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Black/Brown Unity Coalition Holds Second Annual Meeting
Featuring President of the A. Phillip Randolf Institute,
Clayola Brown
The
Black/Brown Unity Coalition
held its second annual meeting Tuesday, December 3, 2019 at
6:00 pm at Warren AME Church 915 Collingwood, Toledo, Ohio
43604. The coalition is comprised of these founding members:
Toledo Community Coalition, Farm Labor Organizing Committee
(FLOC), FLOC Homies Union, Latins United, Coalition of Black
Trade Unionists (C.B.T.U), and the NAACP Toledo Branch.
These
organizations have come together to fight racism and its
effects in Toledo and beyond. Currently they are addressing
LED lighting in the city, the minority community’s
relationship with police, lead paint poisoning of our
children in Toledo, and the VUSE Boycott of 7-Eleven and
Circle K.
The plenary
speaker was Clayola Brown, president of the
A. Phillip Randolf Institute.
At age 15, Brown joined her mother, Ann Belle Jenkins Shands,
in a successful campaign to bring the Textile Workers Union
of America (TWUA) to the Manhattan Shirt Factory in
Charleston. Brown later attended Florida A&M University,
graduating in 1970 with her B.S. degree in secondary
education and physical education.
Subsequently, Brown went on to play an organizing role in
the 17-year struggle to unionize the textile giant, J.P.
Stevens, culminating in 1980 with 4,000 workers winning a
contract through the newly formed Amalgamated Clothing and
Textile Workers Union (ACTWU). Brown served as the ACTWU’s
education director, civil rights director, and also, for 13
years, as manager of the ACTWU’s Laundry Division.
In 1991, Brown was elected international vice president of
the ACTWU; a post which she was continually reelected to for
over a decade. In 1994, President Bill Clinton appointed
Brown to the National Commission on Employment Policy. In
1995, Brown was elected international vice president of the
AFL-CIO. In 2004, Brown became the first woman to serve as
national president of the A. Phillip Randolph Institute.
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