A new mural celebrates Wobblies union leader Ben Fletcher, a rare Black labor official in his time

The memory of Philadelphia union leader Ben Fletcher rose anew on Saturday, celebrated on the waterfront where he enabled others to envision and attain a better life.

“Imagine having to work 16 hours a day unloading these ships, and then still have the energy to formulate ideas, organize workers, get their respect — and be Black at the same time,” said muralist Jonathan Pinkett.

On Saturday, Pinkett and about 50 others dedicated a new Mural Arts Philadelphia portrait that honors Fletcher and his Local 8 union. The mural is on the Penn’s Landing Operations Center on South Christopher Columbus Boulevard, on the Delaware River waterfront where Fletcher fought not just for wages but also for fairness and justice.

In World War I America, a time when many labor unions excluded Black workers, the Industrial Workers of the World welcomed people of color.

The union was leftist and militant, and Local 8, comprised of Philadelphia longshoremen, was the largest and most powerful IWW branch in the Mid-Atlantic. It dominated waterfront labor relations in one of the nation’s biggest ports during and after the war, according to historian Peter Cole, who has written widely on the subject.

Fletcher was an orator, organizer, strategist, and, most of all, a leader.

“Ben Fletcher was a revolutionary who suffered the consequences of fighting for his beliefs,” said Cole, a professor and graduate director at Western Illinois University, where he teaches the history of social movements, particularly labor unions. “A Black man leading a majority white union — that was unheard of. Now it may seem common, but at the time it was exceptional [because] unions were hesitant to organize Black and immigrant workers.”

Cole, who flew in for the ceremony, has written books about the IWW that include, Ben Fletcher: The Life and Times of a Black Wobbly, using a nickname for IWW members of unknown origin.

The dedication came as union membership in the United States hit a record low 10% of workers in 2023, according to Reuters. At the same time, it was a year of highly publicized labor strikes around the country, with labor successful in organizing at such companies as Starbucks. There’s also been growth in union membership among people of color, the news agency said.

The IWW was committed to racial equality, and Local 8 was its most racially inclusive branch, Cole wrote. The local had the largest contingent of African Americans in the IWW and, in Fletcher, its most significant Black leader.

Fletcher, who was born in Philadelphia in 1890 and died in 1949, helped found and lead Local 8 of the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union. He stood up at a time when Black Americans were excluded by Jim Crow laws and murdered by lynch mobs.

“So little has been said about Fletcher’s work to bring about a multiracial democracy in an early point in American history,” City Councilmember Nicolas O’Rourke said at the event. “It’s important that we pull together and memorialize such movement leaders of the people, so we can remember going forward as we work on a new Philadelphia.”

By 1916 all but two of Philadelphia’s docks were under IWW control, according to an IWW biography of Fletcher. By 1917, dock workers had won their demand for pay of 65 cents an hour, compared with management’s offer of 25 cents.

Improving race relations was among Fletcher’s top priorities, a means of promoting working-class solidarity. IWW dockworkers sponsored anti-racist forums to try to block employers from divide-and-rule tactics, Fletcher’s biography says.

But the industry drive to enter into the war created a shift in national mood. The FBI vandalized IWW offices across the country, the union says, stealing membership records on the pretext that the union supported the Axis nations and was plotting to weaken America.

Fletcher was arrested for “conspiring to strike,” and sent to prison with hundreds of Wobblies who served time on charges of speaking out against the war, refusing to sign no-strike contracts, and engaging in “criminal syndicalism,” a law by which some states sought to outlaw the IWW, the union said.

Today the IWW cites Fletcher’s ongoing legacy, including the 1984 refusal of San Francisco dock workers to unload cargo from South Africa, which Nelson Mandela later referenced as helping reignite the anti-apartheid movement in his country.

The mural came to be after the Democratic Socialists of America pitched the idea to Mural Arts in 2022.

Kolson Schlosser stumbled upon a flier announcing the unveiling and decided to attend the event.

“Unions do things for society in general. Without them even nonunion wages will go down,” said Schlosser. “It’s the only way the working class can make sure it doesn’t get run over.”