THE AFL-CIO AND THE CIVIL RIGHTS ISSUE
During the AFL-CIO merger negotiations, Walter Reuther announced that the CIO would insist that all affiliated unions be required to enlist members without regard to their race. Exactly what this meant, however, was unclear. The AFL had issued declarations against racial discrimination repeatedly since its formation, but it had not taken action against an affiliate on these grounds since the 1890s. In fact, the CIO’s Committee on Civil Rights had refused even to recommend disciplining its own affiliates for discrimination. Nevertheless, most blacks initially were satisfied with the merger agreement’s statement that the new federation would “constitutionally recognize the rights of all workers without regard to race,” and that it would establish the internal machinery to guarantee non-discrimination. The statement did not specifically state by what means the principle would be implemented. Therefore, as early as the founding convention, those few black delegates in attendance demanded that the federation deny affiliation to any union that practiced racial discrimination. Their effort failed as did all subsequent efforts to pressure the federation along these lines. Thus, a long internal struggle began to force the organization to take firm action against the problem.
The leader in this struggle was A. Philip Randolph, one of two black vice presidents of the 27-man AFL-CIO Executive Council. Randolph had maintained his silence on the racism issue since the merger, but he and other black delegates came to the 1959 convention with a plan calling for the AFL-CIO’s Civil Rights Department to determine the extent of discrimination and segregation in member unions, and then to initiate stern measures against those refusing to reform. Randolph demanded, however, that action be taken immediately against the railroad brotherhoods which barred or segregated Negroes for more than a half century. The resolution failed to pass under repeated confrontations between Randolph and the AFL-CIO leadership, and ultimately resulted in his censure at the 1961 convention. The chairman of the subcommittee which presented the report against Randolph was George M. Harrison, president of the Brotherhood of Railway Clerks, a union which had “jim crowed” Afro-Americans into segregated locals for decades.
The censure report also indicted the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. The protests of black workers and their leaders had gained the attention of the NAACP, and just after the merger it announced that it would begin concentrating on the problems of Negro labor. In numerous speeches and reports, the civil rights organization attacked organized labor for its failure to correct even the most blatant forms of racism practiced in some of the member unions. The AFL-CIO executives denounced the NAACP for criticism so unrelenting that it was considered detrimental to the Negro-labor alliance.
By the mid-sixties George Meany had unveiled a stepped-up civil rights program calling for a more aggressive educational campaign, and assistance for black workers who wanted to file complaints of discrimination with the federal government under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. This was the first step toward reestablishing the alliance forged by the CIO prior to its merger with the AFL between black civil rights workers and the more progressive labor leaders. Soon, A. Philip Randolph had been pacified as well, and the alliance again seemed secure.