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Durham is a city in the U.S. state of North Carolina and the county seat of Durham County. Small portions of the city limits extend into Orange County and Wake County. With a population of 283,506 in the 2020 census, Durham is the 4th-most populous city in North Carolina, and the 71st-most populous city in the United States. The city is located in the east-central part of the Piedmont region along the Eno River. Durham is the core of the four-county Durham-Chapel Hill, NC Metropolitan Statistical Area, which had a population of 649,903 at the 2020 census. The Office of Management and Budget also includes Durham as a part of the Raleigh-Durham-Cary, NC Combined Statistical Area, commonly known as the Research Triangle, which had a population of 2,043,867 at the 2020 census.
Service Employees International Union (SEIU) is a labor union representing almost 1.9 million workers in over 100 occupations in the United States and Canada. SEIU is focused on organizing workers in three sectors: healthcare, including hospital, home care and nursing home workers; public services ; and property services.
Washington Duke was an American tobacco industrialist and philanthropist. During the American Civil War he enlisted in the Confederate States Navy. In 1865, Duke founded the "W. Duke, Sons & Co.", a tobacco manufacturer that would be merged with other companies to form conglomerate American Tobacco Company in 1890.
The Farm Labor Organizing Committee (FLOC) is a labor union representing migrant farm workers in the Midwestern United States and North Carolina.
Justice for Janitors (JfJ) is a social movement organization that fights for the rights of janitors across the US and Canada. It was started on June 15, 1990, in response to the low wages and minimal health-care coverage that janitors received. Justice for Janitors includes more than 225,000 janitors in at least 29 cities in the United States and at least four cities in Canada. Members fight for better wages, better conditions, improved healthcare, and full-time opportunities.
The American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) is the largest trade union of public employees in the United States. It represents 1.3 million public sector employees and retirees, including health care workers, corrections officers, sanitation workers, police officers, firefighters, and childcare providers. Founded in Madison, Wisconsin, in 1932, AFSCME is part of the AFL–CIO, one of the two main labor federations in the United States. AFSCME has had four presidents since its founding.
George Hardy was a Canadian-American labor leader who was president of the Service Employees International Union (SEIU) from 1971 to 1980. At the time of his death, SEIU had grown to become the fifth-largest affiliate of the AFL-CIO. Hardy was a vice president of the AFL-CIO from 1972 to 1980, and a member of its executive council. He was a former member of the Democratic National Committee and the California Democratic State Central Committee.
George Washington Watts was an American manufacturer, financier and philanthropist. Alongside James B. Duke, he co-founded the American Tobacco Company. He also founded Watts Hospital, which was the first hospital in Durham, North Carolina, and prompted the establishment of Duke University.
Central Carolina Bank and Trust (CCB) was a bank headquartered in Durham, North Carolina. It began in 1961 with the merger of Durham Bank & Trust and University National Bank of Chapel Hill, North Carolina. Central Carolina Bank and Trust merged with SunTrust Banks of Atlanta, Georgia in 2005, which in turn merged with BB&T to form Truist Financial. Its headquarters was the historic 17-story Hill Building in North Carolina.
NC Mutual was an American life insurance company located in downtown Durham, North Carolina and one of the most influential African-American businesses in United States history. Founded in 1898 by local black social leaders, its business increased from less than a thousand dollars in income in 1899 to a quarter of a million dollars in 1910. The company specialized in "industrial insurance," which was basically burial insurance. The company hired salesmen whose main job was to collect small payments to cover the insured person for the next week. If the person died while insured, the company immediately paid benefits of about 100 dollars. This covered the cost of a suitable funeral, which was a high prestige item in the black community. It began operations in the new tobacco manufacturing city of Durham, North Carolina, and moved north into Virginia and Maryland, then to major northern black urban centers, and then to the rest of the urban South.
Wilbur Hobby was an American labor unionist. He was the president of the North Carolina chapter of the American Federation of Labor – Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO) from 1969 to 1981. Hobby also was active in North Carolina politics, running unsuccessfully for the Democratic nomination for Governor in 1972.
Immediately following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr., the Silent Vigil was a social protest at Duke University that not only demanded collective bargaining rights for AFSCME Local 77, the labor union for nonacademic employees, but also advocated against racial discrimination on campus and in the surrounding community of Durham, North Carolina. Occurring from April 4, 1968, to April 12, 1968, members of the University Christian Movement began planning a campus-wide vigil in memoriam of Dr. King. Another group of undergraduate students called for a protest march to address prevalent issues concerning the primarily African-American nonacademic employees at Duke in Local 77. Together, both student groups, along with the support of Local 77, most of the teaching faculty, and civilians not affiliated with the university, sparked a non-violent demonstration that involved over 2,000 participants, making it the largest in Duke's history. The Silent Vigil stands out from other contemporary college movements due to the collaboration between primarily white students and faculty, and mainly African-American workers. Furthermore, unlike rowdier protests at the University of California, Berkeley and Columbia University, Duke's Silent Vigil received considerable praise for its peaceful approach, especially considering its surrounding Southern backdrop. Inspired by the Civil Rights Movement, the Silent Vigil not only aimed to externally change Duke's white, privileged, and apathetic image in the eyes of the Durham community, but also internally set a powerful precedent on Duke's campus for student activism in the future.
The Local 77 chapter of the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees is a Duke University labour union established in August 1965. It initially began as the Duke Employees Benevolent Society in February 1965, led by Oliver Harvey. The formation of Local 77 was directed towards improving work conditions for the working-class employees, most of whom were African-American. Members fought for minimum wage increases, improvements in working conditions, and medical benefits for employees. The union members of Local 77 demanded a systematic way of dealing with workplace complaints that was impartial to the Duke University administration. Because the majority of the union's members were African-American, several of the goals overlapped with the ideas of the Civil Rights Movement.
