{"id":39979,"date":"2026-08-30T18:10:18","date_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:10:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=39979"},"modified":"2026-08-30T18:13:43","modified_gmt":"2026-08-30T16:13:43","slug":"usa-bea-lumpkin-and-how-an-antifascist-rests-in-power","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/?p=39979","title":{"rendered":"USA: Bea Lumpkin and How an Antifascist Rests in Power"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

. HUMAN RIGHTS .<\/p>\n

An article by Stacy Davis Gates in In These Times<\/a><\/p>\n

When people ask me what it means to be a\u00a0woman in power, I\u00a0think about Bea Lumpkin, because power means you don\u2019t wait for\u00a0permission.<\/p>\n

Not power as in proximity to the powerful, or having a\u00a0seat at a\u00a0table someone else built. I\u00a0mean power as in knowing early which side you were on, then spending every day of your life standing on the business of that\u00a0side.<\/p>\n

Bea passed away June 14 at 107\u00a0years old. A\u00a0lifelong communist and the Jewish daughter of Russian immigrants, she married a\u00a0Black man during the height of the Red Scare in 1949 and raised a\u00a0family under the restrictive conventions of Jim Crow\u00a0fascism.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>
\nBea Lumpkin with her husband Frank<\/center><\/p>\n

The United States in the mid-20th century was a\u00a0country where inter-racial marriage was still illegal in 30 states, and where the Supreme Court would not strike down those laws until 1967.\u00a0A\u00a0federal agent might show up at your door simply because of who you loved and what you\u00a0believed.<\/p>\n

It was the McCarthy era, and the openly Communist Lumpkins were already a\u00a0target for their activism. But their politics were the least of it. They were an interracial couple in America in 1949. That alone was enough to make them a\u00a0threat.<\/p>\n

In a 2019 article for People\u2019s World, Bea Lumpkin wrote: \u201cIn addition to fighting back against school closures and the firing of teachers, it is important to keep the struggle for an anti-racist, multicultural curriculum front and center.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bea and her husband, Frank\u2009\u2014\u2009steel-worker, son of sharecroppers\u2009\u2014\u2009were\u00a0undeterred.<\/p>\n

To understand what Bea brought to her marriage, and to everything else in her life, you have to understand what she had already lived by the time she\u00a0married.<\/p>\n

Her parents were Russian revolutionaries. Her father was arrested after returning fire on the Czar\u2019s Cossacks when they attacked the synagogue where the Jewish Labor Bund was meeting. Her mother helped engineer his\u00a0escape.<\/p>\n

Bea was born knowing which side she was on, telling the Chicago Teachers\u2019 Pension Fund in 2025, \u201cI always knew, even when I\u00a0was 6\u00a0years old, how much injustice there\u00a0was.\u201d<\/p>\n

By age 9, she was making solidarity trips in support of striking textile workers. At 14, she lied about her age to get a\u00a0factory job assembling radio tubes and joined the Metal Workers Industrial Union. At Hunter College, when the school threatened to raise the price of a\u00a0half pint of milk from five to six cents, she organized a\u00a0boycott and won. She was later suspended for organizing a\u00a0conference against war and fascism on\u00a0campus.<\/p>\n

At 19, Bea was one of the organizers hired by the newly formed Congress of Industrial Organizations to organize more than 30,000 laundry workers in New York City. She was a\u00a0radio technician with the United Electrical Workers and a\u00a0defense worker during World War\u00a0II.<\/p>\n

In 1948, she stood alongside Paul Robeson at a\u00a0labor rally in New York. She marched with the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. in Marquette Park. She stood alongside the Black Panthers on Chicago\u2019s West Side. Legend in our movement holds that she once babysat a\u00a0young Fred\u00a0Hampton.<\/p>\n

She bore witness to the state killing striking workers during the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre in Chicago, where 10 were killed and 90 injured when police shot into the crowd. She knowingly took risks to win justice and to marry the love of her\u00a0life.<\/p>\n

(Article continued in the column on the right)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Questions related to this article:<\/div>\n
<\/div>\n
\n

\n

How can we carry forward the work of the great peace and justice activists who went before us?<\/a><\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

(Article continued from the column on the left)<\/p>\n

Bea was many things that our politics too often tries to reduce and sort into separate boxes. She was a\u00a0mother, and she was an educator who started her classroom career at age 47. She was a\u00a0mathematician who published groundbreaking scholarship on the multicultural roots of math and science because her students demanded to see themselves in what they were learning. She was a\u00a0feminist who co-founded the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974. She was a\u00a0fierce advocate for climate justice in her\u00a0100s.<\/p>\n

