NAACP

AFSCME Office of the Secretary-Treasurer: William Lucy Records

jruss — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 14:21:25 -0400

The AFSCME Office of the Secretary-Treasurer oversees the general financial health of the international union, keeping records for its locals, councils, and the headquarters staff. The Office keeps files on council and local trusteeships, maintains per capita dues payments by locals and councils, issues charters to new locals, and suspends and disbands locals or councils when problems arise. William Lucy held this position for 38 years, 1972-2010.

Lucy joined AFSCME as a civil engineer in Contra Costa, CA in 1956. A decade later, he was working for the International in Washington, D.C. Proving his leadership abilities during the 1968 sanitation workers strike in Memphis, during which Martin Luther King, Jr., was assassinated, Lucy became AFSCME Secretary-Treasurer in 1972. Alongside his work with AFSCME, Lucy also served with countless labor, civil rights, and civic organizations to advance causes for blacks, women, and workers locally in Washington, D.C., nationally, and internationally. Lucy helped found the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) in 1972 to represent African Americans in the labor movement. He was instrumental in the Free South Africa Movement's efforts to end apartheid in South Africa. He served as president of Public Services International (PSI) and as a member of the AFL-CIO Executive Council. These activities are reflected in the Records. Lucy retired from the position of Secretary-Treasurer in July 2010 at the AFSCME biennial convention.

The AFSCME Office of the Secretary-Treasurer: William Lucy Records document the activities and operations of AFSCME International, the Office of the Secretary-Treasurer, and AFSCME’s state and local councils. The Records also convey the actions of William Lucy in a number of labor and civil rights organizations, including TransAfrica, the NAACP, CBTU, PSI, and the AFL-CIO. The Records include correspondence, reports, speeches, financial information, legal documents, convention transcripts and proceedings, publications, and meeting minutes. Several boxes of audio recordings of International Executive Board meetings are included, and a very small number of photographs appear in the collection.

David Clements Papers

mwallace — Mon, 18 Nov 2013 13:29:35 -0500

David Clements was born in Indiana in 1948, grew up in Benton Harbor, Michigan and earned his Bachelors and Masters degrees from Wayne State University in Detroit. He began his professional life as an educator in Detroit, where he was one of the founders of the Detroit Children’s School, an alternative school to public education. At the same time, Clements was also interested in film and photographic arts and was very involved in the Cass City Cinema in Detroit. Clements’ Detroit urban photography is featured in two photographic books. He currently resides in Royal Oak, Michigan. The David Clements Papers consist mostly of posters and advertisements of events, especially musical ones, happening at small venues within the city of Detroit, Michigan spanning the 1970s through the 2000s. Gospel, jazz, R & B, and electronic music shows are represented in the posters. Political Buttons, nostalgic product packaging, and advertisements from local sporting events, and other happenings throughout Detroit are also within the collection.

Elvin Davenport Papers

drice — Fri, 03 May 2013 16:36:55 -0400

Elvin Lamoine Davenport (1899-1988) was the first African-American judge elected to the Recorder’s Court for the City of Detroit; he served on the bench for over 20 years. Davenport was born in Folly, Virginia, attended local schools, and received his undergraduate degree from Temple University and his law degree from Howard University Law School in 1929. After graduation he worked as a Pullman porter for the Canadian Pacific Railroad, and completed further graduate studies at McGill University. Davenport moved to Detroit, Michigan where he was appointed to the State Bar in 1931. He became associated with the law firm of Stowers, Bledsoe & Dent, later forming his own practice with Garvin, Osborne, Smith, and Fuller (1931-1945). Like many African-American lawyers practicing at the time, Davenport had difficulty attracting clients; to make a decent living he also sold life insurance. He became heavily involved in civil rights cases, serving as counsel for the NAACP in the Sojourner Truth housing project riots; the 1943 Detroit race riot inquest in police shootings; and the general court martial charges against Lt. Milton R. Henry. He was appointed as the Assistant Wayne County Prosecutor in 1945-1946 and 1948-1956. In 1956, Governor G. Mennen Williams appointed him to the Common Pleas Court for the City of Detroit, making Davenport again the first African-American to be appointed to the position. By 1957, he was elevated to the Recorder’s Court for the City of Detroit. Davenport sat on the bench until his retirement in 1977. Throughout his life, Elvin Davenport was a member of many professional and service organizations. Elvin Davenport died in June of1988.

The papers of Elvin Davenport primarily document his practice as an attorney and judge in the city of Detroit, from 1942-1977. Of particular note are correspondence files that demonstrate the integral role Mr. Davenport played in both the judicial profession and local community service organizations, as well as the relationships he cultivated as a result of his involvement.

