MARCIA FISHMAN: Okay, today is, um, Friday, February 10th. This is an
interview by Marcia Fishman with Al Kehrer, uh, conducted at Georgia State University at the, um, Southern Labor Archives, and we can get started, I think. Let me make sure that my little needles are moving. Hang on. Ok. Well, let's start with where and when you were born.AL KEHRER: I was born in Brighton, on a farm outside of Brighton, Michigan, on
January 11th, 1921.FISHMAN: What, um, how many siblings did you have?
KEHRER: I was the 5th of 8.
FISHMAN: And what did your parents do?
KEHRER: My father, when I was born, he was a dairy farmer. My mother was a house
-- my mother was a mother, she…had her hands full.FISHMAN: Was Brighton a farming community?
00:01:00KEHRER: Yeah. Oh, yes. Yeah. [inaudible]
FISHMAN: And then how long did you stay there?
KEHRER: Um, I was about 2 or 3 years old, I guess.
FISHMAN: And where did your family go to?
KEHRER: Moved to Detroit, and my father became…was involved in the auto industry.
FISHMAN: Where did he work?
KEHRER: Um, it was Briggs Body -- at that time, automobiles were made -- the
bodies were made of wood. And that was his, he got into the wood making part of the whole business.FISHMAN: What year was that?
KEHRER: It must have been twenty-three, twenty-four, something like that.
FISHMAN: Real early.
KEHRER: Yeah. And, um, he ended up as part -- a member of management. But, he
went into the design department, where they used wood to make the pattern, the 00:02:00design, the patterns, where…which soon became -- the tool and die people made --.FISHMAN: Right, I was going to say the dies.
KEHRER: Made the metal parts.
FISHMAN: Uh huh.
KEHRER: But that's where he finished up, in that department.
FISHMAN: Did your mother work outside the home ever?
KEHRER: Uh, yeah, my father was -- well, he and I stopped talking to each other
after a while because he was such a character. And, um, he had a very roving eye. And so there was a period of time when, when she had to go to work. She became a beautician, and she may have had another job, but that was essentially it. In order to support the family.FISHMAN: Were they native-born Americans?
KEHRER: Yes, but they were second generation. Ah, matter of fact, my mother went
00:03:00to a German-speaking school as a child, and the whole thing changed with World War I and, and the…what had been a pretty much cohesive German community began to split off and and Americanize.FISHMAN: Sure. I know people changed their names.
KEHRER: Yeah. Uh, my family didn't. Her…her maiden name was Mueller; it
became Miller. Uh, but, uh, there were very important changes in terms of outside, behaving relationships in the whole community. And the best thing you could say about my father at that time was he was a Democrat and a big supporter 00:04:00of Al Smith, who ran for the Presidency. I remember as a little one distributing Al Smith's literature up and down the street, and that kind of thing.FISHMAN: Where did his Democratic predilections come from, you think?
KEHRER: I'm not sure . . . of course, the various, I don't know whether it was
Polish or German or, well it was always substantially, well probably more than anything else my family was Catholic. And that obviously, had an impact on the politics, both local and up to national. Matter of fact, my first school was a parochial school.FISHMAN: Which one was that?
00:05:00KEHRER: Um, precise name was Assumption Gratiot, on [inaudible] Avenue.
FISHMAN: So many are gone now, I know.
KEHRER: Really.
FISHMAN: Archdiocese closed a lot of the Catholic schools in Detroit.
KEHRER: It was there the last time I went through there. I don't think very much
of Detroit.FISHMAN: You were raised on the east side.
KEHRER: Yes. And so I have not been there very much.
FISHMAN: Well, you were there during the Depression too. It must have----
KEHRER: Oh yeah, right, that, and you know, but I left Detroit as fast as I
could get out of there. ---I took my wife back there to show her where I grew up. That's been about 10 or 15 years ago, I guess. The…the church and the school were still there. But, [inaudible]. It should have been closed a long time ago.FISHMAN: As you were getting to your teen years in high school, what did you
00:06:00expect to do next, at that point? Was that before World War II?KEHRER: That was before World War II, yeah. Well, I simply went to school, you
know. Oh I did, I did, well. What I…what I ended up, was being substantially influenced by several teachers at Denby. And, just from that I got interested in Labor movement.FISHMAN: Really, how did they interest you?
KEHRER: Well, one was Florence Sweeney, who is now dead. She was the first
president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers. And she took me under her wing -- would invite me over for dinner and evening discussion groups and that kind of thing. We'd talk about politics and, and unions and, and all that kind of 00:07:00thing. The other one was a man by the name of Max Jaslow. Max Jaslow was also an English teacher. He was much more, radical, let's say, than she was. Uh, he used to teach workers' classes at night just for the UAW, that's how I got involved with the UAW. Um, but, he was a very nifty guy. He had, he didn't like the school library, so he had his own library in the classes, classroom. And, uh, you got extra credits for reading the books in his library. And, uh, his books were not terribly different, from others but there was always some 00:08:00little influence there. And, you also got extra credit if you went to the night classes. And you also got extra credit if you, you -- there was in Detroit at that time a very, very, very good lecture series at Central -- Central Methodist Church in downtown. And, if you went to those, you got extra credit. So, he had lots of incentives for his students.FISHMAN: Right
KEHRER: When you got to the UAW Hall and sat in on the classes, which teach
things like public speaking, and parliamentary law, all the basic stuff, and if you were there in the hall, and there was a picket line going on, next thing you knew you were heavily switching your hand and you were out in the picket line. It just flowed very easily, very naturally, and of course Detroit at that time was a very exciting place. If you weren't on strike you were a nobody, you know it was just a – and, going back to the family, my father was a member of 00:09:00management and he used to be, he used to come home boasting about how we crossed the picket line.FISHMAN: Wow.
KEHRER: And that hurt very badly, and we had many very knock-down drag-out kinds
of arguments about….about what he was doing.FISHMAN: Was your mother more supportive of your activities?
KEHRER: Yeah, I guess. Um, she was never very political or very much involved.
She had, you know, with eight kids, she had her -- we all were -- inevitably there were all kinds of problems [inaudible] But you know, as far as, she used to supervise more or less the, ah, work that we did. We all had a very strong 00:10:00push to help support the family, especially during the deficit and depression. At one point, my father was laid off and he sold butter and eggs door to door to keep things going. We had our own house, he had built the house. So from that standpoint, we didn't have that kind of pressure.FISHMAN: They must have managed to stay off of welfare and general assistance.
KEHRER: Yeah, well, of course, at that time it wasn't what we have today. I
called my oldest brother, worked for WPA at one point or whatever it was called at that time, pick and shovel kind of work.FISHMAN: Right.
00:11:00KEHRER: But my brothers and sisters were pretty resourceful. I started out, my
first paid work was as a shoeshine boy.FISHMAN: Where at?
KEHRER: Right down the street. I was not very good.
FISHMAN: How can you be not good as a shoeshine boy?
KEHRER: Well, you have to really be able to shine shoes. [Laughter.] I didn't do
very well. But, then I geared up to buy a little paper route. So that was my next -- three-dollar bicycle, which wouldn't run half the time. That was tough because my mother would make sure I got up at 3:30 in the morning, you know, and it was not bad in spring and summertime, but in the depths of winter it was 00:12:00pretty rough. But, she finally persuaded me that I ought to move on to something, because, now I'm talking about I was 11, 12. If I added it all up, I would just about break even. We had the nastiest, we had nasty customers who would insist on paying you by the month. And then by the time you got around to collecting at the end of the month, they had moved. So you always struggled to just keep the thing going.FISHMAN: Let me make sure that this picked up.
[Break]
FISHMAN: Okay, um. You mentioned Central Methodist too, just going back to that.
What lectures were those, what talks? 00:13:00KEHRER: The minister's name was Henry Hitt Crane. Fabulous preacher. And he had
a, a, uh, Wednesday night public lecture series, which had all kinds of -- Norman Tallens came, and, ah, Carl Sandburg came, all the very big names for that period in time. It was just a general kind of forum thing, very – you know, I remember it was very inspirational and very.... The League for Industrial Democracy, which is still around, had a road team that went out and spoke everywhere. They routinely were signed on to Central. Big crowds. We 00:14:00always with a big…a big group of students sat in the balcony.FISHMAN: What did you do after you grad -- finished high school?
KEHRER: Oh, well let's, I hadn't gotten to that period in time.
FISHMAN: That's true, I wouldn't want to skip, we can back up.
KEHRER: During that period of time, my -- we have to finish my work.
FISHMAN: True. Oh, that's right. You're losing money on a paper route.
KEHRER: Then I came to work for a ice house. I don't know whether you know what
a ice house is.FISHMAN: Sure, because they had to deliver ice.
KEHRER: Well, sold ice to people that drove up in their car. You…you put the
50-lb. block on the rear bumper, and they took it home. Yeah, I worked there for 00:15:00a man that was -- you know, after a while you get to know how mean and how cheap they are. I worked half days, mostly when school was out. But always when…even when school was on. I worked half days for twenty-five cents. And Saturdays from 8 till about 10 for 50 cents. The interesting thing about that was the 50 cents was hard work, and I was just a skinny little kid. But the half days, if I didn't work the whole half days, he would deduct the hours I didn't work. So, I would end up with like, instead of 25 cents, I would end up with 13 cents. 00:16:00FISHMAN: How old were you?
KEHRER: I was about 13, I guess. But I think the important thing is my mother
always encouraged us to be involved that way. I mean, whatever we could bring in. It was close by, didn't have to worry about where I was. But I used to tell students and workers afterwards, you're exploited. You're getting 75 cents an hour, 13 cents for four or five hours is hardly a living wage.FISHMAN: No. And all the money went to the family then, is that the way you did it?
KEHRER: Well I just kept back some always, because I have to have some money to
00:17:00go to the movies and, um, and -- but most of it went to the family.FISHMAN: You probably took trolleys, right? Or did your family have a car?
KEHRER: Oh yeah, well, you know, Detroit at that time had streetcars. The
streetcars were expensive, they were a nickel.FISHMAN: That could eat up your wages pretty quickly.
