Chapter of Labor Organization for Workers of Color Officially Launches in Maine

Maine’s A. Philip Randolph Institute chapter held its official launch dinner on Saturday December 3 in Portland. APRI Maine is organization within the AFL-CIO for people of color to fight for economic justice and racial equality both within the labor movement and in the broader society. National APRI President Clayola Brown delivered inspiring words about labor and civil rights leader A. Philip Randolph’s legacy and the work we still have to do to make Dr. Martin Luther King’s dream a reality.

APRI was founded in 1965 by Black labor leader A. Philip Randolph (1889-1979), former head of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, and civil rights and labor activist Bayard Rustin (1912-1987). Both Randolph and Rustin successfully pressured President Franklin D. Roosevelt to end discrimination for Black workers in the defense industry by proposing a Black-led March on Washington in 1941.

FDR’s order allowed hundreds of Black workers to get jobs in Maine’s shipyards during World War II. Rustin later organized the 1963 March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom where Dr. Martin Luther King gave his famous “I Have a Dream” speech. Two years later Randolph and Rustin founded APRI to forge an alliance between the civil rights movement and the labor movement.

Senator Craig Hickman — the first African-American man to serve in both chambers of the Maine Legislature — gave a powerful speech at the APRI dinner about the history of Black workers’ in Maine, their fight to end slavery and their collective struggles for workers’ rights and a stronger voice within their unions. As he spoke so eloquently,

“Portland, Maine, has a proud history of Black-led movements for justice that in many ways were shaped by our relationship to the sea.

“The ancestors of Maine’s indigenous Black community arrived on our shores in chains and were auctioned off at slave markets in Wells and Kittery. Black slaves in Maine built the foundation of the colonial economy with their forced labor and made vast fortunes for white shipyard owners, sea captains, textile barons and merchants, who all had a stake in the slave trade.

“But our ancestors also resisted, emancipating themselves from chattel slavery by escaping from bondage and suing for their freedom. Cambridge Little, London Atus, Sarah Peters, Mum Betts, also known as Elizabeth Freeman, among them.

“Portland’s Black sailors, teamsters, hackmen, barbers, and laborers assisted countless formerly enslaved workers escape through Maine to Canada on the Underground Railroad, which, incidentally, ran right through the tunnels underneath my farmhouse in Winthrop. Southerners feared the influence of Black sailors on enslaved workers so much that they arrested, jailed, even kidnapped and sold them into slavery when they came into port.”

Read Senator Hickman’s full remarks here.

The delicious dinner was catered by former USW 366 member Anaam Jabbir and her son Qutaiba Hassoon, owner of the Falafel Time restaurant on Forrest Avenue. APRI is open to all working people who support its mission. If you or someone you know would like to join please email Cynthia Phinney at cynthia@maineaflcio.org

The AFL-CIO's constituency groups—the A. Philip Randolph Institute, Asian Pacific American Labor Alliance, Coalition of Black Trade Unionists, Coalition of Labor Union Women, Labor Council for Latin American Advancement and Pride At Work — are unions' bridge to diverse communities, creating and strengthening partnerships to enhance the standard of living for all workers and their families. The groups also promote the full participation of women and minorities in the union movement and ensure unions hear and respond to the concerns of the communities they represent.