As told by Ralph Poynter to Betty Davis
And edited by Sheila Hamanaka and Bob Lederer
The snowball union story
During one of the union strikes, in the steel mills in Pennsylvania where Ralph Poynter grew up, Ralph was approached by one of the union organizers. Scabs were being trucked into the mill by the bosses to bust up the strike. Everybody in the small town of Vandergriff, where Ralph grew up, knew he was a champion snowball thrower. At 12 years old, he could throw a snowball a great distance and always hit the tree he aimed for.
A union organizer who observed this skill approached Ralph one day when he was playing in the woods and said, “You’re pretty good with that snowball aren’t you?”
“Of course,” Ralph responded, “I can hit anything I aim for, no matter how far it is.”
The union organizer and Ralph were on the top of a hill. As Ralph told it, this hill overlooked the steel mill which was on strike, and Ralph could see there were trucks pulling up and then there were men (scabs) getting out of these trucks.
The union organizer explained to Ralph, “We have a strike going on and we cannot allow people to come in and work while we are on strike and bust up the strike. Do you think you can throw that snowball and hit the front window of one of those trucks?”
Ralph said, “Of course.”
The union leader then said, “Do you think you might want to put a big rock in it and wrap it up with snow and throw it at that truck again?”
Ralph responded, “Of course,” and so for the rest of the day every time a truck with scabs pulled up in front of the foundry, Ralph threw a rock right through the truck window and was very instrumental in helping the workers win the strike against the steel mill.
Later that evening, the union organizers stopped by Ralph’s house to speak with Ralph’s father.
He said to him, “George, we want to thank you ’cause your boy was very instrumental in helping us win that strike!”
He proceeded to explain how, whereupon Ralph’s mother said, “Well, since we were so instrumental, or I should say my boy was so resourceful, in helping you win that strike, what about a little something, something for our boys?”
In other words, she said, “Some of our boys could use some jobs in that steel mill that aren’t the most dangerous ones, because all the colored boys have all the very lowest paying jobs which are also the most dangerous.”
The union leader said, “You’re right.”
[ End of twelve-year-old union organizer Ralph Poynter’s snowball story ]
Why did they all call me Brother
According to Ralph Poynter, when he was 6 years old, his father was preparing to go to a meeting and Ralph asked if he could go along. It was a union organizing meeting in a steel mill town, and it was organized by the CIO. Ralph’s father, George Poynter, was a member of the CIO and a union organizer.
Ralph’s mother said, “No!” His father interceded and requested that he be allowed to accompany him.
Ralph’s mother thought for a moment and said, “He can go with you if he can prove that he can hold onto your pants and run two blocks without falling and keep up with you.”
Ralph’s father agreed.
Ralph’s mother told his father, “Run full out. Do not hold back because every time there’s a union meeting, the bosses try to bust it up. They send their goon squad out to beat up anyone who is organizing against them. You have to prove to me that he can keep up with you and not get hurt. Only then will I consent for this 6-year-old to join you in a union organizing meeting.”
All along the two blocks, everybody from the neighborhood, including union organizers, lined up to watch. Someone blew a whistle and Ralph’s father started running as fast as he could with Ralph holding onto his pants. When he stopped two blocks away, as was promised, Ralph was still holding on tight to his father and he never fell or stumbled once. Then the entire neighborhood gave a cheer and a shout. Everybody started running up to little Ralph, especially the union guys and the union guys kept saying, “Welcome, brother! Welcome, brother!”
Later on that evening, at the dinner table at home, little Ralph kept saying to his mom, “Why did everybody keep calling me little brother? Why did everybody keep saying welcome, brother?”
And Ralph’s father said to him, “Because you’re a union guy now and that’s what comrades in the union call each other. They call each other brother.”
This one fights back and there’s nothing you can do!
Ralph Poynter said that when he was in the third grade, he was sent home from school for fighting. According to Ralph, the story went like this. His family was one of the very few Black families who migrated from the South to this steel mill town of Vandegrift, PA.
Ralph and all three of his older brothers attended the same schools. When they started elementary school, they would come home running every day being chased and beaten by the older white boys in the school.
Every morning, according to Ralph, his mother would take off her apron, walk the brothers to the school, speak to the principal and demand that this stop. And each time the principal would always say to her, “There is nothing we can do. This is the way it is. This is the way boys are.”
These beatings always seemed to start around third grade.