KEHRER: Exactly. I didn't go downtown very often You walked -- I walked to
school. I walked to most places I wanted to go. But if you wanted to go downtown, it cost you ten cents round trip. And, it was…FISHMAN: Did your brothers and sisters work several kinds of jobs too?
KEHRER: Oh, yeah. All various kinds of things, and just you name it, they did it
at one time or another. As a matter of fact, when we have family reunions now 00:18:00and laugh about the kinds of…the kinds of things that we did. Anyhow, that was important in terms of the whole work and school experience. During that period of time, I left the church and then -- being involved in all these groups, then being involved in the labor movement, it radicalized me.FISHMAN: That must have been hard with your family, leaving the church?
KEHRER: Yes, that was a very difficult time. My mother had great problems with
that. Because, ah, sending all us kids to parochial school was -- to be able to pay -- it wasn't a lot, but still it was not cheap then. But, ah, that was 00:19:00involved in the whole thing too. The, uh, I saw the church as a very bad influence on working people.FISHMAN: How was it so, you think?
KEHRER: Well you know, we had a -- the pastor of the Church was Father Joseph
Marx, and he was a mean son of a bitch. He was. He would stand up in church on Sunday and preach about the people who were going to go to hell because they put pennies in the offering box and offering basket. And the…that was bad enough that he was threatening them in terms of fundamental kinds of, you're going to go to hell, kinds of things. But also he would go on to say, it was very 00:20:00difficult for the ushers to count. And he was bad. And, you know, we went to confession regularly. I was an altar boy for a couple of years. I went to confession regularly, and I used to time it so I would avoid his being in the confessional because he was such a mean bastard and he just. You know, all kinds of sins that he would spark you. And he would rant and rave and threaten, scare the hell out of you, you know. And..FISHMAN: Now in the 30's too, I think, is when you had Father Coughlin.
KEHRER: Oh yeah, he was a very big influence in Detroit. Matter fact he had a
big influence on my father.FISHMAN: Did he?
KEHRER: Yeah.
FISHMAN: I was going to ask what your family thought of him.
00:21:00KEHRER: Oh, yeah. That was also part of my separation from my father. My father
became involved in a crazy outfit called Direct Credits. I remember a number of crazies wandering around with the solutions to everything. And this guy was -- what was his name? It will come to me. Anyway, he organized big groups, but they were all kind of paramilitary with uniforms and bands, and they didn't carry guns, but they had all the other trappings, you know. And my father became a general in that outfit. Looking back on it, it was very sad, very pathetic, but we were…we were put into marching groups, and we had parades. 00:22:00FISHMAN: Was his basis political or community or religious?
KEHRER: Oh yeah, well he, he, they didn't vote particularly, but this guy wrote
lots of little pamphlets. And, um, he had some strange ideas about taxation and property and -- I guess, if you know, looking over the history of America, he was not out of place. I mean, there have been lots of them. But, my father was very much involved, I guess, all the rest of his life. He was involved…FISHMAN: And then, Father Coughlin, did they listen to him at all?
KEHRER: Yeah, yeah.
FISHMAN: He was on the radio locally and nationally.
KEHRER: Oh yeah. And, um, but, you know, that was also part of the whole. I
guess, I'm not sure whether or not if Direct Credits was a subsidiary or was very closely aligned to the whole fascist thinking. But that was all going on at 00:23:00the same period of time, and, the more my father got into that, the more I was going in the other direction. And then, we developed a group of young radicals, some of who were students of Max Jaslow's, some of them were from outside -- other places. Later on, during my high school, we used to meet regularly on Sunday afternoon. We'd go out in the park and have discussion groups. It was co-ed, but not any sexual. It was all big intellects, you know. Big talk. So that went on through this entire period of time. And it was kind of unique; not 00:24:00only was it all labor-oriented, but several of them went on and became officers in their local union. They're in the Auto Workers. But they…we were also integrationists.FISHMAN: I was gonna say, I was wondering if it was interracial.
KEHRER: Yeah, we…it was a big point to work on this. And you know, we would do
crazy things like going down to the center of Detroit and going to black night clubs, you know. Heard great music. Yeah.FISHMAN: I'll bet.
KEHRER: That kind of thing. And we evolved and several went on after high
school. Went to…to... Wayne State. When it was called -- What was it called?FISHMAN: What was Wayne State?
KEHRER: Wayne…Wayne something. Wayne College or something. I don't think it
was even a University then. In any event, we would invite blacks to come to our 00:25:00little discussion groups, which they did, and we worked on this. Then most of us became Young Socialists. The Young Socialist League was very big at that time. I got involved in that in a meeting kind of way. Marching and pickets and---.FISHMAN: Was that still high school years or after?
KEHRER: Both.
FISHMAN: That must have been, was it frightening? Especially the inter-racial
aspect. I know my mother tells me a story of one of her first political activities and, I forget what it was even, now. There was a party maybe, something, but being accompanied back to the bus stop by two African-American men who she had met there and being hooted at and called names, just on the 00:26:00street, especially being a woman, was even more controversial. Did that feel safe?KEHRER: Yeah, oh, yeah. That was her…kind of a real concern. I guess it's
because I personally have never really felt physical fear about anything, whether… since that, whatever it was. It's still a little bit of difficulty in the family because I'm very casual about -- well, that happened, you know. It's never doing any kind of worry or fear about that aspect of the community now.FISHMAN: And during your early years in Detroit, what were the messages in your
00:27:00home about race and integration?KEHRER: Largely silent, I guess. It's not something that was talked about. And
then, during that period of time, that's probably because of Florence Sweeney and Max Jaslow, I began to read. [laughter] While the rest of the family were out playing baseball or or doing something else, I would get my four books at a time from the library and read. You know. And…and…they had an influence on the kinds of things I would read, so if I couldn't get a hold of them or anything; I would take them from their libraries. You know, my brothers and sisters still talk about -- all you had was your book. Your nose buried in it, 00:28:00you know. And.FISHMAN: Did you take it everywhere?
KEHRER: I would find a hideout somewhere, yeah, [laughter] wherever it was
quiet. That also was going on about the same period of time. You know, I did very well in those -- wherever Max Jaslow -- I tried to get him for a teacher all the time, you know, it was a pleasure to, to... I'd get all A's from him just by all my extra-curricular activities. I had a difficult time other than that. Oh, two or three things. I had one English teacher who was…she was quite conservative with making us read stupid stuff. Worst class I ever had was typing. We had mandatory typing -- in order to graduate you had to take a typing 00:29:00class. I couldn't ever reach 50 words per minute because we had to use these stupid form letters from the business community, you know. The writer of the letter would be describing these terrible workers there. And I would get so angry that I couldn't pass the exam. I was so frustrated having to type this stupid stuff. And so that was a tough time, and we had to have it in order to graduate.FISHMAN: Boys and girls, so it wasn't just training girls to become secretaries.
KEHRER: No. I was in college prep. I remember this -- my counselor, was, you
know. Considering everything, I guess he wasn't so bad. He had to deal with people like me. And this…this typing teacher would -- and I would pitch a fit, 00:30:00slam the book on the floor and say, 'I'm not going to do that.' She would complain to him. And counseled me. 'You have no options, you have to pass that 50 words a minute.' She finally came to him and said, 'He's failing. He ain't…he ain't going to pass it.' He persuaded her. 'Look, pass him. Give him a D, you know so he can get through this.' They negotiated it and finally she said to him, 'Look, I'll give him a D, but he's gotta repeat the class. But he can't repeat it in my class, I won't have him in my class. He can go to another' [inaudible] I finally lived through that thing. But, um, 00:31:00it was, you know, so it was not always easy. Then, but, before I graduated. . .FISHMAN: So you were saying that they spent 2 days looking for the captain that
had gone overboard and never found him.KEHRER: It was really ridiculous, you know. And, so we then took off again for
Tokyo, and we finally made it. The communications in those days are not like they are today. Well, they're probably about the same. We got to the harbor there on the way into -- and we were going to end up in Yokohama. The navy came alongside and said, 'Who are you?' My captain [inaudible] a hand megaphone 00:32:00to show him who he was. 'We don't, that's not true. You're not him, because we have a message here that you were washed overboard.' [laughter] They said, 'Oh, well, you know, par for the course! Of course messages have been going across back and forth; all over the Pacific trying to describe our condition. But, anyway, we spent November to April in the drydock in Yokohama. This is right after the war.FISHMAN: Two months or so after surrender.
KEHRER: Yeah. Yeah. Horrible, but fascinating kind of place because so much of
00:33:00Tokyo had been fire-bombed. I was real lucky, when I was in school, in college, we had an exchange program with Japan. One of the exchange students was a young woman by the name of Kyoka Takeda. Kyo was interning when the war broke out, and finally ended up teaching Japanese to American flyers at Yale. Then she was exchanged for an American diplomat. He, as it turned out, I didn't know this, when she was in school, but she's a member of a very high-ranking Japanese 00:34:00family. And…Japanese Christian by the way. And I remembered when I was in Tokyo that the Japanese philosopher Hayakawa was her mentor. And I said, 'Well, I want to see what has happened here.' I searched up Hayakawa and he said, 'Oh yes, she's still around. She works with the YWCA here.' So I met her again. That was really quite an experience because then, ultimately, she took me around Japan. We took a train -- as the purser pharmacist mate, I wrote all kinds of orders in the captain's [inaudible]. One of the orders I wrote was directing the military to give -- we were in kind of a no man's land as 00:35:00far as the military is concerned. We were under military rules, but we weren't military.FISHMAN: [inaudible]
KEHRER: Military…most people didn't like us particularly. I would write
these fancy orders, among which was "Lieutenant E. T. Kehrer was to be given every courtesy on his trip to Kobe, Japan. He will be accompanied by Kyoka Takeda, his interpreter." That caused a lot of eyebrows being raised, but I was successful in getting it done. She took me down to her family home which is near . . . She had gone to Kobe College, which is there where the earthquake had 00:36:00just been. And took me to her family home. And we…fascinating experience. Her brother, who was then the head of the family, took us to [inaudible] to Kyoto, [inaudible], it was very exciting. And, of course, I was able to get an insight into what…what was going on. We'd do trips every time I wanted to go somewhere. Write another order. But we…the Japanese finally got our ship working, and we left for home. Stopped off in Hawaii to get fresh fruits and 00:37:00vegetables. And we were supposed to go first to the West Coast; then they changed our orders to go onto Mobile. And so had to go through the Panama Canal. We were the…we had the distinction of being the only ship to completely block the Panama Canal during the war.FISHMAN: How did you manage that?
