Manuscripts Department
Library of the University of North Carolina
at Chapel Hill
SOUTHERN HISTORICAL COLLECTION
#4642
CLYDE JOHNSON PAPERS
Initial Inventory
Abstract: Clyde Johnson, 1908- , union organizer, business
agent, and writer.
Scrapbooks, clippings, correspondence,
manuscripts, interviews, and other items concerning
Clyde Johnson's involvement with various unions, most
affiliated with the Congress of Industrial
Organizations. Included are materials related to
organizing campaigns and strikes conducted by Johnson
for the Sharecroppers' Union in Alabama, 1935-1937;
the United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied
Workers of America in Colorado and Texas, 1937-1941;
and the Oil Workers' International Union in Texas,
especially in Baytown, 1941-1943. There are also many
items concerning the United Brotherhood of Carpenters
and Joiners of America, Local 550, Oakland, Cal., for
which Johnson was business agent from 1961 to 1966; a
few personal letters to Johnson and his wife Anne;
tapes of interviews with Johnson; and manuscript
drafts and printed copies of Johnson's books, Organize
or Die and Millmen 550.
Online Catalog Terms:
Agricultural laborers--United States--History--20th century.
Baytown (Tex.)--Economic conditions.
Cannery workers--United States--History--20th century.
Carpenters--United States--History--20th century.
Congress of Industrial Organizations--History.
Johnson, Anne Agron.
Johnson, Clyde, 1908- .
Oakland (Cal.)--Economic conditions.
Oil industry workers--United States--History--20th century.
Oil Workers' International Union--History.
Sharecroppers' Union--History.
Strikes and lockouts--United States--History--20th century.
Trade-unions--Agricultural laborers--United States--History--
20th century.
Trade-unions--Cannery workers--History--20th century.
Trade-unions--Carpenters--History--20th century.
Trade-unions--Organizing--History--20th century.
Trade-unions--United States--History--20th century.
United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America--
History.
United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing and Allied Workers of
America--History.
Size: About 4,000 items (27.0 linear feet).
Provenance: Received from Clyde Johnson of Berkeley, Ca., in
April and June 1993; Robin D.G. Kelley of Ann
Arbor, Mich., in January 1993; and Dale
Rosengarten of McClellanville, S.C., in May 1993
(Acc. 93064), from Sinobu Uesugi of Japan in
November 1993 (Acc. 93139), and from Jonathan Gold
of Berkeley, Ca., in February 1996 (Acc. 96019).
Access: Unprocessed; may be used only with special staff
assistance. No listening copies of audiotapes.
Copyright: Retained by the authors of items in these papers, or
their descendants, as stipulated by United States
copyright law.
Table of Contents:
Biographical Note
Box List
BIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
Clyde Johnson was born in 1908 in Proctor, Minn., a railroad
town outside Duluth. In 1929, after Johnson had completed two
years of junior college, layoffs preceding the Great Depression
sent him east in search of work. He was hired by the Western
Electric Company of New Jersey as a junior engineer. He also
attended night classes at the City College of New York, where he
joined the National Student League and was elected an organizer.
He took part in four college strikes in 1932 and 1933, at City
College, Columbia, New York University, and City College again,
after which he was expelled from City College. He went to Rome,
Ga., in 1933 in response to a student request to help organize a
strike at the Martha Berry School. While there, he also advised
striking stove foundry workers. In Atlanta, he organized
advocacy councils for the unemployed; in Birmingham, Ala., in
1934, he worked with steel workers, coal miners, and ore miners.
He became an organizer for the Sharecroppers' Union (SCU) in
central Alabama in 1935, the year of a cotton pickers' strike.
During this period, he also married Leah Anne Agron, whom he had
met in Atlanta.
In 1937, the Congress of Industrial Organizations chartered a
national union for agricultural and cannery workers. Johnson
became an international vice president of this union. As such,
he organized and led strikes of beet workers in Colorado and
pecan shellers in Texas. He resigned from this post in 1941,
when the CIO set up an Oil Workers' Organizing Campaign and hired
Johnson as its Southern director. By the end of 1943, the staff
had won bargaining rights at seven of the eight refineries
targeted in southeast Texas, and Johnson resigned to join the
Merchant Marine.
After World War II, Johnson was hired as business agent by
Local 610 of the United Electrical, Radio, and Machine Workers in
Pittsburgh, Pa. In 1948, Local 610 played a key role in the
defeat of a Republican congressman, a member of the House
Committee on UnAmerican Activities. Johnson and Local 610 also
led a campaign in support of Henry Wallace for president.
