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Transcript of an Interview with

Nellie stone Johnson

July 15, 1975 Interviewer: David Taylor Project

Mrs. Johnson was born in 1905 on a farm owned by her father two miles from La.keville. She is Societya founder and organizer of Minneapolis Local 665, affiliated with the Hotel and Restaurant International Union.History She was a m.mber of the Farmer-Labor' Party and the first Black and the first woman vice-president r( of the Minnesota Women's Auxiliary. The interview concerns her background, union activity and Blacks in the Blacklabor movement. . This is a verbatim transcriptHistorical of a tape recorded interview. The recording is available in the Audio-Visual Library of the Historical Society.

MinnesotaMinnesota INTERVIEW WITH MRS. NELLIE STONE JOHNSON

July 15, 1975

Interviewed by David V. Taylor

Taylor: This is an oral interview with Mrs. Nellie Stone Johnson, taken July 15, 1975 in Mrs. Johnson's business establishment, Nellie's Zipper and Shirt Repair Shop, 628 Nicollet Mall, Room 320 (Minneapolis). Mrs. Johnson was born December 17, 1905 two milesProject from Lakeville, Minnesota in Dakota County. Her parents were William R. Allen of Dalton, Missouri, born May 7, 1880 and Gladys (Foray?) born in 1881 in Rising Sun, Indiana. Her parents came Societyindividually to the Lakeville area - to Minneapolis - and were later married and obtained a farm and farmed in the LakevilleHistory vicinity. Mrs. Johnson was a founder, or one of the founding members, of the Hotel and Restaurant Local 665 which is affiliated with the Hotel and Restaurant Inter­ national, and her fatherBlack was one of the first members of the Farmer­ Labor Party. She herself hasHistorical been involved in the Farmer-Labor Party since 1924. She was also one of the founding members of the merger of the Democratic Farmer-Labor Party. She was also the first vice president - the first black and woman - vice president of the Minnesota Culinary Council. Mrs. Johnson when and where were you born? Minnesota Johnson: TwoMinnesota miles north of Lakeville, Minnesota in Dakota County.

Taylor: What was the date?

Johnson: December 17, 1905.

Taylor: And what were your parents' names? -2-

Johnson: My father was William R. A11en. My mother was Glady Foray (?)

Taylor: And where were they from?

Johnson: My father was born in Dalton, Missouri and my mother in Rising Sun, Indiana.

Taylor: When did your parents come to Minnesota?

Johnson: My father, I would suspect, came here about 1899, making his first trip, and my mother came about 1903. They met in Minneapolis. Project Taylor: What was your father's occupation? What did he do for a living?

Johnson: He, being a farmer, having grown up on a Societyfarm, he liked to make the harvest during the summer. Then he worked with Linseed Oil in Minneapolis during the winter months.History Sometimes as a packing house worker also.

Taylor: And what was your mother doing at this time? BlackHistorical Johnson: My mother worked at Powers department store.

Taylor: Did they . . . They married in Minneapolis?

Johnson: They married at the old Bethesda Baptist Church on Eighth and Eleventh Avenue South in Minneapolis. MinnesotaMinnesota Taylor: What was the date of the marriage?

Johnson: January 4, 1904.

Taylor: Did your father immediately go to the Lakeville area and begin to farm or did they begin to live in Minneapolis? -3-

Johnson: No. They went on kind of a honeymoon. They had a house already out there, some pieces of furniture in it. The rest they took with a horse and spring wagon and drove up (from) Minneapolis, and that was kind of like a honeymoon.

Taylor: How large was the homestead?

Johnson: The farm that they settled on was about eighty acres.

Taylor: Were there any other black families in the area?

Johnson: Not at that time, that I know of. But laterProject on, I think about the time I was five, six, maybe seven years old, I knew of the Edwards family in Lakeville; lived right in the town. They called him Grandpa Edwards and then later on a son moved Societyout from Minneapolis and his wife. Name was Clyde Edwards. They worked at the Lakeville flour mills. History

Taylor: What was it like growing up on the fj,arm? Did you have any brothers or sisters? BlackHistorical Johnson: Yes. I'm one of seven.

Taylor: What were their names?

