1945–1946 Charleston Cigar Factory strike
This, coupled with the firing of an African American worker in a move viewed by many employees as racially charged, led to a series of sitdown strikes and walkouts.
In addition to demands regarding pay and protections against racial discrimination, the strikers also pushed for the Cigar Factory to become a closed shop.
Additionally, the strikers were able to garner support from a wide array of sources in Charleston, including among African American activists and white progressives.
Despite a ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that mandated the company to issue backpay on November 8, the union decided to remain on strike until all of their demands were met.
During the late 1800s, influential business leaders and boosters in Charleston, South Carolina, sought to encourage increased industrial development in the city.
[3] The plant attracted many African American workers as it offered some of the highest wages available to them in the city, though they had to contend with both the physically demanding nature of the work and constant racial discrimination from management.
[4] However, company executives ignored the order and Harold F. McGinnis, the manager of the Cigar Factory, also refused to honor the local union's contract.
[4] With the firing and the failure to honor their contract, tensions increased dramatically between the company and the union, and on October 3, Local 15 president Reuel Stanfield organized a sitdown strike.
[8] The workers' demands included a 25 cent per hour raise, the issuance of backpay,[3][9] and a closed shop model for the plant that would have required new hires to join the union.
[4] Because of ATC's refusal to issue backpay in spite of orders from the federal government, the union filed a complaint with the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB), who sent a representative of theirs to Charleston on November 8 to investigate the matter.
[4] As a result, the strike continued past the fall and into winter, during which time Charleston experienced unusually extreme weather phenomena, including freezing rain and snow.
[4] Ultimately, these efforts were able to attract a large base of support for the strike among both black civil rights activists and white middle class progressives.
[9][4] These concessions included a pay raise of 8 cents per hour and an agreement to ease racial barriers to certain skilled positions within the factory.
[9][4][8][note 2] By this point, there were few strikers left actively picketing the factory, and while the concessions fell short of the workers' initial demands, they returned to work on April 1, bringing an end to the strike.
[3][9] In 1980, Johnson & Wales University began using the facility as for classroom space,[4] and that same year, the building was added to the National Register of Historic Places.
[3] In 2013, a historical marker was added outside the building that gave information on the strike, and the following year, the property was purchased by a private company that converted it into a mixed-use development.
[3] In 2016, the cigar factory and the strike were the subject of a historical fiction novel written by Michele Moore and published by Story River Books.
[12] Some historians note that the strike was significant in bringing together black and white individuals towards a common goal, a rarity in the Southern United States at the time.
[9] A 2016 book by historians Herb Frazier, Bernard Edward Powers Jr., and Marjory Wentworth echoes these same sentiments, stating that the strike was "far ahead of its time" for uniting black and white economic interests.
[16] In 1947, two members of Local 15, Anna Lee Bonneau and Evelyn Risher,[4] traveled to the Highlander Folk School in Monteagle, Tennessee, to attend a workshop.
