Yolanda "Bobby" Hall, the coordinator of the Working Women's History Project, has been a long time union activist and organizer for many years in the Chicago area.
Joan Morris: Could you tell us how you got involved with the labor movement?
Bobby Hall: Back in the 1930's my father and mother were members of unions, and my uncle was a tool and die maker from the old country, Hungary. He brought with him both union ideas and Socialist ideas. I grew up with the idea that unions were good things for working people. In the 30's when I was in High School, the first union activity I remember was collecting food for the Chicago Taxi Driver Strike. This strike became famous because the Chicago Repertory Company Theater with Studs Terkel, put on a play by Clifford Odets, Waiting for Lefty, the story of that taxi strike.
I just went down Armitage Avenue collecting money. I lived between Humbolt Park and Logan Square. I went to the grocery store and butcher shop. It made me very concerned about the big issues that were happening. The activity of the Congress of Industrial Organizations in the 30's was one of the vivid memories from my teenage days.
J M: What were some of the issues that unions had to fight for?
BH: First of all, during the New Deal there was the issue of raising wages because we were coming out of the Depression. Wages were very much lower and the working hours were long. The fight for the eight-hour day took place in the 1870's. But there were still many problems - not observing time and a half for overtime. Of course, women who were in the lowest paying jobs fought for a chance to get promoted into better jobs and get equal pay.
JM: You were involved in the union in W. W. II, and you were one of the "Rosie the Riveters"
BH: There were a lot of Rosie the Riveters. That was a big opportunity for women to break into skilled jobs and carry part of their responsibility for assuring that this war would be won against Hitler and Fascism. My father was a tool and die maker, a skilled worker, so I decided to work in a war plant. My husband volunteered for the army right after Pearl Harbor.
I went for training at Lane Tech High School and became a tool grinder and I finally got a job at Bendix Aviation Corporation, on Sacramento Blvd. I was the first woman hired for the tool room, and you can kind of guess what happened with the men in there. Well, they thought the tool room was the domain of the males. I was a brand new worker, just learning the job. We were making carburetors for aircraft, and I found tools were hidden on me, and blueprints were changed. There was quite a lot of underhanded and unwelcoming activity.
However, at night my father and my uncle would teach me how to read blueprints and answer all my questions about the tools I had to use. And I found one person who was an old timer, a Swedish American, and his attitude was that we all had to work together for the war effort, and so he was a real tremendous help to me.
But I realized that we had to have a union. The Bendix Company had a union in the main plant in South Bend, Indiana. So workers from South Bend came and helped pass out leaflets and told us what a union could do for us in handling grievances, making it possible for us to negotiate with the company on more even terms.
JM: Was there a big disparity between the wages for women the wages for men in the same job at that time?
BH: No there wasn't because mostly there were women's jobs and men's jobs. Men were in the tool room and in the maintenance department. They ran lathes and so on. There was a real struggle to get women promoted to these jobs. Once they got promoted to the jobs, they received the same wages. So one way of discriminating against women was to relegate them to the lowest paying jobs. The CIO was adamant about raising women's wage scale. After the war women were laid off and then had to fight for their seniority rights and to maintain their positions
in the more advanced jobs.
JM: Did most women who were laid off, once the men returned from the war accept it? Did they want to give up their jobs, or did they want to stay in their positions?
BH: Oh, there was a very big struggle to keep their jobs, and very often they had to fight even with the union to make sure that seniority was observed. Women resented after helping win the war, being told go back in the kitchen. Basically I think the struggles in the l970's for women's right was the continuation at a new level of what happened in the l940's. Efforts to get women into the trades and get into higher paying jobs were enlarged for a good number of years.
Working with Sylvia Woods
BH: I must tell you about some of the things we did in the union. We had the women working together on social issues like child-care. These problems were not in the province of the union so much previously, but the women brought them to the floor. In our Local 330 eventually I became president. We had about 3000 members in Chicago and Sylvia Woods was the secretary - treasurer, and those of you who have ever seen the film Union Maids, will remember Sylvia Woods. She and Vicky Starr were two of the women who were honored in their struggles in that award winning film.
JM: And from my research I know that at that time this was highly unusual for a woman to be president of a local.