Johnson: Brother Richard, brother Herbert, a sister Gladys, a brother Portland, a sister Almeda. How many is that, six? MinnesotaMinnesota Taylor: Six.

Johnson: And me.

Taylor: And which are you?

Johnson:' I'm number one. -4-

Taylor: Number one.

Johnson: It was about a year's difference between the marriage and me.

Taylor: How was it like? What was your family life like?

Johnson: Well, I thought my family life was pretty good. I heard about people not having enough to eat and a place to live, but this never occurred to me that it really happened to people, because as far as I remember we always had plenty enough to eat, milk to drink, and plenty of chickens to eat and everything else. We butchered our own beef and all of our pork. Project

Taylor: Did you go to school in the Lakeville area? Society Johnson: Yes, I did, a little school out in District 102 of which my father was already on the schoolHistory board when I started to school.

Taylor: What was the relationship that your father or your parents shared with the neighbors, the surrounding farmers? BlackHistorical Johnson: Well as far as I know, it was very good. We still have friends - or I do - out in that area that I went to school with; people who are in business, and so forth. Some retired now, because none of us are so young any more.

Taylor: Did your father produce crops for the market or was he more or Minnesotaless a Minnesotatruck farmer?

Johnson: l~en they first started out he did do some truck farming, but that was in relation to an awful lot of hay and grain and corn and that sort of thing. Before we were large enough to work he had about three hired men during the summer.

Taylor: Does your family still own land out in that area? -5-

Johnson: No. Later on they bought land at Hinckley, Minnesota in Pine County. We still have two farms up there.

Taylor: What did you do or what led you to move away from the farm?

Johnson: Well, one of the things was he wanted more land and we wanted to get bigger into dairy. And at the time that we moved from out there I guess we were milking around twenty or twenty-five cows. And when we moved into Pine County, of course we moved up to around thirty or thirty-five; had a rotating herd and began to build a very good - when I left home - a very good thoroughbred herd of Holsteins. Project

Taylor: Were there any dairy cooperatives in those days, or was it every man for himself? Society Johnson: No, we had cooperative creameries.History In fact, as strange as it may seem, Land Q'Lakes used to be very much of a cooperative creamery. My father was also on the board of that. And that creamery was started . When we moved to Pine County, the closest town was fourteen miles, whichBlack was Hinckley, and then about four miles from our place they had a corner Historicalgrocery set up and this Land Q'Lakes Creamery. My father helped to get that started and was on that board. There wasn't any electricity out there. Electricity was a little slower coming because Roosevelt hadn't come in with the philosophy of REA and so forth. So my father served on that board, and finally got electricity too. Minnesota Taylor: YourMinnesota father seemed like a very interesting and dynamic person. I remember you saying that he was involved in labor politics; that he helped to organize, as it were, the Farmer-La.bor Party.

Johnson: Well he certainly was a member. He was probably one of the charter members in the state of Minnesota because he was very interested in the Nonpartisan League movement which came out of North Dakota -6-

prior to the Farmer-Labor Party. I think that's the beginning of . my interest too, because I read all the publications.

Taylor: Then you moved away from home at what age?

Johnson: Seventeen.

Taylor: And where did you go?

Johnson: I came to Minneapolis. I came down with the idea of becoming a chemist or something, I was always very interested in chemistry. It was beginning to get into the heart of theProject Depression and jobs weren't too easy to find and it kind of curtailed my going to school. However I did go to the University quite a bit. But I didn't dabble in chemistry. I dabbled in politics and the wholeSociety economic end of things because I was getting interested in the labor movement at that time. This sort of dove-tailedHistory with what my activities were.

Taylor: What exactly was your involvement with the labor movement during the Thirties? BlackHistorical Johnson: Well, one was very interesting, the starting of 665, which was the Miscellaneous Workers local affiliated with the - or the beginning of it - affiliated with the International Hotel and Restaurant. And I helped to organize that and I was on the board. I served on the policy-making boards - or committees rather - and bettered conditions all the way around. MinnesotaMinnesota Taylor: Were you working in a related area at the time?

Johnson: Yes. I was working at a club, a private club, and in fact I had three different jobs there. I worked as a checkroom attendant, an elevator operator, and a receptionist. At the time that we helped to organize, I was running a service elevator and it made it very convenient for me because I come in contact with the employees and -7-

sort of built in memberships there. Always talked to them about labor and beginning the organization while we were going up the fourteen floors.

