White workers bar blacks from testifying: 1969
White construction workers bar black Americans from testifying at a U.S. Labor Department hearing on integration of the building trades in Chicago September 25, 1969.
More than 2,000 white members of building trades unions packed the hearing room at the Customs House meant for 150.
They then barred Willis Martin, the black head of the U.S. Department of Apprentice Training from entering the Customs House and later stopped Rev. C. T. Vivian of Coalition for United Community Action (which was leading the effort to integrate the crafts), despite the efforts of police to break through the crowd..
The following day more than 5,000 white workers surrounded the building. Some later marched to a nearby demonstration protesting the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 8 antiwar defendants, heckling the antiwar protesters.
George Meany, the AFL-CIO president, later denounced the Labor Department and black activists.
“There can be no basis for cooperation with so-called militant groups who pretend to represent these minority people, who threaten violence. Nor can the training of skilled mechanics be turned over to people who are completely without competence to this industry.”
The Labor Department later began negotiating weak integration plans in different cities that went unenforced.
In May 1970. a “Washington Plan” adopted by the Labor Department was denounced by Reginald Booker who headed the Washington Area Construction Industry Task Force—the local group seeking to integrate the trades.
Booker charged the plan as “devoid of promise” and “wholly unacceptable” at a June 4, 1970 press conference at the Labor Department.
Specifically, the task force said that the plan was diluted by including the predominantly white suburbs of Virginia and Maryland,
“It serves little purpose to offer an unemployed but eligible black construction worker residing in D.C. a job in Reston, Va. or some other remote construction site when in his own city the overwhelming majority of jobs will continue to go to whites,” the task force wrote in a letter to Secretary of Labor George P. Schultz.
The task force also blasted the Labor Department for excluding a number of crafts from the plan, including carpenters and operating engineers; for low quotas on unions like the sheet metal workers, for “discrimination committed over the years;” for “escape clauses” that make the plan unenforceable; and for not addressing the “restrictive” bonding and insurance requirements for federal contracts that are out of reach for most minority contractors.
Booker explained in a 1970 interview that the task force was seeking an immediate overhaul of the whole union-sponsored apprenticeship program in order to rectify past and current discrimination.
However, the Labor Department went ahead with its plan and the results 10 years later were about as Booker had predicted.
Ten years after the “Washington Plan” was initiated and six years after it was supposed to be completed, none of the craft unions met hiring goals. Only an average of 10 percent of all journeymen across all construction craft unions were from a minority group.
As Booker predicted, the federal government did not enforce the plan. The District’s mayor’s office found that more than 60 percent of all reviewed building sites in the city did not meet hiring guidelines, but only two of 1,000 contractors investigated on site were barred from doing federally assisted construction which was the ultimate penalty for non-compliance.
For a detailed account of Booker’s activism, victories and defeats, see washingtonareaspark.com/2020/01/28/the-d-c-black-liberati...
For more information and related images, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/152V4G
The photographer is unknown. The image is a United Press International photograph housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.
White workers bar blacks from testifying: 1969
White construction workers bar black Americans from testifying at a U.S. Labor Department hearing on integration of the building trades in Chicago September 25, 1969.
More than 2,000 white members of building trades unions packed the hearing room at the Customs House meant for 150.
They then barred Willis Martin, the black head of the U.S. Department of Apprentice Training from entering the Customs House and later stopped Rev. C. T. Vivian of Coalition for United Community Action (which was leading the effort to integrate the crafts), despite the efforts of police to break through the crowd..
The following day more than 5,000 white workers surrounded the building. Some later marched to a nearby demonstration protesting the conspiracy trial of the Chicago 8 antiwar defendants, heckling the antiwar protesters.
George Meany, the AFL-CIO president, later denounced the Labor Department and black activists.
“There can be no basis for cooperation with so-called militant groups who pretend to represent these minority people, who threaten violence. Nor can the training of skilled mechanics be turned over to people who are completely without competence to this industry.”
The Labor Department later began negotiating weak integration plans in different cities that went unenforced.
In May 1970. a “Washington Plan” adopted by the Labor Department was denounced by Reginald Booker who headed the Washington Area Construction Industry Task Force—the local group seeking to integrate the trades.
Booker charged the plan as “devoid of promise” and “wholly unacceptable” at a June 4, 1970 press conference at the Labor Department.
Specifically, the task force said that the plan was diluted by including the predominantly white suburbs of Virginia and Maryland,
“It serves little purpose to offer an unemployed but eligible black construction worker residing in D.C. a job in Reston, Va. or some other remote construction site when in his own city the overwhelming majority of jobs will continue to go to whites,” the task force wrote in a letter to Secretary of Labor George P. Schultz.
The task force also blasted the Labor Department for excluding a number of crafts from the plan, including carpenters and operating engineers; for low quotas on unions like the sheet metal workers, for “discrimination committed over the years;” for “escape clauses” that make the plan unenforceable; and for not addressing the “restrictive” bonding and insurance requirements for federal contracts that are out of reach for most minority contractors.
Booker explained in a 1970 interview that the task force was seeking an immediate overhaul of the whole union-sponsored apprenticeship program in order to rectify past and current discrimination.
However, the Labor Department went ahead with its plan and the results 10 years later were about as Booker had predicted.
Ten years after the “Washington Plan” was initiated and six years after it was supposed to be completed, none of the craft unions met hiring goals. Only an average of 10 percent of all journeymen across all construction craft unions were from a minority group.
As Booker predicted, the federal government did not enforce the plan. The District’s mayor’s office found that more than 60 percent of all reviewed building sites in the city did not meet hiring guidelines, but only two of 1,000 contractors investigated on site were barred from doing federally assisted construction which was the ultimate penalty for non-compliance.
For a detailed account of Booker’s activism, victories and defeats, see washingtonareaspark.com/2020/01/28/the-d-c-black-liberati...
For more information and related images, see www.flickr.com/gp/washington_area_spark/152V4G
The photographer is unknown. The image is a United Press International photograph housed in the D.C. Library Washington Star Collection.