BALTIMORE—Tim Wheeler told a crowd at Red Emma’s Café & Bookshop Wednesday that he was unsatisfied with the first title he selected for his book: The Man From Lonaconing: The Life & Times of George A. Meyers.
“It did not quite fit,” he said, explaining that Lonaconing, Maryland, is the town where George A. Meyers was born, son of a union coal miner, where he became an organizer of 10,000 workers at the nearby Celanese mill into Textile Workers Local 1874, the town he loved and often visited.
“Yet it did not quite convey the theme of my book,” Wheeler noted.
A few days before he submitted the manuscript to International Publishers, a phrase popped into his head: “No power greater.” That became the title of his book, No Power Greater: The Life & Times of George A. Meyers.
Holding up the book, he asked the crowd, “Does anyone recognize that phrase, ‘No power greater?’”
A woman in the second row spoke up: “When the union’s inspiration through the worker’s blood shall run, there can be no power greater anywhere beneath the sun….”
“That’s it!” Wheeler exclaimed. “Solidarity Forever! It runs through my book from page one until the end. I’m going to sing it. You can join me if you like.” The crowd then sang the first verse of “Solidarity Forever” loudly, with a burst of applause at the end.
The attendees, who filled a big part of the café, were multiracial, women and men, about half old friends from the decades Wheeler lived in Baltimore, a neighbor and comrade of George A. Meyers, who lived two blocks away in Lower Govans. However, young people were also present, including over a dozen members of the Baltimore Club of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Several Baltimore school teachers were present, including Mike Thompson, a middle-school teacher active in the Baltimore Teachers Union (BTU), who introduced Wheeler and chaired the meeting.
Wheeler said the book is in two halves. The first half deals with several historic moments in time. For example, during the 1930s and 1940s, a powerful multiracial coalition led by the C.I.O. (Congress of Industrial Organizations) won huge victories. The election of Franklin D. Roosevelt, the passage of the “New Deal” including the Wagner Labor Relations Act, Social Security, public works jobs, and the first laws against racist discrimination. That coalition led the fight to defeat Hitler’s fascism and KKK terror here in the U.S., he said. They won these gains over the determined opposition of fascist-like Wall Street corporate resistance. The working class, united, was invincible, “no power greater!”
George A. Meyers had been elected President of Textile Workers Local 1874, the first President of the Maryland-D.C. CIO. He joined the Communist Party USA in 1939. He and the CPUSA were in the thick of the mass United Front movement. “It’s all in my book! I hope you will get a copy and read it,” Wheeler exclaimed.
The second half of the book, he continued, is corporate America’s brutal counterattack after World War II. The workers accepted a no-strike pledge, essentially a wage freeze to help win the war. By contrast, the banks and corporations raked in enormous war profits squeezed from the blood and labor of workers and soldiers. When the war ended, workers, including the millions of returning soldiers, sought “catch up,” winning some of the war profits. Among the demands was the enactment of universal health care as part of Social Security. The biggest strike wave in U.S. history spread among the working-class ranks. Wheeler read a page from his book listing these strikes in 1947-1948.
Corporate America was determined to keep all the ill-gotten profits for themselves. They launched a ferocious attack aimed at smashing the strike movement, destroying the militant labor-led coalition.
“George often said that the passage of the Taft-Hartley Act was corporate America’s declaration of war on the labor movement. They were determined to smash the CIO,” Wheeler noted.
They crushed the CIO and imprisoned CIO leaders like George A. Meyers, who spent 38 months in prison. They foisted on the AFL-CIO misleaders like George Meany and his “class partnership” hoax. Freed from prison, Meyers spent the rest of his life as Labor Secretary of the CPUSA, struggling to expose and oust Meany, Lane Kirkland, and other class collaborators from leadership of the AFL-CIO.
Wheeler said Meyers saw the emergence of Black caucuses and women’s caucuses in the soaring rank and file movement, the force that would restore “class struggle trade unionism.” It came to a head with Ronald Reagan’s firing en masse of 16,500 PATCO air traffic controllers. From labor’s ranks came a demand for a march on Washington to oppose Reagan’s strikebreaking and union busting. Meyers and the CPUSA worked tirelessly to make that march happen. And it did, Solidarity Day, Sept. 19, 1981, when 500,000 workers from 500 unions marched on Constitution Ave. George A. Meyers was marching in the ranks.
Wheeler added, “We are seeing a multiracial coalition rising up against the Trump-Musk fascist oligarchy like the ‘Hands Off’ demonstrations on April 5 that many of us here joined.”
That movement, he said, is searching for the path ahead. “We need a return of the anti-fascist coalition that George A. Meyers helped organize, a labor-led United Front.” Many in the crowd were nodding in agreement.
During the Q&A period, BTU President Diamonte-Brown said she was running for reelection, running on a platform that seeks better wages and benefits for all teachers and paraprofessionals, but also to dramatically improve the quality of Baltimore public education, a library in every school, for example. She brought with her several members of her team.
Enoch Pratt librarian, Debra Elfenbein, a leader of Pratt Workers United, also drew warm applause when she told of the struggle to unionize hundreds of librarians and library staff at the city’s library system. The battle is complicated, she said, because Enoch Pratt is neither entirely public nor fully private, and its source of funds is partly from the state government, city, and private sources. Yet the workers are determined to win union rights, struggle against drastic staff cutbacks, and even the closing of branches.
The Enoch Pratt Free Library, established in 1882, is the Maryland State Resource Library. It is considered one of the greatest library systems in the nation.
In April, Wheeler read from No Power Greater: The Life & Times of George A. Meyers at Common Ground Café in Baltimore, where he spoke and autographed copies of his book. Proceeds from that gathering were donated to help Baltimore achieve its People’s World Fund goal. On April 12, Wheeler read at the Lewis J. Ort Library at Frostburg State University, home of the George A. Meyers Collection. The proceeds from his book sales at that event were donated to the fund that sustains the George A. Meyers Collection at the Ort Library. Wheeler is available to speak about his book and read excerpts. Please send requests to Wheeler’s email: greenpastures164@gmail.com.
Several participants at the Red Emma’s event contributed to this article.
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