Taylor: Was there any . . . Let me rephrase that. Were the employees disgruntled about the wage or the working situation? What led to the organization?

Johnson: Very much disgruntled about the wages, which as I remember at that time was about twelve and one-half cents an hour. The people couldn't live very well on that. This particular institution was one of the better paying jobs to be had duringProject the Depression. They cut back. They said they had to cut back. Anyway, we got cut, and of course then we started to think in terms of organization. Not only just organization, but we did a lot ofSociety work in the field of social security because we didn't have a social security system when we first started attemptingHistory to organize. We sent delegations to Washington; raised money a lot of us walked back and forth to work so we could save our carfare to put in the hat or kitty for our delegates going to Washington to lobby for social security. BlackHistorical Taylor: Was there any attempt in this labor movement to segregate, as

it were, whites into one labor cell, one local cell~ and blacks into another? Or was it quite an intermingling of efforts?

Johnson: Well no, not from the union's position per se. There were always Minnesotapeople in various locals that would attempt to do these kinds of things.Minnesota But the union movement, at the time) - I would say this was pretty true of the whole international; they had pretty knowledgeable people - that you could not organize whites into a union and have blacks discriminated against to the point that they may be hired and brought in at a lower wage, and then break down everything that would come under the union contract. Now this is not true of all unions. But we did happen to have this. Interesting enough, we had as our national president a Hugo (Earps?) who had a brother in New York who was probably one of the -8-

greater civil rights lawyers in the country. And it was no accident that within your top structure you had this kind of a philosophy governing that union.

Taylor: At the time was there any attempt, let's say, of Communists in the United States to utilize the labor movement as a front organization? Did you experience any attempts of burrowing within?

Johnson: Everyone of us I think during the organizational days - and this is true of the CIO when they were organizing The employers of that day labeled everybody that wanted to start a union or get involved in a union as a Communist or some kindProject of a Red. And the same thing was true of the NAACP. Some of us just made up our minds that we didn't care what anybody called us. We knew which way we were going. We knew what our objectives were;Society what we were organizing for. We just kept on going. History Taylor: Were there any let's say, socialists in the ranks, people who ascribed to socialist principles?

Johnson: Well I supposeBlack there were, because you know we had a socialist mayor in Minneapolis at one Historicaltime. And a lot of the people that helped to form the Farmer-Labor Party in the urban areas were socialists. And I don't think working people get too hung up on those things anyway. So I'm pretty sure. Yes, we had the mayor from the city of Minneapolis by the name of Van Lear who was a socialist. I think probably the first and only socialist ever elected. Minnesota Taylor: WhatMinnesota was the nature of the early Farmer-Labor Party? What was the origin and nature of that party?

Johnson: Well the nature of that party was that it was a real people's political party. Because I think there's still remnants of the fact that the DFL Party today has such a good reputation nationally because it was the melting pot. They believed in no question about anybody's religion, color or anything. Sex - women were brought along as fast -9-

as men were brought along. Blacks were encouraged to join. All minorities ... and just a real melting pot; the farmers, laborers, and all nationalities.

Taylor: Did they have strength to begin with or was this a growing movement?

Johnson: Well the Farmer-Labor Party grew . . . a real strength because they elected a governor and a lieutenant governor in the state of Minnesota. In fact today they did a background of Floyd B. Olson A man was elected as lieutenant governor from Askov, Minnesota, which is just north of the area I was talkingProject about in Pine County - our farm. His name was Hja1mar Petersen. We used to sell many boxcar loads of rutabagas to Hja1mar Petersen in Askov. But the Farmer-Labor Party has it's roots allover thisSociety state.

Taylor: What then led to the mergerHistory of the Farmer-Labor Party and the Democratic Party?

Johnson: I would suspectBlack because the arguments I used and was involved in was the re-election of PresidentHistorical Roosevelt in 1944. The Farmer­ Labor Party was the stronger of the two parties membership-wise. We just felt that we had to have that merger to bring the President out to the state of Minnesota, because the Democrats up until that time had never had any real power.

