​Copies of No Power Greater will be available for purchase. Tim has generously offered to donate all proceeds from book sales at this event to PSARA.

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The Retiree Advocate published a review of the book in our May issue. To read the review, go to PSARA.org, click “Newsletter,” then “Advocate Archives,” and search for “202505 May Advocate.”

 

The remainder of this article is an excerpt from this fascinating book:

 

A couple of days before Christmas, 1941, the Maryland Council of the CIO met at a convention in Baltimore. The nation was reeling from the December 7 sneak attack on Pearl Harbor two weeks earlier by Imperial Japan; the US was suddenly plunged into war.

 

Yet even so, sharp partisan politics intruded when the industrial union leaders met in Baltimore. John T. Jones, a leader of the United Mine Workers, had quit as President of the Maryland- DC branch of the CIO. He was following the lead of UMW President, John L. Lewis…

 

John L. Lewis was furious at FDR for rejecting his appeal that he supports the steelworkers in the 1937 “Little Steel” strike marked by the infamous massacre by Chicago police of steel union strikers.

 

Lewis was so angry at FDR that one week before the November 1940 presidential election, Lewis urged union workers to vote for Republican Wendell Wilkie. Lewis vowed that he would resign as CIO President if Roosevelt was reelected.

 

The overwhelming majority of union workers rejected Lewis’ appeal and Roosevelt won in a landslide. Lewis followed through, announcing his resignation as President of the CIO, pulling the UMW out of the CIO. All UMW leaders who held leadership posts in the CIO, including Jones, also resigned. George was chosen unanimously to replace Jones.

 

George Meyers said of his election to lead the Maryland-DC CIO:

To my great surprise, at the Council convention…I was unanimously proposed to succeed him. Need- less to say, I was both surprised and honored but only agreed to run if the convention elected an African American as one of our vice presidents. It did, and Joe Neal, a leader of the Steel Local at Sparrows Point near Baltimore, became the first black officer of the Maryland-DC Council.

 

George A. Meyers gave unstinting leadership to the Maryland-DC CIO during his two-year tenure as President.

 

His highest priority was to build labor support for the war effort. For him defeating fascism and organizing unorganized workers were two sides of the same coin...

 

Equally high on the CIO agenda was fighting Jim Crow exclusion of African American workers at plants like Glen L. Martin, Fairchild Aircraft, Beth Steel, the shipyards, and all other jobs in Maryland. Along with fighting racist hiring practices, the CIO demanded equal hiring and equal pay for women workers