Richmond Tobacco Strikes
A Unique Moment in Labor Activism
A series of strikes led by African American women in the late 1930s in Richmond opened up possibilities for better conditions in the tobacco industry, labor organizing in Virginia, and the wider cause of African American civil rights.
This woman was a tobacco stemmer at Export Leaf, asking for a living wage, better working conditions, and the union recognition and collective bargaining that was afforded to white tobacco laborers. She is part of a larger story about labor activism and radicalism in Richmond.
From the 1940s onward, Virginia, like most states of the American South, adopted “right to work” laws that limited the power and possibilities for unionization. But, this workers landscape was not always the case in the Commonwealth. The organic grassroots action of the black women stemmers at the first strike at Carrington and Michaux created a cascade of labor improvements for all tobacco laborers in Richmond.
Black Women Lead Strikes
On April 16, 1937 at the Carrington and Michaux tobacco plant, off of Hull Street in the Southside of Richmond, a group of primarily black women walked out of the plant in protest. The workers had been forced to increase productivity with no increase in pay. As stemmers, they breathed suffocating air, eighty 80 hour work weeks, for lowest pay of any factory tobacco laborer.
For decades, black factory workers had been excluded from the all-white Tobacco Workers International Union that was affiliated with the more conservative umbrella union, the American Federation of Labor. The black stemmers worked instead with young black organizers and the more radical Congress of Industrial Workers(CIO) to gain recognition as the Tobacco Stemmers Laborers Union (TSLU).
Richmond Tobacco Strikes 1937-38
Strikes followed at Vaughn and Company, then Tobacco By-Product and Chemical Corporation, Export Leaf Tobacco Company in 1938, and finally Larus Brothers in 1940. As shown in this map, the strikes occured across the city's various manufacturing hubs, from the Southside to Tobacco Row to Scott's Addition.
Mama Harris: A Community Organizer
Mama Harris, a stemmer at Export Tobacco, exemplified the grassroots organizing that the CIO relied on to unionize tobacco workers.
“Mama Harris was a spokesman of the rank and file . . . in a class by herself. Her husband was a quintessential manly worker, but he often sat quietly aside while his wife’s loud voice boomed over the crowd”
-James Jackson, a TSLU leader who served as the education director and Civil Rights leader
When Mama Harris first heard of the TSLU organizing at Export Tobacco, she went to the first meetings at Leigh Street Baptist Church with sixty women who worked with her on the stemming floor.
Location of Leigh Street Baptist Church, where TSLU members met
Her fellow stemmers respected her trust in the CIO and that contributed to a strong union. Mama Harris served as the picket line captain for over 500 people. Without the community resources and connections of people like Mama Harris, the CIO would have not been able to gain traction.
Mama Harris knew that women were at the center of this labor movement claiming: “They ‘fraid of the women. You can talk the men. But us women don’t take no tea for fever”
Measurable Victories for Labor
The early strikes created unprecedented, tangible victories for labor organizing in Virginia and in the tobacco industry.Carrington and Michaux tobacco plant was the first successful strike in Virginia since 1905. An impressive record was achieved by strikers and union organizers, with three strikes and three settlements in barely three months.
“tobacco stemmers and laborers have won four strikes, an eight hour day, wage increases totaling about $300,000 and brought out collective bargaining with managers who use to fire negros for just wailing into the offices” - Augusta V. Jackson in 1938, reporting for The Crisis, the official magazine of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People
Social Strides for Unions
The TSLU offered black tobacco workers new opportunities for tangible economic gains and connections to a wider national union effort. While the all-white union, Tobacco workers' International Union (TWUI), had done little to improve conditions in tobacco factories, the TSLU enrolled over 2,500 members in a few short months.
Through the CIO, the TSLU had strong cross racials labor networks. For example, 200 white members of the CIO's Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America marched in mass to the Export Leaf Plant to join the black strikers on the picket line.
The CIOs cross racial efforts even influenced the TWUI to call an integrated strike in April 1939 at Liggett and Myers in Richmond, as well as Durham, NC, and San Francisco, CA.
Limits to Unionization
After these unprecedented victories, the drive to unionize ran into new roadblocks that ultimately proved too difficult to surmount. In late 1940, several independent Richmond stemmeries fired hundreds of workers due to mechanization. Unions survived in the Southern tobacco industry, but by the 1950s, anti-union “right-to-work” laws passed in Virginia and throughout the South made these unions relatively weak. Instead, at Richmond-based Philip Morris, a form of corporate paternalism, at least until the 1980s, meant good benefits and decent wages but little to no workplace democracy.
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A Unique Moment in Labor Activism
The spark of labor activism in the tobacco industry during the 1930s in Richmond was a unique moment for union organizing and perhaps a lost possibility for Southern labor. Black women stemmers were the most exploited in tobacco factories and without their labor activism, all tobacco workers would have not received improved wages and conditions.
Image Credits
Picket - tobacco worker with umbrella, October 1938, Courtesy of Library of Congress https://www.loc.gov/item/2010648530/
Picket - tobacco worker in street, October 1938, Courtesy of Library of Congress, https://www.loc.gov/item/2010648545 /
Tobacco Warehouse Postcard, 1913, Courtesy of the American Studies Program
James E. Jackson Jr., Illustration by Shawn Yu, People's World Archives, https://www.peoplesworld.org/article/james-jackson-communist-leader-and-pioneer-fighter-for-civil-rights/
“Vote CIO” Lapel, ca.1940s, Courtesy of the American Studies Program
Tobacco Workers International Union Matchbook, ca. 1960s, Courtesy of the American Studies Program