Erwin Mill was a textile mill in Durham, North Carolina that operated between the years of 1893 and 1986. After seeing the success of other cotton mills in the Northeast and locally in Durham, entrepreneur Benjamin N. Duke incorporated the mill in 1892 and recruited William H. Erwin to manage the enterprise. The mill's success in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was the result of Erwin's and his successors' exceptional management tactics, even when the factory hit obstacles such as the Great Depression and the unionization of its workers. The mill grew quickly in the late 19th century and early 20th century, became one of North Carolina's largest cotton mills. It originally produced muslin pouches for tobacco, but the mill would later expand its production to other fabrics, becoming one of the largest producers of denim in the world during the early 1900s. Workers at the mill enjoyed some of the best working conditions and highest wages in textile factories throughout the southern United States. Mill employees would later sign union-friendly labor agreements that were radical to the southern textile industry in the early to mid 20th century. The establishment of homes, businesses and recreation areas in the mill village was a significant factor in the development of the West Durham, especially the Ninth Street business district and the Old West Durham Neighborhood. Erwin Mill No. 1 is on the National Register of Historic Places and the mill village of West Durham is a National Historic District. An apartment complex, office building and shopping center of the same name that are built on the original site also commemorate the factory.
The Duke University Hospital unionization drives of the 1970s involved two distinct organizing efforts aimed at uniting the service workers of Duke Hospital. The drives were defined by their fusion of the fight for worker’s rights with the battle for racial equality. The first drive in 1974 was characterized by unity amongst the workers involved, including members of the American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees Local 77, and a strong spirit of activism, but failed due to political infighting and resistance by the University. The second drive, organized by a representative of the national American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) in 1978, was formed on the ideals of inclusion and keeping the union free of politics. The 1978 drive failed as well, in part due to the management company that Duke hired to instill fear in its workers, and partly due to the overall lack of spirit for organizing. Despite the failure of these drives, they offer a revealing example of the convergence of civil rights and workers rights, highlighting both the status of the civil rights movement in Durham and the difficulty of instigating grassroots-level change in a corporation the size of Duke Hospital, not to mention larger Duke University community.
David Leinail Richmond was a civil rights activist for most of his life, but he was best known for being one of the Greensboro Four. Richmond was a student at North Carolina A&T during the time of the Greensboro protests, but never ended up graduating from A&T. He felt pressure from the residual celebrity of being one of the Greensboro Four; his life was threatened in Greensboro and he was forced to move to Franklin, NC. Eventually, he moved back to Greensboro to take care of his father. Richmond was awarded the Levi Coffin Award for leadership in human rights by the Greensboro Chamber of Commerce in 1980. Richmond seemed to be haunted by the fact that he could not do more to improve his world, and battled alcoholism and depression. He died in 1990 and was awarded a posthumous honorary doctorate degree from North Carolina A&T
The Edgemont neighborhood is a community of mill works located in Durham, North Carolina. Previously known as Smoky Hollow, this area developed around the Durham Hosiery Mills in the late 19th century. Durham was a “raw whistle-stop village” along the Great North Carolina Central Rail Road that transformed into one of the largest tobacco cities in the United States. The Durham City Bull became one of the better-known tobacco trademarks with the help of the big players in the industry, W. T. Blackwell and Company and Julian Carr. The success of these tobacco mills started overflowing into other industries, mainly textile mills that produced cloth bags, socks, and other hosieries. As demands rose, communities began growing and changing around the factories. A shift in the racial make up of the workforce was reflected in Edgemont's shift to a more African American dominant community as the years progressed. Julian Carr Jr. was one of the first to allow black workers in factory level jobs to help cope with the high demands. This industrialist's decision to reach over the race barrier is part of what made Durham “the City of the New South.” The Edgemont Neighborhood is just one of many examples of how Durham became one of the more progressive and tolerant locations for African Americans in the country.
The Tobacco Workers International Union (TWIU) was a labor union representing workers in the tobacco industry in the United States and Canada.
James Michael Woodard is an American politician who has served in the North Carolina Senate from the 22nd district since 2013. A member of the Democratic Party, he represents most of Durham County.
Velma Hopkins was an American labor rights activist. In 1943 she helped organize a strike against R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which attracted over 10,000 participants from Winston-Salem, North Carolina and led to the founding of the only union to be formed by Reynolds Tobacco employees. Hopkins was a leader in Local 22, a racially integrated union led primarily by Black women. Her efforts in fighting for higher pay and fair treatment made her a leader within the African American community of Winston-Salem.
References
- 1 2 3 4 McConville, Ed (1978). "Oliver Harvey: Got to Take Some Risks," Southern Exposure, 6(2), 24.
- 1 2 3 McConville, "Oliver Harvey," 25.
- ↑ Sacks, Karen Brodkin, Caring by the Hour: Women, Work, and Organizing at Duke Medical Center (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1988), 40.
- ↑ Sacks, Caring by the Hour, 41
- 1 2 McConville, "Oliver Harvey," 27.
- 1 2 3 4 5 McConville, "Oliver Harvey," 28.
- 1 2 "Duke Employees' Organizing Efforts," Herald-Sun, 24 August 2013.
- ↑ Greene, Christina, Our Separate Ways: Women and the Black Freedom Movement in Durham, North Carolina (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2005), 106
- ↑ Dunbar, Tony, "The Old South Triumphs at Duke," Southern Changes 1(9), 5
- ↑ Sacks, Caring by the Hour, 56.