Tucker, Rosina 1881–1987

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Rosina Tucker 1881–1987

Labor organizer, social and civil rights activist, educator

Unfaltering Devotion to Social and Civil Rights

As founder and secretary-treasurer of the International Ladies’ Auxiliary and a force in the establishment of its parent organization, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, Rosina Tucker helped to raise the economic level of large numbers of black people in the United States and Canada. She organized porters’ wives in activities to support the auxiliary and the union, and their efforts helped to ensure the men of adequate pay, decent working conditions, and new benefits. The brotherhood focused on battling racism and, with Tucker’s assistance, organized civil rights marches in 1941 and 1963.

Rosina Budd Harvey Corrothers Tucker, one of nine children, was born on November 4, 1881, on Fourth Street in northwest Washington, D.C. Her parents, Lee Roy and Henrietta Harvey, had been slaves in Virginia before they relocated to Washington after their emancipation. As was the case with many former slaves, they found the brutal memories of bondage painful to recount. Although the Harveys never told their story to their children, Rosina Tucker overheard them discussing their experiences with each other. Tucker remembered her father talking about the meager amounts of food he received as a slave. On Thanksgiving Day he and other slaves on their Virginia plantation were denied turkey but were allowed to chew on the string with which the turkey had been tied. After he married and his children were born, Lee Roy Harvey never invited guests to dinner to ensure that enough food would always be available to his children. On the other hand, Tucker’s grandmother, also a slave, ate well. She was assigned to the master’s house and whenever she wanted or needed food, she took it.

Notwithstanding the harsh realities of his upbringing, at some point in his life Lee Roy Harvey taught himself to read and write. He surrounded himself with the books he loved and read to become more familiar with the world around him and to learn history, which he particularly enjoyed. He became a shoemaker by trade. Doubtless his slave experiences affected the way he reared his children; he was very protective of them and prevented them from working as service employees or in white people’s kitchens. Rosina Tucker had pleasant memories of her early childhood and fondly reminisced about her musical training and her father’s teachings. Lee Roy Harvey provided an organ at home, which he learned to play, and saw to it that his children studied music and played the organ as well. By the time the children entered school, they already had a more than rudimentary musical education and were able to read and write. When she was twelve years old Rosina Tucker played piano for her Sunday school and also taught in the infant department.

When Tucker was a child, segregation existed everywhere in the District of Columbia except on the street cars and in public buildings. She began school at the old Banneker School Building on Third Street in northwest

At a Glance …

Full name Rosina Budd Harvey Corrothers Tucker, born November 4, 1881, in Washington, D.C.; daughter of Lee Roy (former slave, shoemaker) and Henrieta Harvey (former slaves); married James D. Corrothers, 1899 (died 1917); children: Henry Harvey Corrothers; married Berthea J. Tucker, 1918.

Career: Music teacher; Liberty Baptist Church, D.C., organist; federal government, file clerk; Brotherhhod of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925; Intl. Ladies Auxiliary, founder, 1937.

Selected awards: Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, Humanitarian Award, 1983; National Coalition of 100 Black Women, Candace Award for leadership, 1983; Coalition of Labor Union Women, honoree, 1985.

Washington. She completed the eighth grade, then entered the old M Street School, the predecessor of Dunbar High School. In 1897, while still in her junior year of high school, Tucker visited an aunt in Yonkers, New York, where she taught Sunday school at the Colored Baptist Church and met James D. Corrothers, a guest minister. A graduate of Northwestern University, Corrothers became known as a poet and writer of short stories, particularly his sketches on black humor and folklore. His poems and stories were published in leading newspapers for 25 years. Rosina Harvey and James Corrothers married on December 2, 1899. The couple had one son, Henry Harvey Corrothers, who later became a fine athlete and graduated from the American International College in Springfield, Massachusetts. He directed the physical education program at Wilberforce University in Ohio before he died of heart disease in 1945. Rosina and James Corrothers also raised a son from his previous marriage.

After marrying, the couple lived first in New York City, then in South Haven, Michigan, where James had lived as a child. He continued to practice his ministry and to write and publish poetry. Rosina occupied herself by teaching music to some thirty students. The family moved to Washington, D.C., in 1904, when James Corrothers took a position with the National Baptist Convention. Rosina continued to share her musical talent with others, becoming organist for Liberty Baptist Church in the Foggy Bottom section of the District. Two years later James Corrothers became pastor of the First Baptist Church in Lexington, Virginia. In their new town the couple often appeared in church, with James telling stories and reading poetry while Rosina played classical pieces. About this time she composed “The Rio Grande Waltz.”