KEHRER: We broke down. And the current carried us sideways, so we got jammed
into the canal. So, by this time the navy was calling us Japan's secret weapon. They would make these elaborate rendezvous plans for us, like rendezvous at [inaudible] or rendezvous at Anawetop. They would wait for us, and they'd give us up finally because we had broken down or stumbling along. It was a funny 00:38:00ship. It is a long story, but let me tell you what happened. We finally got into Mobile, broken down. They pulled us by tug all the way up. But tug boats – you know, most ships if you noticed them have two tug boats because a ship that's being steered by a tugboat --FISHMAN: Right. You would have to have two of them in front to do it right.
KEHRER: Right.
FISHMAN: I have a gut feeling that wouldn't work right, I don't know why. [inaudible]
KEHRER: Otherwise you would go one direction, then you'd keep going while the
tug boat is going the other direction. [laughter] I spent part of the entire trip filling out insurance papers because we were knocked down out of the buoys and we only had one tug boat. We got up -- we had a lot of interesting stuff -- my captain by that time -- he started out black-headed, he was absolutely white 00:39:00when we got there. It was pretty hard on him, he was also captain, he didn't do well. We broke down all these blues on the way up to Mobile channel. Then they had a pilot who took the ship over [inaudible]. At this point we had no power. They were shouting through a megaphone. The understanding was when we got 20 feet of the dock in Mobile, the first mate was to drop the anchor. We had to do it manually. Didn't have any power. While the pilot was doing that -- the 00:40:00first mate -- he also asked the people on shore 'how much water are we drawing here?' The tug boats were also pushing on us toward the dock. The agent on shore said, '18 feet.' We were drawing about 24 feet. We ended up about a good stone's throw from the dock, stuck out in the water in the mud. The crew left. Within 15 minutes, there were 3 people left on the ship: the captain, myself, and the first mate who had been stuck out of the [inaudible]. The crew 00:41:00abandoned ship. That was a big scandal, too, because they tried to make charges against the crew and all this kind of stuff. In those days -- I went on to Yale, finally.FISHMAN: Right.
KEHRER: In those days, the back page of the New York Times was a shipping news
page. Fascinating. If you know anything about the sea, you could tell which ship was going where, and what it was carrying, and how many passengers it had. I used to read it regularly. First thing I read is a story that the navy has commissioned -- that ship went into moth balls up in Mobile. The navy 00:42:00recommissioned her as now, then, the USS Mission San Miguel. That was the name of the ship. That winter, New York had a tug boat strike. Harry Truman finally ordered the navy to bring in oil for emergency public -- for hospitals. Front page of the New York Times: "Navy Mission Ship Breaks Down." Exactly! Exactly! I know what ship that is. It could only be one to break down in such a time. It was true. The Mission San Miguel broke down at sea and they had to tow it into port.FISHMAN: Who ended up towing it, then, if they are on strike?
00:43:00KEHRER: The navy, the navy did their own. The following spring there's a story
on the shipping page: Navy vessel goes aground in Anawita Atoll. I said, 'Of course. I know what ship that is. That's the Mission San Miguel.' It was. It is still on the beach at Anawita.FISHMAN: Really?
KEHRER: If I live long enough, I'm going to go
FISHMAN: [inaudible] You should go visit.
KEHRER: I'm going to go visit. Because, I'm going to walk up to that ship
there resting on the beach and kick it. Kick it. Kick it.FISHMAN: It deserves at least that. That's amazing.
KEHRER: Anyway. Quite a story. [laughter]
FISHMAN: They could have made a movie of that, great. I'd go see it. Like the
wackiest ship in the army type movie. [laughter]KEHRER: Yeah, right. It was wacky all right.
FISHMAN: You mentioned you did some college before the Marines.
KEHRER: Oh yeah, yeah. I was -- three years.
FISHMAN: Oh, so you almost finished. That was at Olivet?
KEHRER: Yeah.
FISHMAN: What were you studying there?
00:44:00KEHRER: Political science. Political science.
FISHMAN: Did you think you were going to teach or what?
KEHRER: I guess the more I got into it, the less -- well, it was the certificate
that was -- a big drag. The guy who taught the education stuff there was terrible. You know. It was very discouraging. But -- I did very well. My undergraduate work was pretty good, I must say.FISHMAN: When you came out you went back to Olivet to finish up?
KEHRER: I finished up in '46, I graduated in '47.
FISHMAN: And then….'47, then you went straight to Yale? How did you pick there?
00:45:00KEHRER: Well, I had saved a little money from the Merchant Marines. You know,
when you are in the Pacific you are on triple pay, war zone pay. So, you know, unless you've gambled there was no place to spend the money, so I put it all in the bank. Um, I actually had a fellowship to the University of Sweden at Gothenberg. After thinking about, you know if I'd really want to go to graduate school, I really like to go some place with a name, that's got some prestige, maybe somebody would pay attention.FISHMAN: Looks good on a resume.
KEHRER: Yeah. Exactly. Yale at that time had a one-year crash masters' degree.
I had just about enough money for that. That's why I went to Yale. My…my 00:46:00academic work was very good.FISHMAN: And after…when you left Yale in '48, at some point you became a
field rep for the AFL Workers . . .KEHRER: After I got my degree. In June of..of '48.
FISHMAN: '48. How did you decide to do that?
KEHRER: I was just job hunting. I was interested in working with education.
Florence Sweeney, she knew a lot of people. She…she was the vice president of the National Teacher's Union, AFT. A fellow by the name of Arthur Elder cropped up. He was a big wheel in the AFT. He was still at that time director of 00:47:00the labor studies program at the University of Michigan. I guess it was at Michigan State, before it was all [inaudible]. You know, I talked to these people and said, 'Be on the lookout for -- I'm eager to get started.' This job came open. John Conners, who is the director of the Worker's Education Bureau -- Worker's Education Bureau by the way was the so-called educational arm of the old AFL. They didn't have an education department. This was kind of -- AFL is in Washington, Worker's Education Bureau is in New York. The AFL contributed some money. John Conners had been a organizer at one point for the 00:48:00AFT. So when they called him and said, 'Hey, we have got a hot shot young prospect . . .' Well, you know, I was…it was difficult to break into anything. And, so, you know, I was going to do practically anything. I got paid 65 dollars a week. It's a magic number somehow. Living in New York -- even in those days that was not easy, but, you know, it was an interesting experience. I got to travel a lot. Now, my special task was to develop programs with various 00:49:00levels of unions, what we then called human relations. It was to get people to deal with the whole question of race, very elementary. As a matter of fact, one of the terrible things we used to do -- put out little conferences, discussion groups, what not, using the little movie that Frank Sinatra made called "The House We Live in."FISHMAN: Oh, right?
KEHRER: Yeah, we used that as a basis to start the discussion. What is this
house we live in?FISHMAN: What unions were you working with?
KEHRER: Largely with central bodies and state federations. Some unions, I worked
00:50:00with the laborers, I worked with the teachers. Um, there were 6, 8 or 10 different unions that were making some pass at putting an education program together. You know. It was not a very successful program. But we did…we did some interesting work.FISHMAN: What kind of attitudes did you come up against? [inaudible]
KEHRER: Mostly, what you are talking about? What kind of problem are you raising
with us? We don't have…we don't have any such difficulty. Now that union over there might, or this state fed. over there down the road might.FISHMAN: So the leadership that you were dealing with was probably almost all white?
00:51:00KEHRER: Yeah. Almost totally male. Yeah. Yeah. We did some interesting – you
know, without thinking, we did some important things. One of the things we did was -- John Conners was named US representative to in Beirut at the very time of the AFL convention which took place in Cincinnati. I helped run the…the education committee of the convention, which you routinely write all this stuff and no one pays attention. We put a resolution to the full convention that the AFL contributes 35 thousand dollars a year to the Workers Education Bureau. Now, 00:52:00that education committee report was the last item on the agenda before the convention was closing. And I guess it was read, I don't remember it being read, but it was approved. When Conners got back, we said, 'Well, what a great thing we've done; we're going to get, you know, 35 thousand dollars from the AFL.' George Meany was then the secretary-treasurer. And one month went by, two months went by, three months went by, and no money. So Conners, he wrote to me saying, 'The convention minutes reflect that the AFL is supposed to give us 35 thousand dollars.' Well, I didn't know this. The committee obviously didn't know it. The committee was made up of all delegates from the various unions to the convention. The rule in the AFL was, you could pass resolutions 00:53:00like, "We think you ought to contribute more money to the incoming executive council and should do so." You never recommend in a convention resolution a specific amount of money. Well, Meany had a -- he apparently went through the roof. 'How dare they do something like this!' The upshot of that was, that he says, "Well, if we are going to get into that kind of money, we are going to have more to say about what goes on" And he --. That was after I left after I went to the ILG. They moved the office down to the AFL building, and it became the Department of Education.FISHMAN: So they could keep an eye on them.
KEHRER: Absolutely, exactly. 'Cause, when it was in New York, he never paid
00:54:00attention to it. It was something off there in the other world. So, you know, without…by the way, it was an excellent idea that it happened that way, otherwise we were always the 5th wheel out there somewhere.[Break]
FISHMAN: Now we are finally ready to resume the interview with Al Kehrer on
Friday, February 17, at Georgia State. We had talked about wanting to back up a little bit and for sure talk about your experiences at Olivet College. When did you go there?KEHRER: It was in '39 - '41. The thing I wanted to get on record, was that
00:55:00Olivet in those days was a very special place. It was headed by a man by the name of Joseph Brewer who had been a Rhodes scholar who had worked and studied at Oxford University a great deal. He transferred to Olivet the Oxford system of tutorials. We had a class size of no more than 7 persons in each class, and you had your own…your own tutor. Small college, of course, only 300-350 people. And, um, it was a very exciting place in terms of learning to do research and 00:56:00independent study. No…no large classes, no large lectures, and a very unique kind of approach to education, which has been over the years picked up by a number of colleges and universities as a way to do business.FISHMAN: What made you decide to go to Olivet?
