Springer Fun Facts
What year and where was Springer born?
1910, Panama
What does AFL-CIO stand for?
American Federation of Labor and Congress of Industrial Organizations
What angle did Springer’s activism in Africa always include?
Women's development and liberation
What is the ILGWU and how was Springer involved?
The International Ladies Garment Workers Union. Springer was a member of the Dressmaker's Union Local 22, and was involved in executive and educational boards and rose through the ranks over time.
What year was Springer's first visit to Africa and who was it organized by?
1955. Francis Edward Tachie-Menson - government minister and president of the Gold Coast TUC. He wanted Springer to convince Gold Coast women to join the labor movement.
Where did Springer go to school?
Manual and Industrial School for Negro Youth in Bordentown, New Jersey
What is the AFL-CIO and what do they do?
The AFL-CIO is a national trade union center that focuses its political organizing on the rights of working people. Lobbies for worker-related legislation and organizes new unions.
What were some barriers to her working in Africa?
Her gender and her American nationality and her age.
Who was the president of the ILGWU from the 1930s-60s?
David Dubinsky.
Who was George Padmore and what is the significance of Springer meeting him?
Padmore was a former communist and had built a global network of black labor and political activists.
"Springer's introduction to George Padmore and other conference conveners represented a turning point in her activist career"(43).
He would later became her principal mentor on pan-African affairs.
What did Springer's African friends refer to her as and why?
“Mama” or “Mama Maida" to reflect both a familial sentiment and respect for her older age.
What was the 1978 allegation against Springer and what fueled it?
Springer was portrayed as a CIA contact officer for Kenyan labor and nationalist leader Tom Mboya. He had been assassinated in 1969.
These assertions against Springer were the "result of an atmosphere of suspicion and distrust which was generated by preexisting allegations, power struggles within and among labor centers, and Cold War politics" (39).
Name one way Springer helped advance women's development in Africa.
She lobbied African labor, the International Labor Organization, the AFL-CIO, and the ICFTU to be more inclusive of women.
She co-coordinated the Pan-African Conference on the Role of Trade Union Women, whose aim was to devise ways to increase women’s participation in trade unions.
Helped to convince the union in Tanganyika to provide four young girls who managed the office of the dockworkers with some pocket money every month.
What are Lovestoneites?
Followers of Jay Lovestone, the former general secretary of the American Communist Party. They were expelled from the party due to their refusal to accept Joseph Stalin’s prescriptions.
Explain at least 2 key elements of Springer's stance on communism and the communist party.
Her anti-communism balanced criticisms of U.S. domestic and foreign policies with an understanding of the actions of African leaders who turned to communist powers to help solve economic and social problems their nations faced.
Springer felt patronized by the communist party - viewed communists as “having an opportunistic concern for the plight of blacks in order to further party goals”(38).
She disagreed with some communist representations (descriptions of the Soviet Union as a worker's paradise and a purely egalitarian society, portrayal of the Dubinsky administration as entirely negative).
What did Jomo Kenyatta ask Springer that "changed her life" and how did it do so?
“Young girl, what does the working class in America know of the struggle for liberation from colonialism?”
She was embarrassed because the ILGWU, which prided itself on its radical tradition, diverse immigrant membership, and international activism, did not give colonial oppression official attention. She then sought to build U.S. labor support for African labor development and independence.
Why was there a "rivalry" between the AFL and CIO?
There were disagreements over political alignments and approaches to activism.
The CIO was more progressive and more connected to communist rhetoric and ideology.
What did she lobby her U.S. colleagues for at the request of the Africans she met with?
Direct interactions with the AFL-CIO, financial and technical assistance, and, above all, educational opportunities, especially labor scholarships to study in the United States.
What are 2 examples of the racism and sexism that Springer dealt with while being involved in the ILGWU?
White shop chairman spat in front of Springer on her office floor.
She "encountered white immigrant families who would not allow their daughters to attend weekend education institutes because the few black men who would be present were presumed to be potential rapists"(40).
All but one of the employers’ association members from the district objected to working with her when she became Local 22’s first black business agent.
While installing Springer and others as officers in the Union, Dubinsky alluded to needing to look outside of the women's union for male leadership.
What group of women did Springer observe as playing an "unsung role" in the nationalist movements within Africa?
West African market women and the Tanganyikan Muslim women.
Bibi Titi Mohammed - leader of the Muslim women, first woman to join the nationalist movement, the Tanganyika African National Union (TANU), and played a major role in its development.
Whose house did Springer stay in while in Washington for preliminary meetings and how did she feel about the arrangement?
Mary McLeod Bethune
“under ordinary circumstances, to have been invited to be the guest of Dr. Bethune was a great honor. O.K., so here was how my personality got very split on that. . . . There was the bittersweet [feeling]. . . . If I had known about the segregation I would face, I would never have gone to D.C. "
However, Bethune helped make her trip more bearable and convinced her to take the opportunity and go abroad when she was thinking of pulling out of the trip.
Explain the conflict between African labor leaders and the anticommunism of the AFL-CIO.
The AFL-CIO's anticommunist efforts became an issue for African labor leaders of emerging nations who were still fighting colonialism and white minority rule sought allies and financial support from communist countries.
Why did Springer target East Africa for the Harvard labor education program?
She was deeply concerned about the conditions within which East Africans lived.
"East Africa, with its large white settler and Indian populations, had a three tier wage system based on race which greatly exploited Africans. Moreover, education opportunities were severely limited and little publicity was given to African struggles except for British renditions of the horrors of Mau Mau in Kenya"(49).
What is the specific reason why Springer turn down the opportunity to join the ILGWU General Executive Board as a vice president-at-large?
"because she was not a leader of a local; without a base of support, her potential to make meaningful changes would be undermined"(39).
"She argued for a broad inclusion of blacks as opposed to symbolic acts. 'Negro workers are aware of their need of a strong trade union movement but we need also to believe that the trade union movement has moved from the concept of a few chosen for their high visibility to an inclusiveness which makes unionism meaningful to all the workers in industry and at all levels'"(39).
Based on the reading, provide your best explanation of pan-Africanism and some of the ideals associated with it.
Race redemption, pride in ancestry, belief in black achievement.
Global efforts for black liberation, anticolonialism.
Political, social, and economic unity of the people of the African diaspora.