BH: Yes, I was the first member in the Illinois Industrial Union Council, who was a woman, and when we went to the convention Sylvia Woods and I became a rather well known team in terms of leadership. We broke through with a number of campaigns that were being done by autoworkers in Detroit and in California and the shipyards. We found that we had to have a women's rights committee in our international union as well, in order to help educate our fellow unionists, our brother unionists.
JM: And I know that also in the film Sylvia Woods gives you credit as one of the people who fought against racism at that time within the shops.
BH: Well we had a mixture of people at that time. Lynchings were still going on in this country. The Armed Forces were segregated. I mean, the problem of racism hasn't been settled today, but it was a lot worse at that time [l940's], and so one of our first jobs was to bring African American and Hispanic Women into the leadership of our union. We had steward training classes, where we had training that enabled our newer members to learn about unionism and to learn the contract and how to represent their workers. And we faced racism among union members. We'd have very knockdown drag-out discussions about why we had to work for equality. If workers were not treated equally the unions would be the losers. It was in our own self-interest and not just altruism to have workers stick together. Being united is one of the principles of unionism.
JM: So united and equal for women, men and people of all races? BH: Yes.
BH: Working with Local 330 after the war when our plant shut down, we had two or three thousand people looking for work. Bendix decided not to do any post-war work in Chicago. The union spent a lot of time helping our workers find new jobs, and get unemployment insurance, which was another thing that unions fought for.
But the post war period was a long struggle, and I found it very difficult to get skilled work. I worked in many different jobs and I often got laid off. From my militant union background, I found that I had been blacklisted at least twice that I could document.
JM: Could you talk about what it meant to be blacklisted and what that meant?
BH: Well I think what happens is when employers are anti-union, they have a network that identifies who active unionists are. And in the post war period, there was also the well known the McCarthy Red Scare, and unions were painted with a brush of being too radical. There was a very big struggle after the war. Some unions were expelled. So I, like many people, who were more well known, found it difficult to find jobs. I had to leave the skilled trades and take a job in healthcare.
Current Projects
BH: We are very excited about Women Building Chicago, 1790-1990, A Biographical Dictionary by Rima Schultz, which is being published this year (2001). It will have historical biographies of about 400 Chicago area working women.
This is a 1999 WZRD (88.3 FM) radio interview by Joan McGann Morris, former WZRD member at Northeastern Illinois University in Chicago. She worked on this project with YahaleYadede, former WZRD Program Director.
Book Review
Exploring the Dangerous Trades:
The Autobiography of Alice Hamilton MD
Copyright 1943, Northeastern University Press, Reprinted 1985
"The poor must take dangerous jobs, or have no jobs at all." Alice Hamilton
Mary Wehrle
Picture yourself being slowly poisoned to death at work. It was common in many dangerous trades at the turn of the twentieth century, the risk of taking an industrial job. There were no laws to protect workers in factories, no OSHA, no workers' compensation. Dr. Alice Hamilton wanted to take on the problem of industrial poisoning. When Alice Hamilton began her work in the new field of industrial toxicology, few worried about chemical hazards at work. Many victims were recent immigrants afraid to complain. Most did not know the risks. "The poor must take dangerous jobs, or have no jobs at all," she wrote.
Alice Hamilton was born in1869 and grew up in Fort Wayne, Indiana, part of a generation of progressive women who took active roles in changing society for the better. She had a medical education from the University of Michigan and a lifetime of 101 years to devote to it. First she taught women medical students, referred to as "hens" by male doctors at Northwestern Medical College. She spent over twenty years at Hull House, working with Jane Addams and Florence Kelley. She got involved in the labor movement, working with the Factory Girls. She recalled, "I began to see the working world through the workers' eyes." She joined union strikers on picket lines. As a physician, she joined the birth-control movement through the Chicago Birth Control Committee.
Her first article on occupational disease was published in 1908. Dr. Hamilton was appointed in 1910 by the governor to a commission to investigate occupational diseases in Illinois. When she began her work with a small group of physicians and student assistants, she called it a journey of exploration. Her medical colleagues said she had feminine sentimentality about the poor. In Chicago, she went to watch workers sand-papering the lead painted ceilings of Pullman cars. In smelters on the south side laborers shoveled white lead from the drying pans and breathed the deadly dust. To prove these toxins killed employees, she visited 300 workplaces, interviewed workers, and went to their homes to speak to them or to surviving relatives. She researched death records. She found Cook County Hospital filled with victims of industrial poisoning. The American Federation of Labor helped pressure for safety and compensation laws.