KEHRER: Well, I had a couple of friends from this group I talked about earlier
who ended up there. They were very high on it. My alternative at that time was to go to the University of Michigan, which then had roughly 20 thousand students. [laughter] And the contrast seemed to be too much for me. Also, at Olivet I was able to negotiate a rather big scholarship and a work system, so I could afford to go there. I started at Olivet with about $125 to my name and so 00:57:00it was…that was a key part of the whole thing. It was a great faculty, very badly underpaid. My tutor who went out…who left there and became president of a college in Maine, finally, before he retired, was earning $3,600 a year and then not getting paid half the time. So, about all he had was the love of teaching and a house to live in. It was…I just wanted to make that point for the record.FISHMAN: What did you study while you were there?
KEHRER: I was…it was political science.
FISHMAN: You worked while you were attending Olivet?
KEHRER: Oh, yeah. In those days, you had student work program. And I worked the
maximum number of hours. 00:58:00FISHMAN: Did you still do some work with the UAW at that time? Or…
KEHRER: I was on the side connected with what was going on. As a matter of fact,
one of the people from the UAW became a professor of economics at Olivet. His name was Tucker Smith. [inaudible] photographs of the goons beating up the Reuthers took the photographs and Tucker Smith was the one that took most of the [inaudible].FISHMAN: That was the battle of the overpass?
KEHRER: It may have been that one, yes. He, of course, still had his hand in the
labor movement, encouraged by interest. Attend RB meetings, hearings, that kind of thing.FISHMAN: Well, in fact, somewhere in the background of the materials there was a
note from somebody that Reuther had urged you to go to Olivet. Is there any truth to that, that you remember? 00:59:00KEHRER: Um, I don't remember . . .
FISHMAN: No?
KEHRER: It's entirely possible.
FISHMAN: So you were there for what -- about two years?
KEHRER: Mostly finished three years. It was the kind of program where you -- it
was so individualized that you kind of did all your required work at your own speed. And, um, there were no A, B, C, D, E grades or anything like that. It was a rating of superior, pass or unsatisfactory kind of thing. Lots of writing, lots of essays. Which is kind of the whole Oxford kinds of things, lots of research. We did lots of independent study system. Which was part of the whole Oxford system. 01:00:00FISHMAN: Then you went back there after the war?
KEHRER: After the war I got my senior year done there.
FISHMAN: I can't remember if we had talked or not, I think we did about how
you came to work after Yale for the AFL Worker's Education Bureau. Why that particular position?KEHRER: Well, I was job hunting and I was definitely interested in the AFL
Worker's Education kinds of prograI tried very hard to get on with the CIO Education Department with Kermit Eby, who's the head of it. But, um, the opportunity opened at the Worker's Education Bureau. I, of course, as I mentioned earlier, had friends in relatively high places in the education field. 01:01:00Florence Sweeney who was then, I think, the vice president of the International union. Arthur Elder, who was in the field, he ran the Worker's Education Bureau -- worker's education program -- in the whole state of Michigan. So those people, once the job was announced, were very helpful.FISHMAN: Who was your…who was the people you worked under at the Bureau?
KEHRER: I was directly under -- we had a very small staff -- I was under a man
by the name of John Conners.FISHMAN: Okay.
KEHRER: He was the director.
FISHMAN: How many other folks were there in the Bureau?
KEHRER: Maybe 4, 5 mostly in the office kinds of things. I was the only field
person. It was [an] interesting and challenging kind of thing to go out and simply try to set up 7 hours of conferences and training sessions. As a matter 01:02:00of fact, there was enough demand so that I responded quite often to a request for help. We had come to Colorado to help state feds set up a . . .FISHMAN: Just to make sure that we got that complete sentence -- so that was
when you met your wife in St. Louis, that you were there to -- .KEHRER: I was in St. Louis to interview honor graduates. 'Cause
we….inevitably, you send a strange person in from outside. The existing staff in the union, some of them had problems, some of them had conflicts with -- and there's always the question of – well, is this some kind of special person? In a few cases it was, "Is this a spy from the International union?" And so, 01:03:00and we had to juggle these things around and talk -- do a lot of talking out with both the staff and the person in charge [inaudible]. The student graduate. Um, and, um…so there was a considerable amount of field work that we did to deal with these problems.FISHMAN: What was the most interesting part of being with that Institute?
KEHRER: I guess probably, it was just the challenge of setting it up to begin
with. And the fact that it survived -- its form has changed, but and that was because of the fact that, um, the ILG staff finally decided that they had to have a union. And…and the graduates of the institute were involved in that. 01:04:00The…the program changed somewhat, but the initial challenge of just setting it up and getting it to run. It was…as I say, I started out arguing vigorously that it would never run. And it did.FISHMAN: Does the ILG still have a similar kind of institute, program?
KEHRER: Yes. Um, I am not sure what the exact duration of the program and the
yearly basis is and how it has changed otherwise, but it is still in existence, whether they still take [inaudible] I'm not sure. Um, as…you know, I didn't realize this until later on, that, um, it essentially was filling a need which the union had because it couldn't get sufficient staff to do the 01:05:00basic organizing. I don't know that…that there was any agenda or desire or…or any kind of felt need that these people could stay on indefinitely. I ended up feeling that our role was to provide the cannon fodder for what was necessary. And if a few people survived all that, fine, if not . . . I don't think there was any conscious feeling on the part of Dubinsky or the other top leaders. Um…FISHMAN: And in '50…around '53, then you moved over again, but stayed in
the ILGWU. How did that happen? 01:06:00KEHRER: I got divorced and married during this -- '52. Then we lived in New
York. Betty was a practicing attorney in St. Louis. We had lots of choices to make, lots of decisions to make. Whether she was going to try to pass the New York bar and stay in the field of law. We lived on 93rd Street in Manhattan in a 5th floor walk-up apartment. Um, it was very romantic and very young and exciting, but not necessarily in terms of the long range of having family and that kind of thing. And then, um, by this time, after three years, the 01:07:00excitement of, [coughing] excuse me, of creating this monster had begun to dim a little bit. I had no doubt that every union around the country began to know the areas, know the problems, know the leadership. One day in talking to David Dubinsky, I expressed the fact that…that, you know, I was young enough, interested enough in what's building the union, to, um, if you ever have a place that you can use me out of the field in a different capacity -- I like to organize, be active that way. Um, so, think about it. He said, 'Would you go 01:08:00anywhere?' 'Yeah, you know, I don't have any problems about . . . and I'm not sure that New York is my final resting place. [inaudible]' So, about two or three months later, he asked me to come and see him. He said, 'I would like to assign you to the South. What do you think about that?' Of course, as it turned out, Dubinsky had a New Yorker's view of the world. Everything ends at the Hudson River. That, um, so, I wasn't sure he knew of all the ramifications of sending somebody out. In any event, I thought, maybe, he said, 'Go talk to [inaudible].' He had lots to say about the organization. Um, and 01:09:00we talked, I was a pretty good organizer. I was active for a while before I got married. And, um, organized the very, very powerful tenants' council out in Kew Gardens.FISHMAN: Kew Gardans, [inaudible]…
KEHRER: Yeah, yeah. That was a pretty neat operation. The only time I ever got
into the front pages of the Daily News, you know, when a mother and baby blockaded Queens Boulevard in front of a traffic light. The picture was showing these ladies and -- mothers and babies being put in the back of a paddy wagon with cuffs to the jail house. You know, that was…we had a very vigorous 01:10:00program complete with a child daycare center, art classes, bowling league, and the newspaper -- we had the whole thing. Big project, there were 64 buildings in the project.FISHMAN: Is that still there?
KEHRER: Probably, I don't know what it looks like now. Probably not in very
good repair. It was no good when we were there.FISHMAN: Were they co-ops or were they not?
KEHRER: No…just…just private rentals. They may have been torn down and
replaced. They were built very badly. That was one of the big issues: tenant's repairs, apartment repairs. But in any event, laying all this out for Stulberg, 01:11:00he said, 'We don't have in mind you being an organizer. We want you to be the director of the Southern Department.' So that was a big shock. I wasn't even aware that the -- I knew that the Southern Department was in bad shape, but, um, -- . It…that was what they had in mind. In any event.FISHMAN: Who had been heading up the Southern Department?
KEHRER: A man by the name of John Martin. Martin was old and sick and -- nice
fellow, but very . . . um, Martin had a point of view that if you had one member you had one problem, if you had five members you had five probleIf you had 100 01:12:00members, you had…you had an awful lot of probleThat was his point of view. That was what he ended up with. I don't know what he was like when he was younger. There was no growth taking place. They needed a non-Jewish, white – um…should be in the South.FISHMAN: Why did they feel they needed those particular . . .
KEHRER: It was a general point of view about where the South was. And I guess
they were probably right. Um, [coughing] I don't know, it's difficult to second guess. In any event, I was white enough and young enough to fit that basic qualification. So, I came south in October of '53. 01:13:00FISHMAN: To Atlanta?
KEHRER: Our office was in Chattanooga. Now, [laughter] why Chattanooga? The few
members we had in the South, 1/3 of them was located in Chattanooga. The [inaudible] knitting.FISHMAN: Oh.
KEHRER: Underwear plant. The second part of it was over at Florence, Alabama,
which is very close to Chattanooga. So, two-thirds of the membership was located in those two places. Chattanooga was a very basic place to be in. We…we rented a log cabin up on top of Lookout Mountain. But it was a hell hole to try to work the whole south. If you flew anywhere, you had to fly into Atlanta and connect 01:14:00with planes to Chattanooga. And...and I was forever missing my planes in Atlanta, calling Betty and saying, 'Hey, I'm in Atlanta, the last plane is already left.' And then she'd have to turn around and go home and wait until I could get the next plane. Um, it was very inefficient.FISHMAN: Yeah.
