Addie Wyatt
| Addie L. Wyatt | |
|---|---|
| Born |
Addie L. Cameron March 8, 1924 Brookhaven, Mississippi |
| Died | March 28, 2012 (aged 88) Chicago, Illinois |
| Occupation | Labor leader, civil rights pioneer, pastor |
| Spouse(s) | Claude S. Wyatt Jr. |
| Children | Renaldo Wyatt Claude S. Wyatt III |
| Parent(s) | Ambrose Cameron Maggie Nolan Cameron |
Addie L. Wyatt (née Cameron; March 8, 1924 – March 28, 2012) was a leader in the United States Labor movement, and a civil rights activist. Wyatt is known for being the first African-American woman elected international vice president of a major labor union, the Amalgamated Meat Cutters Union. Wyatt began her career in the union in the early 1950s and advanced in leadership. In 1975, with the politician Barbara Jordan, she was the first African-American woman named by Time magazine as Person of the Year.
Wyatt was born to Ambrose and Maggie (Nolan) Cameron in Brookhaven, Mississippi, on March 8, 1924. She is the second child and the oldest daughter of eight children. She moved with her family to Chicago in 1930 when she was six years old. The family relocated in hopes of finding better job opportunities during the Great Depression. However, obtainable jobs for African Americans at this time were hard to come by.
At 16 years old, she married Claude S. Wyatt Jr., a postal finance clerk, on May 12, 1940. With Claude she had two sons, Renaldo Wyatt and Claude S. Wyatt III. She raised several of her younger siblings after her mother died at the age of 39 and her father was unable to care for them because of illness.
After her marriage, Wyatt applied for a job as a typist for Armour and Company in 1941. On her first day of work, she discovered African American women were not hired as typists in the front office and instead was sent to the canning department to pack stew in cans for the army. In the early 1950s, Wyatt joined the United Packinghouse Workers of America when discovering the union did not discriminate against its members. As the forefront leader of black women within unions, she and others took advantage of their union's antiracist and antidiscrimination laws and fought race-based and gender-based inequities and work as well as in their communities. In 1955, Wyatt worked full-time on staff for the UPWA, representing workers across a five-state region. She recognized the importance and effectiveness of interracial organization. Among other achievements, Wyatt and her union of black, white, and Latino laborers were able to win "equal pay for equal work" provisions in many union contracts well before the Equal Pay Act of 1963, notes a recent tribute by the United Food and Commercial Workers union, a successor of the UPWA.
...
Wikipedia