MSM 693 Claude E. Ramsay - Labor Unions and Voting Rights - a podcast by USM Center for Oral History

When Claude E. Ramsay sat down with us in April of 1981 to discuss his career and tenure as President of the Mississippi AFL – CIO, the three main topics of that series of interviews were: worker’s rights, voting rights, and civil rights. Forty years later, those same three issues are still grabbing headlines across the nation. Whether it is Amazon employees in Alabama trying to unionize, GOP efforts to restrict voting after the 2020 election, the Black Lives Matter movement, or the uptick in violence against Asian, Hispanic, and Jewish communities, the struggle for better working conditions, access to the ballot and freedom from discrimination continues against the same forces using the same tactics and reasoning.

1981 - In 1939, Claude Ramsay went to work for the International Paper Company in Pascagoula. In this episode, he recalls joining the paper-workers union and rising through the ranks to become president. Ramsay was elected President of the Mississippi AFL – CIO in 1959. He discusses working with Medgar Evers to secure voting rights and labor rights for all Mississippians. Ramsay also details his meeting with President Kennedy the day after Evers’s assignation.

In 1964, after years of complaints about the anti-union, anti-civil rights biases of WLBT, the AFL – CIO joined the United Church of Christ in petitioning the FCC to revoke the Jackson television station’s license. Ramsay explains why they felt it was important to take a stand against “right wing propaganda.”

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 outlawed employment discrimination based on gender and ethnicity. Ramsay discusses how the law also aided efforts to organize Mississippi’s workers.

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