American medical authorities had never taken this type of health problem seriously before. Employers too were ignorant and indifferent. Dr. Hamilton recalled the manager of a lead plant who was shocked when she suggested that he was responsible when workers got lead poisoning there. He thought of himself as an enlightened, caring employer.
In 1911 Illinois passed a first attempt at compensation for industrial diseases caused by poisonous gases, fumes, and dust. It required safer workplaces and monthly medical exams for lead and arsenic workers. The law was overturned by the Supreme Court and not replaced until 1936. The National Association of Manufacturers opposed safety legislation as they opposed shorter hours and ending child labor.
During World War I she investigated munitions plants and found them in constant danger of exploding. She discussed this with then Assistant Secretary of the Navy, Franklin Roosevelt. Munitions workers' health became a matter of national concern.
With Florence Kelley in the 1920's she worked with the Consumers' League to help the "Radium Girls" who were dying from their work with radium-laden paint. These women asked for the League's help when state health departments refused to do anything. They fought for compensation and safety regulations.
Dr. Hamilton investigated lead, mercury, carbon monoxide, radium, and solvent poisoning for the federal government. She crawled over open coal pits, rode down mine shafts in open cages, and climbed up ladders to inspect vats of boiling sulfuric acid in pursuit of more details about working conditions. She toured steel mills to explore carbon monoxide poisoning, then on to California to look at mercury poisoning in quicksilver mines. The mercury studies took her to the hat industry, where workers developed shakes and mental disease from mercury poisoning, suggesting the expression "mad as a hatter." She identified problems and recommended protective measures.
In her scientific work she learned the value of careful critical inquiry before forming conclusions. She was an independent thinker who went right to the center of action to see and assess things for herself. In 1924 she went with a group to Russia to see the new Soviet Union. She described a government that could "hold its own only by denying people all freedom." She said it reminded her of Spain under the Inquisition. In 1933 She went to Hitler's Germany and was horrified by the rigid control and violent oppression.
She became the first female faculty member at Harvard. As a woman she was not allowed to march at graduation, belong to the faculty club, or receive sports tickets. But she served on the Health Committee of the League of Nations.
Dr. Hamilton became a committed New Dealer, serving as consultant to the United States Division of Labor Standards. Her work contributed to reforms in industrial hygiene laws like the Fair Labor Standards Act. Dr. Hamilton said she was most pleased that laborers were no longer submissive or ignorant about workplace hazards. They became willing to demand better conditions for themselves. She felt this attitude was critical in maintaining safety gains.
Shortly after her death at age 101 the Occupational Safety and Health Act passed in 1970, a culmination of protective labor legislation, one of organized labor's greatest accomplishments. This book is a fascinating story for anyone interested in labor history or women's achievements. It shows the dogged persistence of a woman convinced she could use her scientific training to change society for the better.
NEW PLAN TO PASS ERA: NO TIME LIMITS
by Susan Straus
Twenty years ago on Mother's Day in 1980 there was an enormous rally in Grant Park in Chicago to support passage of the Equal Rights Amendment. Over 50,000 people attended, all dressed in white, the color of the Women's Suffrage Movement. Things have quieted down since then. Illinois never ratified the ERA.
The deadline for ratification of ERA came and went in 1982. It was three states short.
In order for a piece of legislation to become an amendment to the Constitution 3/5ths of the states must ratify the proposed amendment after Congress passes it.
The Chicago NOW Education Fund recently held an event to remember the Mother's Day Rally. Reverend Addie Wyatt stated, "It's hard to believe we are still here in the year 2000 struggling to obtain equal rights. I thought by now we'd be singing, ' We have overcome.' "
But many hold out hope that ERA can still pass. Pat Polos, president of ERA Illinois, told these long time ERA supporters about the current campaign to get three more states to ratify the ERA. Supporters want to introduce the ERA again without a time limit. There is a precedent for this. Congressional acts have not always had time limits. Recently the 27th Amendment was ratified after 197 years.