KEHRER: And, so after a year of that, I went to the office down to Atlanta.
FISHMAN: Who else was on staff with you?
KEHRER: Oh, we had [inaudible] Let's see, about 10 or 12 staff people. I had
considerable difficulty with the person who Martin wanted to succeed him. Her 01:15:00name was Julie Walden. She was a big pain, tried to sabotage everything. But, that's, you know…that was finally dealt with. She then resigned, left, and became a non-union contractor here in Atlanta. But, um, the staff was -- well, as a matter of fact…when I…when I came on as director, Bonanno was an organizer. He was one of the first graduates [inaudible]. Matter of fact, might as well go on the record, I saved his first job because Martin wanted to fire him. And I…I put a stop to that.FISHMAN: Wanted to fire him because of some drive?
KEHRER: He thought that Bonanno was a New Yorker and didn't fit in.
01:16:00FISHMAN: That can be a terrible accusation in the South.
KEHRER: It is. You know, the…I had lots of problems
FISHMAN: Sure.
KEHRER: With that too Atlanta I -- Bonanno talked like a New Yorker.
FISHMAN: Culturally his backgrounds were Italian, American, New York.
KEHRER: At least I can say that I really came from Detroit. So, um, but that's
part of history which Nick doesn't want to deal with. Got saved by the skin of his teeth. But I think he was the only one. Most of the others were local people out of the shops or…or from the labor movement here in the South.FISHMAN: Was ILGW growing in the South at that time?
01:17:00KEHRER: Well, we had, when I took over, we had thirty-eight hundred members in
all ten states. When I…when I left 11 years later, we had 15,000 members. I talk about that only because that became part of the reason there was conflict in within the leadership and also why I decided to hang it up. But we did grow substantially.FISHMAN: Were those mostly run-away shops?
KEHRER: Oh yes. Almost without exception. These knitting plants had been there
for a long time, but most of the shops that were moving in – um, it is quite different today. Runaway employers -- as matter of fact, union employers don't come south. They go directly to Korea, to the Philippines.FISHMAN: Or to South America, maybe?
01:18:00KEHRER: Well, that's…not so much South America, mostly it's to the far
east. I guess, I think I'm still right on that. You know, the Caribbean still is attractive to some because of -- the nature of the industry -- these were mostly family owned small operations. A few big corporate giants, but very few. Um, and, so, if you are going to have a plant somewhere, you know, going to rural Mississippi isn't exactly the place you want to go. You go to Jamaica or Puerto Rico, somewhere you can get some sun, and swim and -- or Miami.FISHMAN: Right, management could live in a little style there too.
01:19:00KEHRER: Well, you know, Miami, the pattern was very simple. The employer would
be in New York, essentially, and open a little shop in Miami. And he…he would charge it off against his condo in Miami Beach or he had a girlfriend who he would make manager of the plant. And, um, you know, there were all kinds of extra reasons. And in those days, if you went to an employer's club, the conversation would go something like this, 'Oh wow, I just opened a marvelous plant in South Carolina, modern, air-conditioned, cheap labor, great place to…to work.' The guy next to you at the bar or poker table would say, 'Uh huh, that's…[inaudible]…You got a plant like that, I'm going to have one 01:20:00too.' And so there's a competition that took place and that always led so then the next year you'd say, 'Not only do I have a plant in South Carolina, but I've got one in Mississippi, I've got one in Puerto Rico.' You know, and, so that was the kind of competition that went on. There were parts of the industry which were always on the run –my…the best story to illustrate that was in South Carolina. We organized a plant that had run away from Fall River, Massachusetts. The plant…the…the ethnic part of it is very important. In 01:21:00South Carolina, it was all white. In Fall River, it was all Puerto Ri…Portuguese. It ran away from Chicago to start with, family's name was Sopkin. The grandfather, the man who set the company up, was in Chicago. The Chicago plant was all black. The difference was when the union organized the plant in Chicago, he ran to Fall River, non-union. When he was organized in Fall River, he ran to South Carolina, where we organized it. He then opened the plant -- this now is the grandson -- opened a plant in Florence, South Carolina, all black. We organized it. Local hold after I left, as regional director, they ran 01:22:00away again to one of the plants along the [inaudible].FISHMAN: [inaudible]
KEHRER: Hispanic. Now, that's the great grandson already who's running it.
That's a pretty dramatic example, a similar pattern would take place. I had told [inaudible] I had an employer with four shops in Mississippi, made women's lingerie when we start. And I told him, I said, 'If you could figure out a way -- if there was a way to produce garments cheaper on the move, you would do it.' He never denied it. He was…he was….in the low end of the 01:23:00apparel industry, the pressure was constantly to…to…go for the cheap. In that period of time, companies were running away to the South. They don't do that anymore. As I said earlier; they now go directly to…to [inaudible]. They are bigger on China -- There are certain kinds of things which are very attractive in terms of . . . Since the computer age, a lot of the stuff that's 01:24:00made even now -- a fabric by computer. Probably a lot of it is being sewn by computer.FISHMAN: Yeah, so they need a less skilled work force.
KEHRER: Less skilled in terms of . . .
FISHMAN: Handwork.
KEHRER: Handwork. The whole idea about putting the stitching by hand, that's
gone. That's true most of the union section…sectors…non union-sectors. Constant battle.FISHMAN: One of the stories that I wanted to be sure to ask you about was in
reading some of the background materials. I realized that in 1954, was a case that came out of Baxley, Georgia…KEHRER: OH, yeah…
FISHMAN: …about the license fees that people -- for whoever reads this for
posterity -- a lot of cities used to charge these fees to organize it.KEHRER: Oh yes. Sell some, but they don't really . . .
FISHMAN: What do you remember of that story?
01:25:00KEHRER: Oh, very interesting story. We were interested in what was being
produced in a nearby town, to Baxley, called Hazelhurst. I think the company name was Hazlehurst Manufacturing Company. I sent two female organizers in there to check it out. Hazlehurst was very definitely hostile to unions. And, um, you know, when two strange women show up in town. These were not young types or hustler or anything, they had to be up to no good. The first thing to do, of course, would be to listen in on the phone at the motel and find out what they were doing.FISHMAN: Those were the days when the operator could listen in on your call.
KEHRER: Oh, yeah, oh, yeah, sure. Sure. I advised them to stay in a nearby town
01:26:00just so they wouldn't be harassed and the cops wouldn't be following them around. So, they decided to stay in a little place called Baxley. They had never heard of it before. Nor had I. They were arrested and told, 'you have got to pay -- you're out soliciting for your union, you've got to pay this fee.' Well, it was so outrageous.FISHMAN: Did they call you right away?
KEHRER: Oh yeah, sure. There was always…there was always the case -- when the
staff ran into difficulty, they would call me. [laughter]FISHMAN: Do you remember getting that call?
KEHRER: It was sometime during the night. They tended to pick people up at the
01:27:00night; somehow, after dark it was more scary. You know. And, so, we paid the fine, and they left town -- I've forgotten now what the fine was; it wasn't a great deal of money -- and promptly filed suit. Challenging this outrageous arrangement. Well that…that case went through the Georgia Supreme Court, which filed in favor of the town.FISHMAN: They did?
KEHRER: Oh, yeah, well, you know. The Georgia Supreme Court has gotten into the
20th century just lately. Just barely.FISHMAN: I wonder who wrote that, do you remember? [inaudible]
KEHRER: No, I don't. There was such a bunch of, bad bunch of people.
FISHMAN: Before that it had to go to the county level as well.
KEHRER: Oh yeah, we went through all of . . . we hired, to represent us, a great
lawyer here, now retired, by the name of Ed Pierce. Ed Pierce was in part of 01:28:00a…a firm here that did labor. We worked with him -- name of Pool, Pierce, and Hall. They finally got out of the labor business. They represented the teamsters among others; they represented us. But Ed Pierce was a great lawyer. But he told us the sad truth was that we have got to go through all the state courts first before we can go federal with the thing. And, um, that took some time, must have been a couple of years, I guess, before we got it up to the Supreme Court. And we finally won that case. It was still the case which, if a town tries to pass one of these foolish ordinances, they are reminded that the city of Baxley vs. 01:29:00Staub. [inaudible] Staub was her name. S-T-A-U-B.FISHMAN: The other, it says here too, is Mamie Merritt. [inaudible]
KEHRER: Oh yeah, that's right -- She's just an organizer.
FISHMAN: Did they go back during the two years? Did anybody go back to Baxley?
KEHRER: No, we just left it be. That was simply a place to stay.
FISHMAN: Right. Hazlehurst was the focus.
KEHRER: [inaudible]
FISHMAN: Did Hazlehurst get organized
KEHRER: No. I don't even know if they have a plant there any more. They
probably moved on to making . . . fruitcake or something. [Laughing] It might still be there. But, the…you know, it became a good case, good press. It does 01:30:00head off a hell of a lot of trouble. Harassment.FISHMAN: It became famous. There were a couple of others, in fact, that I wanted
to ask you about that were during sometime during those years, I'm not sure exactly when. There was a famous situation that developed at Brewton Fashions about women wearing buttons, union buttons. And, um, I think that it eventually it went to the Supreme Court as well. But, in that…where did it come about, trying to remember the town? Hmmm…I could look it up before we finish here today, but I was wondering if that struck a bell. There were forced to take off ILG buttons. We have some of it in the files in the back. I could look at that maybe and maybe then get back to it.KEHRER: I'm kind of vague on it.
01:31:00FISHMAN: The other though, was many years later, it was Oneida Knitting Mills,
in or near Spartanburg.KEHRER: Oh yeah, oh yeah. Oneida -- it's in Andrews, near Charleston.
FISHMAN: Okay. That was a bitter strike.
