 Labor organizer and leader Bill Lucy “is a shining example of a trade unionist, and has inspired thousands of his brothers and sisters to continue to fight for a better tomorrow,” says the AFL-CIO, which last month presented him with a Lifetime Achievement Award at the AFL-CIO Martin Luther King Civil and Human Rights Conference. Born in Memphis, TN, Lucy worked for Contra Costa County in California as a materials and research engineer and in 1956, joined AFSCME Local 1675. A decade later, he was elected president of the Local and the next year, he left engineering to work full time for the labor union. He worked closely with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. during the Memphis sanitation strike in 1968 until King was assassinated later that year. The strike continued and the union won recognition... Click below to read more and for a chance to win one of 100 Black History Month posters. Lucy was elected AFSCME International Secretary-Treasurer 1972 and retired in 2010. Also in 1972, he became the first president of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists and served as its president until 2012. In 1994, Lucy became the first African American elected president of Public Services International (PSI), an international federation of public sector unions with more than 20 million workers, represented by 669 unions in 154 countries and territories. He also was instrumental in the anti-apartheid movement, as one of the founders of the Free South Africa Movement, that eventually led to Nelson Mandela's release from prison and to the first democratic elections in South Africa.
“Though his name is not as well-known as King and Mandela, Lucy has carved out a legacy based on living wages, health care benefits, and job safety,” said the NAACP. “And like these famous men, Lucy's legacy lives on through the lives of hundreds of thousands of working families around the world every day.” - Kenneth Quinnell, AFL-CIO Now blog. Click here for all the Black History Month Labor Profiles, including A. Philip Randolph, Keith Richardson, Fannie Lou Hamer, Augusta Thomas and Ella Josephine Baker. Text the code “BLACK” (for Black History Month) to 235246 for a chance to win one of 100 Black History Month posters. Comments are closed.
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