The Great Depression; Interview with George Kimbley. Part 1

INTERVIEWER:

You can begin.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I arrived in Gary, Indiana, February the twentieth, nineteen and twenty, about two o'clock in the afternoon. I immediately went over to my cousin's house on 1744 Monroe Street. And the, the next day I went to the steel mills to get a job. I went in what they call the bull pen. There's about a hundred or more men there looking for work. And the manager that was, was the agent that was hiring people picked me out. He went over there, \"Hey, boy, I want you. Come over here.\" And I got a job. They put me in the department, the blast furnace department, and I worked about three or four days there. And I couldn't stand the gas, and I quit that job. And I didn't like it to begin with because it was a twelve-hour, twelve-hour day. So, in a couple of days later, I went to the tin mill. I got a job in a tin mill. And they gave me...the manager said, \"You look like you'd like, make a good tin house worker.\" And they put me in the tin house, and I learned how to operate a tinning machine. And a tinning machine is a machine that has hot metal and oil, and you run very thin sheets of steel through that tin metal, and come out in sheets. And I liked the job, and I stayed on that for seventeen years.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, this job in the mill...OK, we have to stop for just a second.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

The job that I went on as a tin operator, running sheets of tin through hot metal. It was a dirty job with gas and oil and acid, and I had to fire my own furnace to keep the metal hot. Had to go to the basement for that, and it was really a rough, hard job. But I was tough enough, and it didn't bother me at all. And I liked it because it was piece work and an eight hour day, which was, was something that I wanted. And I didn't want a job where I had to work twelve hours, and I was fortunate in getting a job that I only had to work eight hours. And my salary would run from anywheres from five to eight, and once in a while I'd make nine dollars a day. That was very good money over their basic wage of three dollars and forty-nine cents a day for labor.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, when we talked on the telephone, you told me that, that the black people, they would steer black people into certain jobs, the harder jobs, the more dangerous jobs. Can you tell me that story again?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well, I think it was just about the same. Of course there was danger there. The dangers was because you had metal and water. And now if that water got in contact with the hot metal, it would splash. And there were white workers in the department. The only discrimination at the time I went on, I got the job, was the fact that there were no black mechanics, machinists. And but after a year or so, they began to put them on. We didn't have too many problems. The only problem, big problem we had was wage cuts. Every, looked like every week or so they'd cut our wages back, and we begin to protest with...and I took the lead in setting up a Tin House Club, and we protested against the company. And we set as a sit-down for a few hours.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, that's good. Tell me about your experience with the Amalgamated, and how you joined, and what you did as an organizer.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

The old Amalgamated Iron, Steel, and Tin Workers Union made an effort to organize when they heard about the CIO coming on the scene. And there was an electrician that was a very nice sort of a fellow, and somebody told him that, that, that I had gotten a group of workers together, protesting the cuts. And so he contacted me. \"Ye,\" he says, \"Well, we'll need a union here,\" and gave me some cards, and I started writing up. And after I wrote up about fourteen of them, the fellows that I'd been working with, and it wasn't too long then that the CIO, the Steel Workers Organizing Committee came on the scene, and I went and joined them.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, why did you leave the Amalgamated and go with the CIO?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Because it was better! Those Amalgamated hadn't done anything for blacks and I knew it.

INTERVIEWER:

Now wait a minute. You have to tell me that again because I messed up, I was talking. OK? So you have to tell me that again, that the old Amalgamated—tell me that again. Now I have to be quiet.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

About the old Amalgamated...I never did attend any of their meetings. All the cards that I wrote up, I turned them over to this electrician. And I was just, wasn't satisfied with that union because of its discrimination tactics. I knew about it. And, I, I knew any kind of union was better than no union.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, when we talked before you told me a story about a friend who was a carpenter who signed you up. And you told me a story about Hank Johnson with the CIO?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Signed me up?

INTERVIEWER:

Yes.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

How I got signed up: one of my friends, I call him a friend, by the name of Jesse Reese. Jesse Reese was a Communist, and he let the world know it. He didn't hide it. Anybody asked him was he a Communist, and he would tell you with pride that he was a Communist. But, we, he was a likeable sort of a fellow. On Saturday afternoons, many of us would go to his house and play cards. And on that one Saturday afternoon in... Jesse Reese had been to a meeting in East Chicago, and he got home. I was sitting in the house. He said, \"Hey, Brother Kimbley, join the union, I've a card here\". He handed it to me, and I kept talking after I got up and looked at it and signed my name and just handed him a dollar. Just like that, easy. And lo and behold when I found out, [laughs] I think I wrote the, I was the first steel worker to join the union in Gary, Indiana.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. Now, why is it that you all felt like you needed a union? Why did you need a union? Why did you feel like you needed a union?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well I had, I had some experience in Detroit, Michigan. I got a job at the Absopure Ice Company in the storage. And in nineteen and fifteen, there was beginning to be a shortage of labor, and they pulled me out, man asked me had I ever worked in delivering the ice or anything? I told him, \"Yes. When down south, I'd done some work on the ice wagon.\" So they put me on the wagon, and let me tell you I had the hardest time breaking in. And actually there's a word that I don't like to use, but maybe you can cut it out if you don't like it. All day long, people say, \"See this nigger, see the nigger. They got a nigger on the ice wagon.\" And I swore that rather than fight back that I'm going to overcome this thing, and I just let them have their fun. Every day it was the same thing. So the, the, the driver that I was working with, he was a mean sort of a chap. The kids would jump up on the wagon to get ice, and he'd throw his tongs at them, and as soon as he going in one house delivering house, I'd take a chunk of ice and cut it up and give it to the kids. And one kid looked at me, I said, \"Hey, you the guy that call me that bad name. Aren't you the kid that called me out my name?\" \"Oh, no, no, mister, I didn't call you...\" I said, \"Well you take this piece of ice and run. Don't you ever call me that other name that you called me.\" Do you know I broke it up completely? Now to the customers, it was against the rules to let customers have ice on credit, or to let 'em have it for cash. So when Adam, the guy I working with, would go in the house and they didn't have money to pay for the ice, or tickets for the ice, he'd bring the ice back out and throw it in the wagon. And I pick up a chunk and go right behind him, I could see where he'd been in the ice, would leave its mark, and the ladies would say, \"You know that other fellow came in here, and we didn't have the money to pay him. He took the ice back.\" I said, \"Well listen, it's too hot to be living without having some ice.\" I says, \"If you won't say anything about it, I'll let you have it, the ice.\"

INTERVIEWER:

Good. Now, tell me why the steel workers felt like they needed a union. How much we got?

INTERVIEWER:

OK. We have to change. See, after you get finished with this, you'll probably get a call from Hollywood.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, you're going to tell me why the steel workers needed a union, why they needed the CIO?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well, there were many reasons why the steel workers needed the union. In the first place, the wages were way too low. And another reason is there was all kinds of rackets being built around the steel workers. They want to seem to keep them almost enslaved. Twelve hours were too many hours to work in any, in any job. And with low wages and no vacations, and, and the pension plan for little or nothing, about twenty five and thirty dollars a month or less, and there was just need for a union. And many of the jobs was, was bad jobs where you were against one's health, acids and gas and water and, and all kinds of dangers. And people were being injured, and they weren't yet being properly paid. There were a hundred or thousand reasons why there was a need for a steel union.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, what was the relationship like between the workers and the people that ran the plant? What was that relationship like? I mean, you all had these problems, and you would tell them about them, and then so, what would happen? What was that relationship like?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I didn't tell you I had a bad relationship with the management before the union. I got along with people. Maybe I just was tough enough to understand to, to take care of the little hardships that I had to go through, cause I just got been out of the war for a year. I was discharged in February nineteen and nineteen, and I was still pretty tough from the war. Six months is a long time to be on the fighting front. And you can imagine what one would go up against.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, but what about some of the other people that you worked with that wasn't so tough? How was their relationship with the people that ran the, the mill?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well, they were just looking for somebody to lead them, and I guess I had guts enough to do it, see. And I, but I wasn't harsh at the company. I talked reasonable with them. And I talked, recommended in such a way, I said, well I said, \"What would you do if you were working?\" And I, I didn't have any problems with the management. They called me in one time. Sit down and talked with them just like we're talking.

INTERVIEWER:

Good. Now you had said that, your friend Hank, Henry Reese was a Communist.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Yes.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, from what I've read there was a lot of Communists that were in the CIO, that they were good organizers. Can you tell me about that and their involvement?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well yes, [laughs] let me tell you. Philip Murray would have never organized the steel workers in the [unintelligible] in Gary, Indiana or northwest Indiana if they hadn't taken the Communists in. The Communists had their hands on the masses of people. Now mind you back in the early twenties, the Ku Klux Klan had just about controlled Northwest Indiana, just had it almost buttoned up, and in fact almost had the State of Indiana. When I got there in February the twentieth, nineteen and twenty, the only meetings that black people would go to was the church. And there were two organizations that would stand up against the Ku Klux Klan: the Communist Party and Marcus Garvey's outfit. I belonged to Marcus Garvey's outfit. I got along with the Communists. They wouldn't, didn't want me in the, in the union as a member because I was almost a fellow traveler. I liked the way they operated. The only reason that I didn't join the Communist Party is because they didn't believe in God. That's the only reason that I didn't join. I liked the way they operate. They'd sit down and eat with you. They'd laugh and talk with you. If you go to their meetings, they, you could dance with you. And there ain't no difference, see. But they have their ulterior motives in the end, like when I was, found out that they didn't believe in God, well I just backed off from them. But two or three times, the Communists say to me against some of my own friends, who thought the best way to get on the staff was to get rid of Kimbley. And I said, I told them, \"Listen here, you don't have to get rid of me. You come go around with me and learn. The union is young yet.\"