Taylor: MinnesotaDuring this time - I'm speaking of the Thirties and Forties now - were thereMinnesota any other attempts of blacks to organize within the labor movement on their own as separate locals?

Johnson: There was one. I can't think of the number of it. It seems like 614 or something. It was a number similar to the St. Paul local. But this was done primarily on their own and there was a lot of encouragement by other locals affiliated with them to merge with the 458, which was the Cooks and Waiters. -10-

Taylor: Do you know anything of, let's say, the Brotherhood of Pullman Porters' efforts to organize here?

Johnson: Yes, they have a good local in St. Paul and this was before the Railroad Waiters. In fact I know quite a few of the, not just the local ones, but nationally, This was because of the very bad discrimination on the part of the Brotherhood of Railroad Unions or something. I can't even think of the name. But it is a brotherhood of railroad unions.

Taylor: Do you remember anything about Asa Philip Randolph coming through? Project Johnson: Oh yes. Every time Philip Randolph came to town I always went to hear him talk. And had a couple of uncles that were very strong union people in that union. Society

Taylor: Do you know any of the oldHistory founders of that union?

Johnson: Yes. In fact the late Frank Boyd, who was the district representative for A. Philip Randolph in the twin city area also was on the founding conventionBlack Historicalof the DFL party. The blacks who were in on the founding, I would like to say here, were all labor people.

Taylor: Were there any other people affiliated with that particular union, The Brotherhood of Pullman Porters, that you remember?

Johnson: No. I remember . .. I knew a lot of people. I have a Minnesotabrother-in-lawMinnesota that's retired. He was a member. Of course, my uncles that I spoke of. My father's older brother was very close to - worked very close with - the organizational committee in the Brotherhood.

Taylor: What about the local 516 of the Dining and . , . Dining Car . . .

Johnson: Dining Car Waiters. -11-

Taylor: What do you recall of that?

Johnson: Well they were affiliated with the same national that I was affiliated with. 516 was an all-black union that was in St. Paul, but it covered the whole district membership-wise. It was out of the twin city area. I thought it was a very good union and many things that were done community-wise were done around that union. And whenever I wanted to get a group of people together to do anything for the black community, say for instance, through the NAACP, which was very active in most of the civil rights legislation at that time, the 516 always came to the fore. The State Department, now known as the State Department of Human Rights set up andProject legislated as the Fair Employment Practice Commission, which I wish it still were. Then later there was a commission in St. Paul and in Duluth. Of course Minneapolis had it's commission in 1946, about Societythe middle of 1946 or early 1947. We were one of the first cities in the United States to have a fair Employment Commission.History Needless to say, that one of the first supporters of that was the Central Labor Union in Minneapolis which is made up of It is a delegate body from all of the locals alloverBlack the city of Minneapolis and vicinity. And the Central Labor body alsoHistorical was one of the first large bodies to take position on the hiring of black teachers in the Minneapolis school system.

Taylor: And how successful were they?

Johnson:Minnesota Well, I thought it was pretty successful. We had to work through the NAACPMinnesota on a number of things. Because we've got blacks allover the schools now.

Taylor: Was there a strong relationship - or are you suggesting a strong relationship - between the union movement and the NAACP in terms of trying to fight discrimination, not only in employment but in other areas? -12-

Johnson: Mostly in employment, because labor is geared to the employment field. But the NAACP of course is geared to many other areas. And of course the other thing, those of us who were deeply involved in the labor movement and the NAACP, it was a double sword for us because we knew that unless you solved the question of employment, it doesn't make any difference how many business or professionals you get, they have absolutely no economic security until you have that floor, which is the laboring class of people, which is the larger percentage of our total population. Right now I understand it runs about ninety-six percent of the working class people. We had those people organized into an economic organization such as the labor union. There's an awful lot of strengthProject there for doing the things that we want to have done, to say nothing of the political strength, because this is where the real political strength is, those people who control the large organizedSociety organization.

Taylor: Was there any similar relationshipHistory between the union movement and, let's say. the Urban League?

