Ernest Thompson Papers

Born in Baltimore, Maryland, on August 7, 1907, Ernest Thompson grew up on his grandfather's farm on Maryland's Eastern Shore. His immediate family included his grandfather, Philip Henry Thompson, parents Joshua and Jennie, sisters Sarah and Lorraine, and brothers Olin and Robert. At age 13, Thompson went to live with his aunt in Jersey City, New Jersey, where he attended evening school.

One of Thompson's first jobs, at age 16, was working on the construction of New York's Holland Tunnel. Thompson then found employment as a core maker for the American Radiator plant in Bayonne, New Jersey, where he worked until 1943.

United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America

At the American Radiator Company, Thompson organized an independent union and was elected the union's president, a position which he held for approximately 10 or 12 years. Under his leadership, the shop first joined the American Federation of Labor, but later (in 1940) affiliated with the United Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers of America (U.E.), one of the leading militant unions of the Congress of Industrial Organizations.

In 1943 Thompson became the first African-American field organizer for the U.E., conducting organizing campaigns in Jersey City and surrounding areas, and in Baltimore, Maryland. From 1946 to 1950, he was the business manager for U.E. locals 427 and 446, in Bayonne and Jersey City, respectively. His responsibilities as business manager included administration, contract negotiation, time study analysis, organizing workers and political action. Much of Thompson's political action work during the 1940s, however, was undertaken as the executive officer of the Hudson County C.I.O. Council, a position which he held from 1942 to 1950. In developing political power for workers in the region, he ran candidates for city, county and state government offices.

From 1951 to 1956, Thompson served as the Secretary (i.e., director) of the U.E.'s National Fair Practices Committee. While serving as Secretary, he formed a strong coalition of women and Blacks which developed training programs to prepare workers to advance to better positions and which promoted the appointment of non-whites and women into leadership positions.

National Negro Labor Council

Thompson was one of the founders of the National Negro Labor Council which grew to over 50,000 members in 53 cities. He was the Council's theoretician, drafting the keynote address for its first convention, as well as position papers outlining the organization's views. His travel as Secretary of the U.E. National Fair Practices Committee permitted him to undertake major responsibility for the organizational work of the National Negro Labor Council's first convention. He convinced workers in various cities of the need for the Council and articulated the role of African-American labor in the struggle for economic, political and social equality.

As Director of Organization, Thompson was at the center of the National Negro Labor Council's jobs campaigns against discrimination in employment. During the early 1950s, the Council led the nation's first Black mass job campaigns, targeting Sears-Roebuck, the airlines, the railroads and, in Louisville, Kentucky, both the Ford Motor Company and General Electric.

The National Negro Labor Council disbanded in 1956 under pressure from the federal government's Subversive Activities Control Board. The same year, Thompson's position as Secretary for the U.E.'s National Fair Practices Committee was terminated when the membership in the New York-New Jersey area departed from that union, which had been independent of the Congress of Industrial Organizations since 1946, in favor of the C.I.O.'s International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers (I.U.E.).

Community Affairs

Thompson relocated to Orange, New Jersey, in 1956. His skills as a labor and political campaign organizer were subsequently manifested in several community program activities in Orange, Newark and other northern New Jersey cities.

In Orange, Thompson founded Citizens for Representative Government in the city's east ward in 1958 and served as its director of organization. The efforts of CRG led to passage of a referendum to change the form of city government. A result of the charter change was African-American political representation in Orange's wards for the first time, including the election of Benjamin F. Jones, the first Black city council member, and of John Alexander, the first Black school board president. Using CRG as a model, other wards in the city developed similar political organizations. To coordinate these organizations, the Amalgamated Organizations for Good Government was formed in 1965, thereby uniting African-American political power in the whole of Orange. Thompson served as the organizational director of the newly formed coalition.

Beginning about 1964, Thompson was a labor advisor to the Newark Coordinating Council. The following year he represented the Council on its negotiating committee which lobbied for equal employment opportunities at the Rutgers University Law School and at the Newark College for Engineering construction sites in Newark. As part of this effort, Thompson mobilized the African-American elected officials of Essex County. Meetings with the attorney general and governor of New Jersey led to the desegregation of many of the trades through state enforcement of civil rights laws.

In 1965 Thompson also was program director of the Orange Higher Achievement Tutoring Program. In subsequent years he served on the advisory committee for Title I tutoring programs in Orange.

Thompson helped to organize the Tri-City Citizens Union for Progress in 1967. Two years later Tri-City, which had operations in Essex, Hudson and Union Counties, established the "Amity Village" rehab and cooperative housing project in Newark.

Ernest Thompson died on January 27, 1971, at his home in Orange, New Jersey, after nearly three years of illness. He was 64 years of age. Surviving him were his wife, Margaret Brown, and four children, Mindy, Beverly, Ernest and Josh.