This Madison Amendment, named after James Madison, was first introduced to Congress in 1789. It deals with the requirement of a roll call vote to be taken by Congress when voting on a pay increase for its members. It was finally ratified on May 19, 1992. The
U. S. Supreme Court ruled on the Madison Amendment, saying it was still viable, and that states that had ratified it in the past could not reverse their ratification. Feminist legal scholars saw an opening for a new ERA ratification strategy.
The big difference between the ratification process of the ERA and the Madison Amendment is the fact that the Madison Amendment never had a time limit attached.
Supporters plan to introduce ERA with no time limit. Then only three more states could ratify the ERA Amendment. It would still be up to Congress to accept it as meeting the requirements to become part of the Constitution.
Jan Flapan, a Homemaker for the ERA in 1980, spoke of her determination to see her children treated with respect as the catalyst that drove her to the ERA movement. Ms. Flapan is now president of the Illinois League of Women Voters. Representative Louis Lang (D 16th) the current sponsor to ratify the ERA in Illinois pledged to continue the battle for the ERA.
To learn more about the strategy to revive the ERA go to the Internet
The Equal Rights Amendment was first proposed in 1923 by Alice Paul of the National Women's Party after the 19th Amendment, which gave women the right to vote, was ratified by the states on August 26, 1920. It read, "Equality of rights under the law shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any state on account of sex." Alice Paul saw the vote for women as a beginning, not the final goal. So began the long road for the ERA.
It was introduced in Congress every year but never passed. Finally the big push came when it was voted out of Congress to be ratified by the states on March 22, 1972. In order for a piece of legislation to become an amendment to the Constitution 3/5ths of the states must ratify the proposed amendment after Congress passes it. The ERA had a time limit of 1979. Congress extended the deadline to give the states three more years to ratify. That period ended in 1982. Congress extended the deadline to give the states three more years to ratify. That period ended in 1982.
Current Activism: Chicago Colleges
United Students Against Sweatshops
Mary Wehrle
The United Students Against Sweatshops is a nation wide student organization connected by e-mail and the Internet. USAS uses tactics such as teach-ins, rallies, sit-ins, and fasts to protest sweatshops and bring attention to other labor and poverty issues. At some schools they take over the dean's office, make their own films and conduct anti-sweat fashion shows.
USAS is growing on campus as the anti-apartheid movement did in the 1980s. Since 1997 unions have recruited thousands of students for Union Summer training and internships, in which they help to organize low-paid workers. These students return to campus with the anti-sweatshop message. They educate fellow students about U.S. unions and the competition they face from overseas manufacturing practices such as sweatshops. The focus is on manufacturers that produce the shirts and caps with school logos that are sold
in college bookstores. Collegiate licensing is a 2.5 billion-dollar industry.
Pressured by students, many schools have agreed to join the USAS Worker Rights Consortium, which requires disclosure of the names and locations of factories producing school apparel overseas. Many companies resist this, because they do not want competitors to know about their factories. USAS also calls for workers at the companies' factories to receive a living wage. They seek this public disclosure of locations to enable independent human rights groups and unions to find out if codes of conduct are being enforced. Students and unions have developed a system of independent factory monitoring, called the Verification Model, to ensure compliance with codes of conducts.
Protests have included sit-ins at Oberlin, Duke, Yale, Georgetown, the University of Wisconsin, where students were arrested in a demonstration, and the University of Illinois at Champaign. Many Chicago area schools are also involved.
Chicago Colleges Organize Against Sweatshops
UIC
Eric Smith, a UIC member of United Students Against Sweatshops reports that students at the University of Illinois at Chicago are still pushing their school to join the Worker Rights Consortium a non-profit organization that supports and verifies licensee compliance with Codes of Conduct. These codes of conduct verify that goods are manufactured under conditions that respect the basic rights of workers. Smith, a leader of USAS at University of Illinois at Chicago points out that the Chicago campus of the University of Illinois has special historical ties to the struggle for worker's rights. UIC contains Hull House, the site of Florence Kelley and Jane Addams' struggle. Kelley was one of the first factory inspectors in Illinois, focusing on issues of child labor. Sweatshops were at the center of her concern.
DePAUL UNIVERSITY
The Activist Student Union at DePaul University, had a week long action in April 2000 which culminated in a culminated in a nightly sleep-out, in front of the loop campus, with as many as thirty students sleeping out each night. Throughout the year, students in the Anti-Sweatshop Committee fought to make DePaul sign on to the Workers Rights Consortium to make DePaul Sweat-Free. After a year of student hard work, DePaul University signed the Worker Rights Consortium.
LOYOLA UNIVERSITY
Tom Strunk of Loyola University in Chicago feels that because of the school's Catholic tradition, the USAS week long fast was a powerful statement. It began a series of fasts at other universities working for USAS. Loyola also joined the Worker Rights Consortium.
NORTHWESTERN UNIVERSITY
Northwestern University Students Against Sweatshops made an appearance in the homecoming parade. Among the floats these students marched in their underwear, chained to a shopping cart to protest sweatshop made college logo clothing. Inside the cart rode another student portraying the director of Nike.
Working Women's History Project
Formerly Women & Labor History Project
Interview with Bobby Hall..................Joan McGann Morris
Dr. Alice Hamilton.........................................Mary Wehrle
New Plan to Pass ERA ....................................Sue Straus
United Students Against Sweatshops............Mary Wehrle
UIC Labor Education Program
UIC and THE CHICAGO LABOR EDUCATION PROGRAM
THE CHICAGO LABOR EDUCATION PROGRAM is a satellite program of the Institute for Labor and Industrial Relations of the University of Illinois, Champaign-Urbana. The Institute offers credit classes and programs to both labor and management. The labor education faculty focuses on trade audiences, teaching skills union members need to participate effectively at the bargaining table.
The program provides support for the labor movement, helping unions develop classroom materials, research for organizing campaigns, and set up conferences.
CLEP will continue its Tuesday evening open-access classes, including basic Steward Training and Leadership. We urge unions and individual members to consider using this resource.
Worthen may be reached for further information at 312-996-2623.
Bobby Hall
Working Women's History Project
Rev. Addie L. Wyatt
Interview by Joan McGann Morris
Working Women's History Project
"Racism and sexism were economic issues."
It is December 14, 2002. I am very honored to be in the home of Rev. Addie L. Wyatt, who is the Co-Pastor Emeritus of the Vernon Park Church of God in Chicago, Illinois, along with her husband, Rev. Dr. Claude S. Wyatt, Jr. who has worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from 1958 to 1968 and has participated in major marches in Selma, Alabama, Washington, D.C., and Chicago. She spent thirty years as a leader and officer of the labor movement, retiring in 1984 as Vice President of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union. In 1975, Addie Wyatt appeared on the cover of Time magazine as one of its Women of the Year.
She is currently the CEO of the Wyatt Family Community Center which is a couple of blocks from her home. I am interviewing Rev. Wyatt in conjunction with an award she will be receiving in March 2003 at the Gala for the Working Women's History Project at Roosevelt University. I am with my husband, Ken Morris, who is a composer and our audio-visual coordinator, and Sue Straus, who is the president of the Working Women's History Project. We are very honored to give Rev. Wyatt the Mother Jones Award from our organization. We want to her to talk about history and how her own life has mirrored the history of not only African-American women in Chicago, but also the leaders of Chicago who are mothers and grandmothers and the working women who have been involved in unions.
Morris: As I understand, Rev. Wyatt, your family moved to Chicago along with many other Blacks during the Great Migration in the early part of the century. When did your family move to Chicago?
Wyatt: In the year 1930
Morris: How old were you at that time?
Wyatt: Six
Morris: Can you tell us a little bit of how it was to be in Chicago at that time?
Wyatt: First I must say how it was to leave Mississippi. That was the only place that I knew and that was in Brookhaven, Mississippi. I did not want to leave Brookhaven. But I was told that we were going to a place where we would be so much better off. I thought it meant the land of the free. But when we came to Chicago, I was shocked that we did not have fruit trees in the yard. We did not have vegetables. We did not have cattle or chickens, and all of this we had in Brookhaven, Mississippi.
During the years that we were struggling for survival as a family, we almost starved because it was so difficult getting work and providing for your families. So I had mixed emotions about coming to Chicago. I thought we should have stayed in Mississippi. Of course, I've changed my mind now.