Johnson: Not as much asBlack the NAACP. We worked . You have to under- stand the makeup of these organizations.Historical The Urban League of a Community Chest organization. The NAACP is a mass organization. NAACP is organized like labor is. This made for a better relation­ ship. Now many individuals can do things even in spite of the organization, and from time to time we've had executive secretaries who could work very closely with the NAACP and therefore with labor Minnesotatoo without being out on the stump saying well, this is what we are doing.Minnesota There were some areas that . I happened to be on a national committee at one time, and this was during the Henry Wallace movement. The Progressive Party of 1948, '49 . . . I think I was elected in '49 in the Chicago convention as an alternate delegate on the national committee to get out the black vote. And what we did was to come together with the NAACP, the Urban League, the whole labor movement, and the longshoremen played quite a role in this in Texas. The Congress of . . . before CORE .. the... -13-

Taylor: Fellowship of Friends?

Johnson: No, it was the Civil Rights Congress, Civil Rights Congress. These organizations all got together and formed a coalition. And the first task was to pay poll taxes; raise enough money to pay poll taxes for enough people to go to the polls and outlaw the poll tax. And we did this in the state of Texas. And of course we did a lot of work in Georgia and Alabama too. But this was the beginning then of setting the pace so the NAACP then could move into these other states and get people registered to vote.

(End of side one) Project (Start of side two)

Taylor: Were blacks a bit hesitant about involvingSociety themselves in the labor movement in the Thirties and Forties? Was it difficult to get people involved, to organize? History

Johnson: Yes, I think it was, because there was a lack of understanding and there was a question about that they don't want us; that a lot of blacks had bought theBlack propagandaHistorical that the white labor person didn't want them. Of course my position was I didn't care whether they wanted me or not. This was my natural niche. This is where I belonged if I'm going to do myself economically and politically any good. I think this was the position that a lot of blacks took. You had blacks in leadership capacities who did everything they could that was anti-labor, and this Mr. Boyd that I just spoke about, he Minnesotawas a deaconMinnesota in his church and the ministers were very down on labor. You know, they just really weren't, I don't think, speaking for themselves. I think they were speaking somebody else's mind.

Taylor: Why? Why would the ministers be down on labor?

Johnson: Well, that's what I say, I think because they were speaking somebody else's mind. They've had to look to the employers for money to run their churches, and not thinking in terms of what they were -14-

doing generally to their own community. And this Mr. Boyd and I started to tell you about, they put him off the deacon board because he was active in the labor movement. Of course he never

quit his church~ because he was a very devout man. But it just was the indication . . . And I know of a couple of churches in Minneapolis where people would have been much more active in their church if there hadn't been that very hard anti-labor feeling. These people were looked down upon.

Taylor: If I might pose another question here, I know that in the past there has been an influx of blacks into the Twin Cities area from the south basically. Did you find that duringProject your role that you played in the labor union, more resentment of people who were from the south towards labor? Or was the resentment of blacks who were born and raised in the north the same? Society

Johnson: I think it was pretty muchHistory the same. I think it was the under­ standing. . . Because you have to remember that employment, the so-called black employment, was pretty much the same in the North. It was kind of a veiledBlack thing. The people thought, you know, that they would not be able to getHistorical a job, or be fired off of their job. They've had a hard way to go as it was. If they bowed toward labor, why the attitude was the same whether southern or northern person. I must happen to be one of those people that believed in organization. I came up in the light of all kinds of organization. They come up in business, the whole thing. I suppose a person's background has a lot to do with it. MinnesotaMinnesota Taylor: Now you also mentioned earlier of your . . . You seemed to imply that you knew Hubert Humphrey then, back then.

Johnson: Oh yes. I met Hubert on the campus of the University of Minnesota I think it was 1939, or something like that. He was both going to school and teaching on a WPA project. So. And we had a labor seminar; I think it was labor and farmer and small business at the University. It was a combination. Part of it was labor, and that's when I first met him. -15-

Taylor: Was he as a mayor and as a supporter of labor in the Forties very supportive of the need to involve blacks in the labor movement?

Johnson: Hubert Humphrey has been supportive of involving blacks in everything. I ran on the same ticket with Hubert in 1945.

Taylor: For what office?