Detroit Committee for Responsible Banking Records

dgolodner — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:17:59 -0400

The Detroit Committee for Responsible Banking (DCRB) grew out of awareness that banks in Detroit were under-funding city development while frequently supporting development in suburban areas. The DCRB was formed by James M. Edwards and Patrick J. Murray, both Detroit lawyers, and backed by an advisory board of community members. Initially, they focused their efforts on one bank – Comerica – and later went after Standard Federal, National Bank of Detroit, Manufacturers Bank, First of America, Michigan National Bank, and First Federal of Michigan.

The Detroit Committee for Responsible Banking Records document the efforts of the committee to bring attention to redlining practices of banks in the city of Detroit. They reflect a multi-faceted approach, including direct correspondences with banking officials, protests to state and federal banking oversight institutions, correspondence with various news media, and collaboration with other organizations. The materials in the collection include correspondences, acquisition and merger applications, mortgage and home improvement loan statements; Community Reinvestment Act files; bank publications, notes, news clippings, and related reports.

Collection Spotlight: African-American Labor Oral Histories

wlefevre — Tue, 18 Feb 2014 11:05:00 -0500

In late 1967 Herbert Hill, labor director for the NAACP, traveled to the campus of Wayne State University in Detroit to conduct a series of oral histories with African American men and women that centered around their experiences in the labor movement. read more »

Collection Spotlight: Ramon S. Scruggs, Sr. Papers

gstrassel — Wed, 11 Feb 2015 10:37:14 -0500

Best known as the first African American member of management at both the Michigan Bell Telephone Company and AT&T, Ramon S. Scruggs, Sr. served as an influential civil rights figure in the American business community from the 1940s until his passing in 1984. What separated Scruggs from many other civil rights figures was his focus on improving racial equality through integrating African Americans into positions of management within large corporations. The Ramon S. Scruggs Sr. Papers, recently opened to the public at the Walter P. Reuther Library, chronicle the subject’s numerous accomplishments. read more »

Detroit's Walk to Freedom

eclemens — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 22:48:12 -0400

This Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Day, we recall Detroit's Walk to Freedom, described by Dr. King as “one of the most wonderful things that has happened in America." Dr. King led the march and shed light on the status of African Americans in northern industrial cities. Organized by the Detroit Council on Human Rights (DCHR), the Walk to Freedom was the largest civil rights demonstration in the nation’s history. Its purpose was to speak out against segregation and the brutality that met civil rights activists in the South while at the same time addressing concerns of African Americans in the urban North: inequality in hiring practices, wages, education, and housing. The date of the march, June 23, 1963, was chosen to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the 1943 Detroit Riots in which 34 people, the majority of them African American, were killed. read more »

Reuther Library Acquires Horace Sheffield Jr. Collection

ageraci — Wed, 21 Jun 2023 14:19:11 -0400

The Walter P. Reuther Library, Archives of Labor and Urban Affairs, is pleased to announce the acquisition of an archival collection documenting the life and work of Horace Sheffield Jr.

The Sheffield Collection will give insight into the life and work of a labor and community trailblazer through personal and family papers, correspondence, images, and ephemera collected over a life of leadership: as an official in UAW Local 600, founding member of the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU), President of the Detroit CBTU, founder of the politically influential Trade Union Leadership Council (TULC) and Detroit Association of Black Organizations (DABO), director of the Detroit NAACP, and administrative assistant to UAW President Douglas Fraser. read more »

[Podcast] Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence and Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era

teller — Thu, 07 Dec 2023 15:08:52 -0500

Dr. Matthew Lassiter shares stories uncovered in Detroit Under Fire: Police Violence, Crime Politics, and the Struggle for Racial Justice in the Civil Rights Era, a collaborative digital exhibit created by undergraduate history students documenting nearly 200 civilians killed between 1957 and 1973 by the Detroit Police Department and other law enforcement agencies in the city. Because identifying information was rarely included in official reports or the city’s mainstream media, the students instead searched the archives of local activists and community organizations to identify the victims and the circumstances of their deaths. read more »

[Podcast] The Radical Fund: How a Band of Visionaries and a Million Dollars Upended America

teller — Fri, 06 Feb 2026 15:31:22 -0500

John Fabian Witt recounts how in the 1920s and 1930s Charles Garland donated his million-dollar inheritance to the American Fund for Public Service, or Garland Fund, to support progressive causes and organizations he believed could challenge inequality and reshape capitalism and democracy in America. read more »