KEHRER: Yeah. We probably ought to get into the whole question of strikes and
southern strategy and international strategy. We were encouraged to strike. If I said to Dubinsky, 'Hey, we have got to pull this shop out. We are going to have to do something.' Always encouraged, you know. 'Go ahead, strike 'em.' I don't recall, in the 11 years, any period of time when we didn't have a strike going on somewhere. And we spent lots of money on strike benefits. 01:32:00You know, by today's slandards, anyway. You know, 20, 25, 30 dollars a week on strike benefits was standard. And strikes were very common. And, you know, if we have to strike 'em, we strike 'em. Now, it is only toward the end of my time with the ILG that it began to dawn on me, why were we striking? I finally 01:33:00described it to myself and asked. I was the bush beater in the tiger hunt, and that the more I made trouble in the South, less likely it was that New York employers or New York base employers –[inaudible] knew this was going to happen.FISHMAN: You were talking about the plan in Greer.
KEHRER: I'm blocking on the name of the plant, but they made children's
lingerie, and they organized in New Jersey, they'd supposed to. One of those contracts that said you can only work in union shop. I went up there -- the work 01:34:00force was -- the members in New Jersey were all black. They crossed our picket line up there. And I was at the meeting in which the business agent stood up and told them that these people from the South were white and that they wanted to work down there – and put the fear of God into the New Jersey workers.FISHMAN: Didn't help at all, I'm sure.
KEHRER: No, but I took that up with Dubinsky. I said, 'What am I supposed to
do here? I…I…You have got a union shop up in New Jersey which is refusing to honor a legitimate strike that you approved in South Carolina.' He didn't get fired, but he was shoved out of there somewhere, I don't know where he went. And it was outrageous, that's all you can say about it. Marshall is 01:35:00right, I'm not sure about the dates any longer, but I think I gave him the stories. Marshall doesn't take notes, it's all in his head. I mean, fantastic photographic memory, and so he puts it all back. He may have gotten a thing or two rearranged.FISHMAN: In…in strikes like in Fayetteville or similar, another role I'm
interested in is the clergy. Do they have any -- much of a role positive or negative?KEHRER: For the most part in these small towns, they are either neutral or
they…they're are negative. Occasionally, you'll get…as a matter of fact, in many places in the South where we called upon them for help, the Catholic clergy were very good. When we finally settled the plant that Jonathan Logan had 01:36:00bought, known as Jolog, J-O-L-O-G we – we..um…the mana…the local manager said the workers would never -- don't want the union here. It was the same guy that had been in Fayetteville. Jerry Farber was his name. Jarry Farber, the rascal. Convinced New Yorkers that the workers in Jolog would never, never join the union. So we arranged with the people in New York with [inaudible] big shots that we would organize the plant and use a check every now – you know, informal check-off if the workers --We'd get an independent person in to check 01:37:00the day'sFISHMAN: [inaudible]
KEHRER: Card check. If we could do that with ours. So they agreed to it. Sooner
or later they are going to give us enough trouble. We asked the local priest to come in and do the check, and he did. If I thought hard enough, I could probably even remember his name. They were -- clergy in that sense were helpful. In most places, I think probably you'd have to say that they were rather not for us, unless they were one of the charismatic churches or one of -- where our members were big in it. Sometimes the Church of God local pastor would be helpful, but 01:38:00by and large they were not. Um….um…Rabbis -- only in places like Atlanta did we ever get any kind of help. Larger communities. Other than that, there wasn't much there. We were talking about the IUD campaign in Spartanburg. The results were fantastic [inaudible]. It was…I believe, that the stirring the pot in one community with 6, 8, 10 different unions involved was very helpful. Following -- that was when Nick Zonerich, who was then the National Organizing 01:39:00Director, was the guy officially in charge of that campaign. When he left it, Harold McIver became the head man and was involved. Harold dispersed the forces somewhat so that you had a state-wide joint campaign. I think it has been helpful, but not nearly so much in, my judgement, so much as that one community joint kind of thing. I just want to tell you that [inaudible] came to me wanting a shipping center for Southern goods. And I said, 'Look, you know, Spartanburg is on I-85 on the way to New York.'FISHMAN: True.
01:40:00KEHRER: I had this other agenda about putting the concentration in one place.
And they commenced to build a shipping center. Before they completed the shipping center, they came to me one day and said we got a new thing we're doing and we've got a building already constructed here. Instead of a shipping center, we are going to put a new kind of product plant in Spartanburg. What is it…it's the double-knit fabric. We gave them the green light on that. The fascinating thing about the double knit was, they started out with raw wool, spun it into thread and knitted it, then sewed it and then shipped it out of there. That became a fantastic thing for not a very long period of time. The started out with wool, then about a year later, they went to polyesters and 01:41:00other kinds of fabric. We finally organized it, big struggle. I'll tell you about it in a minute At one point while this whole process was going on, you see these big bundles of raw wool coming in off the trucks. I said, you know, 'Where's all this stuff coming from?' He said, 'Oh, we have a little bit of a sheep ranch at our house.' I said, 'Ok, Herby. I'm sending an organizer over there, we are going to organize from the cradle to the grave.' You know, we're going to get that. He said, 'Oh no, don't do that.' In any event, finally [inaudible] came to. They had a local lawyer who had a real 01:42:00business and all this stuff. His name was Bean. I'm not sure, I have forgotten what his first name was. A thorough scoundrel, rascal if there ever was one. And Bean was nothing but trouble for us in trying to organize the workers in this new plant. Hockburg called me once when he was getting very nasty because they were just refusing to talk about union in that place. And I said, 'Okay, what's going on now?' He said, 'I gotta see you, privately, outside away from Spartanburg, we have got to meet somewhere.' We met here in Atlanta. He said, 'Bean has told me that if I sign a union contract in that Spartanburg County that they are going to arrest me and put me in the chain gang.' He 01:43:00said, 'I'm too old, I can't go through all that.' And I said, 'What a fool you are. Don't you know that the chain gang in South Carolina has been abolished for 20 years? They ain't going to put you into any chain gang. He's just trying to scare you.' "Really?" He said, 'is that true?' I said, 'Well, check it out with someone else, if you don't believe me, check it out.' He relaxed a bit. Matter of fact, I think, shortly after that, they got rid of Bean. He was something, representing the other companies, and the Chamber of Commerce. We went out to organize that place. We ended up in Spartanburg with 2,200 members in that whole operation. Including the teamsters, the truckers. Matter fact, at one point, I said, I tried to give…'I don't 01:44:00want truckers, they don't represent garment workers, a whole different set of problems there. They really belong with teamsters. He said, 'Please don't do that. We will do whatever you want with the teamsters, the truckers, but please don't do that.'FISHMAN: They didn't go teamsters?
KEHRER: They stayed with us. They did very well with our contractor. So, anyway,
we ended up with a major local situation here.FISHMAN: Sounds like [inaudible]
KEHRER: All flowing out of the Tennessee strike and all the stuff that happened
thereafter. When the old man…Schwartz is his name, Irving Schwartz…when he retired, his son took the business; it began to slide after that. Then, they 01:45:00finally sold it. I don't know who bought it, I think one of the international. Conglomerate kinds of things bought it.FISHMAN: What local was that? [inaudible]
KEHRER: I don't remember the name. We had so many locals. Each one of these
plants . . .FISHMAN: One plant per local?
KEHRER: Yeah. And, um, we had a business agent there, he's dead now or else
he's very ill, Joel Ferguson. I hired Joel Ferguson, he had been with the furniture work and lost the bitter strike in Florence, South Carolina. I met him in Columbia one day. Joel is a young guy, a very attractive, nice guy. He said, 'I really need to work. I got a family, I have got to have a job.' I said, 01:46:00'Okay, on one condition. That you will go where I want you to go.' 'I'll go anywhere, I need a job.' I said, 'Well, what I want to do is to move your family to Greenville and become a part of the community in Greenville. We need to crack that SOB there somehow. It just bothers me that we can't get it to hold in Greenville.'FISHMAN: Especially with it being so close to Spartanburg. [inaudible]
KEHRER: Right. I said, 'You may work around there, but your home will be in
Greenville.' And he did. He became a business agent for that local. He did a fantastic job that was just great. So, it was…that was one of the more interesting developments in the…in that whole thing especially since how it 01:47:00all started.FISHMAN: Do you want to take a…maybe this is a good place to break and then,
when we meet again, we can continue talking about some of those same years and especially the civil rights years – you can get into that.KEHRER: Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, and also we have the whole development of the
mobile health center.FISHMAN: That's right. That started around then?
KEHRER: That was a…I think that was an important development, saved a lot of women.
FISHMAN: Well maybe we have a good chunk of time then. We can do that.
KEHRER: Okay.
FISHMAN: Okay.
KEHRER: Without the cake and without the machine problems.
[Break]
FISHMAN: This is a continuation of the interview of Al Kehrer, now taking place
01:48:00now on Sunday, February 26, at his home in Austell, Georgia. Okay, we had last started talking about Greenville. You had mentioned Joel Ferguson and how you talked him into moving there and how he eventually became the business agent.KEHRER: Yeah, well, Joel was a young, very hungry, former business agent for the
Furniture workers. And he had lost a very bad strike in Florence, South Carolina. I had met him in the aftermath of that and offered him a job on one condition -- that I could tell him where he was going to live and be stationed. 01:49:00I had always been very fascinated with the Greenville, Spartanburg area because it was so industrialized with apparel and textile mills. But we had had no success in organizing anything there. So I had the idea that if we planted a staff person in the community, and he put his roots down there, his kids went to school down there, we might be able to get some kind of hold on the situation. Our organizing experience was that there would be a plant that you were interested in trying to organize, and you would ship people in from Timbuktu. It 01:50:00took them a long time to get acquainted with where the roads were and where the people lived, and what the local politics were. So my theory was that someone like Joe would be able to make a difference. I don't know if whether you could actually measure the difference, but I think there was a difference.FISHMAN: Where was Joe from originally?
KEHRER: I think he was from Virginia. And so [inaudible] began to be successful
in Spartanburg and organized the local there; Joe became the business agent. He was an excellent business agent, very well thought of by the members. I think from that standpoint, it was a big success. There may be more organizations 01:51:00today. Spartanberg is still pretty organized and with the BMW auto plant moving in there, I think there would be a lot of background -- a lot people hired who got union experience and appreciation of [inaudible] shouldn't have too much difficulty organizing.FISHMAN: How did he…how did he try to make whatever inroads he made in
Greenville, do you remember?KEHRER: Oh, well, in general, what he did was to just -- in terms of organizing?
