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1960-1970 To The Moon

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Riots, peace demonstrations and civil-rights protests deeply divided the United States during the 1960s. But nothing disturbed the country and the world more than the assassinations of the three men who seemed to best personify American’s hopes and dreams for the future. On November 22, 1963, while on a trip to Dallas, President Kennedy was fatally shot. Vice President Lyndon Johnson assumed the presidency. Five years later, just two months apart, first Martin Luther King Jr. was shot and killed in Memphis, Tennessee; and then Senator Robert Kennedy was killed in Los Angeles. The world was in shock.

In 1966, somewhere between the optimism of the early ‘60s and the cynicism of the later ‘60s, the IBEW celebrated its 75th Anniversary at its 28th International Convention in St. Louis. The general tone of the Convention was upbeat. But in addition to the advancements in membership, the need for higher wages for IBEW members and a call for the end of restrictive antilabor legislation, President Freeman’s keynote address focused on the problems the world faced. He said,

It has always been the tradition of the labor movement to want more—but not just for our own people-for all people. We fight for higher minimum wages when most of our own members earn more. We fight for Medicare and Social Security benefits and unemployment compensation and better homes and schools—not just for our members and their families, but for all in our countries...

We start with our own countries, but we do not stop there. Let the IBEW be put firmly on record as wanting to help the poor people of Europe and Asia and Africa and by so doing taking firm steps against encroaching communism..

President Freeman went on to state the IBEW’s support for the troops in Vietnam and for President Johnson, and he said he “wished with all our strength [the war] would be over ...honorably.”

Canada also celebrated an important anniversary in the 1960s. 1967 marked the hundredth year of Confederation. Canada’s movement toward national unity—while until 1982, still technically under the dominion of Great Britain—is very different than in the United States. Even today the provinces of Canada enjoy great autonomy and honor very different customs and traditions from one another. The divisions between French-speaking Canadians and English-speaking Canadians have proven especially difficult to reconcile. However, on February 15, 1965, Canada unified under a common official flag, a red maple leaf on a white background, flanked by vertical red bars.

The then-recently united labor movement won some substantial victories in the ‘60s. The IBEW fought hard for, and won, the extension of the cost of fringe benefits obtained under union contracts to the calculations for the Davis-Bacon Act in 1964. One of the pens President Johnson used to sign the cost extension bill into law was given to President Freeman and now is in the IBEW Archives. And in the Southwest, United Farm Workers President Cesar Chavez brought world-wide attention to the plight of American farm workers when he launched the first of several produce boycotts and protests in 1966.

Within two months in 1960, the IBEW mourned the loss of two former leaders. Henry H. Broach, International President from 1929 to 1933, and International Executive Committee member from 1946 until six months before his death, died on July 25, 1960. And the following month, G.M. Bugniazet, International Secretary from 1925 to 1947, passed away. Brother Bugniazet was described by the Journal as “the grand old man of the Brotherhood,” and he and former President Broach were very much missed.

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1960-1970 To The Moon

The Canadian national flag, adopted in 1965.

Neil Armstrong (left), after he addressed the 29th Convention, shares the dais with President Pillard, while then-IEC member Jack Moore (Fifth District) looks on.

Labor leadership. AFL-CIO President George Meany (left) talks to International President Pillard.