Jamaican-born Ferdinand Christopher Smith became a prominent twentieth century international labor activist and leader. At an early age Smith left Jamaica’s poor economic conditions in search of work as a migrant laborer. He spent five years in Panama, where he worked as a hotel steward … Read MoreFerdinand Christopher Smith (1893-1961)
Social activist and Black labor leader Nellie Stone Johnson was born Nellie Saunders Allen in Lakeville, Minnesota, in 1905, the eldest daughter of an activist farmer, William R. Allen, and a schoolteacher, Gladys Allen. As a child, Nellie worked on her family’s farm near Hinckley, … Read MoreNellie Stone Johnson (1905-2002)
Labor union organizer and leader Bill Lucy was born on November 26, 1933, to Joseph and Susie Lucy in Memphis, Tennessee. Raised in Richmond, California, Lucy studied civil engineering at the University of California at Berkeley in the 1950s. He then joined the U.S. Navy … Read MoreWilliam “Bill” Lucy (1933-2024)
Benjamin Fletcher, born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania in 1890, was the most important African American in the most influential radical union of his time, the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). Fletcher became active in the IWW while working as a longshoreman, loading and unloading cargo … Read MoreBenjamin Harrison Fletcher (1890-1949)
Milton Price Webster is best known as one of the founders and long-time Vice President of the International Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and Maids (BSCP) Union. He helped organize the BSCP’s local in Chicago, one of the largest in the nation with over 15,000 … Read MoreMilton P. Webster (1887-1965)
Stanley G. Grizzle founded the Railway Porter’s Trade Union Council and served as president of the Toronto Canadian Pacific Railroad (CPR) Division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP) from 1946 to 1962. Grizzle was born in Toronto, Ontario in 1918, to Jamaican parents … Read MoreStanley G. Grizzle (1918- )
Lucien E. Blackwell, U.S. Congressman and labor official, was born in Whitset, Pennsylvania. He attended West Philadelphia High School, but left before obtaining his diploma. Blackwell also served in the United States Armed Forces during the Korean War, and received the National Defense Service Medal … Read MoreLucien E. Blackwell (1931-2003)
Hosea Hudson was a Communist Party (CP) activist and industrial union organizer in Alabama and Georgia during the 1930s, 40s, and 50s. He embodied the CP’s turn toward black civil rights in the early 1930s and the attraction many working-class southern blacks felt toward the … Read MoreHosea Hudson (1898-1988)
Carl Brooks was an outspoken civil rights activist, labor leader, and member of the Communist Party (CP) in the state of Washington. Born in 1908 and raised in Seattle, by the mid 1930s he was active in the Northwest branch of the Communist Party’s League … Read MoreCarl Brooks (1908-?)
George Thompson Ruby was born in New York in 1841 but reared in Portland, Maine. After acquiring a sound liberal arts education there, he journeyed to Haiti, where he worked as a correspondent for the Pine and Palm, a New England newspaper edited by abolitionist … Read MoreGeorge Thompson Ruby (1841-1882)