FISHMAN: Uh huh.
KEHRER: Oh, well, the interesting thing is that most of the companies who were
01:52:00there and companies who came in there already were well briefed and well organized themselves as to how to deal with the union. There was, and I suspect probably still is, a blacklist in operation. If there was a question of if people did join the union, and it was known and became known, they and their whole families were put on the blacklist. It was a pretty hard nut. When the textile workers finally got to J. P. Stevens, I was, I think, at the board meeting -- at the J. P. Stevens board meeting one year, and the town fathers were pretty outraged at the fact that union people were actually walking the 01:53:00streets. As a matter of fact, when we had the campaign against -- oh, what was the name of the man who ran…was nominated for Supreme CourtFISHMAN: Against Warren?
KEHRER: He was…I did a lot of work for the AFL-CIO in trying to find out
things about Haynsworth. The only union, only attorney who would be hired by anyone in…in Greenville, Haynsworth lived in Greenville, now it's a suburb of Greenville. This particular man, I'm blocking his name, it may come to me, 01:54:00was the president of the local bar association. I talked to him at length. And he told me a little bit about Haynsworth that was useful. He then went up to testify in Washington on Haynsworth's behalf and reported to the Senate, I guess it was, that there was this agent from the AFL-CIO. This was a man who learned -- representing the union. That was already…he was not prepared to go that far to deny the AFL-CIO was involved in any way. That was the kind of atmosphere -- it still exists today although the companies and the nature of the 01:55:00business has changed tremendously. Spartanburg, on the other hand -- we had a big presence finally in the town, politically as well as the general business atmosphere. There's nothing like representing people who are in pretty good money -- or relatively good money -- to make a difference.FISHMAN: What was the breakdown in a place like Spartanburg or Greenville? Was
it easy or harder to organize white and black workers?KEHRER: Well, until the Civil Rights Acts, until Title 7, most of these plants
were overwhelming white. You had black workers, mostly female, working in these 01:56:00so-called "dirty jobs" the hot and sticky jobs, pressing and that kind of thing. Black males would be almost exclusively in the shipping department. One never had difficulty getting them involved. It was always resolved. I don't remember any situation in which the black workers were antiunion. [Inaudible] Of course, one of the company tactics almost universally was to take advantage of the fact that their members or workers were white and white females. 01:57:00And…if…if the union came around, the first thing that went out was that if you join that union, it's going to be taken over by blacks. That was a fairly successful tactic. I had on one occasion, which was a company where we were…we were having difficulty and probably were going to have to strike to get a new contract, -- and the first thing the company did was see that the…the KKK newspaper, called The Crusader…FISHMAN: Think so?
01:58:00KEHRER: …showed up mailed to the homes of all members. We were able to counter
it 'cause we told our people what was going to happen, but there was a picture, it was an issue of the paper in which the front page, big picture of Jim Carey who was secretary treasurer of the IUE. He was shown dancing with a black female. They didn't say that the black female was the wife of an African diplomat at a state function in Washington. But, um, it was that kind of thing which was very common through all that entire period.FISHMAN: When you held meetings, did you hold them integrated?
KEHRER: Oh yes.
FISHMAN: Whoever would come?
KEHRER: I was very tough on that. Sometimes, in Atlanta, for example, we have
one of the oldest locals of the ILG, it's still around but very small. Before 01:59:00I came, they had a -- it was a one local, but they had a separate section for black members. They had…as a matter of fact, they met separately, and they had their own officers. I had a tough time with them because I insisted that that happen. She ended up as a pretty good friend of mine. The president of the black section was a girl by the name of Bessy Winn. Bessy was very, very upset by the fact of the integration. That was because not so much, race, but because she felt her whole power was being diminished. 02:00:00FISHMAN: Did she become…did Miss Winn become an officer of the local?
KEHRER: I insisted that she be on the executive board. I don't think she ever
held a president, secretary or treasurer, but she was on the executive board. So, you have those things happening but -- even in all of her -- she wrote to president Dubinsky about the terrible things that were – but beside from all that, she never did say she was going to get out; she wouldn't leave. And, well, you know, that was throughout the entire South, Mississippi or North Carolina, black potential members and black members were very loyal; they stuck with it.FISHMAN: Where would you have meetings, when you would have meetings? Um…
02:01:00KEHRER: Well, it was difficult. Um, we've…we…in the earlier days, we had
situations in which we would have a regional…regional conference; we still have them. We call it our educational conference. If you went to any ordinary southern hotel, it was difficult to get entrance. You know, we…um…some occasions, most of the hotels simply turned their backs on the whole –but, um, I remember once in New Orleans, we had to go out and hire a hall for our exclusive use because the hotels were too difficult to deal with. So, the meetings, you know, we always had to search, and there were -- sometimes we used 02:02:00churches, but mostly we would hire space somewhere.FISHMAN: We'll talk about that issue too since we were talking about moving
back up to the earlier 50's. Before we put the tape on, you mentioned that '54 was of course an important year in terms of the Brown decision. You were with the ILG one year before that. During that whole period, how did the civil rights issues develop within the union as far as your work?KEHRER: Well, the…the….beside from the fact that the employers would play on
black and white issues, the…the general atmosphere in the community, the schools, in the churches, and in the politics was pretty red hot. And our 02:03:00members, reflected their communities -- across section of local opinion. It reflected itself politically because even if we would say we endorsed someone against -- what's the old man's name in South Carolina that is running the defense department?FISHMAN: Thurmond?
KEHRER: Yeah. We endorsed his opponent, the union did. Four or five members in
South Carolina didn't vote with us, they liked him; he was militant anti-black. Well…in 19…56 I guess it was, International had its convention, 02:04:00its tri-annual convention in Atlantic City.FISHMAN: Let me turn the tape over. [Break]
FISHMAN: Okay, you were saying the actual record of the -
KEHRER: The actual record of the Klan in its various branches, was just the
opposite. If there was a strike, or if there was an organizing campaign, you can almost guarantee automatically that they were going to be opposed to the union and opposed to the strike. And, in, you know, we had over the years innumerable strikes. It was Klanspeople, and not necessarily just card carriers, but people who had the confederate flag on the front of their pick-up truck and a shotgun in the back window. Um, they were inevitably on the side of the employer. We had 02:05:00numerous run-ins with them. I remember working with a…a group of black union people in Natchez, Mississippi. And, they…they called me to come in to meet with them, and I met with them. The plant at which they worked was majority black. They met with me in the dark of night in a secret place in Natchez. What was their latest complaint? The complaint was that the president of their union had marched in the Klan parade on Saturday. And 'What can we do about that?' I said, 'It seems to me that one of the obvious things, if you represent the 02:06:00majority of the members, to vote him out office would be the first thing to do. You could do other things, but that seems to me to be a very practical approach, to exercise, your' -- They finally did, but, um, it was several years before they got it all together. But, the Klan was very prevalent. And more so than with my members, potential members because the Citzens' Councils were…were the big shots, the upper-middle-class types whereas the Klan happen to be more worker, blue-collar types. I was, from time to time, when my name was in the 02:07:00paper or I got active in a particular campaign, we were subjected to harassment calls, that kind of thing, threats. That got kind of routine, didn't get too excited about it.FISHMAN: Yeah? You didn't take any steps to protect yourself?
KEHRER: At one time, we were getting harassment calls, 3, 4 o'clock in the
morning. And that became kind of annoying more than anything else. And Betty would get them while I was away, saying, 'we hope you kissed your husband goodbye this morning because he is not going to get back across the river tonight,' that kind of thing. Um, and so we finally, you know, made all the 02:08:00usual calls, called the FBI, the telephone company and what-not. And the telephone company finally agreed to put the monitor thing on. Guess I don't know what they do these days, probably could do it a lot easier. They put a box on and recorded all the incoming calls. But when that happened, the calls eased off some -- We have a feeling a network out there said -- they have got a monitor out there on their telephone, you better quit some of these threats.FISHMAN: What city or states was it the worst in, do you think?
KEHRER: Probably overall…northern Louisiana was bad, still is bad. Mississippi
02:09:00was bad, that's not so true anymore. Mississippi was probably, in gross terms, was the worst. Um, although you could move out of…out of downtown Atlanta, and Georgia wasn't exactly what you'd call moderate.FISHMAN: Right, not an open-minded area. Was it more intimidating because there
were mostly women who were your members? I think, if the Klan had some…had some presence and they knew about it?KEHRER: I think just the opposite.
FISHMAN: Yeah?
KEHRER: One thing about women workers, once they got religion, they were hard to
02:10:00stop, and tough. In many of these communities, the women were the chief breadwinner who brought home the money while their husbands may have had, technically, a job as a farmer or a forester or something. But, it was the women who provided the cash. And, so, as they got into it and became more into public work, as we used to call it, they would begin to manage things. If they decided that they can fight the boss, they can fight the Klan, or fight their husbands, or whoever. I think that was pretty descriptive for…you know, obviously there were some exceptions. I don't think the Klan had any kind of real impact on 02:11:00them. If they were out on strike, fighting the whole community, the Klan was just one other annoyance, you know?FISHMAN: How about the politicians in the various areas where you had ILG
locals? Were there any that were helpful on any of these civil rights issues?KEHRER: Or any issues. [Laughter]
FISHMAN: Or any issues, any of the labor issues for that matter.
