Public Employee Press

Local 372's Glen Blacks honored by NAACP

Glen Blacks, executive vice president of Local 372, was honored Feb. 23 by the New York branch of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Blacks received the branch's 2014 Black Heritage Award at its Black History Month celebration at the First African Methodist Episcopal Church in Harlem.

A native of Harlem, Blacks has a long history of community activism in addition to his union work and has served as a mentor to teenagers in the Right of Passage program.

"It's a real honor to be acknowledged by an organization like the NAACP that was in the vanguard of the civil rights movement," Blacks said upon receiving the award. The Harlem branch of the NAACP was established in 1911.

Also honored during the ceremony were the late labor and civil rights activist Dr. Annie B. Martin, who headed the New York branch for many years, and G.L. Tyler, the political action director of AFSCME District Council 1707. As the evening's keynote speaker, former New York City Mayor David Dinkins paid tribute to South African President Nelson Mandela, who died in December.