Labor History News

It's the Union Lady: Betty Murray

July 24, 1920-May 31, 2010

On Tuesday, June 1, 2010, Betty’s daughter, Ai’fe (Betsy) Murray, wrote:        

“Family and Friends, Betty passed gently out of this world surrounded by family members on Monday just after tea time.”

Her memorial service was held on Thursday, June 3^rd and was attended by her family, co-workers, co-unionists and a host of family and friends of loved her dearly.

 Betty was a founding member and officer of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association. GNHLHA presented her with the Augusta Lewis Troup Preservation Award in 2002. Below is a biography written by Joan Cavanagh based on an interview with Betty. It was read by Deborah Elkin, then- President of GNHLHA, as she presented Betty with the award.

Betty Murray's Biography for Augusta Lewis Troup Award 12/8/2002

Elizabeth Murray was born in Philadelphia in 1920 the year, she proudly says, that “women got the vote and Ireland was freed!” She went to work at age 18 in the insurance department of the state capital in Harrisburg, PA, but returned home at the beginning of World War II to work in the Cramp Shipyard, which had been newly refitted for service in the defense industry. Here, she met Henry Murray, a shipfitter who had come from Kearney Shipyard in New Jersey to help organize the Cramp Yard for the Union of Marine Shipbuilders of America (UMSWA-CIO). The drive was successful. Betty married Henry, and thus began a long and loving partnership between two strong labor and community activists.

As a rank and file member of UMSWA, Betty worked on a union newspaper and served on its Selective Service Committee, which visited local selective service offices in an attempt to get fathers who were war workers excused from military service. She also participated in a two or three day strike for the end of racial discrimination at the yard, which resulted in Black workers being offered skilled jobs where once they had been relegated to the position of yard or office cleaners.

After the Cramp Yard closed at war’s end, Betty was offered a job running the office of Steelworkers’ Local 2898, which represented two bearing plants. She became a thorn in the side of the company, calling them “all the time” with questions about their seniority practices and other issues. Betty recalls that, although “they never knew my name, some one would answer the phone and stage whisper, ‘it’s the union lady.’” The local office, which was just down the street from the plant, became a strong presence in the old, poor factory neighborhood, and was involved in many facets of the lives of workers and their families.

Betty left the Steelworkers job in 1950 when her son, Hank, was born. Her daughter, Betsy, was born in 1953. Her husband, Henry, took a job for the Political Action Committee of the C.I.O., which became the Committee on Political Education, AFL-CIO after the merger in 1955. His territory was New England. They moved to New Haven in 1956, but the family traveled all over New England with him in his work.

Betty did not work again for pay until 1966, but she was appointed the Women’s Activities Director of the New Haven Central Labor Council by its then President, Vincent Sirabella. The goal was to reach out to labor wives to get them more involved in the activities of their husbands’ locals. At the time, Betty recalls, wives were feeling very left out of union affairs.

Betty returned to work in 1966 as a secretary at the Yale Medical School Clinic for Adolescent Medicine, where she signed her union card at the behest of Bill Berndtson (another member of the GNHLHA Board and corresponding secretary of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association.) Between 1966 until her retirement in 1987, Betty was a mainstay in every union drive at Yale. She continued as an active member of Local 34. “Winning at Yale,” she recalls, “was a unique victory.” At her retirement dinner, the Chairman of the department, a doctor, thanked her for raising his consciousness and showing him his responsibility to his clerical and technical workers.

In addition to her steadfast contributions to the labor movement in New Haven, Betty has been a tireless community activist. She found her work with the mostly Black adolescents at the clinic to be important and satisfying. During the 1960s, she spearheaded a drive to end the racist minstrel shows at St. Aedan’s Church here in New Haven. Pressure on the church to end the shows came from a Bishop as a result of a letter of Betty’s that was published in the Catholic Transcript newspaper.

Betty  helped to revive the Catholic Interracial Council with Mary Johnson and others. The Council held parish meetings throughout New Haven, Hamden, and Branford and picketed churches after mass about issues such as scattered housing and in support of school busing. The Murrays and fourteen other families were part of a successful court case to integrate Edgewood School.

Throughout the Vietnam War, Betty also participated both nationally and locally in anti-war demonstrations.

Betty has been the treasurer of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association since 1990, an office she is resigning today. Our grateful thanks for her steadfast work as an officer.        