Johnson: I ran for the Minneapolis library director. We were bringing out a lot of black people. And a lot of times they'd go into these hotels and want to eat or something and they would be refused. So one of the things in our campaign was to justProject knock this whole concept to smithereens. And we talked about it. And Hubert in all his speeches talked about anybody, regardless of their color of skin or their religion or what have you, to be able to Societycome in, like we was at the Nicollet Hotel say, to be able to come into this hotel and sit down on their own and have Historydinner or whatever they wanted - not have to come in as a part of the political group or the labor group or something like that. So he has always been very supportive of the total people thing. BlackHistorical Taylor: How was his stance towards the Democratic platform plank concerning civil rights? How was that received here in the Twin Cities in the black community?

Johnson: Oh I think it was received very good because there was a lot of Minnesotapeople that heard him talk before and really just a playback of the things Minnesotathat he had done in '43 and '45. I enjoyed campaigning with him because I had never Well of course it was my first campaign where I was a candidate, but I had worked in campaigns, and I had never been associated with anybody that was out there leading the ticket that would go in where angels feared to tread on this black thing. He really did.

Taylor: Now .. -16-

Johnson: I think he may have been frightened a few times as to how far he did go, because I'm sure that some of his close friends and co-workers in the Democratic Party didn't feel quite the same as he did, but he never let that deter him at all. He just kept on moving. He knew he was right.

Taylor: For long periods of time it appeared that blacks were supportive of the Republican Party, you know, the party of emancipation, the party of Lincoln and all this other trivia. Did you detect in the Forties and Fifties, even as early as the Thirties with the Roosevelt Administration, a definite break with tradition and in this area of the blacks falling behind the DemocraticProject ranks?

Johnson: Yes, they did with the rise of the CIO, which was coming along about the same time as Roosevelt. Society

Taylor: Was that '35? History

Johnson: Their activities had started prior to '35; around '32, '33. right along in there. The sit-down strikes I think started about '33. But the organizationBlack I know Historicalstarted a little bit prior to that, or laying the embryo for the organization. But you know it's a strange thing, my grandparents, I know they had talked about my great­ grandparents voting Republican. But my grandparents and my parents voted Democrat. I remember Al Smith. They voted for Al Smith. I was trying to think of what Democrats prior to that. Woodrow Wilson, Al Smith, and then of course Roosevelt for sixteen years. There was Minnesotajust noMinnesota way that anybody in the family voted any other way. I don't care how old they were. So we have a long history of Democratic voting in our family.

Taylor: Did you know Mrs. Eva Neal from St. Paul?

Johnson: Mrs. who?

Taylor: Neal, Eva. -17-

Johnson: I know Mrs. Neal.

Taylor: I remember she had been active in the Minnesota Negro Women, Democratic Women's Association, or something like that. I was wondering whether there was any union tie-in there at all?

Johnson: I don't know. I don't remember that she was involved with the union. Do you know what her background was? What her work was?

Taylor: I don't think she ever worked.

Johnson: There were a few women in Minneapolis andProject St. Paul who worked in the welfare departments. Not too many. You know, they get that percentage of blacks in there and those women were associated with the - it wasn't the State, County, Municipal WorkersSociety then, but it was a kind of union in the early days, like an association or something like this. I supposeHistory like the MEA - something like that.

Taylor: I've seen several political tracts put out by the Democratic party which tried to encourage blacks to vote for Roosevelt; swing behind the ticket, Blackas it were. And I had the chance to read to see if there was any appeal to Historicalunions within this political tract that I saw; to appeal to the union through blacks or something like this.

Johnson: Well, I think that the You may not find any tracts that way, because the appeal was made to the largest group of blacks through unions. Because you take my own union, the Hotel and MinnesotaRestaurant International; you take the steel workers; you take the minersMinnesota - John L. Lewis. Even John L. Lewis brought the people so far behind Roosevelt that when he denounced Roosevelt he couldn't turn off the vote. Things like that. There was just a number of those big sort of miscellaneous type unions where, when you swung a vote, you didn't just swing on the basis on it being a black vote. It was formed on the basis of the economic factor that was involved in that particular political campaign. This is the reason I say that you probably would not find a tract that would say specifically. -18-

Now when you get into the other things, the appeal to blacks is more to the professional type of blacks.

Taylor: Looking at the past on one hand and the present on the other, have you seen an improvement in the economic conditions of blacks in the Twin Cities that could be directly attributed to increased union activity, things of this nature?

