Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Man from Kerry

As we commemorate the 50^th anniversary of perhaps the second most famous speech in American history on August 28, 1963   (Lincoln’s Gettysburg address is certainly the first), the man who gave the “I Have a Dream” speech, Martin Luther King, Jr. is being commemorated for his place in American history. One of the little known aspects of his life was his relationship with an Irishman, Michael J. Quill, the founder and president of the Transport Workers Union (TWU) in New York City.

In New York, from the 1930’s to the 1960’s, if you were Irish and worked for the subway system, you had two Gods: one was the Holy Trinity and the other was Mike Quill. Subway workers who operated the mass transit system in the early 1930’s earned an average of fifty cents an hour working a twelve hour day for six days a week. There was no vacation, no sick time, no medical, no benefits of any kind.

Mike Quill in 1935

Mike Quill was a big burly Kerryman from Kilgarvin who fled Ireland for his IRA activities arriving in New York in 1926. He started out as a ticket agent (change maker when a subway ride cost just five cents) at one of the subway stations. It didn't take long for him to understand that his fellow-workers were an underclass while the bosses were all much better off. He had no patience for injustice and soon hatched a plan to organize the workers. He had a jovial temperament and could be very charming but he also had one hell of a temper. Add to that he had a thick Irish brogue and a booming, slightly high-pitched voice, and he knew how to use both to rouse a crowd. By the mid-1930’s the labor movement was picking up great steam in America and Quill’s plan to unionize the subway workers fit right in with the rise of the labor movement. By 1934, with the aid of his friends and co-workers from Clan na Gael, the IRA surrogate in New York, the union was founded. In 1935 he became its first president and remained in that office until he died in 1966. 

In 1937 the TWU became a player on a bigger stage by becoming a member of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). Meanwhile the recruitment of the workers in New York continued with the amalgamation of the three subway systems, the original Interborough Rapid Transit (IRT), the Brooklyn Manhattan Transit (BMT) and the newly constructed Independent Subway (the IND). By the end of the 1940’s, the union had 45,000 members and Quill had become head of the New York section of the CIO. In 1950 he was elected one of its national vice presidents. By this time the TWU had extended beyond New York to represent the transit systems in Philadelphia, Chicago and Miami. Mike Quill had become one of the leaders of the American labor movement.

From its beginning in 1934, the Transport Workers Union under the leadership of Mike Quill fought for equal rights for all workers. Its constitution clearly frames its purpose:

The object of this organization shall be to unite in this industrial union, regardless of race, creed, color or nationality all workers eligible for membership employed in, on or about all passenger and other transportation facilities, public utilities and allied industries in the United States, Canada, and possessions and territories of the United States.

Quill’s zeal in organizing the underclass of subway workers in New York stemmed from his

TWU headquarters at 50th St. & B'way

passion for justice for all workers including black workers. In 1937, in collaboration with the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) he fought to get a number of black station porters promoted to station agents despite the vociferous opposition of management and even some of his own Irish union members. In 1941 the TWU led a Harlem bus boycott forcing the Fifth Avenue Bus Company to hire black drivers and mechanics. During these same years the TWU was involved in a face-off in Philadelphia with a rival union which refused to accept the TWU campaign to promote black workers. The rivals staged a wildcat strike necessitating the intervention of federal troops ordered by President Roosevelt. Once the strike was put down the TWU was enabled to force the Philadelphia Transportation Corporation to completely integrate its workers. And a few years later, in its contract negotiations with the Pennsylvania Railroad, the union got management to eliminate the term “colored” that was stamped on the travel passes issued to black workers. In Houston in 1962, the TWU negotiated with the Pioneer Bus Company to eliminate the segregated sections that both the company and a rival union had previously put in place. The TWU won overwhelming support from members in its first contract with the company to eliminate forever the “Jim Crow” hiring and employment policies that had been the practice.

In the late 1950’s Mike Quill began to take notice of a young black Baptist minister named

TWU Vice Pres. Matthew Guinan
conferring with MLK

Martin Luther King, Jr. who was eloquently speaking out for civil rights for black people in America. Quill had been an advocate for blacks in the transit industry since the founding of his union, and he saw a strong link between what he himself had been advocating and what this young minister was preaching in regard to civil rights for all people. The TWU began supporting King and his Southern Christian Leadership Conference by sending union member delegations to events sponsored by King. And Quill himself signed on as a vice-chairman of King’s Youth March for Integrated Schools in 1959.

In early 1961, twenty-five TWU members, airline workers from Tennessee wrote to Quill objecting to the union’s support of Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Freedom Riders. The Freedom Riders were mixed racial groups who traveled on buses from the North into the South. These

Union buses ready to go

rides had as their purpose to challenge the status quo which obligated black people to sit in the rear on buses in the South. The Tennessee unionists told Quill that he ought not to be interested in these social issues and dedicate himself more fully to just union matters. Quill responded to his Tennessee members’ letter in a fiery manner:

You have a lot to learn…. Wherever there are ignorant racist Klu Kluxers --- trying to destroy our country, it is the business of TWU. Wherever Americans do not have the right to vote, it comes under the heading of “things of the union” … When America is sick and endangered by the cancer of segregation, it is cause for concern by all organized labor --- and by each and every member of TWU.

