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5. Bonds of Steel: Depression, War, and International Brotherhood
- The University of North Carolina Press
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f f chapter five Bonds of Steel Depression, War, and International Brotherhood Arthur Robinson Blanchette felt the sting of the Great Depression. Born in St. Vincent in 1910, the son of a prominent dentist, Blanchette lost his father in childhood, the victim of the Spanish influenza epidemic sweeping the globe during the Great War era.∞ In 1927, he boarded a steamship for the United States, bound for medical studies at Howard University, then a crucial training ground for North America’s burgeoning caste of civil rights activists. Wide eyed and eager, Blanchette enjoyed campus life, as well as the prosperity and prestige that it promised, particularly for young black men.≤ Regrettably, Blanchette’s funds dried up well before his thirst for knowledge ever did. Forced out of Howard before completing his intended degree, the frustrated Blanchette cut short his experiment with black campus life and did what thousands of other men and women did during the Great Depression: he got his first job. Blanchette set o√ for Winnipeg in 1931 to join his namesake and uncle John Arthur Robinson, the most prominent black railway unionist in Canada. Despite being ousted from the rails because of his tenacious unionization e√orts, Robinson still held enough clout to secure a summer portering position for his nephew on the Canadian Pacific Railway.≥ The two Kittitians formed an immediately powerful bond. One a scholar and the other an activist, they exchanged ideas and strategies, wedded philosophy and pragmatism , and breathed new life into Winnipeg’s Depression-beaten black community. Robinson, by then also president of the Porter’s Social and Charitable Association, a racial uplift organization created to help blacks in 186 Bonds of Steel Winnipeg navigate the Great Depression, taught the young Blanchette the meaning of leadership, its daily exercise, and the indomitable spirit needed to exert it against irascible bosses, dispassionate white union leaders, and, at times, even furtive black co-workers.∂ During his time in Winnipeg, Blanchette witnessed Robinson’s unstinting campaigns within—and sometimes against—the Canadian Brotherhood of Railway Employees. Robinson accused the cbre’s leadership of being infuriatingly unmoved by the scale of unemployment ripping black men from the rails during the 1930s, leaving these otherwise proud men clustering around railway stations, hoping for day labor, struggling for survival when none was doled out. Though still in his early twenties, Blanchette apprenticed with the most experienced black trade unionist in Canada, learning by Robinson’s side what no classroom could ever o√er.∑ Winnipeg, like all Canadian cities, buckled under the weight of the Great Depression, with African Canadians braving the same adversities—unemployment , hunger, destitution and despair—as other Canadians. In many respects, African Canadians’ singular dependence on the railroads hastened and exacerbated their descent into poverty: when portering jobs dried up, as they did at arresting rates during the 1930s, black railwaymen could not simply turn to other employment options. As a result, blacks in Winnipeg, much like those elsewhere in Canada, banded together, shared meager resources, and cooked up creative survival strategies against often overwhelming circumstances . Robinson, Blanchette, and other sleeping car porters across Canada ultimately saved their communities from total penury through sheer determination and a willingness to test out a range of new approaches, namely, national and transnational ones. Winnipeg then, with its small though tightly knit black community, makes for a fascinating profile in labor and race relations from the 1930s to the 1950s. Moreover, as the seat of labor in Canada and the birthplace of black railway unionism, Winnipeg emerged as a captivating site of protest politics during the interwar years. John A. Robinson and Arthur R. Blanchette spent the years leading up to World War II persuading black workers of the continued value of labor radicalism. At the same time, they focused ever more on social unionism, the practice of melding social justice struggles and community-building e√orts with conventional union workplace concerns. In other words, social unionism sold black railwaymen on the profit of union membership and wedded race-based collective action campaigns with the work of shielding blacks from the full onslaught of the era’s socioeconomic tumult. Put di√erently, Robinson and other black railway unionists broadened the scope of workers’ [54.146.154.243] Project MUSE (2024-03-28 15:18 GMT) Bonds of Steel 187 demands from the railway station to full-scale desegregation, shifting African Canadians’ requests from the workplace to the courts, the press, and other arenas of...