John Riener 

Livingston, Adler, Pulda, Meiklejohn & Kelly, PC

UNITE/HERE Local 34 Members

Thomas J. and Kim M. Trella

Mark Cullen

The Flaherty Family 

Thomas W. and A. Margarida Meiklejohn                                                                                                                           

United Autoworkers Union Region 9A (Farmington)                                                                     

Jim Condren                                                                                                                                

Susan Karlins                                                                                 

Yale Unions Retirees’ Organization

Connecticut Humanities Council Awards Grant to GNHLHA for First Phase of Winchester Workers' Exhibit

Calling Former Winchester Workers (Read article from the New Haven Independent)

The Connecticut Humanities Council has awarded a $6000 planning grant to the Greater New Haven Labor History Association to prepare images for the Association’s upcoming exhibit on workers at the old Olin-Winchester Plant in the Newhallville section of New Haven.

The images, including photographs and newspaper articles, will be digitized and re-mastered to exhibit quality by internationally acclaimed new media artist Cynthia Beth Rubin.

“The plant closed in 2006, but the stories of its workers throughout the 20^th and early 21^st centuries have yet to be told,” said Labor History Association Director and Archivist Joan Cavanagh. “An entire culture developed within the plant among workers. Everyone in the community knew or was related to someone who worked there.”

Labor History Association Board members Lula White, Dorothy Johnson, James Hoffecker and Mary Johnson have been conducting oral histories with retired Winchester workers since the early spring of this year. Information from those interviews will help create the text of the exhibit, which will be produced by the end of 2010.

The core of the exhibit will be based on photographs and documents from the International Association of Machinists Local 609 collection held in the Labor History Association’s archives. Local 609 represented workers at the plant from 1956 until its closure. Images from earlier years as well as images of the workers’ lives in the community will be culled from personal memorabilia. GNHLHA encourages anyone with relevant photographs, documents or newspaper articles to be in contact by calling 203-777-2756, ext. 2 or sending an email to joan@laborhistory.org. Please be in touch right away as we are in the process now of digitizing the images to be used and writing the text for the exhibit.

By Mary Johnson

The Greater New Haven Labor History Association (GNHLHA) hopes that you will share your memories.

In the 1960s, the United Farm Workers of America (UFW) launched a grape boycott that inspired New Haven area residents (as well as people throughout the world) to join and help win good contracts in most of California’s vineyards. In the mid to late 1970s, a UFW Boycott staff person came to New Haven to organize boycott committees in Connecticut.

Almost immediately, the New Haven committee began picketing and leafleting at supermarkets urging customers to boycott fruits and vegetables grown by producers who refused to negotiate contracts with the UFW. All of these were successful.

Most memorable was the Gallo Boycott. The efforts of the New Haven Committee not only attracted a great deal of community support but received a very negative response, including physical violence, unfortunately initiated by some members of a rival union.

The California Agricultural Labor Relations Act, which became law in 1975, guaranteed farm-workers the right to bargain collectively. Gallo Wineries decided that it preferred its known adversary, the Teamsters, to the more militant, independent United Farm Workers’ Union. Gallo collaborated with the Teamsters to suppress the UFW.

The UFW called for a nationwide boycott of Gallo Wines. The New Haven UFW Boycott Committee, after months of picketing liquor stores on Orange Street, convinced three owners to remove Gallo Wines from their shelves.

When the picket lines moved to a liquor store on Whitney Avenue, Gallo salesmen as well as groups of men wearing  jackets identifying themselves as supporters of  a Teamsters Local, began observing us for several weeks. This culminated in the brutal beating of a 16 year UFW advocate. That incident and a tremendous show of community support for the boycott resulted in nationwide news coverage.

If you remember any of these and later activities, please call Mary at (203) 387-7858, or send your stories to info@laborhistory.org. GNHLHA would like to share them on its website. New Haven’s UFW boycott activities were part of a powerful and inspirational social change movement and we cannot afford to lose that history.

Long time GNHLHA member Ruth Emerson passed away on April 25^th at the age of 89. A celebration her life was held at the New Haven Peoples Center on June 26^th. It was attended by many of her friends and colleagues.  The brief snapshot of her life printed for that event is taken from the “Biography in Progress” currently being written by her stepson, Robert Emerson:

Ruth Calvin Emerson, a teacher, attorney, loyal friend and passionate advocate for civil rights passed away on April 25, 20910 at Connecticut Hospice in Branford, Connecticut.

