(To the right, Hank Williams)
During my recent travels through south-central Mississippi
and Alabama en route to Selma for the 50th commemoration of the 1965
march, I encountered a lot of interesting folks—writer and sociologist Al Price
(also known as “Chester Rebel”) and his group of activist Tennesseans who invited
us to join them in Selma (see my postings on this event) plus Terry Faust at
the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, Ala.
It has been a busy March with lots happening during and
since that trip. Here’s a Labor South
roundup of March encounters and events:
Hank would’ve wanted
it this way
The South may be poor but it has always been rich with
storytellers, and I met one of the best in Terry Faust at the Hank Williams
Museum in downtown Montgomery, Ala. Terry is a musician and songwriter who
helps out at the museum, and he’s also a special friend of the Williams family
because of another job he holds: tending Hank Williams’ grave.
(Terry Faust at the Hank Williams Museum in Montgomery, Ala.)
I bought Terry’s CD of great, personally penned tunes, Terry Faust, the Grave Tender, along
with several Hank CD’s at the museum store while Terry entertained me with one
story after another about the Hank legend and his own encounters with country
music greats like Jamey Johnson, also from Montgomery. He told of meeting the
late Little Jimmie Dickens at the Grand Ole Opry. When Little Jimmie found out
Terry tended Hank’s grave in Montgomery, he put his arm around him and told him
what a good thing he was doing. Then he started reminiscing about the Hank he
knew more than 60 years ago. “We talked about Hank Williams two solid hours,”
Terry recalled.
Speaking of Southern storytellers, was anyone better than
Hank Williams himself, a working-class hero if there ever was one? Whether he
was “Ramblin’ Man” Hank or his alter-ego Luke the Drifter, the country music
genius won me over the first time I heard “I’m So Lonesome I Could Cry” and
“Long Gone Lonesome Blues” way back in the 1960s. In later years, I was drawn
to his lesser-known tunes like “Weary Blues From Waitin’” and “Alone &
Forsaken”.
At Terry’s suggestion, my wife Suzanne and I later went and
ate lunch at Chris’ Hot Dogs, a nearly 100-year-old eatery in downtown where
Hank himself used to hang out. It was wonderful, and I kept an eye on the back
booth, where Terry said Hank liked to sit.
Claude Sitton, the
greatest of the civil rights reporters, dies in Atlanta
I was saddened to hear of the death of Claude Sitton at 89 in
Atlanta during my visit to Montgomery this month. Sitton was the greatest of
the civil rights-era reporters, filing dispatch after dispatch to the New York Times from the front lines
across the South. It is said that Sitton and Newsweek reporter Karl Fleming created the modern-day long, thin
reporter’s notebook so they could hide it in their coat pockets.
Sitton possessed a
“physical and mental toughness,” former Atlanta
Journal-Constitution managing editor and author Hank Klibanoff told the Times. “He was not going to be
intimidated.” Klibanoff and former Philadelphia
Inquirer editor Gene Roberts authored The
Race Beat, a Pulitzer Prize-winning account of the journalists who covered
the Civil Rights Movement.
I got first-hand experience with that “physical and mental
toughness” when Sitton interviewed me for a job at the old Raleigh Times in Raleigh, North Carolina, in the late 1970s. Sitton
was chief editor of the morning paper, the News
& Observer. Both papers were then owned by the Daniels family. I
remember sweating under those intense eyes as Sitton probed me about my views
on reporting and writing. I wasn’t sure how I handled his questions, but maybe
I did all right. I got the job.
Labor-Green coalition
helps gain victory for striking oil workers
Striking oil workers in Louisiana, Texas, Kentucky,
California and Washington scored a victory earlier this month with a tentative
agreement on a contract between the United Steelworkers and Shell Oil Co., which
served as representative for ExxonMobile, Chevron and other companies.
Nearly 4,000 workers began striking February 1, and they
were later joined by another 3,000 at workplaces across the country to demand
better working conditions, wages and benefits, and to protest the hiring of temporary
workers.
Also joining the strike were environmental groups such as
the Louisiana Bucket Brigade and the Sierra Club, whose members expressed
strong concern about the environmental impact of oil refineries lacking proper
safety standards.
According to Paul Garver of Talking Union, the USW believes the tentative contract promises
better safety standards and a review of workplace practices and hiring as well
as wage increases.
Tennessee legislator
blasts Volkswagen for its openness to unions
Tennessee politicians just can’t get over the German company
Volkswagen’s willingness to allow the United Auto Workers to address worker
concerns with the company’s management at its Chattanooga facility. Although an
election last year failed to give the UAW official collective bargaining rights
at the plant, the company has okayed the union’s unofficial presence in
discussions over workplace issues.
During a recent meeting of the state Senate Commerce
Committee about, among other issues, a proposed $166 million incentives package
to Volkswagen, state Sen. Bo Watson, R-Hixson, whose district includes the VW
plant, fired a volley of criticism at Volkswagen America general counsel David
Geanacopoulos for the company’s role “as a magnet for organized labor.”
Other Tennessee politicians such as Gov. Bill Haslam and
U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, both Republicans like Watson, bitterly fought the UAW in
last year’s election, warning of dire consequences if the union scored a
victory.