Herbert Hill, who as the NAACP’s labor director in the 1950s and 1960s was one of the loudest and most effective voices raised against racial discrimination by unions, died Aug. 15 in Madison, Wis. He was 80.
His death, which came after a long illness, was announced by the University of Wisconsin, where he was an emeritus professor of Afro-American studies.
Through sharp oratory and myriad lawsuits, Mr. Hill played a pivotal role in the multi-decade effort to pressure many labor unions to allow blacks and other minorities to become members.
But he also accused others of dragging their feet on desegregation, including Hollywood studios, General Motors, General Electric and many New York City construction companies. Acting as a national watchdog on job discrimination, he also criticized President John F. Kennedy and the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission as not being vigorous enough in fighting segregation.
After becoming labor director for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People in 1951, Mr. Hill concentrated his fire on labor unions, asserting that many were oblivious to blacks’ concerns and remained exclusively white through techniques like steering new positions to the relatives of union members.
Hill, who was white and once worked as an organizer for the steelworkers’ union, faulted many unions, saying the carpenters, electrical workers, sheet metal workers, plumbers and operating engineers, among others, had engaged in “a broad pattern of racial discrimination and segregation” by excluding blacks, maintaining segregated union locals and having separate seniority lines by race.
Thanks in part to the NAACP’s efforts, including victories in lawsuits, these unions and others eventually began serious integration efforts.
In the 1960s, Mr. Hill led the NAACP’s effort to file discrimination complaints against General Electric, Shell Oil and Lockheed.
In 1977, Mr. Hill, still crossing swords with organized labor, expressed fury that unions had won a Supreme Court ruling that intentional discrimination must be proved before the courts would view seniority systems as discriminatory. Seniority systems could hurt blacks because they were often recently hired and were thus usually the first workers laid off during downturns.
In Madison, he developed a reputation as a serious scholar and helped build one of the nation’s largest and most successful departments of African-American studies. His books include “Black Labor and the American Legal System” (1978), “Race in America: The Struggle for Equality” (1993) and “Divided We Stand: American Workers and the Struggle for Black Equality” (2001).
