Stateside’s conversation with Gavin Strassel
The United States now honors the life and legacy of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. with a memorial day in January. However, during his lifetime, his public disapproval rate was 75%. Many Americans disliked him because of a variety of his viewpoints, from expanding civil rights protection to opposing the Vietnam War. Still, King found supporters of his work across the country, including Walter Reuther, president of the United Auto Workers Union.
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Two movements, common goals
Reuther, a white man who ran the UAW from 1946 to 1970, was born in West Virginia to Valentine Reuther, a socialist and a member of a brewery workers’ union Gavin Strassel, an UAW archivist at the Walter P. Reuther Library at Wayne State University. According to Strassel, early childhood education may have contributed to Reuther’s involvement in the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 60s.
“I think his father really taught that all people are created equal, that they all deserve labor rights, that they all deserve dignity in the workplace,” said Strassel. “That took Walter his whole life, from his early career in the labor movement until his death in 1970.”
According to Strassel, both King and Reuther saw links between civil rights and labor movements, including shared priorities on issues like the right to work and fair wages. Reuther’s support for King began early in his career.
“Reuther provided Dr. King with the resources the UAW had built to become such an important union in the country,” said Strassel. “He would have staff work on these various campaigns within the civil rights movement. … publications that the UAW has printed and that have been distributed internationally, he would receive news from Dr. Insert King. “
Strassel said some UAW locals in Michigan were integrated, notably Local 600 who represented workers at the Ford River Rouge complex in Dearborn and had a number of black leaders. And thanks to Reuther’s efforts and influence, many auto workers had a fairer view of race than workers in other sectors.
But the racist sentiment among auto workers in the US persisted, and many disagreed with Reuther’s stance on civil rights. Strassel says that in the south, white workers often went on strike because they didn’t want to work with black colleagues. This led Reuther to demand a non-discrimination clause in all union contracts, says Strassel.
“Every time a hate strike like that broke up [Reuther] I would take the side of the people who push for integration and civil rights, ”said Strassel. “He said repeatedly that he would be fine paying members who pay dues [rather] than giving in to their demands to uphold their racist practices. “
From Detroit to DC
In June 1963, a coalition of black church leaders in Detroit, as well as political and civic leaders like Reuther King, brought a civil rights demonstration to Detroit. In addition to the organizers, King led more than 125,000 people on a march down Woodward Avenue – an event known as the Detroit Walk to Freedom.
“Up to that point it was the largest civil rights demonstration,” said Strassel. “There’s no real evidence either, but legend has it that they gave Martin Luther King Jr. an office in Solidarity House, the UAW headquarters in Detroit, for this event and that he wrote part of ‘I Have’ has a dream speech he delivered later that day at the Cobo Arena in the offices of UAW headquarters. “
Reuther also worked with the Big Six, a group of black leaders who organized the March on Washington for Work and Freedom that took place two months later in the US Capitol. It was there that King delivered his famous “I Have a Dream” speech from the steps of the Lincoln Memorial. But there were a number of speakers that day, and Reuther was one of them, says Strassel. Here is an excerpt from the union leader’s speech:
“We must band together, march together, and work together until we bridge the moral gap between the noble promises of American democracy and its ugly civil rights practices. American democracy was too long in religious platitudes and too short in practical performance in this important area. One of the problems is, as I call it, there is too much high octane hypocrisy in America. There’s a lot of talk of brotherhood, and then some Americans drop the ‘brother’ and keep the hood. “
King was murdered in Memphis in 1968, where he organized with striking workers. Two years later, Reuther and his wife May were killed in a plane crash. Coretta Scott King, a civil rights activist and wife of the king, spoke at her funeral in Detroit.
According to Strassel, the UAW’s involvement in civil rights work continued after King and Reuther died. For example, the union worked against apartheid in South Africa and used government ties to put pressure on the South African leaders.
More recently, following the police assassination of George Floyd in 2020, UAW President Rory Gamble called for an end to systemic racism in the US and asked union members to pause eight minutes and 46 seconds to honor Floyd’s memory.
This post was written by Nell Ovitt, Production Assistant at Stateside.
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