About the Womens Trade Union League (WTUL)

About the Womens Trade Union League (WTUL) The Womens Trade Union League (WTUL), nearly forgotten in much of the mainstream, feminist, and labor history written in the mid-20th century, was a key institution in reforming womens working conditions in the early 20th century. The WTUL not only played a pivotal role in organizing the garment workers and textile workers, but in fighting for protective labor legislation for women and better factory working conditions for all. The WTUL also served as a community of support for women working within the labor movement, where they were often unwelcome and barely tolerated by the male national and local officers. The women formed friendships, often across class lines, as working-class immigrant women and wealthier, educated women worked together for both union victories and legislative reforms. Many of the twentieth centurys best-known women reformers were connected in some way with the WTUL: Jane Addams, Mary McDowell, Lillian Wald, and Eleanor Roosevelt among them. WTUL Beginnings A 1902 boycott in New York, where women, mostly housewives, boycotted kosher butchers over the price of kosher beef, caught the attention of William English Walling. Walling, a wealthy Kentucky native living at the University Settlement in New York, thought of a British organization he knew a bit about: the Womens Trade Union League. He went to England to study this organization to see how it might translate to America. This British group had been founded in 1873 by Emma Ann Patterson, a suffrage worker who was also interested in issues of labor. She had been, in her turn, inspired by stories of American womens unions, specifically the New York Parasol and Umbrella Makers Union and the Womens Typographical Union. Walling studied the group as it had evolved by 1902-03 into an effective organization that brought together middle-class and wealthy women with working-class women to fight for improved working conditions by supporting union organizing. Walling returned to America and, with Mary Kenney OSullivan, laid the groundwork for a similar American organization. In 1903, OSullivan announced the formation of the Womens National Trade Union League, at the annual convention of the American Federation of Labor. In November, the founding meeting in Boston included the citys settlement house workers and AFL representatives. A slightly larger meeting, November 19, 1903, included labor delegates, all but one of whom were men, representatives from the Womens Educational and Industrial Union, who were mostly women, and settlement house workers, mostly women. Mary Morton Kehew was elected the first president, Jane Addams the first vice-president, and Mary Kenney OSullivan the first secretary. Other members of the first executive board included Mary Freitas, a Lowell, Massachusetts, textile mill worker; Ellen Lindstrom, a Chicago union organizer; Mary McDowell, a Chicago settlement house worker and experienced union organizer; Leonora OReilly, a New York settlement house worker who was also a garment union organizer; and Lillian Wald, settlement house worker and organizer of several womens unions in New York City. Local branches were quickly established in Boston, Chicago, and New York, with support from settlement houses in those cities. From the beginning, membership was defined as including women trade unionists, who were to be the majority according to the organizations by-laws, and earnest sympathizers and workers for the cause of trade unionism, who came to be referred to as allies. The intention was that the balance of power and decision-making would always rest with the trade unionists. The organization helped women start unions in many industries and many cities, and also provided relief, publicity, and general assistance for womens unions on strike. In 1904 and 1905, the organization supported strikes in Chicago, Troy, and Fall River. From 1906-1922, the presidency was held by Margaret Dreier Robins, a well-educated reform activist, married in 1905 to Raymond Robins, head of the Northwestern University Settlement in Chicago. In 1907, the organization changed its name to the National Womens Trade Union League (WTUL). WTUL Comes of Age In 1909-1910, the WTUL took a leading role in supporting the Shirtwaist Strike, raising money for relief funds and bail, reviving an ILGWU local, organizing mass meetings and marches, and providing pickets and publicity. Helen Marot, executive secretary of the New York WTUL branch, was the chief leader and organizer of this strike for the WTUL. William English Walling, Mary Dreier, Helen Marot, Mary E. McDowell, Leonora OReilly, and Lillian D. Wald were among the founders in 1909 of the