There's Always Work at the Post Office: African American Postal Workers and the Fight for Jobs, Justice, and Equality

SEVEN: Black Women in the 1960s Post Office and Postal Unions (1960–1969)

CHAPTER SEVEN black women in the 1960s post office and postal unions (1960–1969) ‘‘It is important to note that most of the women coming into the PO [Post O≈ce] are Negroes. Reflecting the conditions in the American economy and the unfair treatment that they have received on the ‘outside’ down through the years, these women come into the Federal government hoping that they will get a ‘fair shake.’ ’’∞ Those words appeared in the May 1966 Union Mail, the monthly newspaper of the militant industrial Manhattan-Bronx Postal Union (mbpu), the huge New York local that was the largest in the npu. The article’s author, mbpu executive vice president Philip Seligman, a European American, pointed out that there were over 3,400 women in the New York post o≈ce (up from 550 in 1960), and that half of all postal workers soon to be hired were expected to be women. He called for the union to fight sexual harassment and the inadequate training of female clerks, noting: ‘‘More significant, is the protest from many of our female members that they receive inadequate indoctrination when they are appointed.’’≤ Ten years later, as part of a postal union oral history project by Cornell University, Professor Dana Schecter interviewed Seligman, who had since retired from the post o≈ce. The mbpu was now the New York Metro Area Postal Union (nymapu) Local 10, the largest in the apwu—itself a product of the 1970 postal wildcat strike and subsequent union merger of clerk and other craft unions. Seligman recalled how legislative and executive orders during the Kennedy administration contributed to the abolition of separate gender job registers and paved the way for a tremendous increase in postal employment for women. He also reflected on how the influx of mostly black women in the 1960s in New York transformed the post o≈ce and its unions: ‘‘And they brought a new force with them, a dramatic change. . . . The change was a more aggressive change, they wouldn’t take abuse, they fought back, they hit back, and it was good.’’≥ One of those recently hired militant black women was Eleanor Bailey, who in the early 1970s told a meeting of apwu women activists: ‘‘Our group of 172 | black women in the 1960s post office Eleanor Bailey, New York City 1970 postal strike rank-and-file leader (mbpu-npu), in 2004. Now retired, Bailey was hired during a large influx of women—especially African Americans—into the post o≈ce in the 1960s and fought for their rights. She was shop steward for thirty-one of her thirty-two years at the post o≈ce, promoted women’s organization, and later held positions as legislative director, human relations director, and chair of the Trustee Board of New York Metro Area Postal Union Local 10–apwu. Photograph by the author. ‘subs’ was always ‘getting into something.’ Challenging the establishment of the P.O. and the union on their policies. We had stewards who we wondered on whose side they were on. I attended meetings just to have the knowledge of the union policies and my rights.’’∂ Black women helped transform the post o≈ce and its unions in the early 1960s. By advocating for themselves and all postal workers, black women broadened the scope of civil rights unionism. Their entry into the post o≈ce was facilitated in large part by presidential executive orders and congressional legislation that represented not only Kennedy’s New Frontier anticommunist Cold War ideology and idealism, but its response to the black freedom movement , residual New Deal Democrat advocacy, and competition from communist countries and liberation movements around the world. It was a response that was both politically pragmatic and ideological—an interest convergence where ‘‘top-down’’ met ‘‘bottom-up.’’ Black women entering the post o≈ce in the 1960s got help from black black women in the 1960s post office | 173 In the 1960s, African American women were hired in increasing numbers, for the most part as postal clerks and mail handlers; shown here are workers in one of the main post o≈ces in New York City. Courtesy of the Postal Workers Union Photographs Collection, Tamiment Library, New York University. women working in the President’s Commission on the Status of Women (pcsw), who argued for and helped facilitate policy change at the top with their intervention. The Kennedy administration...