Johnson: Yes. You know the possibility has been there for it to be much greater than it is, except that it's the same anti-labor feeling that we were talking about a few minutes ago. Number one, all you have to do is look at Social Security. I'm afraid thatProject unless the average black is in a position to encourage more participation in labor organizations, the policy within labor, we're going to lose some of the gains - particularly black women - that haveSociety been made in Social Security. One of the reasons, say for instance when we were organizing 665, people who wereHistory doing equal work, whether they were a woman or a man, black or white, there was no difference; there was an equalization of wage there. Therefore when you retire at your retirement age and Blackreceived Social Security, you get the same amount of Social Security. We haveHistorical this breakdown in the wage structure, and particularly in seniority rights. The black women are really going to lose out. Well black men will too. But black women will get hurt the most because they are the lowest on the totem pole, even to this day. And these are some of the things I'm very concerned about. Now you take women right now from about fifty up to about the Minnesotaretirement age, in the next ten years, unless there's a real increase in laborMinnesota activity on the part of blacks, who knows? Who can say what this Social Security system is going to be like?

Taylor: I've noticed that much of our discussion has centered around the laboring black as opposed to the black and his struggle in management. And it seems as if a good portion of our people are in the ranks of the masses of worker rather than working themselves up to the middle range of management and upper. Do you foresee -19-

increased difficulties for blacks to make that transition from the ranks of labor to the ranks of management?

Johnson: No. In fact, that's the way it should come. The way the employment is being done - the hiring is being done today - a person coming out of school with nothing but a theoretical knowledge of what production is all about and getting a job in midmanagement or whatever, the average employer certainly wouldn't put that kind of a person into production, because what do they know about production? So they keep them in mid-management. Where we have to have people move is from the ranks of labor on the production end of things because that person knows how to produce; knowsProject how to hold that business together in good times and bad times. This has been the sort of soft belly in professional and top types of jobs other than labor because of the lack of knowledge in the productionSociety end of things.

Taylor: What do you perceive as probablyHistory the biggest problem facing labor here vis-a-vis race relationships. We talked before that you seemed to have seen a kind of a split, an artificial split growing between the black community recently and the ranks of labor. You think that is goingBlack to grow,Historical or do you wish to see it close ranks?

Johnson: I want to see it close ranks. I don't think there needs to be a split. I think the academic black, the professional black, needs to take a good hard look at themselves before they start spouting off a whole lot of anti-labor jargon, particularly out of our agencies. I just want to mention one program we've got. I'm on the board of Minnesotathe UrbanMinnesota League here. We've got one program which is labor's educational. This deals with the professionally skilled people in the whole construction field. This is where they are training. In our top or in the executive part of our staff, there is none of the understanding there that there should be to know how important that program is. Other programs seem to get the nod much better than the LEAP program. The LEAP program is the most viable program that's going in the whole Urban League structure, because out of the training on the LEAP program sets the pace for the future small business black -20-

person in this country. Also on a small business and the combination of black small service type businesses, and the combination of labor activities, this gives the black worker in this country, or the black population for that matter, the strongest kind of bargaining within politics.

Taylor: You mentioned a point here about small businesses. As a business woman yourself, do you feel that there is a market for small businesses run by blacks in this area? I mean is it viable area for blacks to get into business or has it proved to be resistant to blacks getting into business? Project Johnson: If you have a marketable skill, there is not too much competition. It has to be a pretty highly skilled operation. There is no problem at all. You might find a few fuzzy things. Society I encountered one or two little things; didn't amount to much. One was on the percentage deductionHistory of paying cash. And I found out, you know, that if you pay within a certain so many days, or something like that - ten days or whatever it is - I get a two percent reduction in the price of whatever it was you bought. I paid cash right overBlack the counter, so to speak. Finally I caught up to that and one or two littleHistorical things like that. It didn't really amount to too much bucks, but other than that I have a business that's needed. The public needs it. We do good work. And as I said it's a very highly skilled operation. People can make a very good living at it. But there are times, when your business is good, you can't do it in eight hours. You have to stick around and put in a few Minnesotamore hours. It's like a bank president - bank president coming up, you knowMinnesota - fourteen hour day was nothing for him. Same way with small business.

Taylor: I can understand that.

(End of tape)