Phillips Packing Company Strike
Description
On June 23, 1937, workers at the Phillips Packing Company staged a walkout against planned layoffs. The Phillips Packing Company was the largest employer in Cambridge, Maryland, and had an integrated workforce. As word of the walkout spread throughout the plant, nearly 1,000 Black and white employees joined the strike together. Following the arrest of a Black worker, white and Black employees marched to the jail demanding his release, in a moment that “was in wide contrast to anything ever witnessed before on the Eastern Shore.” The strike ultimately faltered and workers failed to establish a union.
Source
“With one picket dead and white and colored strikers uprooting the traditional color bar of the Eastern Shore in a united front against the Phillips Packing Company industrial empire, this community is in the grip of one of the bitterest labor disturbances in its history.” — William N. Jones, Afro-American Newspaper, July 3, 1937
“Mr. [Herb] St. Clair, who has been a city councilman, a business man and a civic leader in Cambridge for years stated that if by any chance the Phillips Packing Company should be suddenly wiped out of existence, the bulk of the business of the town, most of the employment and the progress of the community would come to a standstill.” — Afro-American newspaper, August 28, 1937
“Mr. [Herb] St. Clair, who has been a city councilman, a business man and a civic leader in Cambridge for years stated that if by any chance the Phillips Packing Company should be suddenly wiped out of existence, the bulk of the business of the town, most of the employment and the progress of the community would come to a standstill.” — Afro-American newspaper, August 28, 1937
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Citation
“Phillips Packing Company Strike,” Passion and Purpose, accessed April 26, 2024, https://passionandpurpose.omeka.net/items/show/11.