Working for civil rights in Asheville, North Carolina
Once Robertson's union involvement became known, she found it hard to get work, but spent some of those years raising her children. Her blacklisting did not diminish her enthusiasm for economic and social justice, however; Robertson also became involved in civil rights in the Asheville area, working with an interracial organization focused on employment discrimination.
Citing this Excerpt
Oral History Interview with Mary Robertson, August 13, 1979. Interview H-0288. Southern Oral History Program Collection (#4007) in the Southern Oral History Program Collection, Southern Historical Collection, Wilson Library, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Full Text of the Excerpt
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
What's been the history of your work in the labor movement
since then?
- MARY ROBERTSON:
-
Of course, on again and off again, because I spent a good
many years when I did not work, just keeping house and
taking care of the youngsters. Not so much because I wanted it that way,
because I did not believe that this was necessary. The economy was
catching up with this kind of philosophy, and I preferred to have a job,
but because of my union background and so forth I was blacklisted, as we
say. I couldn't get a job; they wouldn't hire me.
And when I was able to get a job, it was always in an unorganized
industry, and so I've done all kinds of work. Very little of
it have I done in organized industry. But once you stay in a place and
you make contact with people, you keep those contacts alive. I knew
labor people; I preferred to have an organized situation. And I kept my
contacts with labor people on a friendship sort of basis, and with what
I had learned from my labor experiences got involved in civil rights
situations. And so I contributed a good deal of time to that.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
What was your involvement in civil rights?
- MARY ROBERTSON:
-
My direct involvement was rather puny, to tell you the truth. We
organized a little group here in Ashville called the Buncombe County
Committee for Jobs for Negroes. And it was not attached to any national
organization, although there were a lot of such organizations going on
all over the country at that time. I can't even remember the
name of the early civil rights legislation that everybody was working
for, and job rights, but in any case …
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
Interracial committee?
- MARY ROBERTSON:
-
As long as I was in it, it was, if you mean were there blacks and whites.
Most of the people were black, because obviously it was a group to try
to get blacks hired as something other than maids and janitors at that
time. At that time there were no jobs in Asheville for blacks except
janitors and maids; that was it.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
When would this have been?
- MARY ROBERTSON:
-
It would have been in the fifties.
- JACQUELYN HALL:
-
After the Supreme Court decision.
- MARY ROBERTSON:
-
No, before, well before. It was during the McCarthy period, as a matter
of fact. And since getting blacks hired in capacities other than as
maids and janitors was absolutely hopeless from the outset
[Laughter] , we busied ourselves meanwhile
working on other projects. I know we spent a lot of time working on a
project here in the city of Asheville to persuade merchants to provide
rest room facilities for black women. We didn't even bother
to talk about the same rest room facilities. Just to have even a
separate rest room, because at that time the black women who came
shopping to the center of Asheville had to go way out to the little
black business community to find a place to use a rest room, so that was
one of our big projects. But you learn from all those things.