Frank Rudolph Crosswaith (1892–1965) was a longtime socialist politician and activist and trade union organizer in New York City. Crosswaith is best remembered as the founder and chairman of the Negro Labor Committee, which was established on July 20, 1935 by the Negro Labor Committee.
Frank R. Crosswaith was born on July 16, 1892 in Frederiksted, St. Croix, Danish West Indies (the island was sold to the United States in 1917 and became part of the U.S. Virgin Islands), and emigrated to the United States in his teens. While finishing high school, he worked as an elevator operator, porter and garment worker. He joined the elevator operators’ union and when he finished high school, he won a scholarship from the socialist The Jewish Daily Forward to attend the Rand School of Social Science, an educational institute in New York City associated with the Socialist Party of America.
Crosswaith founded an organization called the Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers in 1925, but this work went by the wayside when Crosswaith accepted a position as an organizer for the fledgling Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters. Crosswaith maintained a long association with union head A. Philip Randolph, serving with him as officers of the Negro Labor Committee in the 1930s and 1940s.
In the early 1930s Crosswaith worked as an organizer for the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, which became one of the major supporters of the Negro Labor Committee.
In 1924, he ran on the Socialist ticket for Secretary of State of New York, and in 1936 for Congressman-at-large. He ran also for the New York City Council in 1939 on the American Labor ticket.
Crosswaith was elected to the governing executive committee of the American Labor Party in New York in 1924.[1]
Crosswaith was an anti-communist and believed that the best hope for black workers in the United States was to join bona fide labor unions just as the best hope for the American labor movement was to welcome black workers into unions in order to promote solidarity and eliminate the use of black workers as strike breakers. He believed strongly that “separation of workers by race would only work to undermine the strength of the entire labor movement.” Crosswaith spent much of his energy in the late 1930s and early 1940s battling a rival labor organization called the Harlem Labor Union, Inc., which was run by Ira Kemp and had a black nationalist philosophy. He accused Kemp of undermining the interests of black workers by signing agreements with employers that offered them labor at wages below union rates.
Crosswaith also worked with A. Philip Randolph during World War II in organizing the March on Washington Movement, which was called off when President Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to sign Executive Order 8802, which prohibited racial discrimination in defense industries.
The Negro Labor Committee was an organization founded by Frank Crosswaith and others to advance African American interests within the American labor movement.
The Negro Labor Committee (NLC) was founded in 1935 and was a major step in the advancement of the rights of black workers. It was the successor to a number of organizations founded by Crosswaith, a longtime Socialist Party and labor activist. The first was the American Federation of Labor Trade Union Committee for Organizing Negro Workers, founded in December 1924. Despite being supported by the Central Trades and Labor Council of New York, the group was hampered by the unwillingness of local unions to accept black members and it was apparently defunct by 1926.
In 1934 Crosswaith founded the Harlem Labor Committee, an organization of both black and white workers who sought higher wages, better working conditions and improved benefits. The HLC called the First Negro Labor Conference in July 20, 1935. The meeting of 110 black and white workers voted to create a permanent Negro Labor Committee, which aimed to help African-American find better paying jobs. and to prevent them from being used as labor scabs. The Committee also wished to open union membership to African-Americans in localities that had excluded them from membership through clauses in their constitutions, by-laws and rituals or had “covertly discriminate against the Negro worker by practices more eloquent and effective than pronouncements, resolutions, or Constitutions can ever be”. Crosswaith was elected Chairman. Other officers included A. Philip Randolph of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters as Vice Chairman, Thomas Young of the Building Service Employees Union, Julius Hochman of the International Ladies’ Garment Workers’ Union, Abraham Miller of the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America, and Morris Feinstone of the United Hebrew Trades, Treasurer, Philip Kapp Joint Board, Dressmakers Union, Financial Secretary, Winifred Gittens also ILGWU, and Organizer Noah A. Walter Jr. of the Laundry Workers Union.
The Committee established the Harlem Labor Center at 312 West 125th Street. This served as a home for the legitimate workers in Harlem for both black and white workers. The Committee also created the Negro Labor News Service, which disseminated news throughout the country. In 1941 the NLC was involved in the March on Washington Movement which pressured Franklin D. Roosevelt to create the Fair Employment Practice Committee. In 1946 Crosswaith declared that Harlem had changed from a community of scabs into a community of labor conscious workers.