Morris: What did your parents do?
Wyatt: My mother in Mississippi was a teacher and, of course, she could not teach here. She was an excellent seamstress. My father was a tailor and when he came to Chicago he couldn't work here as a tailor. My mother could not find work as a domestic worker. She could not find work here as a teacher because she did not have a degree. In the south it was different. If you had a high school education, as you know, you could teach.
Morris: How many people were in your family?
Wyatt: At that time there were five children, my mother, my father and my paternal grandmother.
Morris: And where did you come in the family?
Wyatt: I'm number two. I had an older brother. I'm the oldest daughter and number two in a line of eight.
Morris: That's a big family.
Wyatt: That's a wonderful big family.
Morris: Had your family always lived in this area the south side of Chicago?
Wyatt: No. For a short time we lived on the west side of Chicago. Of course, when we first moved here to Chicago we lived on the south side and most of our life has been on the south side. When we married, my husband and I lived in Altgeld Gardens, which was a housing project at 130th Street and Evans in Chicago.
Morris: So when you said that your father had a hard time getting a job as a tailor and your mother had a hard time getting a job as a teacher, what did they end up doing?
Wyatt: Well, we ended up on what they called at that time charity, which is like relief now. And depending upon family members to also supplement.
Morris: I know from your background that you are highly motivated and highly educated. Was this instilled in you by your parents? Where does this come from in you?
Wyatt: By my parents and by my church. We were very active in our church and that was what helped us to make it through the very difficult times our faith in God and our faith in our family and in our neighbors.
Morris: Were your parents also very active in the church?
Wyatt: My mother and my grandmother were. My father later on before he passed became active in the church.
Morris: Eventually you ended up getting work in the labor movement. But I understand that initially you went for a job as a secretary?
Wyatt: Yes. I went to work at Armour and Company in the city of Chicago. You know, when I was a child, I detested being poor and not having enough to eat and a decent place to stay. I always thought that something could be done to make life better for us. I would raise that question with my mother from the time that I was four or five years old. She would say to me, "Life can be better, Addie, but you will have to help make it so." I didn't altogether know what she meant, but it stayed in my mind that there was something that I had to do to make life better for myself and for my family. Therefore, I went to work at an early age because I knew that change had to come if we were going to survive.
I went to work at Armour and Company. When I went there I was out of high school and I could type 60 or 70 words a minute. I thought I could get a job typing. But when I went to Armour and Company I applied for a butcher's job. Of course, when the man came out to test the butchers by the sharpening of your knives, he could tell right away that I wasn't a butcher. But I looked over at the other side of the room and there were six young white women waiting for something and I thought I'd wait with them. In a little bit, an attractive young woman came out and called for typists. I thought, oh God, that's me. And I went with the six young white women and I applied for the typing job. I passed. And they hired me. But when I told people and friends that I got hired at Armour and Company as a typist, I later learned why they snickered and why they laughed. Because they knew what I didn't know that they did not hire black typists.
When I reported to work Monday morning, they sent me straight to a canning department packing stew in a can for the army, because that was in the year 1941 and we had just entered into World War II. I was so disappointed and I began to inquire among the others there about the job and say to them that I was just there temporarily because I'm going to work in the office as a typist. They just snickered because they knew what I didn't know at that time. But as I worked there and began to inquire about salary, I was told that the salary was 62 cents an hour for women. Of course, at that time if you were a typist you might have earned something like $19 a week. If you were black and light--complexioned, you might have earned something like $12 a week. And if you were black like me and got hired at all, you might have earned something like $8 a week. Of course, $24 a week was more money than I had ever seen in my life and I decided to stay there on the line packing stew in a can.
Morris: How was that? Was it hard to learn to do that?
Wyatt: No, it wasn't hard to learn. It was fast work. You were in motion the whole eight hours. You were constantly moving, taking cans off a conveyor to weigh the cans for accurate weight and putting the cans back on the line. You had to do that for eight hours.
Morris: Was that without a break?
Wyatt: No, at that time the workers had a union and of course, I didn't know what the union meant. They had a coffee break which I could never take because I had a small child. Whenever I had a break I would call to see about the child. By the time I was through getting a turn on the telephone, it was time to get back to the line as the whistle was blowing and the machines were starting. This was in 1941 and I was 17 years old.
