Milton P. Webster
Milton Price Webster (1887-1965) was an American trade unionist, best remembered as the first Vice-President and leader of the Chicago division of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters (BSCP). As lead official for the union in contract negotiations, Webster was influential in securing a collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Company — the first national contract won by any black-led American trade union.
Milton P. Webster | |
|---|---|
 Milton Webster in the 1940s | |
| Born | April 23, 1887 Clarksville, Tennessee |
| Died | 1965 |
| Nationality | American |
| Known for | Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters |
During the years of World War II Webster was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a member of the Fair Employment Practice Committee and its successor organization, attempting to end racial discrimination in the defense industry. Their work helped open access to jobs for black workers, desegregating the work forces in industries with federal contracts that supplied the war effort.
Webster also later served as a member of the International Board of the American Federation of Labor.
Biography
Early years
Milton Price Webster was born on April 23, 1887, in Clarksville, Tennessee.[1] His father, Willis, was a barber and owned land in Clarksville with a small farm.[2] His mother Mary was the daughter of freed black Tennesseans (Julia (Donaldson) and Robert Fogg). Both of Mary’s parents attended a fledgling Fisk University at its inception, and her father fought for the Union Army in the Civil War.
Willis and Mary Webster moved with their family from Tennessee to the booming metropolis of Chicago as a child. The Webster family was of humble beginnings but very close. His mother Mary and father Willis, along with his maternal grandmother Julia Donaldson Fogg and his siblings, moved to a segregated south side of Chicago. It was a large close family of which Milton was the third youngest of 11 children. One of Milton’s earliest memories was of his witnessing of the Pullman Strike in 1894 first hand from his parents tenement apartment window, as white railroad strikers where beaten and shot by US Marshals and US Army Troops. This affected Milton immensely. In later years he would lament that if US troops would treat white union organizers so heinously, he could only imagine what they would do to black union men.
Although Milton was an excellent student and a voracious reader, with a desire to pursue the study of law, the family did not have the resources to send him to the University. He had may odd jobs, eventually obtaining work as a Pullman porter, a job which he held for nearly 18 years.[2] He left the job in April 1924 following a dispute with an official of the Chicago & Northwestern Railroad, for which he worked.[1]
As a porter Webster appreciated first hand the injustices levied upon the worker, the excessive work days on the rail, poor pay, burdensome tolls and fees, undue and uneven disciplinary actions against porters and maids, the weeks and months of being on the rail with no time off, the unsafe work conditions, the lack of any workers rights or advocacy, and the overt racism faced day in and day out by fellow porters and maids. While still employed as a porter, Webster decided that a Labor Union was what was needed for black workers and he, with a few others, began organizing. The Pullman company got wind of his actions and began citing him for disciplinary actions, while trying to force him to disband his efforts, quit, or be fired. Milton quit, but continued organizing porters to form a union to advocate for workers rights for Pullman porters and maids.
After leaving the railroad, Webster took a job as an assistant bailiff at the Chicago Municipal Court, later working for the Republican Party as a political functionary in that same city.[2]
He married Louie Elizabeth Harris of Cassopolis, MI, (daughter of William and Sarah Rebecca Harris) and their union bore three children, Milton Price II, Rebecca Estelle, and Jean all of whom were educated in the Chicago Public School system and secured undergraduate and graduated degrees, respectively.
Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters official
Civil Rights work
On June 25, 1941, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order 8802, prohibiting racial discrimination in the defense industry and establishing the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC).[3] Roosevelt was pushed into action by head of the BSCP A. Philip Randolph, who had been instrumental in organizing the March on Washington Movement (MOWM), which had planned to demonstrate in the nation's capital later in 1941 unless action to end racial discrimination was taken. Webster, a key organizer of the March on Washington Movement [MOWM] leading its powerful Chicago headquarter, helped MOWM emerged as a national mass movement for jobs and justice for black Americans during World War II. MOWM was part of a multi‐generational struggle of black people working for fair and full employment, better wages, union protection...racial fairness under law, political representation, fair housing, education, health care and other social wages, access to parks and similar public amenities, and urban development policies geared toward black communal preservation – in short, a minimum program for full citizenship and self‐determination.[8]
The National Committee of the March on Washington Movement, expecting that the FEPC would be largely involved with trade union affairs and thus needed an effective and experienced negotiator, selected Milton Webster as their nominee and he was duly appointed to the committee.[4]
In the context of relatively weak traditional political power, MOWM was in the vanguard of a wartime trend in which the number of African Americans in defense industries rose from 8.4 percent to 12.5 percent. Randolph and Webster recognized that E.O. 8802 and FEPC were far from adequate implements to annihilate racial inequality, but it was understood that this was the most Roosevelt was prepared to offer.[9]
The FEPC would hold a series of public hearings on racial discrimination in Los Angeles, Chicago, New York City, and Birmingham, Alabama but suffered from a lack of support from the White House for perceived overreach in attempting to end racial discrimination across all government agencies.[5] In an effort to dodge potential racial conflict and its political ramifications, in July Roosevelt moved the FEPC from independent status under Presidential supervision to the direction of the War Manpower Commission, headed by Paul V. McNutt.[5]
Only through the concerted pressure of black leaders would Roosevelt be forced to return the committee to the Executive office from the War Department.[6] Roosevelt's signing of Executive Order 9346 in May 1943 restructured the FEPC as the President's Committee on Fair Employment (remembered to historians as the "Second President's Committee").[7] Webster's talent and worth in the position was recognized as he was the only person from the original FEPC retained on the 7-member committee following its 1943 reorganization.[5]
Death and legacy
Milton Webster died unexpectedly at the Americana Hotel in Bar Harbour, Florida while attending an AFL-CIO convention with A. Philip Randolph in 1965. He was survived by his wife of over 40 years Louie Elizabeth (Harris) Webster formerly of Cassopolis, Michigan, and three children Milton II (Jean Young), Rebecca (Harry Kingslow, MD), and Jean; and 7 grandchildren.
[8][9]References
- Simmons, F.L. "Memorandum to Mr. G. A. Kelly on Milton P. Webster, c. 1930s". Call number: Pullman Company Archives, 06-01-04 Box 17 Folder 454 – via Newberry Library.
- Smith, Jessie Carney (2006). "Milton P. Webster". Notable Black American Men, Book II. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale. p. XX.
- Pfeffer (1990), p. 89.
- Pfeffer (1990), pp. 90-91.
- Pfeffer (1990), p. 91.
- Pfeffer (1990), p. 92.
- Pfeffer (1990), p. 93.
- Lang, Clarence (2009). Grassroot at the Gateway: Class Politics and Black Freedom Struggle in St. Louis, 1936-1975. Ann Arbor, Michigan: University of Michigan Press. p. 3.
- Hill, Robert A. (1995). The FBI’s RACON: Racial Conditions in the United States During World War II. Boston: Northeastern University Press,. p. 34.CS1 maint: extra punctuation (link)
- Pfeffer, Paula F. (1990). A. Philip Randolph, Pioneer of the Civil Rights Movement. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press.
Further reading
- Foner, Philip S. (1974). Organized Labor and the Black Worker, 1619-1973. New York: Praeger Publishers.
- Harris, William H. (1978). Keeping the Faith: A. Philip Randolph, Milton P. Webster, and the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, 1925-37. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press.
- LeRoy, Greg (July 1991). "The Founding Heart of A. Philip Randolph's Union: Milton P. Webster and Chicago's Pullman Porters Organize, 1925–1937". Labor's Heritage. vol. 3: 22–43.
- Tye, Larry (2004). Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class. New York: Henry Holt & Co.
- Wilson, Joseph F. (1989). Tearing Down the Color Bar: A Documentary History and Analysis of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. New York: Columbia University Press.