Ben Fletcher
Benjamin Harrison Fletcher was an early 20th-century African-American labor leader and public speaker. He was a prominent member of the Industrial Workers of the World, a left-wing trade union which was influential during his time. Fletcher co-founded and helped lead the interracial Local 8 branch of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union.
Early life
Benjamin Harrison Fletcher was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 13, 1890. He worked as a day laborer and a longshoreman, loading and unloading ships. Fletcher joined the IWW and the Socialist Party around 1912. Shortly thereafter, Fletcher became a leader of the IWW in Philadelphia, beginning a career in public speaking that won him many accolades.Local 8
Fletcher, along with other Industrial Workers of the World members, co-founded Local 8 of the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union in Philadelphia in 1913. The local was unique in its time for being interracial, with about one-third of its members African American, another one-third Irish American, and the remaining one-third largely composed of other European immigrants. Upon its formation, Fletcher helped lead Local 8. Its members espoused anti-capitalist and anti-racist rhetoric, and were subject to red-baiting by dockyard bosses and local government officials. By 1916, all but two of Philadelphia's docks were under IWW control. Local 8 exercised considerable control of Philadelphia's waterfront for about a decade.Subsequent organizing efforts
Following the successful organization of Local 8 in Philadelphia, Fletcher traveled up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard on behalf of the IWW. In a 1931 Amsterdam News interview, he recounted his escape from a potential lynching in 1917 while trying to organize a union among dock workers in Norfolk, Virginia. From there he fled to Boston, where he continued his organizing activities for a brief period.Treason arrest and sentence
While in Boston, Fletcher learned he was to be indicted for labor organizing. He returned to Philadelphia where he said that he "preferred to be placed under arrest." Upon his return, Fletcher and 165 other union activists were publicly indicted. At the time, the IWW had about a million members, including 100,000 black workers who were rejected from other unions such as the American Federation of Labor. Fletcher was arrested on February 9, 1918, and held with a $10,000 bond. Two weeks later, the district attorney reduced the bond to $1,500, which was promptly paid for by the IWW.Fletcher was charged with treasonous activities, and was the only Black person among the 166 IWW members tried. While no direct evidence of treason was provided against him, Local 8, or even the IWW, all of the defendants were found guilty—the jury came back in under an hour, all guilty on all counts. Fletcher was fined $30,000 and sentenced to ten years in the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas. As the sentences were announced, IWW leader Bill Haywood reported that, "Ben Fletcher sidled over to me and said: 'The Judge has been using very ungrammatical language.' I looked at his smiling black face and asked: 'How's that, Ben? He said: 'His sentences are much too long.'" While in jail, Fletcher's release became a cause célèbre among Black radicals, championed by The Messenger, a monthly magazine co-edited by A. Philip Randolph. Fletcher served for approximately three years before his sentence was commuted, along with most of the other jailed Wobblies, in 1922.