Isaac Myers

Maryland Historical Society

Isaac Myers was born in Baltimore in 1835. Both his parents were free blacks, though several thousand enslaved blacks lived and worked about the city at that time. As a boy, Isaac attended a school run by Reverend John Fortie. Later, his parents arranged an apprenticeship for him in the ship caulkers' trade, working under a prominent black caulker, James Jackson. For a time afterward, during the early-1860s, Isaac worked in the grocery business, eventually operating his own shop. He returned to ship caulking in 1865, just as white workers, motivated by economic stress and racial antipathy, attempted to force blacks out of the shipyards.

White shipyard workers staged an anti-black strike in 1865, forcing shipyard owners to dismiss black employees. Myers understood the deep roots Baltimore blacks had established in the industry and sought ways to protect their heritage and preserve opportunities for future generations. In the wake of the strike, Myers joined a group of black and white investors, who raised $10,000 and chartered a new venture, the Chesapeake Marine Railway and Dry Dock Company, in Fells Point. Soon the company employed hundreds of caulkers from across the city, most but not all of whom were black. The company remained in operation from 1866 to 1884 and served as a base for broad labor organization work by Myers.

For Isaac Myers, the challenge of "reconstructing" Maryland in the wake of slavery was as much about maintaining the hard-won economic momentum held over from the years before the Civil War (such as the ability to work in the shipyards) as it was about forging new political identities for African Americans. Myers hoped to meet the challenge by organizing workers—skilled and unskilled—into labor unions. In 1869, Myers inaugurated the Colored National Labor Union, the first large scale, national entity of black workers.

During the 1870s, at the height of his influence, Myers toured the South, speaking to gatherings of African American workers. He implored all who heard him to protect themselves and their skills. Slave or free, many had acquired skills during the slavery era that could serve them well after slavery's demise. The Republican Party, which sponsored Myers's tour, might empower African Americans politically, but in the end, Myers warned, only the collective strength of black workers standing together would assure success in post-war life. Without deprecating the value of civil rights, Myers preached economic security as the true measure of freedom. To achieve this, he argued, "the watchword of the colored man must be, 'organize.'"

Although the Colored National Labor Union disintegrated within a few years as economic pressures brought on by the Depression of 1873 changed the economic landscape, Myers did not abandon his methods. In 1875 he organized a second body, the Colored Men's Progressive and Cooperative Union, with the goal of creating access for black workers to white-dominated local unions in Baltimore and encouraging apprenticeship opportunities and training for black young people. On a broader level, the organization pushed to ensure that African Americans enjoyed all rights and privileges associated with citizenship. He also spearheaded a number of community-based self-help initiatives, such as the Colored Businessmen's Association, and the Colored Building and Loan Association, and ran a short-lived weekly newspaper, The Colored Citizen. Isaac Myers died at home in Baltimore, on January 26, 1891.

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The Road from Frederick to Thurgood: Black Baltimore in Transition, 1870 - 1920. www.mdsa.net.