Bea\u2019s existence resisted reduction because it undersells the enormous impact of her life. She wasn\u2019t an \u201c-ism.\u201d She was a\u00a0force of nature. The labor movement Bea entered as a\u00a0teenager in the 1930s was fighting for things we now take as bedrock: the right to organize, the minimum wage and the eight-hour workday. She was raised to believe that her existence was to make the world a\u00a0more just place for everyone. For Bea, the struggle was never a\u00a0sacrifice. It was a\u00a0joy.<\/p>\n

As a\u00a0Black woman leading a\u00a0labor union in this particular moment in America, when the rights Bea\u2019s generation bled for are being dismantled in real time, when public education is under assault, when the multiracial coalitions she built her life around are being deliberately fractured,
\nI\u00a0find myself asking what Bea would\u00a0do.<\/p>\n

She would be at the rally, on the picket line and knocking doors. She would be organizing young people and old people in the same room. She would be furious and unrelenting, yet jubilant and optimistic. She didn\u2019t slow down by choice. Her body made that decision for\u00a0her.<\/p>\n

Bea taught us the discipline of showing up, and the refusal to leave a\u00a0struggle to someone else. <\/p>\n

She embodied the understanding that justice is not something you wait for, but something you build, generation by generation, in union halls and church basements, and on picket lines, no matter the weather. Well into her 100s she attended every monthly delegate meeting and protest and caucus meeting for the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU) and oftentimes got there without any support or assistance. I\u00a0can close my eyes and see that black fanny pack, red CTU cap, and fist held high in proud\u00a0defiance.<\/p>\n

She was our friend, and we are going to miss\u00a0her.<\/p>\n

Roberta Wilson, a longtime organizer with the Chicago Teachers Union (CTU), gave 80 years of her life to educating students.<\/p>\n

Our union also lost in these same days of grief one of our longtime members, Roberta Wilson. <\/p>\n

Roberta came north from Thomson, Georgia, as part of the Second Great Migration that helped build Chicago. She gave 80\u00a0years of her life to her faith, to educating her students, to organizing her block club, coat drives, and food pantry, and to creating a\u00a0scholarship fund that sent Black children from Chicago\u2019s West Side to\u00a0college.<\/p>\n

Black history.<\/p>\n

Where Bea showed us how to fight, Roberta showed us how to hold, and how to be the root system of a\u00a0community that allowed everything above ground to\u00a0grow.<\/p>\n

They are the women on whom this movement is\u00a0built.<\/p>\n

Excerpt from her book, Joy in the Struggle: My Life and Love by Beatrice Lumpkin, International Publishers, 2018. Free for any DSA or Union member<\/p>\n

\u2018So how do I feel about fighting for the same issues again and again? My reply is, \u201cYes, I am tired of the system that puts profits first. But I am not tired of fighting capitalism. Each fight brings us in touch with wonderful fellow-fighters. Each fight hastens the day when organized workers and their allies will be strong enough to get rid of capitalism and begin to build socialism. Yes, there is joy in the struggle.\u2019 \u2014<\/p>\n

– – – – –<\/p>\n

The author, Stacy Davis Gates<\/a>, is president of the Chicago Teachers Union and the Illinois Federation of\u00a0Teachers.<\/p>\n

– – – – – –<\/p>\n

If you wish to make a comment on this article, you may write to coordinator@cpnn-world.org with the title “Comment on (name of article)” and we will put your comment on line. Because of the flood of spam, we have discontinued the direct application of comments.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

. HUMAN RIGHTS . An article by Stacy Davis Gates in In These Times When people ask me what it means to be a\u00a0woman in power, I\u00a0think about Bea Lumpkin, because power means you don\u2019t wait for\u00a0permission. Not power as in proximity to the powerful, or having a\u00a0seat at a\u00a0table someone else built. I\u00a0mean power … Continue reading USA: Bea Lumpkin and How an Antifascist Rests in Power<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,91],"tags":[5],"class_list":["post-39979","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-human-rights","category-north-america","tag-north-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39979","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39979"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39979\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":39983,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39979\/revisions\/39983"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39979"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39979"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/english.cpnn-world.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39979"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}