American workers were on both sides of the many heroic labour struggles and strikes in the coal mines and the and packing houses. Fitzpatrick’s views flies in the face of the practice of

⁽⁵¹⁾ Ibid, Page 58.

⁽⁵²⁾ Ibid, page 62.

⁽⁵³⁾ Ibid, Page 67.

⁽⁵⁴⁾ Ibid, Page 131.

⁽⁵⁵⁾ Ibid, Page 131-132.

⁽⁵⁶⁾ Ibid, Page 133.

Caucasian Americans racist unions and their Caucasian clauses in their constitutions. The speech was typical of the excuses that AFL leadership gave for their lack of decisive and principled action on the issue of racism.

There were numerous examples of Caucasian Americans not willing to accept the African American worker as an equal. For example, in the South, the bakery and confectionery workers did not remain in their local when they discovered that African Americans had become members. They also refused to become members of the same international union. Subsequently, the leadership decided to give each racial group separate charters. Another example was the Seamens Union, the President of that union pointed out: “we found...that having common club rooms for both, they would not mix. Sailing together in the same vessel would cause eternal trouble...The Negroes protest and the Whites protest...”⁽⁵⁷⁾ These attitudes, practice and policy led to the emergence of independent African American unions. They were the products of racial discrimination. For the purposes of “racial expediency” many separate unions have been encouraged to be established. In many unions where African Americans were a minority they had no opportunity to rise in the leadership, as such their development as trade union leaders were very limited. Spero’s evaluation of African American independent unionism were as follows: “in those occupations where Negroes have won a substantial place but where the unions have excluded them from membership, independent Negro unions have arisen.” This is especially true on the railroads where Negroes have been employed in almost every capacity since the days of slavery, but where they are barred from membership in practically every recognized union. These independent unions are intended to serve the double purpose of protecting the black worker in his dealings with his employer and of helping to counteract the discriminatory policies of the white groups. Prior to the World War I, independent Negro unions made little headway. Aside from attempts on the railroads, the most important colored labor organization was a short lived group of stationery engineers and firemen in Pittsburgh, known as the National Association of Afro-American Stem and Gas Engineers and Skilled Laborers. For a time this union promised to become an important factor in the Pittsburgh and received recognition from the central labor body and sent representatives to its meetings. But it was unable to make further headway and soon disappeared”.⁽⁵⁸⁾

The policy and practice of AFL and its affiliates have been the most flagrantly racist of the trade unions in the 19^th century. It reflected the developments in the political economy of the era. It was the end of reconstruction and the correlation of forces in all spheres of American society at that time had changed dramatically. The new immigrants were playing a larger role in the labour movement and poor Euro Americans saw the unions as the basis for their economic survival and upward mobility. Neither groups, north or south, were keen in sharing this vehicle with African Americans. The compromise that the AFL made with its affiliates over the workers and human rights of the African Americans was as openly brutal.

The social movement fell down on the race issue in relation the African American, as did the political movement. Political parties and politicians, trade unions and trade unionists were caught in the culture of Compromise. The AFL gave continuity in a more open manner to racism and “apartheid” trade unionism. This twelfth Compromise was undoubtedly a promise of continuous violations of the African American workers and human rights in the 20^th century, particularly since, AFL unions institutionalized their racist policy, in the early decades of the new century. At the trade union level, as in other spheres of society, African Americans would be forced, inspite of many failures, to persist in building independent and separate unions.

⁽⁵⁷⁾ Ibid, Page 70-72.

⁽⁵⁸⁾ Ibid, Page 116.

The Thirteenth Compromise

The African American leadership in the latter decades of the 19^th Century was faced with a number of complex issues and challenges which they tried to resolve within the scope of their abilities and extremely limited material resources. The views of Frederick Douglas, Booker T. Washington and W.E.B. DuBois, stood out as representing currents in the debate regarding the way forward. An African American middle class of professionals, clerics, social activists, trade unionists, educationists and politicians had emerged. They assumed leadership and were very vocal in expressing their views. The opinions verbalized or written very often was influenced by the times. The fifties was a period of pessimism, the sixties of optimism, the seventies of great expectations, the nineties and the first two decades of the twentieth century a return to pessimism. August Meir upheld the thesis that in times of pessimism African American leadership emphasized self-help, racial solidarity, economic advancement, independent organization and emigration. At other times, when a general environment existed for change they embraced agitation for political equality, citizenship rights and active participation in Euro American institutions which held out hope for democratization and integration.