In 1950, Johnson moved to Washington, D.C., where he worked
for some time as a house carpenter before moving to Oakland,
Cal., in 1955. There he joined Local 550 of the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners of America, becoming
business agent in 1960. In 1966, he retired from this position
and spent the next two years researching and writing Organize or
Die: Smash Boss Unionism--Build Union Power, Organize Two
Million Carpenters and Woodworkers, a book intended as "a
criticism of the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and the
failures of the Hutcheson Dynasty." He also wrote Millmen 550:
A History of the Militant Years (1961-1966) of Local 550 United
Brotherhood of Carpenters, which relates to his activities as
business agent of the local during those years.
BOX LIST
Note that materials have been maintained, for the most part, in
the order in which they were received and that the descriptions
below in no way show all the materials that boxes may contain.
Boxes 1-8 Newspaper clippings, reports, studies, business
correspondence, and other items pertaining to
Clyde Johnson's involvement with various unions,
including the United Brotherhood of Carpenters
(Boxes 1-3), the Share-Croppers' Union (Box 2),
and the Oil Workers' International Union (Box 3).
Also included are files of clippings and other
materials pertaining to the Institute of
Industrial Relations at the University of
California (Box 4), and a few personal letters
addressed to Johnson and his wife Anne (Box 8).
Box 9 Scrapbooks containing newspaper clippings, some
correspondence, and other items pertaining to the
Sharecroppers' Union and the Farmers' Educational
and Co-operative Union of America. Also included
are a brief sketch of the history of the
Sharecroppers' Union in Alabama and Louisiana from
1931 to 1941, written by Johnson for a history
conference at The Citadel, Charleston, S.C., 1979;
and a transcript of a 1977 interview with Dale
Rosengarten, concerning Johnson's recollections of
living in Birmingham.
Boxes 10-12 Scrapbooks, manuscripts, and other materials
pertaining to Johnson's work as an organizer for
the CIO, especially in the Oil Workers' Organizing
Campaign in southeast Texas, 1941-1943. Also
included (in Box 10) are a few materials relating
to Johnson's involvement with the National
Maritime Union of America (NMU), and with the
United Cannery, Agricultural, Packing, and Allied
Workers of America (UCAPAWA), for whom he
organized beet workers in Colorado and pecan
shellers in southwest Texas.
Box 13 Scrapbooks of clippings and correspondence,
studies, legislation, and other items pertaining
to the timber industry of the Pacific Northwest,
and to housing development in California.
Boxes 14-16 Materials pertaining to Johnson's involvement with
the United Brotherhood of Carpenters and Joiners
of America (UBC), Local 550, Oakland, Cal.
Included are scrapbooks of clippings and flyers,
newletters, standardized mill agreements, and
policies and procedures of Local 550. Also
included are drafts of Millmen 550, Johnson's book
on his tenure as business agent for the local, and
printed copies of Millmen 550 and Organize or Die.
Box 17 Scrapbooks of clippings and other items pertaining
to the civil rights movement and to the racial
integration of various organizations, including
several San Francisco area locals of the United
Brotherhood of Carpenters.
Box 18 Appointment calendars, photographs, badges, and
other miscellaneous items, including an undated
photocopy of Johnson's reminiscences of his early
life compiled for his grandchildren, a photocopy
of Johnson's reminiscences of his work with oil
workers in Texas and Oklahoma, and a photocopy of
"Breaking Down the Ivory Tower: Recollections of
Nine Student Radicals from the 1930s, a senior
thesis written by Robert F. Pogue at the
University of California, Santa Cruz, in 1991.
Box 19 Cassettes of interviews conducted by Robin D. G.
Kelley with Clyde Johnson, Lemon Johnson, and
Charles Smith. Also included are a letter, 10
April 1989, from Clyde Johnson to Robin Kelley and
a draft of Johnson's manuscript "The Battle for
Baytown," which concerns the Texas Oil Workers'
Organizing Campaign of 1941-43.
Box 20 Tapes of interviews conducted by Dale Rosengarten
with Clyde Johnson.
Box 21 Tapes of interviews with Clyde Johnson, 1982-1992,
received from Shinobu Uesugi of Japan.
Box 22 Tapes (30 cassettes) of interviews with Clyde
Johnson, 1982. Also included are a few
handwritten notes on the interviews.