Labor Front Honors Carrie Smith for Black History Month 2023
Labor Front would like to recognize Carrie Smith for 2023’s Black History Month. When I first heard her name I thought she was an actress or singer. She’s neither, she was a middle aged African American nut sheller who became a labor leader who in 1933, armed with a brick and a Bible lead 2,500 mostly black women on strike agains’t the R.E. Funsten Nut Company over horrible pay and working conditions.
At the time of the strike, Funsten Nut Company had sixteen plants around the St. Louis area and was the largest employer of black women in the city. The black women were tasked with shelling 25 pound bags of pecan nuts and separating the nut meat from the shell, then the shells and nut meat were weighed to make sure no one was stealing.
White women would separate the nuts by halves and pieces and were paid $3.00 per week while the black women were paid by the pound earning up to $2.00 per week. Not only was there a disparity in pay but the white women were allowed to come in fifteen minutes later and leave fifteen minutes before the black women. The women worked in poorly lit basements where the air was so dusty they opened the doors for ventilation even in the winter. Their hands were cracked and full of cuts from the work and the dust caused chronic respiratory illness similar to the coal miners.
Carrie Smith and a few women met with known communist labor activist William Sentner and a joined the Food Workers Industrial Union where they started having monthly meetings. It was at one of those meetings where Carrie Smith coined the phrase “10 and four” demanding ten cents per pound for pecan halves and four cents for pecan pieces. The meetings began to gain in popularity with the workers and Carrie Smith became known as the “heart and soul of the strike”. On April 24th a group of 12 women marched into Funsten’s office and made their demands; equal pay for all, 10 cents per pound for half nuts, four cents per pound for pieces and union recognition. On May 13th, three weeks and no response from management Carrie Smith, holding a brick in one hand and a Bible in the other addressed the crowd and told them “girls, we can’t lose” and everyone in attendance voted to strike. The next day the group met with management only to be rejected.
On May 15th the strike began when some women walked out of the Delmar plant and proceeded to march to plants located around the city urging the workers to join them. While most black women joined the strike only a few white women left their jobs. On the second day more white women joined the strike effectively shutting down all the Funsten plants. A few days into the strike the Mayor of St. Louis met with the striking workers where Carrie Smith told the Mayor “We believe we are entitled to live as well as other folks live, and should be entitled to a wage that will provide us with ample food and clothing.” The women’s meeting with the mayor provoked him to get involved and nine days after the strike began Funsten made a counter offer to the strikers.
On May 24th, Carrie Smith presented Funsten’s offer of eight cents for pecan halves and four cents for pecan pieces to the striking workers which while not the ten-four the strikers initially requested the raise doubled their current pay. The offer was overwhelmingly accepted by the strikers.
The nutpickers success at Funsten sent shockwaves around the country. A journalist for Working Women wrote “the strike should be followed in every section of the country against the slavery imposted on women” and that the women had “aroused the masses of St. Louis like no other strike in years” and had gained the “full sympathy and solidarity of the St. Louis working class…One would think the Negro women had been for years trained in the working class movement”.
All of this was made possible because Carrie Smith stepped up with her brick and Bible to lead these women to strike. Carrie Smith’s name should be recognized as one of the great union activists and leaders of the 20th century.
Excerpts taken from Walter Johnson’s The Broken Heart of America and The Funsten Nut Strike by Myrna Fichtenbaum
