The Memoirs of Wendell W. Young III by Wendell W. Young III (review)

Wendell Young's lively memoir is a welcomed addition to the historiography of labor and social movements in the second half of the twentieth century. Young's account of fifty years of championing "social justice unionism" captures the vitality of the hitherto-slighted progressive wing of Philadelphia's labor movement (2). Indeed, there is surprisingly little mention of Young in existing scholarship and yet the 2,000 mourners who attended his 2013 wake are a testament to his importance to labor, civil rights, feminist, and LGBTQ causes. Young was head of a large Retail Clerks Union local (later, the United Food and Commercial Workers, Local 1776) and a prominent national labor figure. This memoir, ably edited and introduced by Rutgers University's Francis Ryan, provides a first-person account that will interest both scholars and organizers.

Young's Catholic faith framed his life's work. His childhood centered around parish life in Philadelphia's Mayfair neighborhood of mostly Irish and German residents. His father tutored him on the virtues of organized labor; two of his aunts, well-educated Catholic nuns who held leadership positions in their religious orders, encouraged Young to question social and economic injustices. Most important, his Jesuit education at St. Joseph's College (now University), formed his understanding that labor union work was "an outward expression of my faith" (28). Catholic social teaching prompted Young to confront abusive store managers, organize an illegal secondary boycott of grapes in support of the United Farm Workers, and challenge a Philadelphia prelate for his opulent lifestyle while opposing a Catholic school teachers' organizing campaign.

This is a story of an insider who participated in the rough world of Philadelphia labor and politics with a mix of fierce loyalty and principle. As a local party committee member, he provided key support for Mayor Jim Tate, opposing one of the Democrat's election opponents as a "Blue Blood," from the Chestnut Hill neighborhood (92). The novice labor leader (for many years local labor officials called him "kid") confronted an intransigent Teamster official with the threat that store clerks would puncture the cellophane bread wrapper if he insisted that drivers stock bread on grocery store shelves (50). Young faced off against the city's conservative skilled trades and construction unions for, among other things, their backing of Frank Rizzo, the populist mayor who practiced virulent racial politics. In his own union, Young helped lead the "Reformation, Revitalization, Reconstruction" caucus in opposition to the entrenched leadership (118). This was a daunting task: Young and his union allies met gun-toting supporters of the incumbent labor officers when they traveled to Ohio locals. Later in life, Young became an advocate of gay rights in response to one of his siblings coming out to his family.

His role in national Democratic politics was equally significant. Young's extended labor tour of Brazil in the mid-1960s convinced him of the folly of much of the U.S. government's foreign policy, including in waging the Vietnam War. Over the objections of the AFL-CIO's leadership, his trip to China in 1978, sponsored by the US-China Friendship Committee, further modified his views of the US role in Asia. Young's stalwart liberalism crystallized around his visible support for Eugene McCarthy, George McGovern, and Jimmy Carter. Although he only hints at the effect of the Democratic Party's McGovern-Fraser Commission on the dissolution of the New Deal Coalition, he backed its far-reaching reforms on state primary elections and the delegate selection process. Many of the New Democrats of the 1970s and '80s whom Young endorsed proved to be, at best, tenuous supporters of the labor movement. Young's principled politics were tempered by practical considerations. Where he supported Republican gubernatorial candidate Richard Thornburgh over Rizzo in 1978, until his death from a heart attack, he was prepared in 1991 to back...