Beatrice Lumpkin

Beatrice Lumpkin (née Shapiro; August 3, 1918 – June 14, 2026) was an American union organizer, activist, academic and writer. She was a member of the Communist Party and the Chicago Teachers Union, as well as an organizer for several other unions. She was a tenured professor at Malcolm X College, wrote several books about history and mathematics, and was a co-founder of the Coalition of Labor Union Women.

Early life and education Lumpkin was born Beatrice Shapiro on August 3, 1918, in The Bronx, New York, to Morris Shapiro (born Avrom Hirschenhorn) and Dora Shapiro (born Ruhde Chernin), who were Russian immigrants of Jewish descent. They were members of the Jewish Labour Bund, a socialist organization in Russia. During the 1905 Russian Revolution, Beatrice's father was arrested and beaten, but escaped from prison and obtained a fake passport bearing his new name to move to the United States. He entered through Ellis Island and eventually settled on the Lower East Side of Manhattan. Beatrice's mother, who had helped her future husband escape, went to join him in 1906, and they were soon married. They both worked in the clothing manufacturing industry; Dora worked in Greenwich Village at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory but was pregnant and not present during the 1911 fire at the factory. Their first child Max was born soon after, and the family moved to the Bronx where they owned and operated a laundry business.

As part of the civil rights movement in the 1950s and 1960s, Lumpkin protested Jim Crow laws and resisted against segregated public areas with her African-American husband, Frank Lumpkin, a fellow union organizer and member of Communist Party. and remained a member of the Chicago Teachers Union.

In 2016, Lumpkin helped found Intergen, an inter-generational and multi-racial activist alliance.

Personal life and death Beatrice married her first husband, Roderick Mohrherr, sometime before the end of World War II in 1945;

In the reference book series Contemporary Authors, she listed hiking and traveling as her hobbies and the Golden Rule as her religion. In October 2020, she made headlines in several publications when she donned personal protective equipment modeled after a hazmat suit while dropping her vote-by-mail ballot for the year's elections held during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Lumpkin died on June 14, 2026, at the age of 107.