Public Employee Press

Jessie Smith -
Always an activist

By JANE LaTOUR

A massive budget crisis hit city hospitals in August 1976, with 1,350 layoffs scheduled and another 4,000 looming — mainly for members of Local 420. Then-Associate Director Lillian Roberts called a strike, and one of the first on the picket lines was Jessie Smith, a Local 1549 member at Harlem Hospital who was nearing the end of a long career in public service. The walkout saved the jobs, but management later disciplined Smith for her act of solidarity.

Solidarity and class-consciousness came early to Jessie Taft Smith, who retired from Harlem Hospital in September 1977 after co-workers honored her for her 10 years of service. Her friend Celia Weisman penned a poem: “Jessie’s record gives us a clue, of how her retirement she’ll pursue. If we know Jessie, she’ll do better and more, than she’s done in all the years before.”

“Before” stretched back to her beginnings as a teenage political activist, collecting money in the subway system for striking miners, speaking in the classrooms of her junior high school — P.S. 61 in the Bronx — about the children of the striking textile workers in Passaic, New Jersey. While leafleting at factory gates in 1930 in preparation for the great unemployment march, she was arrested and never made it to the historic rally in Union Square.

The third of four daughters born to Russian immigrants, Jessie Smith walked in her father’s path. “He had a strong sense of social justice. His whole life was dedicated to making a better life for workers. He taught us that this was the most honorable thing you could do with your life.”

Organizing on many fronts
She led a drive to organize the workers in the city’s laundry industry. “A small group of employees met and decided to form a union,” she said. “I worked in many plants. During this time, I learned all the skills of laundry work — shaking, sorting, mangling, folding, and tumbling. I usually used an alias, because the employers would blackball anyone who joined the union.” Looking back, Smith recalled that, “The wages were very low, as low as 25 cents an hour for 10 hours a day, six days a week. We did succeed in laying the groundwork for the union in the industry.”

Her activities as a married young mother shifted her focus to tenant, community, and civil rights organizing. In 1951, she moved into the Marble Hill housing projects in the Bronx. Life there had a political vibrancy that found expression in newsletters, day care centers, boycotts and tenant organizing. “It was a very busy, active, and integrated community, but we faced a lot of racism and segregation,” she said. On Aug. 28, 1963, she traveled to Washington with members of the community civil rights group she helped organize. In MARK — which stood for Marble Hill, Riverdale, and Kingsbridge — “we were very active for a long time,” she said.

While Smith’s working days began as a senior in high school clerking at S.H. Kress, the “5 & 10 cent store,” throughout the years she held many positions that added to her storehouse of knowledge and wisdom. Since her retirement in 1977, Smith has been a dedicated activist in the cause of tenants’ rights and in the DC 37 Retirees Association.

The rollback of the protections that she has done so much to secure is a constant concern. “Affordable housing is becoming depleted. Our rights are being diminished on every front,” she noted.

In 1984, Smith was the subject of a discussion at the Berkshire Conference for Women’s History at Smith College. Along with two other women, she participated in a panel called: “Grandma Was An Activist.” It explored the role of rank-and-file women radicals in the social and political turbulence of the 1930s.

With six grandchildren, she is planning for a wonderful celebration of her 92nd birthday on October 7. Jessie Smith is still an activist — always an optimist in her belief that if working people organize, they can build a better world.