The King Behind a Half-Century of Freedom Fighters
For more than a half century, LeRoy King has been the man telling the 20th century's greatest heroes, "I've got your back."
In the ReUnion: Education-Arts-Heritage documentary The KING behind King, Bridges, Chavez and Mandela, to be screened March 16 at the national headquarters of the AFL-CIO, King describes the critical role of a group of pioneers who integrated the first national union, the International Longshore and Warehouse Union (ILWU) and used that position to fund with money and volunteers:
- The Montgomery bus boycott in 1955
- The Auto Row sit-ins in San Francisco in 1963
- The inception of the United Farm Workers in Delano in the 1960s
- The divestment of pension funds from businesses active in South Africa
King was Northern California director of ILWU when dockworkers refused to load ships bound for apartheid-ruled South Africa, an incident seen as the turning point in international condemnation of the segregated regime.
The Fresno native took his first job unloading coffee after serving for three years loading artillery shells on the European front during World War II. In 1947, he and other ILWU members formed the Frontiersmen to gain leadership posts in the union.
After winning his first union election in 1951, King eventually became part of the national union staff. "Harry Bridges mentored me," he recalls of the union's long-time president. "I went to the trial every day." Bridges was accused of being a Communist and tried in federal court during the red-baiting scare of the early 1950s.
"When the Montgomery bus boycott happened, we sent them money and some of us went down there," said King. It was reminiscent of the Underground Railroad operatives in the 1850s during the Gold Rush, who sent money back to the fight against slavery, including $30,000 to fund John Brown's raid on Harpers Ferry.
One of the prominent pictures on King's wall is a shot of Drs. Martin Luther King Jr. and Ralph David Abernathy with the Frontiersmen in the 1950s as they held a fundraiser for the Southern Christian Leadership Conference.
Similarly, ILWU funds and volunteers were sent to Delano every Friday to help the organization of the United Farm Workers.
King and Bill Chester organized the church-labor coalition in the 1950s. "The longshoremen were the people who paid the collection at most of the larger churches. They were the deacons so we were able to get the ministers to go along with us."
They were credited with the election of the first labor leader to become mayor of San Francisco, John Shelley, and later in the 1960s with the election of Joseph Alioto as mayor.
Although originally foes with Diane Feinstein, King persuaded a supervisor to change her vote in order to make Feinstein the city's first permanent woman mayor.
Labor leaders tutored Willie Brown for two years after an unsuccessful race for state Assembly, leading to his victory in his second attempt, recalls King. "Willie never forgot Revels Cayton, who taught him everything he knew about politics," said King of the Assembly speaker and mayor.
Feinstein appointed King to the city's redevelopment commission in 1980, serving until the agency was eliminated on Feb. 1. On the board, he sought to undo the damage from an urban renewal strategy in the 1960s which actually forced King to leave the city for eight years.
