By Mickey Walker - February 14, 2016
My Dad was a great man. He was a union leader at Gulf Oil Corporation from the early 1940’s to when he retired in 1965. Over the years Dad petitioned the company for equal rights in the plant dressing rooms back when “whites only” and “colored” signs were above the entry doors. Until the signs were taken down. Relentlessly, he kept his potter’s wheel of equality turning for all men. He was a molder of human rights and good as he shaped his pot of human rights for all men and all colors of men. And women. Women back then were treated with disrespect and scorn as second-class workers and paid accordingly. He bargained with Gulf that women, too, would receive the same pay as men. He elevated, as best he could, their collective worth as human beings to that of being as fit as men to do the same jobs and hold the same positions. Not with better rights but with equal rights. Dad bargained with Gulf Oil that they would be considered for the highest order of job considerations. And through his efforts, some of them were elevated to be the bosses of men. The women knew him or knew of him because of his work as an unwavering champion of human workers who had little without a spirit like him, a human force, to help them ascend. He was that champion.
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