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BLACK UNION POWER IN THE STEEL MILLS
GEORGE POWERS

Richard Clay is a native of Montgomery, Alabama. Twenty-seven years ago he gathered up his meager belongings and headed north. In Chicago he heard people say "jobs are plentiful and wages high."

After a two year stretch at the Chicago stock yards at miserable pay, Mr. Clay landed a job in a steel mill. Steel mill management herded newly hired Blacks into the "yard" department as laborers. Some time later, a friend told Mr. Clay that there was an opening in the pipe mill. He applied, and to his surprise, was hired. He held down that job until a few months ago when he took his company pension. 

About ten years after Clay, Sr., entered the steel mill, his son Richard Clay, a young Korean War veteran, followed his dad into the same plant. Not much had changed regarding job opportunities for Black workers in the steel mills during that ten year period. Young Clay, like his father, was saddled with a low-paying job with little promise of any advancement. But there was one difference. Richard, Jr., was of the "new breed." He took great pride in his Black heritage, manhood, union membership and his principles. Nobody was going to push him around!

unity and struggle spell progress
Young Clay and a group of Black union brothers decided to challenge the steel corporation's racist policy of job discrimination. As he recalls it, "We were successful in securing the support of 'good union men' among the white workers in the mill. Thus, a coalition was formed!"

This group made a careful survey of the whole mill--shop by shop,

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George Powers worked in steel mills for 25 years and was a steel union organizer in Pennsylvania, Kentucky, Maryland, and Missouri. He now lives in Chicago where he writes and lectures as a member of the Frank London Brown Historical Association.

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