Jesse Reese facts for kids

Jesse Reese was an important African American leader who worked to help workers get fair treatment. He was part of the Communist Party and a strong union organizer in the United States.

Early Life and Joining the Union

Jesse Reese had a tough start. After being forced to work in a group that did hard labor, he left Mississippi in the 1920s. He moved to Gary, Indiana. It's thought that he joined the Communist Party soon after he arrived. During the Great Depression, he lived with a friend named Walter Mackerl. They both knew each other from the Universal Negro Improvement Association. Mackerl said Reese was "a diehard," meaning he was very dedicated to his beliefs.

In 1929, Jesse Reese got a job at Youngstown Sheet and Tube in Indiana Harbor. This company was one of the "little steel" companies. Reese said that an organizer from the Communist Party came to his home. This person asked him to become active in the Amalgamated Association, which was a union.

Leading the Way in Unions

Jesse Reese was one of the few African Americans who openly belonged to the Communist Party. He often spoke for the party. He became the president of the Youngstown Lake Front Lodge for the Amalgamated Association of Iron, Steel and Tin workers. Later, in 1938, he became the first vice president of the new Steel Worker Organizing Committee (SWOC) Local 1011.

In the 1930s, Reese was named one of the "six most active" union organizers for the Steel Workers Organizing Committee. In the summer of 1936, SWOC and the National Negro Congress held many meetings. They met three days a week, twice a day, to match the workers' shifts. George Kimbley, who was the first African American steel worker to join SWOC in Gary, Indiana, shared how Jesse Reese helped him join:

Jesse Reese was a Communist, and he let the world know it. He didn't hide it. Anybody asked him was he a Communist, and he would tell you with pride that he was a Communist. But, we, he was a likeable sort of a fellow. On Saturday afternoons, many of us would go to his house and play cards. And on that one Saturday afternoon in... Jesse Reese had been to a meeting in East Chicago, and he got home. I was sitting in the house. He said, "Hey, Brother Kimbley, join the union, I've a card here". He handed it to me, and I kept talking after I got up and looked at it and signed my name and just handed him a dollar. Just like that, easy. And lo and behold when I found out, [laughs] I think I wrote the, I was the first steel worker to join the union in Gary, Indiana.

See also

• Little Steel strike
• Communist Party USA and African Americans