A month after his letter of response to the Tennessee TWU contingent, Quill decided to invite Martin Luther King,  Jr. to address the upcoming TWU convention scheduled for April that year to dramatize the union’s

Mike Quill welcoming MLK

commitment to civil rights. King graciously accepted the invitation.  Quill introduced King’s speech with the following words:

I don’t think any leader since Abraham Lincoln has done as much to unite the American people, black and white, as Dr. King has done in the last fifteen years… Dr. King has tried a new approach to uniting the people of America. He does not advocate a separate Negro Republic. He does not favor arming the Negroes of the South against the white people. His tactics are very similar to the tactics we use in the trade union movement: the sit-down strike, the outright strike, the boycott.

To the applause of those assembled, King came to the podium and addressed the delegates. Here are some excerpts from his speech:

I bring greetings to you from the South, a section of our nation in transition. Mr. Quill has mentioned to you the struggle which took place in Montgomery, Alabama, and I can hardly speak on any platform in America without bringing greetings from the citizens of Montgomery, particularly the 50,000 Negro citizens … who came to see that it is ultimately more honorable to walk in dignity than ride in humiliation.

When your Union was born in strife during the turbulent thirties, it grew and developed in the pioneering, democratic tradition of a CIO union with respect to racial equality. Your crusading spirit which broke through the open shop stronghold, also broke through the double walled citadels of race prejudice.

Suffice it to say we will not rest until segregation and discrimination have been removed from every area of American life. We are convinced that segregation is a cancer in the body politic, which must be removed before our democratic health can be realized, and it is nothing but a new form of slavery, covered up with certain niceties of complexity.

…we will continue to work in areas of non-violent direct action to break down all of the barriers of segregation. We will continue to sit in, to stand in, to wade in, and to kneel in, in order to get America out of the dilemma in which she finds herself, as a result of the continued existence of segregation and discrimination.

Modern psychology has a word that is probably used more than any other word in modern environment. It is the word “maladjustment.”… I say to you today that there are some things in our social order toward which I am glad to be “maladjusted” and I call upon you to be “maladjusted.”

I never intend to adjust myself to slavery and segregation.

I never intend to adjust myself to religious bigotry.

I never intend to become adjusted to economic conditions that will take necessities from the many to give luxuries to the few.

I never intend to become adjusted to the madness of militarism for … it is no longer a choice between violence and non-violence. It is now non-violence or non-existence.

And I never intend to adjust to the madness of militarism and the self-defeating effects of physical violence.

After the speech Quill presented Martin Luther King, Jr. with a check for $10,000 in further support of the struggle for civil rights. Days later in a letter of thanks, King wrote: “You and the members of your Union have proved to be real and abiding friends of those of us who are struggling for freedom and dignity in the Southland.”

On January 1, 1966, after weeks of fruitless negotiations with the New York City Transit Authority and city officials, the Transport Workers Union called the first subway strike in its history. For 12 days the city ground to a halt. No public transportation moved. A court injunction was issued against the strike and Mike Quill and the top TWU officials were jailed and a second team of negotiators stepped into their place. Quill, who had a previous heart attack, collapsed in jail and was taken to Bellevue Hospital. Ultimately the strike was settled and Quill came back to a thunderous reception from his union members at the Americana Hotel. The new contract contained the largest wage and benefits package in the union's history. But the stress was just too much and two weeks later Mike Quill died at home of a heart attack. Among all the tributes that were received by his wife and family was one from Martin Luther King, Jr. It said:

Mike Quill was a fighter for decent things all his life – Irish Independence, labor organization and racial equality. He spent his life ripping the chains of bondage off his fellow man. This is a man the ages will remember.

I believe in the Corporal Works of Mercy, the Ten Commandments, the American Declaration of Independence and James Connolly’s outline of a socialist society … Most of my life I’ve been called a lunatic because I believe that I am my brother’s keeper. I organize poor and exploited workers, I fight for the civil rights of minorities, and I believe in peace. It appears to have become old-fashioned to make social commitments – to want a world free of war, poverty and disease. This is my religion. 
                                                                                             Michael J. Quill

Further Reading:

Mike Quill: Himself  by Shirley Quill
The Man Who Ran the Subways: The Story of Mike Quill  by L.H. Wittemore
In Transit  by Joshua B. Freeman
The Fight for Civil Rights and the Role of Labor
Martin Luther King, Jr. and the Global Freedom Struggle
TWU Fights for Civil Rights
Fenian Graves