“The Christian civilization of Chicago ... permits the heart's blood of your children to be quaffed in the wine cups of the labor robbers. . . . Socialism is the 100-cents-on-the-dollar religion. (Cheers) . . . . We have heard enough about a paradise behind the moon. We want something now. [....] We are tired of hearing about the golden streets of the hereafter. What we want is good paved and drained streets in this world. [....] I want my immortality in this world, and if there is any in the next world we can look after that when we get there.”
-- Lucy Parsons, “The Religion of Humanity,”
speech delivered at A. R. Parsons Assembly No. 1
of the Knights of Labor, Waverly Hall, January 23, 1889
SOURCE: Ashbaugh, Carolyn. Lucy Parsons: American Revolutionary (Chicago: Charles H. Kerr Publishing Company, 1976) p. 170. For more on this speech and meeting see pp. 169-171.
Randolph, a black freethinker as well as a major figure in the history of labor organizing and the civil rights movement, is here honored. Randolph was selected 1970 Humanist of the Year.
The sleeping car porters that Randolph unionized played a key role in black history, in leveraging access to education and the middle class. See Rising from the Rails: Pullman Porters and the Making of the Black Middle Class by Larry Tye.
There are countless people who could be counted in the ranks of secular humanism, but one must recognize that while most of them were or are simply unorganized, and among those many who have not explicitly taken on such an identity, there was, especially in the first half of the 20th century, a large contingent who functioned not within a secularist, humanist, or freethought movement, but within the labor movement. Radical labor organizer, actor, and playwright Emanuel ("Manny") Fried (March 1, 1913 - February 25, 2011) was the son of Jewish immigrants, but like so many, Manny abandoned religious belief. This is not his claim to fame, but it is a fact. To be Jewish in the old days was to be subject to discrimination, harassment, and violence. And to be Jewish means more to be a member of an ethnic group than it does necessarily to be religious. Manny recounted in one of our talks the horrible antisemitism that prevailed in American society and which was part of his experience, also documented here and there in his work. He told me that he grew up in an area of Buffalo populated by Jews and blacks. In addition to his devotion to the cause of labor, he also opposed an attempt to segregate Hutchinson high school in Buffalo, and there are other comparable anecdotes to be related which I don't think can be found in his autobiography.
As Manny died yesterday, just a few days short of his 98th birthday, I am still collecting my thoughts. When I volunteered to create a web presence for him in 2003, there was practically nothing to be found on the Internet. He was a local hero, but largely unknown outside of Western New York. You are invited to familiarize yourself with Manny's life and work:
