SOUTH DEERING — For Rogers Hardy, an aptly named Alabama native, hard labor came easy.
Hardy came to Chicago as the second Great Migration entered its final years. He began at Interlake Steel Corporation’s South Deering furnace plant in 1964 as a laborer. Over the next four decades, he rose through the company’s ranks, served in combat during the Vietnam War, saw his employer’s name change from Interlake to Acme Steel, and became an assistant supervisor and union shop steward before retiring in 2002.
“I thought I was pretty smart, and I could do this stuff, you know?” said Hardy, now 79. “I had come from down South, plowing a mule and all that. All this physical labor wasn’t nothing but a joke to me.”
Hardy is one of many Black steelworkers who gave their labor, health — and in many cases, their lives — to an industry that promised stability on the South Side in exchange for those sacrifices.
For decades, the steelworkers found some semblance of that stability. Major plants like Acme, U.S. Steel’s South Works, Wisconsin Steel and Republic Steel supplied paychecks and benefits that paid for homes, generations of college educations, cars and more, retirees said.
Black employees sustained their hard-earned, relative security amid workplace discrimination and structural racism that limited opportunities for advancement. But it all came to a crashing halt at the end of the 20th century when South Side steel mills closed.
“We built the Chicago skyline.”
William “Bill” Alexander
The economic and social collapse saw banks, shops, opportunities — and, in many cases, hope — disappear from their neighborhoods.
Several Black steelworkers spoke to Block Club Chicago about their experiences in South Side communities uplifted and devastated by the steel industry.
Their tales give insight into the unique experiences of Black people in an industry which gained a reputation, earned or not, for giving a fair shake to people of all races.
Life In The Mills
Venise Wagner, a journalism professor at San Francisco State University, spent her early life in South Shore and has family ties to the steel mills that dominated the neighborhoods near her childhood home.
Wagner’s grandfather, Robert Elkins, was a mechanic in the boilermaker department who worked at U.S. Steel’s South Works in South Chicago from 1942 to 1976. Her cousin, Jess Gill, started at South Works in 1978 and worked in the plant’s rod mill.
Wagner’s upcoming memoir, “Anatomy of My Past,” will trace the workplace and housing discrimination her family faced over five generations. Uplifting Elkins’ experience as a U.S. Steel employee is crucial, as “I think the Black steelworkers were invisible,” Wagner said.
Black steelworkers often worked in positions “at the early stages of steel production — the hottest and the dirtiest,” Wagner said. Elkins was a laborer — typically the lowest rung on the career ladder — for two years, before advancing to a boilermaker helper position in 1944 and to boilermaker handyman in 1945.
When Elkins was promoted to mechanic in 1947, it was the last official promotion he’d receive until he retired in 1976. At some point within those three decades, Elkins eventually — and unofficially — began doing the work of a “full boilermaker with journeyman status,” and likely received “some kind of bonus pay” to supplement his mechanic’s salary, Wagner said.
The unofficial promotion only came about thanks to the work of a sole supervisor who made it their mission to give Elkins his due, Wagner said.
Even the coveted apprenticeships and journeyman positions required work near high heat, fast production lines and toxic chemicals, former steelworkers said.
Gill, who completed his four-year millwright apprenticeship in two and a half years, received a promotion after his trainer “dropped dead” during a bike ride, he said. He frequently worked with a welder and another millwright “from the hottest [sectors in the mill] to the shipping,” he said.
“It was a hell of a thing, man,” said Gill, now 68. “We would take a 4-inch by 4-inch by 40-foot-long billet of steel, and by the time we would get through processing it, it would be the size of a half-inch, five-sixteenths [of an inch].”
While many Black workers spent years in the toughest positions, Hardy and his coworker William “Bill” Alexander were exceptions.
Known as “Ramjet” for his speed and efficiency, Hardy moved from laborer to oiler to bridge operator at Interlake/Acme with relative ease before being drafted for the Vietnam War in 1967, he said.
He returned to Chicago in 1969 and was back at the mill within a few weeks. He was soon promoted to a bridge, or overhead crane, operator. His coworkers — many of whom also served in Vietnam at various points — “really gave me respect” as a combat veteran, he said.
Hardy’s work nickname shifted from “Ramjet” to “Sarge,” and his younger coworkers “kind of looked up to me” as he began teaching others who hoped to secure an apprenticeship and a job as a bridge operator.
“They got more bid slips [on the bridge operator position] than the company had ever had, ‘cause Sarge was the teacher,” Hardy said.
Alexander, son of former United Steelworkers local president Richard Alexander, was hired at Acme in 1973. He spent only a few days as a laborer before his coworkers started showing him how to do tasks around the boiler house — the first steps to an apprenticeship.
“My dad was VP of the union [upon Bill’s hiring]. He would pull some strings,” Alexander said. “Some guys spend years in the labor gang; two, three, four, five years before they got a [skilled] job, and they had to keep bidding on jobs. I didn’t bid.”
Still, daily work was a grind for everyone at the mills. Many of those who survive bear the injuries, or “tattoos,” of their time in the industry.
As an apprentice in 1974, Alexander was with two coworkers clearing out the coke oven’s gas lines with a coat hanger — a common practice, he said — when a supervisor “forgot to tell the supervisor that relieved him, ‘Don’t push in the ovens. We got guys up there with the gas lines open.’”
The relief man mistakenly “pushed the oven underneath us while the gas lines were broke loose, and it’s explosive,” Alexander said. “The whole thing went up like, ‘Whoosh.’”
Alexander spent six weeks recovering from his burns in the former South Chicago Community Hospital, was off work for a couple of months, and was assigned to “light duty” tasks for several months upon returning to work, he said.
“‘Light duty’ was sitting in the office, balling up papers and shooting them in a wastebasket,” Alexander said. “This is how [the company] could keep [their] insurance from going up — that’s why they hurried you back to work.”
For many Black steelworkers, drinks and mischief at local bars were a salve after their long, toiling shifts.
The Acme crew’s haunts included the Riverfront Saloon, 3301 E. 106th St. — or “Frank’s,” after its owner — and the Lemon Tree Too, 10400 S. Muskegon Ave., known as “The Fence” for its fenced-off property.
“As long as you worked at Acme, it made no difference what color you were when you went in the bars,” Alexander said, though he recounted one time a Black colleague was beaten by a white motorcycle gang as the bar’s management did nothing to intervene.
“This was one Black guy, and about eight white guys had their motorcycles outside,” Alexander said. “He shouldn’t have went in there. You see eight motorcycles out there, you know you shouldn’t go in there.”
The nightlife wasn’t for everyone, however. Edward Cleveland, who started as an Acme laborer and worked 17 different jobs over 30 years on his way to becoming a foreman, joked that whenever his colleagues turned right on 106th Street to head into the Riverfront Saloon, he’d turn left toward the bridge, cross over the Calumet River and head home.
Labor Wins, Then Job Losses
In the steel mills, “radical” could apply to any number of Black workers, retirees said.
Sometimes, “radicals” were the union organizers who fought for equity in pay, seniority and workplace conditions. Hardy, a shop steward, was known at Acme for his willingness to speak up during bargaining meetings, he said.
“We used to have union meetings … and they’d take me upstairs to talk to the boss as a representative,” Hardy said. “They’d tell me, ‘Please don’t say nothing,’ but I couldn’t help it. I was very outspoken.”
“Radical” also applied to those who refused to tattle in hopes of winning over their bosses. White workers also would label their Black peers “radicals” when they refused to back down from racist comments.
Case in point: Richard Davis, known among coworkers as “the mouth of the South.” Davis moved to Chicago from Alabama in 1966, and worked as a pipefitter and welder before leaving Acme in 1986, he said. He was never afraid to stand up against those who tried to belittle him — including one incident where he knocked down a coworker who was giving him trouble.
“It was a good experience to be in the steel mills,” and he made good money, but he had no desire to continue working there by the end, Davis said. “It was real racists in there, and I wasn’t no yes-man.”
Black steelworkers regularly faced racist comments from white coworkers, and Wagner and the retirees said workplace discrimination often limited career advancement opportunities.
Despite Elkins’ skills and tenure, his white coworkers — including those “with no experience” whom he personally trained — frequently bypassed him for better positions.
Black steelworkers with similar experiences saw an opportunity to voice their frustrations by joining the steel strike of 1959, a nearly 4-month walkout for higher pay.
The Supreme Court ended the strike by siding with President Dwight Eisenhower and the steel companies, and ordering the steelworkers back to work.
Instead of pay increases and increased opportunities, many Black steelworkers — already facing the economic pressures and inequities that came with being Black in the ‘50s — were decimated financially by the strike. They wouldn’t see gains toward equality in the mills for at least another decade, Wagner said.
“As far as promotion, there wasn’t no Black supervisors back then,” Hardy said of his first years on the job in the early ‘60s. “They had one or two; they’d get a little spot here and there because they was Toms — saying ‘yes, boss’ and ‘yessuh.’ [Management] picked them because they’d squeal on the others.”
While Black employees blamed corporate leadership for their stagnation, some retired workers said the steelworkers’ union was far from faultless. Though the union “was supposed to have the backs of all workers, it often did not have Black workers’ backs,” Wagner said.
“There is this notion that they had these great-paying jobs, and therefore it was evidence that the union had actually protected them,” she said. “I argue the union may have given them some benefits, but it did not protect them completely from workplace discrimination.”
Gill didn’t get involved in the union during his time at South Works in part because of the racism he experienced, he said.
“Hell nah, I didn’t get involved in that, man. That was for white folks,” Gill said. “… You had some really prejudiced motherf–ers back then.”
A landmark moment came in 1974, when federal intervention led to a consent decree agreement to overhaul seniority systems in steel plants, according to the New York Times. The agreement, which included Republic Steel and U.S. Steel, secured $30.9 million in back pay for workers who were victims of discrimination.
The agreement also addressed the accusations union leaders signed contracts with steel companies which deprived “minority [and] women employees of opportunities to compete with white men for better‐paying jobs,” the Times reported.
“Black awareness,” and a willingness to speak out against racism in the mills and unions, ramped up in the years after the consent decree, Hardy said.
In what was a far cry from Hardy’s early years in the industry, “we were very active and I felt like we got a foothold. We got people on our side that really could help us out,” he said. “We were very radical, and we could stand up to just about anybody.”
Those gains were short lived for many South Siders. When Wisconsin Steel abruptly closed in 1980, the company left 3,300 people without an income.
Gill was laid off from South Works in the early ‘80s, a victim of the “last hired, first fired” policy at the mill, he said. By that time, the plant was struggling to survive. U.S. Steel blamed the steelworker’s union and its members’ “high wages” for its struggles in the ‘80s amid ”the most corrosive labor relations in the industry,” the Tribune reported.
Over the next two decades, all the major South Side operations closed — South Works in 1992; Acme starting in 2001; and LTV Steel, the successor to Republic Steel, by 2002.
Upon South Works’ closure, about 700 employees were on-site at a mill that once employed 20,000.
At Acme — home to about 3,500 jobs in the ‘70s — about 1,200 remained by the new millennium, when the company phased out its Chicago operations.
LTV Steel bled jobs through the ‘80s before going bankrupt and shutting down, leaving thousands of workers without benefits.
Black labor successes likely aren’t the main reason the industry abandoned the South Side, Hardy said. “It goes deeper than that,” he said.
Some former steelworkers blamed a changing economy. International competition caught stateside steel companies off guard after decades of dominance, Alexander said.
By the end, Acme was “selling iron for less than it cost us to make it, to keep from losing our customers,” Alexander said. Companies from Japan, China and elsewhere “could [make steel], ship it all the way from there and dump it here, for less than it cost us to make it.”
‘It Was A Death Sentence Over There’
Wisconsin Steel closed in 1980. By 1988, when the plant’s workers reached a settlement in their bid for back pay, pensions and other benefits, more than 1 in 6 of them were dead.
Some laid-off workers who thought the closures and layoffs marked “the end of time” died of suicide, Richard Davis said. Others, particularly those who worked in coke plants, died of health problems from years spent inhaling toxins. Others died amid struggles with substance abuse and stress.
Alexander is a prostate cancer survivor whose father died in 2014 after battling lung and prostate cancer.
Maurice Davis, an Acme maintenance technician who was with the company from 1980 through its closure, was diagnosed with prostate cancer in 2014. After going into remission, the cancer returned last month, he said.
The health impacts, not racial discrimination, define the steel mills’ toll on Black labor, said Maurice Davis, 72.
“It was a death sentence over there,” Maurice Davis said. “… I just wish they would’ve done something for our kids — college tuition or something to make up for it, because [the mills] destroyed a lot of families.”
Johnny Sangster, an assistant shift manager who worked in Acme’s furnace and coke plants, didn’t want to join his former colleagues this month as they revisited his job site of 26 years. It was too overwhelming to return to a place where at least three of his colleagues died in on-the-job accidents, he said, including South Shore resident Brutus Herriott in 1989.
Sticking It Out On The South Side
Deindustrialization devastated the South Side and many Black steelworkers.
By the late 20th century, many workers had overcome discrimination to earn the seniority for good-paying steel jobs, only for the mill closures to throw them back into a job market without the same protections against structural racism they had in the mills, retirees and Wagner said.
As victims of redlining and other forms of housing discrimination, Black steelworkers and their lower rates of homeownership “did not fare as well” economically amid the closures as their white counterparts, Wagner wrote in a 2017 Labor Studies Journal article.
Hardy was once denied a home loan by a South Chicago bank, only for a white coworker of similar rank and pay to receive one “a couple days later,” he said.
“The double whammy of housing and workplace discrimination really kept a lot of African Americans from prospering,” Wagner told Block Club.
Black workers’ attempts to recover from their job losses were often further hampered by companies’ resistance to paying out pensions and other benefits, they said.
Wisconsin Steel employees battled for seven years in court, seeking $40 million in severance, vacation pay, unemployment benefits and pension. Workers accused Wisconsin Steel’s longtime owner, International Harvester, of an ”unlawful” scheme to wipe out the steel mill, then sell it to a small company with no prior experience in the industry to avoid paying out the benefits, the Tribune reported.
In 1988, workers settled with their former employer for barely one-third of that amount.
Acme began shutting down its Chicago operations in late 2001, right before Christmas bonuses were due, and steelworkers enlisted the help of Rev. Jesse Jackson’s Operation PUSH to secure the payments, Alexander said.
For a few months after Acme’s closure, Alexander received pension checks of nearly $2,000 a month, he said. But when the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation took over the pensions amid the company’s bankruptcy, they were cut to about $900.
“A company files bankruptcy, the first thing they do is stop paying into pensions. That’s what made our pensions go under so fast,” Alexander said.
Most retirees said they couldn’t survive off pensions alone when their mills closed, so they found jobs elsewhere.
Cleveland, who worked on “one of the last crews to shut [Acme] down,” went on to work in medical transportation. While on the job in 2013, he was picking up longtime passenger William Strickland when he witnessed Strickland’s murder, orchestrated by Strickland’s grandson and wife.
Alexander found work helping some of his fellow “dislocated steelworkers” find new jobs. He also worked for the Transportation Security Administration at Midway Airport for a couple of years, but bristled at his treatment at the hands of his superiors — many of whom were decades younger than him, he said.
Richard Davis wanted to wipe his hands clean of his time as a steelworker upon leaving Acme, he said. After getting his commercial driver’s license, he worked for the Chicago Housing Authority, hauled Illinois license plates under former Secretary of State Jesse White and drove glass to Wisconsin for a suburban firm.
He’s proud to have sustained careers in such diverse fields, which have enabled him to drive Cadillacs since the ‘70s, he said.
Some Black steelworkers continue to meet monthly at their old union hall, 11731 S. Avenue O — now home to the United Auto Workers’ local — where they engage in political activism and network with their former colleagues through the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees.
At this month’s meeting, Bea Lumpkin — a 105-year-old labor organizer and wife of Frank Lumpkin, a Black steelworker who was crucial in securing the Wisconsin Steel settlement — stumped for “yes” votes on the upcoming Bring Chicago Home referendum.
Attendees also prepared for their annual gathering to honor victims of the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, pushed for a Museum of Science and Industry exhibit on South Side steel and held a moment of silence in support of Palestinians.
The steel industry hasn’t completely disappeared from the South Side and surrounding communities. Finkl Steel, which moved from a gentrifying, mostly white Lincoln Park in the 2000s, still operates in the mostly Black Burnside neighborhood.
Acme’s facilities in suburban Riverdale also survive under the ownership of Cleveland-Cliffs, the largest flat-rolled steel company in North America.
But the stable community of Black Chicago steelworkers found during the industry’s heyday will likely “never come back,” Alexander said.
As the last generation of Black steelworkers who witnessed the industry’s dominance in Chicago continue to age, it’s crucial to seek them out and keep their stories alive, he said.
“We built the Chicago skyline. You see all them big buildings down there?” Alexander said. “Black steelworkers came here for a better opportunity, and a lot of them made something of themselves. A lot of their kids became somebody.
“It saved a lot of people’s lives — even though it killed a lot of people, and a lot of that could’ve been prevented if the companies hadn’t been so greedy, and followed safety measures and all that.
“It was all about the buck, and we realized that. It was a chance we were taking.”
Block Club’s Colin Boyle contributed to this report.
Support Local News!
Subscribe to Block Club Chicago, an independent, 501(c)(3), journalist-run newsroom. Every dime we make funds reporting from Chicago’s neighborhoods. Already subscribe? Click here to gift a subscription, or you can support Block Club with a tax-deductible donation.
Listen to the Block Club Chicago podcast:
