Cottrell Laurence Dellums (January 3, 1900 – December 6, 1989) was an American labor activist and one of the organizers and leaders of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters.

[1] Dellums became the standard bearer of a growing African American labor movement in Oakland,[2] Richmond, and San Francisco in the aftermath of the war.

Dellums with the OVL, drew their strength from building an organization and a new notion of political community among the city's multiracial working class.

In response, Roosevelt issued an executive order establishing a Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC), which urged that defense plants be opened to African Americans.

[3] In 1964, Dellums and the California Fair Employment Practices Commission published “A Report on Oakland Schools” that provided a window into the structural problems within the district as a result of hiring discrimination being one of the biggest obstacles to making the Oakland Unified School District receptive to its growing black student body.