After James Corrothers died in 1917, Rosina returned to Washington, D.C., where she worked as a file clerk with the federal government and became involved in civic activities. Through friends she met Berthea J. Tucker, known as B. J., who had worked as a carpenter’s helper before becoming a Pullman car porter. They married on Thanksgiving eve in 1918, when she was thirty-six years old, and moved into a two-story brick house on Seventh Street northeast near Gallaudet College, where she remained the rest of her life.

Porter’s Union Established

In the 1920s the Pullman Company had a virtual monopoly on railroad sleeping-car facilities throughout the United States. The company was a major employer of black men, and those who had jobs as Pullman porters were held in considerable esteem in the black community. Rosina Tucker said in the November 8, 1984, Washington Post that, in the early days, a job as a Pullman porter was perhaps one of the best available for a black man. By working the sleeping coaches, making beds, and shining shoes, they collected hefty tips. “To be a Pullman porter in those days meant respect, prestige, social status and prominence.” Nonetheless, porters were poorly paid, and charges for any damage to Pullman equipment were deducted from their small salaries. They were required to work long hours without overtime pay, sometimes working up to four hundred hours a month with “dead-heading” and “doubling out” responsibilities. In the absence of a union to protect the men’s rights, the company took full advantage of its black labor force.

Although the black porters were restless at the beginning of the twentieth century, it was not until some years later, in 1909, that the porters formulated their grievances and made efforts to organize. While the attempt was unsuccessful, the Pullman Company made faint gestures to address some of the men’s concerns. Driven by the abuse of the black Pullman workers and an accumulation of grievances, Ashley Totten, a militant New York porter, made a bold move in 1925 to stimulate the organization of a porter’s union. He engaged A. Philip Randolph, a radical journalist and social theoretician who was later prominent in the civil rights movement, to organize the union. On August 25 that year, in the Imperial Lodge of Elks, 160 West 129th Street, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters was launched and Randolph began what was to be a long tenure as president. The union also established the Women’s Economic Councils, an organization through which women could work for the rights of the brotherhood. To protect the workers who could be fired for their connection with the union and their criticisms of the Pullman Company, Randolph surprised the stool pigeons present by handling the entire discussion himself. The next day some two hundred porters came to his office, the brotherhood’s headquarters, to join the union.

Randolph and Totten tried to bring the union to Washington, D.C., where they had a big meeting at John Wesley Church for the porters as well as their wives. But the porters were reluctant to join for fear of losing their jobs. B. J. Tucker joined the union immediately--in time he became a member of the executive board--and then he and Rosina took up the cause in the District. At first the men’s work was so demanding that they had little time for union activities; therefore, their wives did much of the work for them and held secret meetings so that the men’s positions would not be threatened. When Rosina Tucker met with Randolph and Totten, they did so in private and secret places, including Tucker’s home, so that informers would be unable to report on the sessions to the company. To organize unions in the South, Tucker visited the homes of some three hundred porters who lived in the Washington area, distributed literature, discussed the organization with prospective members and their wives, and collected dues from the women as well as the men.

International Ladies’ Auxiliary Formed

The next step for Tucker was to organize the local Ladies’ Auxiliary, which, over the years, provided financial and emotional backing for the brotherhood. From the start, the women raised a great deal of money by hosting parties, dances, dinners, and other activities. Tucker called upon her church and social service background to help families experiencing illnesses and other difficulties, including loss of employment. In time the Pullman Company learned about her work and reacted by firing her husband. When she heard about the company’s punitive action, she declared, “I’ m not going to take that.” She told Susan Ellen Holleran for about…time, that she tried to contact the company superintendent, who was always “in conference.” Then she went to his supervisor and said, “I’ m Mrs. B. J. Tucker and I came over to see you about why my husband lost his job.” When the man asked why B. J. Tucker was not there to see about it himself, Rosina reacted by banging on his table and saying, “You brought me into this thing, and you have nothing to do with what I do.” B. J. Tucker was rehired.

In 1937, when the porters and the Pullman Company signed a contract, for the first time there was a formal agreement between a union of black workers and a major American corporation. The next year Rosina Tucker attended the union’s national convention in Chicago and chaired the Constitution and Rules Committee. Immediately after the brotherhood’s convention, the International Ladies’ Auxiliary was established and held its first meetings on September 24-27. Since it was a support organization, the group was intentionally designed to be subordinate to the brotherhood. Officers included an international president, Halena Wilson of Chicago; four international vice-presidents; and an international secretary-treasurer, Rosina Tucker. Program visitors included Mary McLeod Bethune, the most influential black woman in the United States, who represented the Division of Negro Affairs of the National Youth Administration, Washington, D.C. There were 1,446 members of the auxiliary by August 1940. Tucker traveled to railroad centers throughout the United States and Canada to unite workers, often coming in contact with such prominent women as Eleanor Roosevelt and Bethune.