Born in Bridgeport, Connecticut in 1921, Ruth loved music and played flute and trombone in her school years. She was an enthusiastic Girl Scout, one of five Scouts who represented the United States in an international meeting of Girl Scouts and Girl Guides in Switzerland in 1938.

Ruth attended Oberlin College, graduating in 1943. During World War II, she served in the Women’s Army Corps, Signal Corps, from 1944-1956 and was stationed in Fort Myers in Virginia and Fort Dix in New Jersey.

Following the completion of her military service, Ruth entered Yale Law School, graduating in 1950. She was one of only six women in her class of 160.

After her graduation from Yale Law School, Ruth worked in Washington, D.C. as an enforcement attorney for the National Labor Relations Board. She returned to Connecticut in 1953 and entered private practice in New Canaan but soon left to become a teacher and psychological tutor in New York City.

Ruth married Yale Law School Professor Thomas Emerson ’31 in 1960 and remained married to him for 31 years until his death at age 83.

Ruth was one of the early practitioners of Words in Color, an innovative method of teaching developed by the educator Dr. Caleb Gattegno. Like Gattegno, Ruth believed in the subordination of teaching to learning and the active involvement and awareness of the student. Beginning in 1970, she taught Words in Color at High School in the Community, and several years later to teachers in New Haven and students referred to her by other educators.

Throughout her adult life, Ruth was a committed progressive and political activist. She was involved with organizations such as the National Committee Against Repressive Legislation (now Defending Dissent) and numerous other civil rights and human rights organizations.

She was a frequent writer of brief and powerful letters to the editor about law and politics. In 2006, she co-founded the Connecticut non-profit, Haiti Marycare, Inc, to support two pre-schools and a rural health clinic in Haiti.

Written by Joan Cavanagh, GNHLHA Director

Report on This Year’s Annual Meeting

By Jim Hoffecker and Joan Cavanagh

The excitement was high at the New Haven Federation of Teachers/ Greater New Haven Central Labor Council Building on the afternoon of Sunday May 16, 2010 for the Greater New Haven Labor History Association’s Annual Meeting. Those attending included many who have been GNHLHA members for years as well as several who joined for the first time.  Highlights of the afternoon included presentation of the Augusta Lewis Troup awards and a dramatic reading of “Voices of Working People’s History,” a performance piece by Western Massachusetts Jobs with Justice, followed by remarks from Professor Troy Rondinone. 

 Guests were greeted at the door by GNHLHA’s new Outreach Coordinator, Christine Saari, and welcomed from the podium by President Nicholas Aiello. Archivist/ Director Joan Cavanagh gave a brief report and an overview of the afternoon.  Vice President Mary Johnson was mistress of ceremonies.

The first of the two Augusta Lewis Troup awards was given to Mary Altieri for her work as a union organizer in the early garment industry. It was presented by Anthony Riccio, author of The Italian American Experience in New Haven, Cooking with Chef Silvio, and the soon to be published  Farms, Factories and Families: Italian-American Women of Connecticut.  The second award, presented by former AFSCME Local 1939 President and long-time community activist Irmgard Wessel, was given to Joe Dimow for his life time contributions to progressive work in New Haven and beyond.

 GNHLHA members and Executive Board members joined in reading the parts of Big Bill Haywood, Mother Jones, W.E.B DuBois, Peter McGuire, Albert and Lucy Parsons and other key figures in the fight for the eight hour day, whose words are used to evoke the history of labor organizing in the United States in the Western Massachusetts Jobs With Justice production, “Voices in Working People’s History”.  The performance included classic labor songs performed   by Frank Panzarella, GNHLHA’s official troubadour, sometimes accompanied by new GNHLHA member George Anthony (“Tony”) Rosso, a professor of English at Southern Connecticut State University, whose singing ability is a previously undiscovered resource. The performance ended with a rousing rendition of “Solidarity Forever,” joined by all.

Following the reading was a talk by Southern Connecticut State University History Professor and GNHLHA Recording Secretary Troy Rondinone about the history depicted in the reading.  The talk is being written up as an article tentatively entitled, “The Bomb that Started Labor History” and will be published in the next newsletter. Stay tuned!

From Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1

By Anthony Riccio

Come this July, I anticipate the publication of Cooking with Chef Silvio: Stories, Social History and Authentic Recipes from Campania, by SUNY Press, which looks at the fascinating social history of Italy’s Campania region through food and oral history stories.  The book highlights the cuisine our ancestors brought from the farmlands of Campania to the city of New Haven – those hearty and delicious meals our grandparents made from simple, earth-based ingredients.  Highlighted in this book is the unknown history and unheralded role of the Italian woman whose resourcefulness and ingenuity in “la cucina della povera gente” the kitchen of the poor, often meant survival for large peasant families with few resources in the poverty-stricken south.  

A second book in progress, also by SUNY Press (Spring ’11), is Farms, Factories and Families: Italian American Women of Connecticut, a woman’s history woven together by oral histories from elderly Italian American women storytellers from many cities throughout Connecticut.  The book begins with recollections of small village life in Italy through the eyes of young women who reconstruct the social history of the south through their experiences at home, in schools, at work and during their arduous journeys to America.  This Italian woman’s history documents the sewing tradition beginning with the ancient Samnites of Campania and how the centuries-old craft was absorbed by New Haven’s garment industry when the city was an epicenter in the 20s and 30s, employing thousands of Italian immigrant women and their daughters who were eager to support their families at the cost of foregoing their dreams for professional careers.   The book chronicles the union movement of the Amalgamated in New Haven, tracing its origins as a woman’s movement whose outspoken leaders – Jennie Aiello, Jill Iannone, Carol Paolillo and others profiled in the book – broke the traditional role of the subservient southern Italian woman and stood up to male factory owners and the barbaric sweatshop conditions they imposed to form their own union.  Through their organizing efforts and willingness to risk their own livelihood, these gallant women turned the tide in favor of the common working person, gaining better working conditions and fair pay, setting in motion a union movement that reverberated through the city for generations. 

Several of Anthony Riccio’s photographs of Italian American Garment Workers are featured in the GNHLHA exhibit, “New Haven’s Garment Workers,” on display now at Fairfield University.

From Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1

“Lincoln Speaks to New Haven” was a commemorative celebration of the 150^th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s visit to New Haven during his presidential campaign in 1860. The event was the first in the New Haven Student Seminar Series, which included three stages where New Haven high school students engaged in historical research, became involved in a collaborative demonstration to recognize an historical event or place and then developed and delivered presentations to New Haven elementary studentsundefinedsparking their early interest in the history of their city.

“Lincoln Speaks to New Haven” was a re-enactment of the actual speech given by Lincoln, including a brass band and period costumes, and took place at Union Station downtown. The event, spearheaded by attorney Frank Cochran, was sponsored by the New Haven Public Schools, the New Haven Museum and Historical Society, Partner 4 Peace, the Greater New Haven Labor History Association, and the Office of Cultural Affairs of the City of New Haven.

Readers of Moments in New Haven Labor History, written by Neil Hogan and published by the Greater New Haven Labor History Association in 2004, remembered the significance of Lincoln’s speech for the labor movement.

In describing the speech, Neil wrote: “[Lincoln’s] comments were prompted by a strike that was going on at that very moment in New England. When workers’ demands for increases were denied, shoemakers walked off the job in Lynn and Natick, Mass. in February 1860. They were joined by workers in other Bay State and New Hampshire towns until almost  20,000 employees were on strike in one of the nation’s largest labor disputes until that time. The strikers argued that better pay for employees was also in the interest of employers, ‘inasmuch as the wealth of the masses…increases the demand for manufactured goods.’

“It was that theme that Lincoln took up in his comments before a huge crowdundefinedso great was the enthusiasm that nearly 1,000 had to be turned awayundefinedat Union Hall on Union Street near Chapel Street, on March 6, 1860. His remarks on labor were made within a definitely partisan context and comprised only a few sentences in a speech devoted almost entirely to the burning issue of slavery. He also linked his support for workers’ rights with the slavery question. Yet, what he said that night about the shoe strike was a clear-cut defense of employees’ rights, going further…than any other politician of national stature had done.”

“’I am glad to see that a system of labor prevails in New England under which laborers can strike when they want to,” Lincoln said to cheers, “’where they are not obliged to work under all circumstances, and are not obliged to labor whether you pay them or not.’( cheers)” The future President also said, “’I am not ashamed to confess that 25 years ago I was a hired laborer, nailing rails, at work on a flat boat, just what might happen to any poor man’s son’ (applause.)”