African American leaders met in a number of conventions between 1869-1875 to analyze their reality and to advise the race on strategy for action. Fifty African Americans who were free attended in 1864 (before passage of the thirteenth amendment) a convention in New York. The event was presided by Frederick Douglas. Out of the convention, a National Equal Rights League was born. Opinions varied as to the way forward. There were those who were pessimistic inspite of the civil war and felt that it was hopeless to achieve the restoration of the African American humanity on the American landspace. They recommended emigration to Africa. One Reverend H.H. Garnet argued that “Negroes were a separate nationality in America.” The majority disagreed and “...were prepared to stake all on their American nationality. As native Americans they regarded any attempt to expatriate or colonize them abroad, or to concentrate them forcibly in one section of the USA as unjust...”⁽⁵⁹⁾ Another convention in 1869 in Washington, DC called for the petitioning of Congress to pass the 15^th Amendment and for Homesteading Land Grants which were forfeited by Southern Railroads. The largest reconstruction convention was held in 1873 and the emphasis was on civil rights. It was dominated by politicians who rallied for the 15^th Amendment and protested the increase in racist violence and discrimination.

One of the issues which occupied the attention of the leadership of the time was the relationship of African Americans to the Republican Party in particular and political parties in general. The Republican Party was viewed as the vehicle to achieve the civil, political and human rights of African Americans Many middle class African Americans had successfully penetrated the states and federal political systems. But as the Radical Republicans went into decline, reconstruction formally ended, protection of the army in the South was removed, and former Confederates were restored to political offices in the Congress and States’ Houses, not only was the “the political carpet pulled from under their feet,” but general disillusionment and pessimism became the order of the day. For example, Bishop Turner (AME) and his colleagues were expelled from one legislature in 1868. In the South many begun to look elsewhere for a political home, but in the North, African Americans remained steadfast with the Republicans. Frederick Douglas’ dictum “the Republican Party was the deck and all else the sea” no longer held sway. He himself at one point in time declared that he was an “uneasy Republican.” An African American school principal in Cincinnati was reported as having declared for the Liberal Republicans and advanced a proposal in 1885 that African Americans should not put all their “political eggs in one basket” but support various parties. Many African Americans joined populist, political movements which had emerged during the latter half of the 19^th century. However, in a general sense African Americans remained with the Republican Party until the third decade of the twentieth century.

Leaders like Frederick Douglas, Langston and Pinchback enjoyed enormous prestige among African Americans and their opinions bore weight. Douglas stood out in the 1880's and 1890's as a symbol of the protest tradition even though his views varied at different periods. Between the 1840's and 1850's, he had seen no contradiction between agitation for political and civil rights and an emphasis on middle class virtues of economic independence, self help, race pride, and racial solidarity. “By gaining the respect of the white man, Negroes would better attain their constitutional rights”.⁽⁶⁰⁾ Then around 1881 Douglas modified his views. In an article he wrote that racism in all its forms perpetuated against the African American was “calculated to repress his manly ambition, his energies, and make him a dejected and spiritless man”.⁽⁶¹⁾ Douglas begun to stress assimilation and insisted that the race problem was not to be solved by African Americans themselves. In his opinion, it was not the “Negro who was on trial” since “the real question is whether American justice, American liberty, American civilization, American law, and American Christianity can be made to include....all American citizens.” He further argued that “our union is our weakness,” that separate schools, churches, and benevolent and literary societies was a cultural provincialism peculiar to the race’s condition as an oppressed people”.⁽⁶²⁾ Frederick Douglas was appointed by president Hayes, Marshall of the District of Columbia, while President Harrison appointed him Minister to Haiti. His personal act of total assimilation was his marriage to a Caucasian bride which he insisted was personal and not the business of the African American public.

The other great figure of those times was Booker T. Washington. His views were very controversial but he had the support of Northern philanthropists and the establishment politicians. His famous Atlanta Compromise of 1895 was summed up by August Meir as a “shift of Negro thought from political to economic action, from immediate integration and protest to self help, and from rights to duties; uniting the Northern and Southern whites and Negroes upon a common, even if ambiguous, platform, expressed Negro accommodation to the social condition implicit in the earlier Compromise of 1877".⁽⁶³⁾ Washington wrote a book “The Man Farthest Down (1912)” and advanced the thesis that the African American was better off than the depressed classes of Europe.⁽⁶⁴⁾ He reiterated his love for the South and faith in the Southern white man’s sense of justice. In 1912 he was quoted as saying that nowhere had any race “had assistance, direction, and the sympathy of another race in all its efforts to rise to such an extent as the Negro in the United States.”⁽⁶⁵⁾ In a 1903 address to the Afro American Council, he advocated patience and optimism. “In the long run it is the race or individual that exercises the most patience, forbearance, and self-control in the midst of trying conditions that wins...the respect of the world...An inch of progress is worth more than a yard of complaint.”⁽⁶⁶⁾ He was critical of African American civil rights advocates and politicians during Reconstruction. “In a word, too much stress had been placed upon the mere matter of voting and political office rather than upon the preparation for the highest citizenship.”⁽⁶⁷⁾ His response to discrimination in segregated residence was, “Let us, in the future, spend less time talking about the part of the city that we cannot live in, and more time in making the part of the city that we can live, beautiful and attractive”.⁽⁶⁸⁾

Booker T. Washington’s views about self help was laudable. However, his position on Jim Crow laws and his views on workers, civil and human rights were virtually counter-revolutionary. There is no doubt that his emphasis on deepening the economic aspirations and the building of solid separate organizations were positive. An overall evaluation of his positions clearly supports that his Atlanta Compromise was a nail driven in the coffin of a betrayed revolution for African American workers, civil and human rights in latter 19^th century and the first decades of the twentieth century. This Compromise has been in the tradition of the previous compromises except that on this occasion, it was an African American who engineered it, with support and finance of members of the then American ruling class. This Thirteenth Compromise underlined that the dreams and aspirations of African Americans for the achievement of workers, civil and human rights would have to be championed by new leadership who would have to find new organizational forms in the twentieth century.

