Fighting for Total Person Unionism: Harold Gibbons, Ernest Calloway, and Working-Class Citizenship by Robert Bussel

Author:Robert Bussel [Bussel, Robert]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Ethnic Studies, American, Labor & Industrial Relations, Social Science, African American & Black Studies, Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780252097607
Google: A5WJCgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 25404018
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
Published: 2015-09-17T00:00:00+00:00

Following the disappointing results of the campaign to end employment discrimination at Famous-Barr, Calloway had resigned from his post as St. Louis NAACP president. Now free from the organization’s ban on participation in partisan politics, Calloway applied his strategic skills to the electoral arena. In 1959 and 1960, he managed two prominent campaigns that resulted in notable African American political breakthroughs. Determined to win greater influence over their children’s education, black St. Louisans had long lamented their inability to place a black candidate on the city’s school board. At the urging of key community leaders, Calloway agreed to manage the campaign of Reverend John Hicks, a respected minister and NAACP activist, for a school board seat. He organized a massive get-out-the-vote operation that enabled Hicks to win the June 1959 election with the second largest tally among all candidates in a crowded field.24

An even more impressive victory followed a year later when Calloway’s close political ally, Ted McNeal, became the first black elected to the Missouri state senate. Even as north St. Louis’s population had grown increasingly African American, Irish politicians had retained their control in this section of the city. With Calloway managing his campaign, McNeal won an overwhelming victory over Edward “Jelly Roll” Hogan, a longtime state senator who chaired the powerful Ways and Means committee. Along with other black candidates defeating Irish legislators and committeemen, McNeal’s sweeping triumph signaled the demise of Irish political domination in north St. Louis. Indeed, Calloway and other black leaders had successfully “encouraged” John Dwyer, an Irish committeeman and major power broker who sought to remain politically relevant, to back McNeal’s candidacy. Dwyer’s decision to support McNeal affirmed Calloway’s conviction that the city’s white Democratic leadership was increasingly prepared to make pragmatic accommodations in acknowledgment of growing African American political power.25

Managing notable black electoral “firsts” boosted Calloway’s reputation for political savvy in the African American community, with the St. Louis Chronicle describing him as “a whiz at tidy organization and political know-how.” At the same time, his successes aroused concerns about his role as a political kingmaker. Asking in a March 1960 article if Calloway was “the Iron Fist in the Velvet Glove in Coming Political Campaign,” a Chronicle writer claimed that “… many express fear at the Calloway political touch” and his “creeping tentacles.” The article concluded with a familiar refrain, wondering “whether the Teamster worker is on his own—or has more powerful backing.” Although Calloway did not respond directly to this charge, he quite likely resented the insinuation that he was a puppet doing Harold Gibbons’s bidding. In fact, he had kept his role as Ted McNeal’s campaign manager a virtual secret within Local 688 to keep questions about his purported manipulation by Gibbons from becoming a campaign issue.26

In December 1960, just a month after McNeal’s election, Calloway returned to his journalistic roots, launching a weekly newspaper first called the Citizen Crusader and later the New Citizen, which he used to promote his strategic vision, deepen his connections within the black community, and affirm his political independence.

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