For further details about the “Lincoln Speaks to New Haven” program on March 6^th, please contact Frank Cochran, 203-865-7380, fbcochran@comcast.net or ben@newhavenmuseum.org.

From Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1

By Ai’fe Murray

www.maidasmuse.com

When American poet Emily Dickinson wrote the lines "I'm Nobody! Who are you? Are you - Nobody - too? Then there's a pair of us!" she might've been writing about the women and men who tended her kitchen hearth and household grounds in the quiet country town of 19th-century Amherst, Massachusetts. Except that Emily Dickinson, who yearned for privacy, became a famous "Somebody" while her many maids and stablemen, gardeners and laundry workers slid from the public's sight. But that's about to change. Those "nobodies" long lost to history are about to get their public due with the publication of Maid as Muse: How Servants Changed Emily Dickinson's Life and Language.

This new book, by Elm City native Aí’fe Murrayundefineddaughter of trade unionists Betty Murray and the late Henry Murray-- squarely places the renowned American poet downstairs in her kitchen, a warm and lively place which was a veritable United Nations of helping hands from English immigrant stablemen and African American gardeners to Protestant Yankee seamstresses and Irish immigrant laundry workers and maids-of-all-work. According to Aí’fe (pronounced ee-fah), the poet apparently rubbed elbows with these men and women because she was the family baker. Emily Dickinson won baking prizes at local fairs and, even after the family hired a live-in maid, her father insisted that Emily make all of the bread. As a baker herself, the author understood how much time the poet would have spent in the kitchen working alongside of her servants. That explains why, according to Ai’fe, that Emily Dickinson’s letters frequently refer to her servants Ai’fe didn't set out to write a book about the servants and their relationship with one of the world's most famous poets. It came about because Murray, now of San Francisco, found herself coming up short when comparing her own writing productivity with that of the very prolific Emily Dickinson.  Wondering who helped make Dickinson’s writing possible, the author stumbled upon a photograph of three servants in a Dickinson biography. Staring at those three Irish faces she thought to herself, “my great-grandmother could’ve been scrubbing Emily Dickinson’s stairs!” But there’s more: Dickinson was influenced by the servantsundefinedand maid Margaret Maher, with whom Dickinson was especially close, saved poems that the poet stored in the maid’s trunk from their planned destruction.

Ai’fe  Murray is the daughter of Betty Murray, the former treasurer of the Greater New Haven Labor History Association and a recipient of the Association’s Augusta Lewis Troup Award. Ms. Murray begins the book tour in her home town. Maid as Muse was launched at the New Haven Free Public Library on Tuesday, March 16 at 6 p.m. Following a reading and a question and answer session, books were available for purchase and signing. For more information about her writing and the book, please visit www.maidasmuse.com. 

From Newsletter Volume 6, Number 1

By Dorothy Johnson, GNHLHA Executive Board Member

I can’t count the number of people I have met who lived in the Newhallville area or worked at the former Winchester plant. My father was living in Birmingham, Alabama when plant managers headed to the South in hopes of recruiting potential workers to locate to New Haven, CT. Great numbers of people headed north for a better future for themselves and their families. Some of the workers who migrated to the North stayed at the former YMCA which was then located on Howe Street in walking distance to the plant.

Winchester has such a rich history. I can remember when my family lived on Bassett Street and I would walk down to the plant, which at that time had factories on both sides of Winchester Avenue. This historic facility was a city inside a larger city. At 12 noon you could hear the whistle blowing all over New Haven. Those were the good days.

Many positive changes did occur throughout the decades. The Greater New Haven Labor History Association is launching an oral history project for former Winchester workers to share their experiences while employed there. Victory Lodge 609 members stood up and fought back against the company numerous times. It certainly was an active journey the workers experienced. Now is the time you can share your untold story with others. The Winchester Plant may be gone, but the history is alive!

Interviews will kick off in the middle of March 2010. The committee has already contacted some former workers who are eager to tell the story. Please join us in this history event.

For more information about this project, please contact Dorothy Johnson or Lula White, (203) 281-0665, Mary Johnson (203) 387-7858, or email info@laborhistory.org.