Negro American Labor Council

Shortly after the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) refused to adopt internal desegregation measures at its 1959 convention, seventy-five black trade union officials, led by A. Philip Randolph, president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, AFL-CIO, formed the Negro American Labor Council (NALC) as a vehicle through which to pressure the labor federation to act against segregated and discriminatory unions. At its founding convention in 1960, the all-black NALC called for the elimination of Jim Crow union locals, racist bars to union leadership, and discriminatory job-training programs. Randolph, who was elected president by the delegates, dominated the council for most of its brief life. By the end of its first year the NALC had enlisted ten thousand members nationally, with its largest chapter in Detroit.

In 1961 the NALC presented to the AFL-CIO Executive Council specific charges of discriminatory practices in affiliated unions along with the recommendation that such practices be rooted out and, as a final resort, unions refusing to comply be expelled from the federation. The Executive Council rejected the proposals, labeled the NALC "separatist," and officially censured Randolph, charging the longtime labor and civil rights leader as the cause of the black rank and file's discontent with AFL-CIO leadership.

The second NALC convention, held in Chicago in the fall of 1961, featured lengthy and vigorous denunciations of the AFL-CIO Executive Council for its response to the NALC's proposal in particular, and for the failure of organized labor historically to combat racist practices and extend class solidarity to black workers.

By the time of the second convention, the NALC's membership had fallen to a little more than four thousand, largely as a result of a lack of funds to wage a sustained organizing campaign. Moreover, a number of members notified the NALC that they were not allowed to organize on behalf of the council while holding official union positions. However, as a result of the pressure brought to bear by the NALC, the 1961 AFL-CIO convention adopted an unprecedented civil rights program that Randolph called the best antidiscrimination measure ever taken up by organized labor. The AFL-CIO's civil rights resolution instituted grievance procedures and called for affiliated unions to voluntarily eliminate segregated locals and discriminatory practices. The NALC criticized the resolution for its reliance on voluntary compliance yet considered the AFL-CIO's measure an important, if insufficient, victory. One of the greater tangible achievements of the NALC was the election of an African American, Nelson Edwards, to the executive board of the United Auto Workers, for which the Detroit chapter had lobbied since its founding.

Shortly after the 1961 NALC convention, Randolph renewed his call from 1941 for a massive march on Washington to demand jobs and civil rights, partly as a way to satisfy militant black nationalists in the council. The NALC became one of the primary mobilizing organizations for the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. Although it was unable to win the official endorsement of the AFL-CIO, it was instrumental in gaining the support of various major unions for the demonstration. The NALC continued through the early 1960s as the leading liaison between the civil rights movement and organized labor.

At its fourth annual convention in 1964 the NALC adopted a resolution calling for a national one-day general strike on August 28, the anniversary of the March on Washington, if the pending civil rights bill was not passed by that time. The resolution became moot when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law shortly after the NALC convention.

In 1966 Randolph resigned as president of the council and Cleveland Robinson, vice president of the Distributive, Processing, and Office Workers Union (District 65) and a longtime ally of Randolph, was elected to succeed him. The name of the organization was soon thereafter changed to the National Afro-American Labor Council, which was supplanted as the leading advocate of equality within the labor movement by the more moderate A. Philip Randolph Institute, founded by Randolph in 1964. Through the 1960s the institute also recruited black workers into the civil rights movement, assisted voter-registration drives in the South, and successfully lobbied the AFL-CIO leadership to support African-American political causes.

See also Labor and Labor Unions

Bibliography

Foner, Philip S. Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619–1973. New York: Praeger, 1974.

Hill, Herbert. "Racial Practices of Organized Labor." In The Negro and the American Labor Movement, edited by Julius Jacobson. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor, 1968.

Pfeffer, Paula F. A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1990.

thaddeus russell (1996)