INTERVIEWER:

Good. Now, beyond the Communist involvement, what were race relations like within the union? I mean, I know that there were a lot of ethnic, a lot of ethnic groups and so forth. How did all the ethnic groups and different races get along within the union?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

There's not but one thing that ever happened that I disapproved of and that's, and I didn't make any protest. And one of the big local unions that I attended, now I'm the staff now, I went on the staff in September, in August nineteen and thirty-seven, and when I attend, attended a meeting of 1014 they were all for wanting, requesting that the, the black worker sit in the back. Well that was the old mine workers' method at one time. I protested, I think, to some of the people, and from then on, why they just said nothing about where you sit when you attend a meeting. That's the only difference that I saw the whole time I was in the union.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, do you remember your first union meeting that you went to?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well, that was one of them.

INTERVIEWER:

OK, so, tell me what would happen at the union meetings and what, I mean, how, how did you get in and make sure the people that weren't in the union getting in there, the spies and that kind of thing. Tell me about that.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

Well I tell you what: really we was in the drive to get the workers in the union. We'd have, what we'd call, educational meetings on picket lines. And if you didn't have your card, you couldn't get in, see. On one or two occasions we'd have a problem that I thought was going to get nasty. One of my friends told me, he said, \"Listen, Kimbley, I'm going to get in. I, I don't belong to that union, and I'm going to get...if those, any of those SOBs try to stop me, I'm going to shoot the hell out of them.\" I said, \"Now listen, you don't have to do that, see. When you come down the line, I'll you coming. I'm going to escort you through.\" And I did, see, but he didn't know that I had written his card up and put it in the basket as a member of the union. And when he woke up, he was already in the union and I signed his card. [laughs]

INTERVIEWER:

Now tell me about how you recruited, John Howard to the union. You signed him up, right?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I went to his house.

INTERVIEWER:

Wait a minute, now, OK, tell me that story.

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I went to John L. Howard's house. And I'd heard about him being very prominent in the mill, was well thought of. And I talked a little bit about the union, not too much, cause he'd already known, and I wrote him up. Didn't have problem at all with Jack, getting John Howard in the union.

INTERVIEWER:

OK. You told me that you were involved in the union specifically to help black workers? Remember you telling me that? Why was that so important to you?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I had promised God some of the things I'd do if he'd get me back home from the war. I went through a bitter bombardment at one, one day, and I prayed so hard that I could hardly get God out of my mouth. And the next day I was praying, thanking God for getting [unintelligible] \"Oh God,\" I said, \"You're getting me back home, there're certain things I'll do.\" I did those things. I kept those promises, and I'm impressed with one, one of those things I promised God. And I, when I, when, when Hank Johnson decided that we going to put on more black organizers, Walter Michael turned it down, Stanley Cotton, Cotton turned it down, and a fellow named Dorgan turned it down, and, next, when they got to me, I accepted because I didn't have any family at that time. And I said, \"Well, I'll stay here until I can do, until they get rid of me or I'm not much good, and I'll go on to Kentucky.\" I didn't think I would make good at it, see, cause my mother taught me a whole lot about working with people, especially Southerners.

INTERVIEWER:

Now, you mentioned him a little earlier, but tell me what you thought, what were your impressions of Phil Murray?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I don't think you could beat him. He was one of the finest men I ever met.

INTERVIEWER:

You have tell, you have to say his name, because my question's not... Can you tell me that again, but say Phil Murray's name?

GEORGE KIMBLEY:

I think Philip Murray was one of the finest men God ever put breath into. And I heard him say one time that told me that the union was hundred per cent indebted. He said, \"Before I would discriminate against a Negro worker, I would resign my position as President of the United Steel Workers Union.\" That was good enough for me. And I proved it because everybody would say, \"Oh, that George Kimbley, he's crazy about that union. He just, he just love that union so much.\" Because the union was a vehicle, see. I had been lied on, fired on, sit on, double crossed, tricked, betrayed, and misused so much that there was an opportunity, see, and I, I could see it. I had the vision to see and know and believe what the union could do. And it did it. I'm not a bit disappointed in the steel workers union.

INTERVIEWER:

Good, perfect. We have to change again, but this is great. [laughs] This is great.