Over the years, the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and the Ladies’ Auxiliary became more powerful. Through its official presence in the House of Labor, a speaking platform for the workers, the union could focus on the evils of racism, the need for civil rights legislation, the protection of minority voting rights, and the preservation of dignity on the job. The auxiliary remained a consistent part of the effort. Some sources report that although the brotherhood is generally given credit for the work, Tucker helped the group organize its first March on Washington, scheduled to occur in 1941. The march was called off when A. Philip Randolph convinced President Franklin D. Roosevelt to issue Executive Order 8802, which addressed fair employment practices and discrimination in government offices and defense plants. In 1963, again with Tucker’s assistance, Randolph and the brotherhood organized another March on Washington. However, technological change was undermining the union as rail passenger service declined. In 1978 the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters merged with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks.

Tucker told her story and that of the work of the brotherhood and the auxiliary in the 1981 award-winning, hour-long documentary Miles of Smiles, Years of Struggle, produced and directed by Paul Wagner and Jack Santino and aired on public television. In the documentary she also sang “Marching Together,” which she wrote in 1939 in honor of the Pullman porters.

Unfaltering Devotion to Social and Civil Rights

Tucker’s interest in civil rights never wavered. In 1985 she participated in an unsuccessful picket at a Safeway market, located at 6th and H Street, N.E., to stop the store from moving out of the black community. In 1986, when she was 104 years old, Tucker was still giving lectures across the country, primarily recounting the history of the brotherhood and the Ladies’ Auxiliary. She had completed a book-length manuscript about her life when she was 96 years old entitled Life As I Have Lived It. She often participated in discussion groups in the Fifteenth Street Presbyterian Church, where she had held membership since 1917 and was affectionately called Mother Tucker. Over the years she testified before Senate and House committees on education, day care, labor, and voting rights for the District. She lobbied Congress for legislation on labor and education and helped organize unions for laundry workers and domestics. When she was 102 years old, she testified before a Senate Labor and Human Resources subcommittee on aging. Her community activities extended to other areas as well; for example, she worked with the Board of Public Welfare, NAACP, Northeast Women’s Club, and the Sunday school.

During her life and after her death, Rosina Tucker was honored for her work with the brotherhood and for her civil rights activities. In 1983 she received a humanitarian award from the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights and the Candace Award for leadership from the National Coalition of 100 Black Women. In 1985 the Coalition of Labor Union Women honored Maida Springer-Kemp, Addie Wyatt, and Rosina Tucker for their contributions to the American labor movement. In 1993, during its sixth year of operation, the District of Columbia Hall of Fame selected five women who had made significant contributions in local public service, health care, labor initiatives, housing, and education. Rosina Tucker, who died on March 3, 1987, at the age of 105, was honored posthumously for her role as a founder of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters in 1925 and as a founder and international secretary-treasurer of the union’s Ladies’ Auxiliary.

Toward the end of her life, Rosina Tucker was still iron-willed, robust, and healthy. She laughed easily and was overflowing with wit and wisdom. Commenting on her longevity and the fact that all of her close relatives had died, she told Dave Pitts for Washington Living, “Being alone is an inevitable consequence of living long enough.” Tucker’s great-grandmother lived to be 101 and her grandparents lived to their mid-90s. “I don’ t know why we live so long,” she told the Washington Post. Most of the neighbors from her once elegant neighborhood had died or moved away, yet she enjoyed life to the fullest. She added, “I’ ve been almost every place I wanted to go, met many interesting people and basically had a good life. But that doesn’ t mean I’ m ready for the Man to come get me!”

Perhaps the best summation of Tucker’s life can be found in her autobiography, which Dave Pitts quotes in the Washington Living article. Responding to a young man who had asked what it was like in her day, she wrote, “In my day. This is my day.” The autobiography continues: “Today is my day as it is your day. Although I live far removed from the time I was born I do not feel that my heart should dwell in the past. It is in the future. Each day for over a century added to another has culminated in growth that has led to my present experience and has made the person I am today and will be tomorrow…. While I live let not my life be in vain. And when I depart may there be remembrance of me and my life as I have lived it.”

Rosina Tucker devoted her life to her community, her church, piano instruction, civil rights, education causes, and the labor movement, particularly the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and its auxiliary. She will continue to be remembered for her life and the way she lived it.