One of those organizations which emerged from the middle class was given leadership by W.E.B. Dubois and others. “Ten years after Booker T. Washington concede that, in effect, constitutional protection and the rule of law did not apply to Blacks, a group of Black professionals and businessmen, twenty-nine in all, met at Niagara Falls, Ontario, and founded the Niagara movement. They repudiated Washington’s leadership and proceeded to urge Black men to reclaim the vote. They called on federal and state governments to enforce civil justice against “peonage and virtual slavery.” Four years later provoked by mob killings of scores of Blacks in Atlanta (in September 1906) and Springfield, Illinois (August 1908), the Niagara group joined with Wells-Barnett and Terrel of the NACW, and other Black and white activists, to call for a new organization. Meeting in New York in May 1909, some three hundred delegates established the basis for the NAACP”.⁽⁶⁹⁾ One leader of the Niagara Movement at a meeting in 1906 clearly stated the options which faced African Americans: “One is that the Negro should stoop to conquer; that he should accept in silence the denial of his political rights; that he should not brave the displeasure of white men by protesting when he is segregated in humiliating ways...There are others who believe that the Negro owes this nation no apology for his presence...; that being black he is still no less a man; that he should refuse to be assigned to an inferior place by his fellow-countrymen”.⁽⁷⁰⁾

Throughout the 19^th century, African Americans of various backgrounds successfully established various independent organizations. In the 1800's the African Methodist Episcopal Zion (AME) and the Northern Baptist Denomination were founded. A number of fraternal organizations were also organized like the Mason, Odd Fellows, Good Samaritans, Templars, Knights of Tabor and the Knights of Pythias. A colored Men’s Department of YMCA was established in the International Congress of 1875. Before World War I, the philanthropist, Julius Rosenwald gave matching funds for the construction of African American YMCA’s.⁽⁷¹⁾ The Negro Chamber of Commerce was also organized. The Editors founded their association in 1880, the Teachers in 1889 and the doctors in 1895. In 1903 the National Bar Association, 1906 the Negro Bankers Association, 1907 the National Association of Funeral Directors were established.

Many of the organizations were founded out of Business League Conventions. “Fundamentally opposed to the philosophy of the Business League, and yet reflecting the same spirit of racial self-help and cooperation were the feeble attempts to form Negro labor unions. These were organized generally in occupations in which Negroes had obtained a substantial place but where the unions had excluded them from membership. Negro longshoremen had created successful unions in Charleston, Baltimore, and other Southern ports as early as the Reconstruction period, but it was not until 1910 that colored longshoremen organized their own unions in the Hampton Roads area, where they maintained an active life until absorbed by the International Longshoremen’s Association in 1917. The National Association of Afro-American Gas Engineers and Skilled Laborers, organized about 1900, lasted several years and was recognized by the Pittsburgh Central, but never had more than three locals. More important were the succession of Railway Unions-from the Colored Men’s Locomotive Firemen’s Association founded about 1902 to the Railway Men’s International Benevolent and Industrial Association, founded in 1915. The pre World War I union with the longest career has been the National Alliance of Postal Employees, originally organized by the Negro railway mail clerks in 1913, the Railway Mail Association had excluded them”.⁽⁷²⁾ Dubois was apt in his observation when in 1913, he wrote that the increase in racial consciousness and group solidarity was a manifestation of African Americans “...gaining their own leaders, their own voices, their own ideals. Self-realization is thus coming slowly to another of the world’s great races”.⁽⁷³⁾

⁽⁶³⁾ Ibid, Page 25.

⁽⁶⁴⁾ Ibid, Page 106.

⁽⁶⁵⁾ Ibid, Page 106.

⁽⁶⁶⁾ Ibid, Page 107.

⁽⁶⁷⁾ Ibid, Page 109.

⁽⁶⁸⁾ Ibid, Page 108.

⁽⁶⁹⁾ Ibid, Page 109.

⁽⁷⁰⁾ Ibid, Page 270, Quoting Reverdy C. Ransom.

⁽⁷¹⁾ Ibid, Page 133.

⁽⁷²⁾ Ibid, Page 128.

⁽⁷³⁾ Ibid, Page 270.

* Presently researching and writing a book entitled: “African-Americans: The Untold Story of NAPFE 1913- 2000". This is a part of the manuscript.

Director of World Confederation of Labor (WCL), Washington Liaison Office/WCL Representative to the United Nations: Tel (202) 939-6386; E-Mail: Fax: (202) 939-6389.