As a tech worker turned tech organizer, I believed the current wave of activism was the first. Then I realized I was part of an important lineage.
Seeing this echo of the present made me want to find out more. What had happened to the anti-apartheid campaign at IBM? What other issues had the group organized around? I decided to begin an oral history and research project to document the work of the BWA. Though I didn’t realize it at first, I was looking for a way to understand my feelings of uncertainty. I felt uncomfortable and impatient; I thought looking to the past would allow me to peek ahead to what would come next.
As I researched the BWA, I kept trying to classify the group. Was it a proto-union? A diversity and inclusion initiative? Something else entirely? Five years later, as Hudson’s lawsuit was finally reaching the courts, word of it reached Ken Branch in DC. Branch told Hudson about the BWA and asked him to start a chapter in NYC. Hudson agreed and for the next two years did his organizing under the umbrella of the BWA. One of his activities was writing a monthly newsletter.
In between the organizing reports, there was also mention of a disco night with over 200 attendees, a fundraiser cabaret with 400 attendees, and a 100-person dinner in Durham that ended with discussions of setting up a new chapter of the organization in North Carolina. Seeing the dates on each issue, I was reminded of the passage of time. When I heard Hudson telling his stories, they felt condensed, as if each moment of action had happened after the other.
Coworkers sought Donaldson after word got out that she was trying to bring in the Pullman Porters, the first Black union in the US. Donaldson was not a member of the BWA, though she met with the group and was in touch with BWA officers. Unlike the BWA, which was expresslyBy the time she started working at IBM in 1967, Donaldson was used to being the only Black woman on her team, in her organization, and even in her field.
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