Morris: You've had to wear many hats as a wife, mother and a worker. How did you manage that over the years?
Wyatt: Well, thank God I was well trained by a loving mother and a grandmother. As an older sister, you had to help take care of the other children and do the housework. From the age of eight, I helped to cook to prepare for the children. So a lot of skills I learned by precept and example in my home. My church provided me with spiritual depth and understanding how to live with other people, how to live with myself most important, and so when I went to the job at that early age I was able to do the job, but also I was able to do the job at home.
Morris: Did you have a sense of the racism that existed? How did that affect you when you weren't able to get the initial job you went for because you were African-American?
Wyatt: It really didn't strike me at first. When we were small in the South, I knew that Blacks were discriminated against. At that time we were called "colored" and colored people were discriminated against. It wasn't until I started in the paid workforce of this nation that I discovered that women were also discriminated against. Facing the discrimination as a race and as a woman, something woke up within me. I remember my mother said life can be better - you have to help make it so. I would raise the question in my mind What can I do? I have got to do something. I can't tolerate, I can't deal with racism and sexism.
I discovered that this was one of the reasons why we were poor. Racism and sexism was an economic issue. It was very profitable to discriminate against women and against people of color. I began to understand that change could come but you could not do it alone. You had to unite with others. That was one of the reasons I became a part of the union. It was a sort of family that would help in the struggle.
Morris: When did you meet your husband during this time?
Wyatt: I met my husband when I was in high school. I was a sophomore in high school when I was 14 years old. I went to high school at the age of 12 and most people thought I was older. I guess it was because of my maturity from child up. He was a senior and I thought he was the most handsome man I had ever seen. He was such a wonderful young man. My mother loved him. My family loved him and I do too.
Morris: What were the circumstances? How did you meet?
Wyatt: I was in the high school band and I played the first clarinet in the concert band. My husband was attending classes that I had and his period of class was always an hour or so before mine. We would meet in the hall and I wanted to be sure that he passed the test and that he knew what was happening in class that day and I would talk with him and he would talk with me.
Morris: Was it instant attraction on both of your parts?
Wyatt: I knew it was on mine.
Morris: When did you get married?
Wyatt: We got married in 1940. We've been married 62 years and never been apart. I've been married to the same handsome, wonderful man who helped me to not only raise our children, but helped me to raise my mother's five children that she had when she died at the age of 39.
Morris: So, in your family you have five children of your mother's and two sons and a number of grandchildren?
Wyatt: Yes. We have eight grandchildren and 11 great-grandchildren.
Morris: What did your husband do early in your marriage in terms of work?
Wyatt: Right after my mother died in 1944 he was drafted into the navy so I was left alone with seven. Before then he worked in a cleaners. After that time, he worked in the post office as a finance clerk.
Morris: Was he also involved in unions at that time?
Wyatt: Yes, he was. He was not actively involved but he was a member of the union. He started working at Armour and Company before I did, but only for a short time.
Morris: How did he take to your involvement with the unions and with the civil rights movement?
Wyatt: He was also involved in the civil rights movement. It was in 1956 that we met Dr. King and our union was the first union to invite him to the city of Chicago. My husband worked with the civil rights movement too. He worked in the union with us and was involved all along.
Morris: What were the circumstances of your meeting Dr. King?
Wyatt: Our union was the first union to invite him to the city of Chicago. At that time I was a program coordinator for District One of the United Packinghouse Workers Union. The late Congressman Hayes (Charles Hayes) was my director. He had made commitments to Dr. King and the movement to raise money for the Montgomery Improvement Association. And of course, as a coordinator, he gave me the assignment to do the work. So I had to cover five states to raise funds so that we would have our quota. Thank God, we did very well because, number one, I had faith in God, faith in the movement, and faith in the people, white and black, that we were serving. We raised the largest amount of any district in our union. When Dr. King came, we had to present this money to him for the Montgomery Improvement Association.
Morris: We have never had the privilege of meeting Dr. King directly. Is there anything in particular you remember about Dr. King that you would like to convey to us?
