“The Other Sixteen Hours”
This chapter examines Teamsters Local 688's community stewards program, Harold Gibbons and Ernest Calloway's ambitious initiative to promote the exercise of working-class citizenship and the practice of total person unionism. Early in the 1950s, an internal Teamsters Local 688 memo discussed what it called “the wide view and the narrow view” of the union movement's mission. “The narrow view” “would train stewards to do the job in the shop and nothing else,” while the “wide view” states that “[the union member] is willing to assume his or her responsibility in the maintenance of a democratic union and a democratic society.” This chapter considers how the Teamsters's “wide view” of member responsibility led Gibbons and Calloway to establish a community stewards program that mobilized Local 688 members to address issues affecting their lives during the “other sixteen hours” they spent off the job. It also explores how Calloway's leadership role within the St. Louis NAACP created new possibilities for the labor and civil rights movements to shape social policy in St. Louis after World War II.