KEHRER: By and large, no, we had managers of plants or New York owners, they
would talk to you privately, give you encouragement, but not very much help. 02:12:00The…the president of the company in Chattanooga, Tennessee, was one of the rare exceptions. Reed Murphy was his name. And, um, he was quite outspoken, liberal Democrat, believed in higher minimum wages. You now, we, um, what he said essentially was, 'Look, if I raise wages at my plant, I'm fighting all of the cheap competition out here.' If I raise the wages, you raise it everywhere; we all…you have a level playing field.' He was kind of an exception. But, by and large, the employers generally, particularly the 02:13:00manufacturers we dealt with were, you know, not -- you have to understand that in those days, I don't know how it is now, but in those days they would bring you in New York or Chicago or Cleveland, metropolitan northern employer into one of these plants, in one of these communities -- It was a great culture shock for them, and also they brought with them their attitudes about workers and politics. They, you know, their…their involvement in the community in which they had their plant was -- most of them, first of all, didn't own the plants, 02:14:00didn't build their own plants. Most of them leased the equipment, were tax-free, were absolved from local taxes. I…I may have mentioned earlier, this company in Mississippi in which the employer quite candidly -- as a matter of fact, he was proud of the fact that all he owned was the keys to the front door. He didn't have any investment in that community. The town had built the plant, the town had leased the machines for him, he was in 7th heaven, you know. Anyway, so that - they tended not to get involved in politics, they…they would go to the country club, play golf with the big shots in town, bankers, etc. And 02:15:00that was about the extent of it. I think I told you earlier in this whole story about my friend, Irvin Hockburg being told he would end up in the chain gang and believing it, you know, very naive and unaware of what was going on around him. So, yeah, you know, if you were in New York, having dinner somewhere and someone makes a comment saying, 'Boy, you have a tough job, good luck.' That kind of thing. But, um, so far as doing anything about it, they didn't.FISHMAN: Getting back to the civil rights issues again, too. What, um, you know,
was your involvement in the unions in those years, in the late 50's leading up to King becoming active and more and more demonstrations being held? 02:16:00KEHRER: Well, we of course, were -- as I indicated earlier--we were very
supportive in terms of assisting where we thought we could do our best, working on those practical things like printing and use of facilities. And…and…like in Spartanburg, we ended up with a pretty good union hall which came to be used for the civil rights organizations. Um, and, wherever we had a -- which were quite numerous -- request for involvement, support, help, either turning out people or…or supplying, making contributions, that kind of thing, we did it routinely. And, um, yeah, you know, the ILG was one of the unions who word got 02:17:00out we would help, we did a lot of that kind of thing. Um, and, you know, now…now when they write about all this happening, they think there was some kind of grand scheme operating. It really didn't work that -- it wasn't happening that way. It happened from day to day and issue to issue. You would come to the next problem as it took place. I'm always amused at how well thought out -- when I look back -- There wasn't any master plan, you just grabbed hold.FISHMAN: Do you remember the lunch counter sit-ins?
KEHRER: Oh yeah. I'm not sure what you call it, what involvement we had
02:18:00particularly. I'm confident we did because my man in North Carolina was very active. That was again. -- you see, you operated on several levels in terms of support, in terms of participation, in terms of solicitation of department unions, and so it was a whole kind of loose networking taking place. I never was personally involved in the lunch counter thing, not in North Carolina. I was in Atlanta.FISHMAN: Were you? What year?
02:19:00KEHRER: Um, it was when the lunch sit-ins took place. You weren't around when
lunch was -- the only place to eat was a delicatessen-type of culture food.FISHMAN: Oh.
KEHRER: That was a pretty good place to eat, matter of fact.
FISHMAN: Is that where they took place, sit-ins?
KEHRER: Yeah.
FISHMAN: Where was that?
KEHRER: Corner of Luckie and Forsyth Streets. There is a drug store there now,
right across the street from the Equitable Building.FISHMAN: About how many people were involved?
KEHRER: They sat in there over two or three days. Seems to be there must have
been 10 or 12 sitting in.FISHMAN: Who was organizing that one?
KEHRER: That was a SNCC operation.
FISHMAN: Who were the SNCC people involved, do you remember the leaders?
02:20:00KEHRER: Um, well, Lewis was involved, Julian Bond was involved. Julian and I
have laughed about this. There again, it is strange how one thinks that a bunch of crowd counter sit-ins were invented in the late 50's and 60's. I have sat in at a lunch counter at the University of Chicago with Bayard Rustin over the same issue in 1939. You see, it sounds familiar. During those days, the hostility in Chicago was just as severe as --FISHMAN: How did you come to be in Chicago with them?
KEHRER: Oh, I was attending some radical meetings.
FISHMAN: What…go ahead…
02:21:00KEHRER: It was over Christmas holidays in between semesters. So, you know, I
guess when it was all happening here, it didn't seem to be -- first of all, you didn't know you were making history.FISHMAN: Right, you never do when you are making it.
KEHRER: Never kept a detailed account of precisely what was going on.
FISHMAN: Again, do you remember any adverse reactions from locals about any of
that participation?KEHRER: No. The, um…as I said earlier, first of all if you are a garment
worker, working, and you got 2 or 3 kids at home, and you got a husband to contend with and all, you don't really sit around actively thinking about 02:22:00things: 'What is going on out there? Why are they doing this?' As a matter of fact, there used to be a labor director from the NAACP, -- I'm blocking out his name -- in any event, he was a very pessimistic type, a white guy. I rode on a plane with him one night, from Atlanta to New York. And he was trying to get me to prove that his pessimism was righter today than I thought he was. Today, 02:23:00tend to be pessimistic. Rather than doing that, I would give him positive examples of what I considered to be progress. And he ended up thoroughly disliking me because I was so bubbly and buoyant in the face of all these terrible things. And I guess that is also how you survive, survive through a lot of this stuff was simply by…by not being horribly depressed. In fact, our typical member had her hands full of her own personal concerns and did not really -- was not very much involved or even thinking about it. Somebody out 02:24:00there is doing something, but they don't know much about it.FISHMAN: Were there other…what other unions were supporting the civil rights movement?
KEHRER: The auto workers, the steel workers. Almost without exception during
this earlier period, the building trades were on the other side. We changed a lot of that as time went on. But, um, there are two groups who were really cannon fodder for the Klan – and…and that whole operation, that was the building trades and the paper workers. Places like north -- north Louisiana, the 02:25:00foot soldiers for the Klan were, in fact, the paper workers. You know, Amalgamated was good, um…FISHMAN: When you said, Amalgamated, you mean . . .
KEHRER: Amalgamated Clothing Workers. There were not very many. You know, ACTWU
today is great, but in the earlier days, their structure was such, and the industry was such, the membership was such, without really great -- without good 02:26:00progressive leadership guiding things, you couldn't count on them for much. There were exceptions. In Mississippi, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers was very good. The secretary-treasurer of the state [inaudible] was [inaudible]. There were probably, if I went down through the list, 10 or 12 unions that took not only good positions, but actually did things.FISHMAN: In terms of the civil rights movement, I suppose 1960 brought some
changes in terms of the pace, leading up, I guess to '63, to the march. What 02:27:00events do you remember?KEHRER: There again, the national march got a lot of folks involved because it
was really a union kind of thing, even though the people at the King Center are trying to re-write the history to make it seem like it was King's idea. In fact it wasn't, he was a speaker at the march at the end of it. Randolph and Rustin were the people that did it. And, um, the ILG was a heavy participant, mostly from the northeast. We had buses from here mostly from where our biggest membership was where they had money. 02:28:00FISHMAN: Were the busses from here made up of…of staff and activists?
KEHRER: Yeah, mostly local officers. We did our piece.
FISHMAN: What states did they come from?
KEHRER: Mostly because of logistics, it was hard to bring in someone from
Mississippi. From Georgia east to the Carolinas, Tennessee, western Tennessee. Two or three busses, maybe three. That period of time had so many busses going around. We knew the cost down to the last little bit.FISHMAN: You knew how many fit on the bus and exactly where to stop?
02:29:00KEHRER: Yeah, exactly. We stopped as few places as we could.
FISHMAN: It's a long trip, though. It only makes it longer if you stop. What
other unions that sent folks from the South that you remember?KEHRER: The ones I mentioned
FISHMAN: Mmhmm.
KEHRER: Auto, steel, rubber. I think it is safe to say that there were largely
the unions who were from the CIO-type of unions, more accustomed, more interested, more involved in these issues.FISHMAN: What was your impression of…of the march?
KEHRER: It was uplifting to say the least, it was amazing. We've had…we've
had probably had bigger crowds since that time, but the whole spirit and 02:30:00enthusiasm that was in the atmosphere, you could feel it. It was very exciting and rewarding. It has never been really duplicated since that time in terms of this period.FISHMAN: Did all the ILG people go together? March together?
KEHRER: Yeah, you kind of grouped with your people. That's is, they tried to
organize it by identifiable groups. If you were a red button, you would know where to go -- to the red button place, that kind of thing. It is more sophisticated these days. Part of the excitement was in this big mass spilling 02:31:00around. People have remarked since that time about how there were no probleThat's true. The people had their focus on the issues at that time. And the speeches were all great, you know. It helps the spirit of the occasion. Yeah, it's…I don't know that we will ever accomplish that again. We may get forced to it. [laughter] We're rapidly…as a matter of fact, I talked to Washington the other day and they said that. 'Some good is coming out of all of this stuff. Some of the people who have not been talking to each other in the Women's Movements, they're back talking to each other. The environmentalist 02:32:00are now talking to the labor people.' So you get - if you give up that negative pressure, you may accomplish something.FISHMAN: What do you remember…
KEHRER: You can cut all that out.
FISHMAN: No…that's….the interviewer tends to agree, for the record. What
speeches do you remember being most impressed with at the time of that march? I'm sure there were many.KEHRER: Oh, yeah. Well of course, you know, King's was a great speech. I
particularly liked John Lewis' speech. Randolph himself was first rate. Um, 02:33:00there were so many, and those three were all standouts. Lewis, because he was a young radical, you know, they tried to cool down a little bit. He didn't cool very well.FISHMAN: Did, um, what did you think coming back, what was your impression of
what was going to happen next?KEHRER: Oh, um, again, it's….one just knew that there was something going to
be going on, but the agenda was not all that clear, and the objectives were not clearly stated. We just knew we were going to do something. I think that is what most people ended up thinking: we've made this statement, now let's see what 02:34:00we can do. Because there was still this tremendous -- between the atmosphere and all the spirits in Washington that are still a big gap between what was actually going on in the local communities. So, we didn't come back with any list of -- other than the fact that we needed to keep the pressure on for the vote, for, um, the public accommodations, for jobs.FISHMAN: Do you remember doing any formal report backs to locals when you came back?
02:35:00KEHRER: No. The attendance was not universal, so I wouldn't -- and the locals
and the region unless I happen to be speaking at a local . . . [Break]