Ernest Calloway’s Labor experience helped shape the civil rights movement in St. Louis

By ZACHARY PALITZSCH
Archivist
State Historical Society of Missouri

Ernest Calloway was a prominent African-American political activist, civil rights activist, and Labor leader who helped shape St. Louis’ economic justice and civil rights movement.

Born in Heberton, West Virginia in 1909, but raised in the coal mining industry in Jenkins, KY, Ernest Calloway began his ventures in the Labor Movement in 1925, when he first started working for Consolidated Coal Company at the age of 17.

BLACKLISTED FOR TRYING TO UNIONIZE
While working and living in a mining community, Calloway was appalled by the near-total dependence the miners had upon mining operators.

In mining communities such as Jenkins, the mining companies controlled nearly every aspect of life for the town’s inhabitants. In this case, Consolidated Coal Co. bought 100,000 acres of land and created the town specifically for mining operations. People were born and buried in the hospitals and funeral homes owned by the mining companies. These communities were almost seen as an autocratic dystopia, where the mining company effectively controlled what people thought, how they acted, the politics they observed, and the morals they held.

Calloway joined the United Mine Workers of America hoping that they would be able to help him achieve better pay, less hours, less grueling labor and independence from Consolidated Coal. However, he was quickly disillusioned by the local union’s ineffectiveness. When he tried to take part in union activities, the company found out and blacklisted him in 1930.

FINDING A CALLING
Unable to find work in a town where the only jobs available were in the mining industry, he traveled around the nation for three years taking odd jobs. During a stint in California, he helped organize the unemployed for Upton Sinclair’s End Poverty in California campaign. Soon after, he found a strong desire to fight against group inequality and unfair labor treatment.

Calloway returned to Jenkins in 1933 to attempt to rally workers. He also attempted to organize a local NAACP chapter, only to be met with opposition from local African-American leaders. They were too afraid to put pressure on their white counterparts for fear their condition would be made worse. Calloway soon found out this was the same with local union leaders as well, and that his efforts were futile.

WHEN ONE DOOR CLOSES, ANOTHER ONE OPENS
However, from this failed experiment came an invitation to study at Brookwood Labor College in New York, a training facility for Labor organizers headed by the radical pacifist, A.J. Muste. After spending a year at Brookwood, Calloway began taking Labor organizing jobs throughout the nation. From 1935 to 1950, he traveled to Chicago, Virginia then North Carolina, organizing workers.

In 1946, Calloway married DeVerne Lee, a teacher who led a protest against racial segregation in the Red Cross during World War II. The same year, he accepted a job working with the CIO Southern Organizing Drive.

However, he left the CIO in 1950 and was enlisted by Harold Gibbons of the St. Louis Teamsters Local 688, to establish a research department for the Teamsters in St. Louis.

Calloway’s move to St. Louis would prove to be fruitful for not only the Labor Movement, but also civil rights.

BUILDING A CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT
Economic justice wasn’t enough for Calloway.

Civil rights had always been an important part of Calloway’s drive toward group equality and he believed civil rights and Labor equality went hand in hand.

As such, he tried to use what he learned from organizing labor and apply it to civil rights. Workers could have a lot of political influence if they became involved in their communities outside of the workplace. He called this “total person unionism,” advocating for rights both in the workplace and the community, which Calloway put into practice.

Shortly after his move to St. Louis in 1950, while working as the research director for the Teamsters Local 688, Calloway became involved in the local NAACP and used his Labor organization experience to help develop plans for integrating public schools.

In 1955, he became president of the NAACP, and within the first two years of his presidency, membership grew from 2,000 to 8,000 members. He led successful efforts to gain substantial increases in the number of African-Americans employed by St. Louis taxi services, department stores, the Coca Cola company and Southwestern Bell.

The NAACP opposed a proposed city charter in 1957 because it did not include civil service reforms, public accommodations sections or support for civil rights. The charter was defeated.

THE GUIDING HAND
Following the campaign against the charter, Calloway served as campaign director for several African-American local leaders in their efforts to campaign for public office:

• Reverend John J. Hicks’ successful 1959 election to become the first African-American on the St. Louis Board of Education.
• Theodore McNeal’s 1960 senatorial race, which he won by a large margin, becoming the first African-American to serve in the Missouri Senate.
• 1961, technical advisor for James Hurt, Jr.’s successful campaign as the second African-American to be elected to the St. Louis School Board.
• In 1962, helping his wife, DeVerne, become the first Black woman elected to the Missouri House of Representatives.

CIVIL RIGHTS FOCUS
Following this string of monumental successes for the Black community, Calloway continued to advocate civil rights.

He worked with the Committee on Fair Representation in 1967 to develop a new plan for congressional district reapportionment. The plan created a First Congressional District in Missouri that was more compatible to Black interests. The following year, Calloway filed as a candidate to represent the new district but was defeated in the Democratic primary by William L. Clay.

Calloway’s desire to end unfair labor treatment evolved into a desire to fight for African-American equality at a time when the civil rights movement was beginning to form in St. Louis. He was a relatively unseen figure in St. Louis’s Labor and civil rights history, but without his guiding hand, the political landscape of the 1960s, when the civil rights movement was at its height, could have looked much different.

Calloway retired from the Teamsters as its research director in 1973 and became a professor at St. Louis University’s Center for Urban Programs. He suffered a debilitating stroke in 1982 and died in 1989.

(This ongoing series is being written by the archivists at the State Historical Society of Missouri St. Louis Research Center (SMSMO) to preserve and promote the study of Missouri’s history, including the history of the Labor Movement within the state. Contact archivists AJ Medlock, Zack Palitzsch or Erin Purdy at stlouis@shsmo.org for more information about this article, or to schedule an appointment to freely view one of the many Labor collections available to the public)