And when it was time for Ralph to go to third grade, his mother had made him a brand new hat and a brand new jacket. Sure enough, at the end of the school day, the white boys in the third grade and the older graders chased Ralph home from school and proceeded to beat him and tear his clothes and they stomped on his new hat that his mother had made for him.
When Ralph came in and his mother looked at him, she was very sad. She said to Ralph, “Did they hurt you?”
He looked at his mother and he saw the pain and tears in her eyes.
He said, “No.”
His mother then asked, “Are you afraid to go back to school?”
And again he looked at his mother and he said, “No.”
So she cleaned up his clothes and she straightened his hat and he felt very sad because she had made that hat especially for him, and she had cried.
All through class the next day, all he could think about was when the school day would be over. Ralph thought about how hard his mother had worked making his clothes and cleaning him up after school. He thought about how she had made a special effort to make him a new jacket. So this time when the boys started chasing him and the boys started throwing rocks at him, Ralph threw the rocks back and started fighting. He fought so hard that the rest of the other boys did not want to join in the fight.
Some teachers were watching this after-school melee and took notice of this incident. They stopped the fight and took Ralph to the principal. The principal told Ralph that he was suspended and that he could not come back to school until his mother came up to the school with him. When Ralph got home he was upset because he did not want to tell his mother that he had been suspended. In that day and age this never happened.
The superintendent proceeded to explain that he had had a fight. He went on further to say that he also had a fight after school in the street with several boys.
Ralph’s conclusion from this incident was that this is where his personality of RESISTANCE and fighting got its start. He not only wasn’t afraid of fighting, he got to liking it. He wouldn’t wait until the older boys came across the street to attack him. He would cross the street and step to them and START THE FIGHTS AND CHASE ANYBODY WHO CALLED HIM NIGGER. He promised he would never let anyone make his momma cry again.
The Draft Board was burned down
When Ralph left Pittsburgh to come to New York, he had to apply to what was then called the Board of Education. They had to take his fingerprints. Because he had worked in the ovens of the steel mills from the time he was 14 years old and his job included working in the ovens taking the hot bricks out, by the time he was an adult he had no fingerprints. His fingerprints had actually been singed off due to the immense heat.
But Ralph’s mother was not angry. He was shocked as he noticed how very calmly she called for her hat as she removed her apron. And then she said, “Come on, we’re going back up to that school.”
When they arrived at the school, she took Ralph and put him right back in his class. When the principal called in the superintendent, she told them both, “When my oldest son, his brother, came home every day beaten with his clothes torn, you said there was nothing you could do. When the second and third older sons ran home every day, you said there was nothing you could do. But Ralph does not run. Ralph stopped crying. Ralph FIGHTS BACK and there is nothing you could do.”
When they arrived at the school, she asked, “Why was my son sent home from school and told he was suspended?”
At that time the U.S. war in Vietnam was going on. So when you applied for any government position, if you were a male, and you were eligible for the draft, they wanted to see your draft card. Well, Ralph had no draft card because he had never enlisted. He was eligible to serve at one point in the Korean War. But he refused to enlist and he refused to acknowledge the draft. He was advised that he was a “draft dodger.”
But even though his family was one of few so-called colored families in this steel mill town, none of the working-class people ever ratted him out. This solidarity existed in spite of the fact that some of their sons had served in the Korean War. He recalled one episode in particular, when the Marines had come to town and made a point knocking on his family door because he had not shown up for enlistment. His sister answered the door and said no one had seen him for quite some time. The rest of the town gave the military police the same message.
Consequently Ralph had no draft papers, so when he arrived in New York City they explained that he would have to contact his draft board because when they tried to take his fingerprints to send them to the draft board, he had fingerprints that could be recognized and identified. This went on for several months. Finally the payroll secretary at the public school where he was working in Harlem called and explained that they could not continue to let him go unpaid for so long. Ralph immediately tried to think up an explanation but the secretary interrupted him and said, “No problem, Mr. Poynter, there is a direct link to your draft board in Pennsylvania. All you have to do is call them and they will validate your status.”
Ralph tried to think of something but in the end he had no choice but to call the draft board. He picked up the phone, filled with trepidation. He dialed the number he was given for his local draft board—but he was told the draft board no longer existed because it had been burned down by nuns who were comrades of the Berrigan brothers. They advocated the burning of the draft boards to protest the war.
At some point later, both Ralph and Lynne were at a dinner party and one of these nuns was in the room and Ralph went over to her and thanked her profusely for burning down his draft board.