NAACP, and this new organization helped support the Shirtwaist Strike by thwarting an effort of the managers to bring in black strikebreakers. The WTUL continued to expand support of organizing campaigns, investigating working conditions, and aiding women strikers in Iowa, Massachusetts, Missouri, New York, Ohio, and Wisconsin. From 1909 on, the League also worked for the 8-hour day and for minimum wages for women through legislation. The latter of those battles was won in 14 states between 1913 and 1923; the victory was seen by the AFL as a threat to collective bargaining. In 1912, after the Triangle Shirtwaist Company fire, the WTUL was active in the investigation and in promoting legislative changes to prevent future tragedies such as this one. That same year, in the Lawrence Strike by the IWW, the WTUL provided relief to strikers (soup kitchens, financial help) until the United Textile Workers pushed them out of the relief efforts, denying assistance to any strikers who refused to return to work. The WTUL/AFL relationship, always a bit uncomfortable, was further strained by this event, but the WTUL chose to continue to ally itself with the AFL. In the Chicago garment strike, the WTUL had helped to support the women strikers, working with the Chicago Federation of Labor. But the United Garment Workers suddenly called off the strike without consulting these allies, leading to the founding of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers by Sidney Hillman, and a continuing close relationship between the ACW and the League. In 1915, the Chicago Leagues started a school to train women as labor leaders and organizers. In that decade, too, the league began to work actively for woman suffrage, working with the National American Woman Suffrage Association. The League, seeing woman suffrage as a route to gain protective labor legislation benefiting women workers, founded the Wage-Earners League for Woman Suffrage, and WTUL activist, IGLWU organizer and former Triangle Shirtwaist worker Pauline Newman was especially involved in these efforts, as was Rose Schneiderman. It was during these pro-suffrage efforts in 1912, that the phrase Bread and Roses came into use to symbolize the dual goals of reform efforts: basic economic rights and security, but also dignity and hope for a good life. WTUL World War I - 1950 During World War I, the employment of women in the U.S. increased to nearly ten million. The WTUL worked with the Women in Industry Division of the Department of Labor to improve working conditions for women, in order to promote more female employment. After the war, returning vets displaced women in many of the jobs theyd filled. AFL unions often moved to exclude women from the workplace and from unions, another strain in the AFL/WTUL alliance. In the 1920s, the League began summer schools to train organizers and women workers at Bryn Mawr College, Barnard College, and Vineyard Shore. Fannia Cohn, involved in the WTUL since she took a labor education class with the organization in 1914, became Director of the ILGWU Educational Department, beginning decades of service to working womens needs and decades of struggling within the union for understanding and support of womens needs. Rose Schneiderman became president of the WTUL in 1926, and served in that role until 1950. During the Depression, the AFL emphasized employment for men. Twenty-four states enacted legislation to prevent married women from working in public service, and in 1932, the federal government required one spouse to resign if both worked for the government. Private industry was no better: for instance, in 1931, New England Telephone and Telegraph and Northern Pacific laid off all women workers. When Franklin Delano Roosevelt was elected president, the new first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt, a long-time WTUL member and fund-raiser, used her friendship and connections with the WTUL leaders to bring many of them into active support of New Deal Programs. Rose Schneiderman became a friend and frequent associate of the Roosevelts, and helped advise on major legislation like Social Security and the Fair Labor Standards Act. The WTUL continued its uneasy association mainly with the AFL, ignored the new industrial unions in the CIO, and focused more on legislation and investigation in its later years. The organization dissolved in 1950. Text  Ã‚ © Jone Johnson Lewis WTUL - Research Resources Sources consulted for this series include: Bernikow, Louise. The American Womens Almanac: An Inspiring and Irreverent Womens History. 1997. ( compare prices) Cullen-Dupont, Kathryn. The Encyclopedia of Womens History in America. 1996. 1996. (compare prices) Eisner, Benita, editor. The Lowell Offering: Writings by New England Mill Women (1840-1845). 1997. ( compare prices ) Flexner, Eleanor. Century of Struggle: the Womens Rights Movement in the United States. 1959, 1976. ( compare prices) Foner, Philip S. Women and the American Labor Movement: From Colonial Times to the Eve of World War I. 1979. ( compare prices) Orleck, Annelise. Common Sense and a Little Fire: Women and Working-Class Politics in the United States, 1900-1965. 1995. ( compare prices) Schneider, Dorothy and Carl J. Schneider. The ABC-CLIO Companion to Women in the Workplace. 1993. ( compare prices)

