And Labored And Labored
To Those Who Helped Pave The Way For Them That Labored
A Phillip Randolph was born in Florida in 1889. He Organized the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925 and finally granted the rights to have a union in 1936. This bold and long venture helped the many black men working for the Pullman railway cars known as Pullman Porters.
Be They Female Laborers
Johnnie Tillmon was born in Scott, Arkansas,in 1926 to a migrant sharecropper.
After moving to California 1959 she went on to be a union shop steward in a Compton laundry. Tillmon organized workers and became involved in a community association called the Nickerson Garden Planning Organization which was established to improve living conditions in the housing project.
Or Male Laborers
Isaac Myers was born in Baltimore Maryland on January 13, 1865 to free parents. At the age of 16 Isaac went to work with a ships caulker and soon became a skilled worker. After a strike among white caulkers and carpenters against the black workers, Isaac helped to found the first union of Black Caulkers in the ship building Industry which eventually bought their own shipyard and railway.
The Proof is Undeniable
Nellie Stone Johnson a farm girl from Minn was born in 1905. She was a union organizer and the first African American Vice-president of Local 665 Hotel and Restaurant Employees Union in Minn.
And Selfless Beyond Measure
The daughter of a sharecropper, Moranda was born in 1915 in South Carolina but later moved to North Carolina where she helped to unionize the Tobacco workers to gain better working conditions.
To all those who fought for the rights of others so that they may have a better life, and better working conditions. To the American workers who no doubt are the best America has to offer be they union or non union.