How Ralph cheated death as a very young child
According to another story shared by Ralph, when he was young and still in elementary school, he was hit by a truck not far from where he lived and dragged a considerable distance before the driver realized it. It then took a considerable time because there were no Black doctors and it was difficult to get a doctor to visit. Ralph could not be moved and no hospital would admit a Black patient at this time. It was decided nothing could be done.
Several weeks later, when the white doctor saw Ralph’s father walking in the street, he offered his condolences for the loss of his child because he assumed that Ralph had died from his injuries. Upon learning from his father that Ralph was still alive and at home and receiving no professional medical attention, he profusely apologized and visited the house immediately. Whereupon he began to prescribe certain medications. Due to the fact that it had been a long time before Ralph had received any proper medical care, he had scabs all over his affected area. The doctor made it clear that these scabs had to be removed and proper medication of an antiseptic nature had to be applied. Ralph recalls this was excruciatingly painful but he began to recover. According to his mother, she would notice he was sitting up in bed, then she noticed he was sitting in a chair by the window. Then she noticed he was sitting by the door, and she noticed he was sitting at the top of the stairs, then he was at the bottom of the stairs. The next thing she knew he was sliding down the stairs and into the yard to talk with friends.
Thus he cheated death.
The biggest argument Ralph ever had with his dad
The Poynter family was a union family. They were working-class people and proud of it. Ralph’s father was an organizer for the CIO, and the CIO was still powerful. At an early age, Ralph became a union organizer for his dad. Ralph’s job was to get the vote out, to make sure the workers came out and voted on any critical issue involving the union. Ralph grew up in a steel mill town in Pennsylvania, which was owned by Carnegie.
In particular, Ralph’s job was to get the Black vote out. Everyone knew Ralph had a temper and didn’t mind a rumble. As was stated earlier, once Ralph learned how to fight back, it got so he enjoyed it. Many of the workers that Ralph had to encourage to come out and vote the correct way for the union were Black migrants from the South. As such, they had been terrorized ALL THEIR LIVES, and the thing that they feared the most was being lynched for trying to vote. Consequently, when the union needed the workers to come out, suddenly, claiming to be sick, many of the Black workers became too ill to vote! Ralph literally had to go to their homes and drag them to the voting locations to get their vote.
Ralph’s father would first send the oldest son, Norman. Everyone loved Norman because he was gentle and kind. If they didn’t come out to vote when Norman knocked on the door, then Ralph’s father would send his next oldest son, Garland, who was short-tempered but not a fighter. If the Black workers still insisted on being “sick,” Ralph’s father would send Ralph. And when Ralph went knocking on their door, they knew it was no joke, ’cause Ralph didn’t mind getting physical!
On this particular occasion, at the dinner table at home, after Ralph’s father had laid out the plan for the next workers’ election, the conversation somehow began to include a discussion about Walter Reuther, the labor union organizer, and his decision not to push back against Southern states that would not allow union organizing. Ralph adamantly tried to make his head understand what a horrific error this was and how terrible would be the consequences of not organizing the Blacks in the South. Dinner table discussion became extremely heated as Ralph refused to accept his father’s discussion points. Ralph kept saying, “You don’t get it. If they don’t organize the Black workers in the South to have equal parody with the white workers, then all of the factories and industries will simply relocate to the South. Ralph’s father scoffed at this position and said to Ralph it will never happen. Ralph refused to let the argument die. He kept insisting over and over that the racism of union leaders like Reuther would eventually undermine the union movement as a whole. He tried to explain again and again that the refusal to insist on the equal organizing of Blacks and whites in the South spelled the end of the union movement’s potential in this country.
Shouldn’t all babies have milk?
When Ralph was a teenager, at a certain time of the year, Ralph’s mother would insist that if they had milk left over after milking the cows, any extra milk be placed in jars and delivered to the doorsteps of the less fortunate families. Ralph once commented to his mother, “Why am I delivering milk to the doorsteps of people who have babies? They would not do the same for us.”He would complain bitterly to his mother and object to helping families whose children made his life so difficult when he was younger, whom he still remembered called him “nigger.” On one such occasion, Ralph complained very adamantly, “I have worked hard all day. Are you asking me to go out after all this work and deliver milk to the families of some of those who definitely do not like us?”
Ralph never forgot his mother’s response. She looked at him and very patiently very quietly told him, “Shouldn’t all babies have milk?,” whereupon Ralph didn’t say anything else and never again protested another word against this position, no matter how many times he was told to perform this task.