Biography of Diane Nash, Civil Rights Leader

Biography of Diane Nash, Civil Rights Leader Diane Judith Nash (born May 15, 1938) was a key figure in the US Civil Rights Movement. She fought to secure voting rights for African Americans as well as to desegregate lunch counters and interstate travel during the freedom rides.   Fast Facts: Diane Nash Known For: Civil rights activist who cofounded the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC)Born: May 15, 1938 in Chicago, IllinoisParents: Leon and Dorothy Bolton NashEducation: Hyde Park High School, Howard University, Fisk UniversityKey Accomplishments: Freedom rides coordinator,  voting rights organizer, fair housing and nonviolence advocate, and winner of the Southern Christian Leadership Conferences’ Rosa Parks AwardSpouse: James BevelChildren: Sherrilynn Bevel and Douglass BevelFamous Quote: â€Å"We presented Southern white racists with a new set of options. Kill us or desegregate.† Early Years Diane Nash was born in Chicago to Leon and Dorothy Bolton Nash during a time when Jim Crow, or racial segregation, was legal in the U.S. In the South and in other parts of the country, blacks and whites lived in different neighborhoods, attended different schools, and sat in different sections of buses, trains, and movie theaters. But Nash was taught not to view herself as less than. Her grandmother, Carrie Bolton, particularly gave her a sense of self-worth. As Nash’s son, Douglass Bevel, recalled in 2017: â€Å"My great-grandmother was a woman of great patience and generosity. She loved my mother and told her no one was better than her and made her understand she was a valuable person. There’s no substitute for unconditional love, and my mother is just really a strong testament to what people who have it are capable of.† Bolton often took care of her when she was a small child because both of Nash’s parents worked. Her father served in World War II and her mother worked as a keypunch operator during wartime.   When the war ended, her parents divorced, but her mother remarried to John Baker, a waiter for the Pullman railroad company. He belonged to the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, the most influential union for African-Americans. The union gave workers higher pay and more benefits than employees without such representation.   Her stepfather’s job afforded Nash an excellent education. She attended Catholic and public  schools, graduating from Hyde Park High School on Chicago’s south side. She then headed to Howard University in Washington, D.C., and, from there, to Fisk University in Nashville, Tennessee, in 1959. In Nashville, Diane Nash saw Jim Crow up close.   â€Å"I started feeling very confined and really resented it,† Nash said. â€Å"Every time I obeyed a segregation rule, I felt like I was somehow agreeing I was too inferior to go through the front door or to use the facility that the ordinary public would use.†Ã‚   The system of racial segregation inspired her to become an activist, and she oversaw nonviolent protests on the Fisk campus. Her family had to adjust to her activism, but they ultimately supported her efforts. A Movement Built on Nonviolence As a Fisk student, Nash embraced the philosophy of nonviolence, associated with Mahatma Gandhi and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. She took classes on the subject run by James Lawson, who’d gone to India to study Gandhi’s methods. Her nonviolence training helped her lead Nashville’s lunch counter sit-ins over a three-month period in 1960. The students involved went to â€Å"whites only† lunch counters and waited to be served. Rather than walking away when they were denied service, these activists would ask to speak with managers and were often arrested while doing so.  