Moranda Smith was a black labor organizer and unionist who served as the first regional director of

Winston-Salem, North Carolina Winston-Salem is a city and the county seat of Forsyth County, North Carolina, United States. In the 2020 census, the population was 249,545, making it the second-largest municipality in the Piedmont Triad region, the 5th most populous city in ...

's local 22 of the Food, Tobacco, Agricultural and Allied Workers of America (FTA) in the 1930 and 1940s.

Career

Born of a

sharecropping Sharecropping is a legal arrangement with regard to agricultural land in which a landowner allows a tenant to use the land in return for a share of the crops produced on that land. Sharecropping has a long history and there are a wide range ...

family in South Carolina, Smith led thousands of Winston-Salem workers to win $1,250,000 in back pay in the leaf houses and stemmeries. In 1943, after a Black worker fell dead at a

Reynolds Tobacco Company The R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company (RJR) is an American tobacco manufacturing Manufacturing is the creation or production of goods with the help of equipment, labor, machines, tools, and chemical or biological processing or formulati ...

plant, Smith, along with thousands of other Black women, participated in a spontaneous sit-down leading to a massive

walkout In labor disputes, a walkout is a labor strike, the act of employees collectively leaving the workplace and withholding labor as an act of protest. A walkout can also mean the act of leaving a place of work, school, a meeting, a company, or an ...

forcing Reynolds to temporarily shut down. Her leadership at the local 22 saw a 50% rise of minimum wages. The union also increased voter registration in the area, leading to the election of the first Black alderman in the South. Throughout her career as a unionist, Smith worked extensively, "openly defying" the

Ku Klux Klan The Ku Klux Klan (), commonly shortened to the KKK or the Klan, is an American white supremacist, right-wing terrorist, and hate group whose primary targets are African Americans, Jews, Latinos, Asian Americans, Native Americans, and Ca ...

Personal life

Smith died in 1950 at the age of 34, "the strain of her activities seeming to be a major cause."

References

African-American trade unionists 20th-century African-American women 20th-century African-American people American women trade unionists Trade unionists from North Carolina People from Winston-Salem, North Carolina 1910s births 1950 deaths {{US-activist-stub