Wyatt: He was a sincere person with great faith in God and great faith in people. He loved people. He had a great sense of humor. There were times when we'd meet together it was so wonderful to see him relax and laugh heartily at things that would happen some experiences that we go through, and he and I would pray from time to time as I do with most of our leaders, knowing what they go through and praying for their families. Knowing Dr. King's great love for his wife, Coretta, and his children, I would always take the opportunity to steal away and pray with him to keep him encouraged. He was faithful, true to his commitment. There were times when we would invite him to come to speak for us, and he always would compliment me by saying, "Addie, I'm coming because you called me, and I know you wouldn't be calling me for just anything. You know how busy I am." And that was so true. He was a very wonderful person and a person that you could love. He was a great eater. He loved to eat and we would do that so often as we would share with each other.
Morris: What did you and your husband like to eat and what did Dr. King like to eat?
Wyatt: Well, it's always chicken and barbecue. I can recall on one occasion when we were meeting at Rev. Willie Barrow's home, he was coming in and he came in late, and when he got there to her home he just laughed at Rev. Barrow. He said, "Girl, Why do you have all this china and this silverware polished? All we need is our fingers to eat this barbecue and this chicken. He would dine with us and we would laugh and talk, and then he would teach us. We learned many things from him how to relate to the opposition, how to love not because of, but in spite of ."
Morris: When you were working with Dr. King, at times did you sense that there was danger? What kept you going?
Wyatt: Faith in God, and faith in the people that we were working with, and faith in Dr. King's commitment and what the struggle was all about. We knew we had to make change and that change was not going to come easy. Some of us would live and some of us would die, as some did. We went to Selma with him. I went down with Rev. Barrow and six white women from the Chicago area. There were fearful moments there. Just before we arrived in Montgomery, you could look out and see the Klan on horses with their uniforms on.[full regalia with hoods covering their faces] We were told that some of them had come to pick us up.
When we were called to Selma, they told us not to leave with anyone because they had not sent anyone to pick us up. We stayed all night in the bus station, and slept there until the next morning when someone officially came to get us. We went into Selma and we were meeting at two churches. We'd have to come down the streets from one or the other. We marched to the County Building and we were abused and all kinds of things were said, but we were marching behind our leader who was Dr. King, and Dr. Abernathy, and some of the others. As long as you could see the leader still stepping, you felt like stepping along with them because you were there to give them support and help. The last evening that I was there, they incarcerated us, put us in jail, and I was to come back to Chicago to get my husband to get some of the other ministers so they could see what was happening. So I came back. One of the sort of fearful things was to come down that highway when Viola Liuzza was killed and I had to drive down there with the driver alone. Of course, I prayed all the way and I made it and got back home. I went to church on that Sunday.
We called a group of our ministers of the Church of God and a few others together and we inspired them and encouraged them to organize some other forces to go down to join Dr. King. So my husband left in a couple of days with 25 members to go down and join Dr. King. This he did and I went on back to the labor movement to my job I was working then for the movement - and to encourage others to prepare to send forces down to help. My husband met Dr. King and the others on the route to Montgomery. They joined them. It was several days before I saw them again and learned of their experiences as they marched and as they slept in the bus and whatever happened to them on their way to Montgomery.
Morris: We talked of your meeting with Dr. King and how you worked in Selma with him and how dangerous it was. You said that one of the white women, Viola Liuzzo who had been killed you had to drive down the same road from Selma to Montgomery. Did your group take any special precautions for your safety?
Wyatt: Yes. There were instructions given to each of us as you entered Selma. We had meetings where Whites were told how they had to protect the Blacks when you were attacked. White women were told that if you were marching with a black man, and he was attacked, you had to fall upon him to protect him, and a white man would fall upon the black woman to protect her. We marched, black and white, together. I can recall one day at church in the meeting, I went downstairs to the washroom and all of a sudden I heard rumbling going on upstairs. Rev. Barrow ran downstairs to try to get me. She said, "Everybody's gone and you're left here so you better come on because I'm leaving you too." And I was trying to get up to get out of the washroom and I came out just as I was, trying to make it down the street with her. There was shooting and everybody was getting back to the larger church. When we got back down there, we were incarcerated. We had to stay in the church and some had to stay in the jail.
Morris: Did they charge you with anything or did they just put you in jail?
Wyatt: They just put us in. They didn't charge us with anything.
