They follow in the tradition of leaders who shaped the Labor Movement in their efforts to champion workers’ rights and to unite coalitions.

Randolph was also one of the first two Black vice presidents of the AFL-CIO and he was the founder of the Negro American Labor Council. Randolph and Bayard Rustin, together, co-founded the A. Phillip Randolph Institute, a labor organization for African-American trade union members. 

Randolph and Rustin, who attended local Cheyney University, were organizers of the late Martin Luther King’s famous March on Washington for Jobs and Freedom, August 28, 1963. The march drew 250,000 people, including members of the NAACP and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference, and is credited with helping to pass the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and influenced the 1965 Voting Rights Act.

Then, march leaders pushed for the passage of civil rights legislation, but also for specific workplace-related wins like laws prohibiting discrimination in public or private hiring, an increase in the minimum wage, withholding federal funds from programs that tolerated discrimination.

Randolph’s Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters, merged with the Brotherhood of Railway and Airline Clerks, which eventually merged with IAM in 2012. The union represents machinists in aerospace, transportation, the federal government, automotive, defense wood-working and several other industries. Companies where the union has members include Harley-Davison Motorcycles, Southwest Airlines and Boeing, along with Lockheed Martin and United Airlines. IAM was headed, until recently, by African-American labor leader Robert Roach, Jr.

Locally, Ryan Boyer leads the way as the first African-American leader of the Philadelphia Building Trades Council. The 52-year-old businessman is business manager of the Laborers’ District Council of Philadelphia and Vicinity, which represents four local Black unions.

Other top African-American labor leaders include:

James Wright, Vice-President of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, oversees 1,900 affiliates in the United States, Canada and Puerto Rico. Since he was sworn in as Vice-President-At-Large in 2022, Wright has focused on increasing diversity and member engagement to activate the rank and file and reinvigorate the international.

Wright joined the Teamsters in 1991 when he was a UPS worker. He moved up to shop-steward, then trustee and has since held a variety of leadership position including Vice President and Secretary-Treasurer. He also serves as Chairman of the UPS Air Committee; He is considered to be a strong negotiator and has solidified strong contracts with companies like UPS, YRC and Smithfield Foods.

The Teamsters is largely known as the champion of freight drivers and warehouse workers, but it also workers organized and professional workers in virtually every occupation imaginable from healthcare to newspaper workers in Seattle, Washington to Philadelphia.

Gregory Floyd, Vice-President-At-Large for the International Brotherhood of Teamsters, was sworn in to the position in 2016. He joined the Teamsters as a hospital police officer at the age of 27, and was the youngest hospital police captain in New York City’s history, before joining union leadership. He has also served as Secretary and Chief Negotiator for the international labor union.

Milton Jones, Executive Vice President and Director of National Bargaining for The United Food and Commercial Workers International Union (UFCW), serves with Stuart Applebaum, UFCW Executive Vice President and President, Retail for (UFCW).

The UFCW labor union is made up of 1.3 million men and women in the United States and Canada. Members work in grocery and retail stores, pharmacies, healthcare, and manufacturing facilities, and in food processing and meat-packing industries – working to feed, serve and strengthen the neighborhoods we call home. The union also takes pride in supporting legislation that protects workers’ interests, organizing to tackle national trends, lobbying for better wages for non-union-workers getting them over $190 more per work that non-unionized counterparts, and pushing for better health insurance, paid vacations, holidays and sick leave and overtime protection. 

Kenneth R. Kirk, International Vice President of the Amalgamated Transit Union (ATU), became involved in the union while working his way through college at a Dallas, Texas transit system. He moved up from shop steward to vice president of the local union and eventually president of the local union in 1994. By 2004 Kirk increased union membership from 368 members to 1, 500 members.

Fedrick C. Ingram, Secretary and Treasurer of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT), is in charge of the AFL-CIO affiliate. The AFT was founded in 1916 and represents 1.72 million members and has 3,000 affiliates nationwide. It represents 80,000 early childhood educators, 250,000 retired members as well as pre-k-teachers, higher-education professionals, para-professionals and school-related personnel, as well as the nation’s nurses and health professionals. Notable past members include: former Health and Human Services Secretary Donna Shalala and former United Nations Under-Secretary and Nobel Peace Prize winner Ralph Bunche.

Elizabeth Powell, Secretary-Treasurer of the American Postal Workers Union. duties include overseeing the proper collection and disbursement of union funds, and providing training on handling finances and on conducting union elections for local unions. The union also provides a college scholarship competition for the children and grandchildren of union members. Powell was the first woman to serve on the union’s national executive board and the group’s former Northeast Regional Coordinator. She was the winner of the 2020 Shirley Chisholm Breakthrough Leader Award and she won the 2019 UFCW Minority Coalition’s Addie Wyatt Award.

Fredrick D. Redmond, Secretary-Treasurer of the American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), which represents 60 national and international labor unions, including 12.5 million working people. Their goal is to make sure that workers are treated fairly, with decent paycheck and benefits, safe jobs, dignity and equal opportunities. The AFL-CIO’s functions include worker organizing, collective bargaining, political action, global labor rights and unified efforts to help workers have a better life.

William Adams, International President of the International Longshoremen’s and Warehouse Union and William Rowell, General Vice President of The labor organization, which was founded in 1934 and today represents over 40,000 members in 50 local unions, with an additional 6,000 members from Canada. Adams was the winner of the City of Tacoma, Washington’s “Destiny Award,” and was the winner of the “Paul Robeson Peace and Justice Award” from Mother’s for Police Accountability in Seattle, Washington. In addition to serving in the union, Rowell, worked for more than 50 years as a longshoreman, deck crane operator, bulldozer and fork-lift operator, and maintenance welder – and later worked as a licensed container crane operator, tractor-trailer operator and container handler.

Joseph Bryant is Executive Vice President of the Service Employees International Labor Union, SEIU and works with April Verrett, Secretary-Treasurer for the SEIU, to represent public, social and human services workers. Together they help manage the nation’s largest healthcare union, which includes home-health care workers, daycare workers, plus 160,000 union janitors, and 65,000 security officers.

Nia Winston, General Vice President of the International Hospitality Workers, and UniteHere oversees a union representing 300,000 women in the United States and Canada who are housekeepers in hotels, airports, and in industries like transportation, textiles and manufacturing and gaming. She also serves on the AFL-CIO’s Task Force on Racial Justice.

Rebecca S. Pringle, of the National Education Association (NEA) and the Pennsylvania State Education Association represents a group of 3.2 million members dedicated to improving the quality of teaching, increasing student achievement and making schools safer, better places to learn. Pringle was honored for producing the NEA’s policy statement on teacher evaluations and accountability. Pringle was given the “Woman of Power Award,” from the National Action Network and won the “Community Woman of the Year” from the American Association of University Women. The NEA merged with the American Teachers Association, in 1966, joining two unions once separated by race.