WS Chronicle

Showcase of songs coming to NCMA-WS on June 28 

BY JUDIE HOLCOMB-PACK AND DAVID WINSHIP 

 The United States was in the middle of World War II in the summer of 1943 and riots were erupting across the country, fueled by wartime tensions, urban overcrowding, and racial discrimination. These riots were particularly severe from Los Angeles to Detroit, from Harlem to Texas.  

Winston-Salem saw peaceful confrontation with the emergence and victorious stance of tobacco workers against R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company to achieve union representation. The members of the Tobacco Workers Organizing Committee (TWOC) brought attention to and changes in workers’ pay, hazardous working conditions, and respect for union representation. 

Local 22 of the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) had helped organize the TWOC within the plant. The union was prohibited from organizing within the plant due to a no-strike clause during wartime, which led to the emergence of the grass-roots movement of working-people’s assertion of their workplace rights. 

World War II was smoking, and cigarettes were considered an essential product. Reynolds Tobacco was ramping up its production, causing hazardous and unhealthy working conditions for the machine operators and other line workers, who were largely African American women. With a workforce of over 16,000, more than 80% of RJR workers were African American and a majority of these were women.  

Theodosia Simpson was a young woman who took a job at Reynolds after her enrollment in Winston-Salem Teachers College had been cut short by the Great Depression in 1938. She became a quiet leader among the women and a vocal opponent of working conditions in the plant. When a fellow machine operator succumbed to threats and abuse from a supervisor and a colleague fell ill and died on the factory floor, the workers recognized that they had had enough, and they stopped their machines. Among those joining Simpson in the strike were Velma Hopkins, Moranda Smith, Geneva McClendon, Viola Brown, Christine Gardner, Etta Hobson, and Ruby Jones, among many others. 

McClendon later recalled. “We told him (Vice-President Whittaker) we were tired of the workload, tired of the boss standing over us with a whip in his hand. We wanted better working conditions, and we wanted more money. We wanted equal pay for equal work.” 

According to historian Philip Gerard, “It [was] an astonishing moment in a Southern workplace where Black workers – especially Black women – have previously been silenced for fear of retribution. Now these women are speaking out openly, as equals, as workers who are valuable to the company.” 

The work stoppage in June 1943 lasted five days. It led to the only time that the Reynolds Tobacco Co. had been unionized, by Local 22-CIO. This led to the R.J. Reynolds Company commitment to agree to workers’ demands. Collective bargaining agreements were signed in 1943, 1945, and 1947.  

In 1950, Reynolds conducted management and employment practices that shrank union membership, including red-baiting, misrepresentation, and disinformation through the Winston-Salem Journal. In its final vote for union representation, Local 22 was decertified.  

Roz Pelles, former director of the AFl-CIO’s  Civil, Human and Women’s Rights department, points out that this is a story of success and the start of “Operation Dixie,” seven years of union solidarity and victories that organized industries across the South. 

This story of courageous workers and their victory against workplace injustice and Jim Crow segregation has long been overlooked in our local history. Ironically, our story has been told twice in our nation’s capital through the jazz opera “Love Songs from the Liberation Wars,” based on a book by Robert E. Korstad, with music and lyrics by Steve Jones. Now it will be told in Winston-Salem. 

“Love Songs from the Liberation Wars” coming to NCMA-WS on June 28 

From the opening number, “Workin’ Can’t See to Can’t See,” to the finale, “Love Songs Medley and We Shall Overcome,” this incredible production tells a true story in Winston-Salem’s history that should never be forgotten.  

Originally staged as a jazz opera and produced twice in Washington, D.C., as well as showcase highlights presented in various venues, it is ironic that this historic story from Winston-Salem’s past has stayed relatively out of our local consciousness – until now. 

“Love Songs from the Liberation Wars” is an original work composed by Washington, D.C.-area singer/songwriter Steve Jones and directed by Elise Bryant, both union members. It dramatizes the historic event in organizing the first and only union at R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, led primarily by African American women. 

The show is based on North Carolina historian Robert R. Korstad’s classic study of Winston-Salem’s labor movement, “Civil Rights Unionism: Tobacco Workers and the Struggle for Democracy in the Mid-Twentieth Century South.”  Korstad said, “Music was central to the fight for workplace justice, so it seems fitting for singers to deliver this story to a new generation of audiences.” 

MUSE Winston-Salem, a local history museum, is presenting this performance in partnership with the creative team and other supporters who are dedicated to bringing this historic episode to the city where it began. The museum’s Executive Director Mike Wakeford said, “As the community marks the 150th anniversary of R.J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, we leapt at the opportunity to shine a light on this story of working people’s courage and contributions to Winston-Salem’s history.” 

This is a one-night-only showcase on June 28 featuring 21 of the more than 30 songs in the full-length jazz opera. Five performers will bring a variety of characters to life through selections of songs in an intimate, concert-style experience. The cast includes: Jason McKinney, Chelsea Gabrielle Rose, Trevor Ketterling, Zakiyyah Niang, and Jeffery Maggs.  

As the first-ever staging of the show in Winston-Salem, Jones and Bryant, the show’s creators, see it as an opportunity to bring the story home to the community that inspired it. “The story belongs here in Winston-Salem,” Bryant said. They hope to do a full production of the jazz opera here in the future. 

The showcase performance of “Love Songs from the Liberation Wars” is on Saturday, June 28, 7 p.m., at the McChesney Scott Dunn Auditorium at the North Carolina Museum of Art-Winston-Salem (formerly SECCA), 750 Marguerite Drive. Tickets can be purchased at: https//www.musews.org/events/love-songs-from-the-liberation-wars. 

Judie Holcomb-Pack is associate editor of The Chronicle. She and David Winship are both members of Winston-Salem Writers and frequently write together. David Winship is a retired public-school educator and member of the National Education Association. Following his career in Virginia, he resides in Bristol, Tennessee, and continues to work with education and advocacy organizations.