Ã‚   Four students, including Diane Nash, had a sit-in victory when the Post House Restaurant served them on March 17, 1960. The sit-ins took place in nearly 70 US cities, and roughly 200 students who took part in the protests traveled to Raleigh, N.C., for an organizing meeting in April 1960. Rather than function as an offshoot of Martin Luther King’s group, the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, the young activists formed the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee. As a SNCC co-founder, Nash left school to oversee the organization’s campaigns. Sit-ins continued through the following year, and on February 6, 1961, Nash and three other SNCC leaders went to jail after supporting the â€Å"Rock Hill Nine† or â€Å"Friendship Nine,† nine students incarcerated after a lunch counter sit-in in Rock Hill, South Carolina. The students would not pay bail after their arrests because they believed paying fines supported the immoral practice of segregation. The unofficial motto of student activists was â€Å"jail, not bail.† While whites-only lunch counters were a big focus of SNCC, the group also wanted to end segregation on interstate travel. Black and white civil rights activists had protested Jim Crow on interstate buses by traveling together; they were known as the freedom riders. But after a white mob in Birmingham, Ala., firebombed a freedom bus and beat the activists on board, organizers called off future rides. Nash insisted they continue. â€Å"The students have decided that we can’t let violence overcome,† she told civil rights leader the Rev. Fred Shuttlesworth. â€Å"We are coming into Birmingham to continue the freedom ride.†Ã‚   A group of students returned to Birmingham to do just that. Nash began to arrange freedom rides from Birmingham to Jackson, Mississippi, and organize activists to take part in them. Later that year, Nash protested a grocery store that would not employ African Americans. As she and others stood on the picket line, a group of white boys started throwing eggs and punching some of the protesters. The police arrested both the white attackers and the black demonstrators, including Nash. As she had in the past, Nash refused to pay bail, so she remained behind bars as the others went free.   Marriage and Activism The year 1961 stood out for Nash not only because of her role in various movement causes but also because she got married. Her husband, James Bevel, was a civil rights activist, too.   Marriage didn’t slow down her activism. In fact, while she was pregnant in 1962, Nash had to contend with the possibility of serving out a two-year prison sentence for giving civil rights training to local youth. In the end, Nash served just 10 days in jail, sparing her from the possibility of giving birth to her first child, Sherrilynn, while incarcerated. But Nash was prepared to do so in hopes that her activism could make the world a better place for her child and other children. Nash and Bevel went on to have son Douglass.   Diane Nash’s activism attracted the attention of President John F. Kennedy, who selected her to serve on a committee to develop a national civil rights platform, which later became the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The next year, Nash and Bevel planned marches from Selma to Montgomery to support voting rights for African Americans in Alabama. When the peaceful protesters tried to cross the Edmund Pettus Bridge to head to Montgomery, police severely beat them.   Stunned by images of law enforcement agents brutalizing the marchers, Congress passed the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Nash and Bevel’s efforts to secure voting rights for black Alabamians resulted in the Southern Christian Leadership Conference awarding them the Rosa Parks Award. The couple would divorce in 1968.   Legacy and Later Years After the Civil Rights Movement, Nash returned to her hometown of Chicago, where she still lives today. She worked in real estate and has participated in activism related to fair housing and pacifism alike.   With the exception of Rosa Parks, male civil rights leaders have typically received most of the credit for the freedom struggles of the 1950s and ’60s. In the decades since, however, more attention has been paid to women leaders like Ella Baker, Fannie Lou Hamer, and Diane Nash.   In 2003, Nash won the Distinguished American Award from the John F. Kennedy Library and Foundation. The following year, she received the LBJ Award for Leadership in Civil Rights from the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library and Museum. And in 2008, she won the Freedom Award from the National Civil Rights Museum. Both Fisk University and the University of Notre Dame have awarded her honorary degrees. Nash’s contributions to civil rights have also been captured in film. She appears in the documentaries â€Å"Eyes on the Prize† and the â€Å"Freedom Riders,† and in the 2014 civil rights biopic â€Å"Selma†, in which she’s portrayed by actress Tessa Thompson. She is also the focus of historian David Halberstams book â€Å"Diane Nash: The Fire of the Civil Rights Movement.†