Milton P. Webster

Milton Price Webster (April 23, 1887 – February 24, 1965) was an American trade unionist, best remembered as the first vice president of the Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters and leader of its Chicago division. As the union's lead negotiator, Webster was influential in securing a collective bargaining agreement with the Pullman Companythe first national contract won by any black-led American trade union.

During the years of World War II, Webster was appointed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt as a member of the Fair Employment Practice Committee and its successor commission, working to end racial discrimination in the defense industry. Their work helped open access to jobs for black workers, desegregating the work forces in industries with federal contracts that supplied the war effort.

Webster also later served as a member of the International Board of the American Federation of Labor.

Early years

Milton Price Webster was born on April 23, 1887, in Clarksville, Tennessee. His father, Willis, was a barber who owned land in Clarksville with a small farm. His mother, Mary, was the daughter of freed black Tennesseans (Julia (Donaldson) and Robert Fogg). Both of Mary's parents attended a fledgling Fisk University at its inception, and her father fought for the Union Army in the Civil War.

The Websters moved to the booming metropolis of Chicago when Milton was a young child. The move was forced by Southern nationalist backlash against freedmen and women after Reconstruction, with threats and actions that induced financial hardship, beatings, and lynchings for many Black residents across the South. The Webster family was not immune to these threats and attacks. The family was of humble beginnings, but very close. His mother Mary and father Willis, along with his maternal grandmother Julia Donaldson Fogg and his siblings, moved to a segregated South Side of Chicago. It was a large close family of which Milton was the third youngest of 11 children. One of Milton's earliest memories was of his witnessing of the Pullman Strike in 1894 first hand from his parents tenement apartment window, as white railroad strikers where beaten and shot by US Marshals and US Army Troops. This affected Milton immensely. In later years he would lament that if US troops would treat white union organizers so heinously, he could only imagine what they would do to black union men.

Although Milton was an excellent student and a voracious reader, with a desire to pursue the study of law, the family did not have the resources to send him to the university. He had may odd jobs, eventually obtaining work as a Pullman porter, a job which he held for nearly 18 years. As the location of Pullman's headquarters and the largest population of maids and porters, Chicago was an important city to the fledgling union, and Webster's experience as an influential member of the city's Republican Party made him well-situated for the role.

In the months after the union's formation, Webster worked to recruit more members. He was opposed by the Pullman Company, which had invested heavily in Chicago's Black community, engaged in anti-union practices, and recruited informants ("stool pigeons") to report any labor organization activity.

As First Vice President of the BSCP and Chair of the International Executive Board, Webster handled most of the routine work of the union, while Randolph served as the public face. at the Americana Hotel in Bar Harbour, Florida while attending an AFL-CIO convention with A. Philip Randolph. He was survived by his wife of over 40 years Louie Elizabeth (Harris) Webster formerly of Cassopolis, Michigan, and three children Milton II (Jean Young), Rebecca (Harry Kingslow, MD), and Jean; and 7 grandchildren Milton Webster(III), Steven Webster, Margot Webster Jones(JD), Marcia Kingslow, Janet Webster, Harry Kingslow(II), and Leslie Kingslow(MD).