Rochester’s Remuneration Rebuked and Reproved

The twentieth century witnessed Rochester’s grand entrance into the national business arena. A relatively small but innovative city, Rochester had impressive unemployment numbers that were the result of the Eastman Kodak Company and its subsidiaries. The camera and film behemoth continued to grow and hire even amid the Great Depression. In 1931, the company reported net earnings of $20,353,788, “surpassing all previous results except in the record-breaking year of 1929.”¹⁰ The city’s economic growth and attendant wealth enjoyed by its companies and their employees was a source of envy to many in the nation. Eastman Kodak developed a reputation for sharing its phenomenal affluence with its workers. Those same workers also benefited from Kodak’s pioneering labor-management conflict resolution strategies. To dissuade its employees from unionizing, Kodak offered employee stock options, improved health and retirement benefits, and provided recreational facilities to its employees, in addition to paying cash dividends as profits allowed. In the middle of the Great Depression, as employees lost their jobs all across the nation, Eastman Kodak continued to hire and paid handsome employee bonuses to boot.¹¹ “Bonus Day,” the actual day Rochester employees received their wage-dividend checks, became an eagerly anticipated holiday of sorts. Parents allowed their children to stay home from school, and retail stores extended their hours, while furniture and auto dealerships planned their yearly sales to correspond with the Kodak distribution. In short, Rochester was feeling flush.

Kodak shared its wealth with its employees to be sure, but the corporation also donated significant funds to the University of Rochester, Strong Memorial Hospital, and other local institutions.¹² In exchange, Kodak exacted a toll from the city of Rochester. One scholar aptly compared Kodak to “the benevolent Puritan father who, while making sure of his children’s welfare, does not hesitate to discipline them should they fail to measure up to his standards and values.” He continued: “Keeping its employees happy with generous bonuses, good working conditions, and other benefits, the company has remained free of unions and has carefully guarded the established prerogatives of management.”¹³ Given that many of Rochester residents were either employed by Eastman Kodak or had a family member who worked for the company or one of its beneficiaries, its control over the city was pervasive. When Kodak made its wishes clear, local government, churches, and residents jumped to do its bidding.

This twentieth-century windfall made Rochester something of a model city for the nation’s business world. Corporations that seemed constantly engaged in labor disputes watched Kodak closely. As President Franklin Delano Roosevelt drafted antimonopoly labor legislation, his emissary Robert Jackson toured the nation, touting “the growth of the Eastman Kodak Company, … saying ‘there is no better illustration of the kind of business which this nation ought to foster than the kind of business you have fostered here.… The biggest threat to the enterprise and sound business of a city such as you or I live in is the threat of the speculating financiers, who grab these locally developed industries for exploitation.’ ”¹⁴ This locally developed industry, however, was no small-town venture. Kodak continued to grow during World War II, unabashedly declaring itself “a veritable arsenal of photography.”¹⁵ Success generated during the war years earned Kodak officials the attention of the nation’s presidents from Roosevelt to Dwight Eisenhower, who frequently recruited staff from Kodak’s ranks.¹⁶ If Rochester, through its economic success, had made its mark politically, it only remained for it to become culturally relevant. In the summer of 1957, with the advent of television, Kodak edged out Lincoln Automobiles for corporate sponsorship of the popular Ed Sullivan Show.¹⁷ Rochester had indeed arrived on the national scene.

Between 1900 and 1930, in what scholar Juliet E. K. Walker has deemed the “Golden Age of Black Business,” the relative peace and tranquility brought to Rochester by Kodak’s success also bolstered the city’s miniscule Black community, which comprised less than 1 percent of its total population of 305,000.¹⁸ Despite the small number of African Americans, white affluence drove a demand for Black labor, not in the city’s highly skilled, technical industries, but in the service industry: the kitchens, the cars, and the caravansaries of upwardly mobile white Rochester. Black porters, messengers, maintenance workers, and stockmen joined the city’s chauffeurs, maids, service employees, and those who found employment in nearby mills, gypsum mines, and, during World War I, an ammunition factory. These workers and their income provided the basis for a Black economy and drove a short-lived proliferation of small Black businesses.¹⁹ A 1926 city directory reported no less than forty such establishments.²⁰ Many of these were small family-owned shops. The Gibson family, for example, operated both the Gibson Hotel and Apartments and the adjacent Gibson Dining Hall, which served “meals at all hours” and offered dancing every night. Fred and Horace Jentons ran both a realty corporation and a “cash grocery,” the former likely operated out of the latter.²¹ But as with Black businesses everywhere, the Great Depression took its toll on the Jentonses. “A tightening economy,” Rochester historian Adolph Dupree asserted, “squeezed out many of the smaller Black business enterprises through decreasing capitalization and stiffer competition from white business owners.”²² The Jentonses, who had purchased their real estate by using one piece of property as collateral for another, lost everything and moved to Washington, DC. Their story was not unusual in Rochester; a vital Black economy would not reemerge there until the latter half of the century in a frenzy of Black organizing. In the meantime, Black Rochester struggled to make inroads in the white-dominated industrial and corporate community.

The 1964 uprising served as a watershed moment, dramatically altering the reputation and success of Rochester’s business community. Having wet their feet in Rochester’s political well, FIGHT’s leaders set their sights on Kodak. As previously indicated, FIGHT’s targeting of Kodak was not random. Kodak was a company to be watched and modeled. Where Kodak led, other corporations followed.²³ But Kodak’s national reputation, once a treasured asset, became a colossal liability in the wake of the uprising. Rochester’s Catholic bishop Fulton Sheen would later note of Kodak and Rochester: “The whole world looks at Rochester … but it does not see the city’s beauty; it sees the blemish on its face.”²⁴

Despite the hiring of men such as Walter Cooper, Kodak had developed a somewhat different reputation for refusing to hire African Americans in all but the most demeaning of jobs. As early as 1939, it will be recalled, a previous generation of Black leaders had challenged Kodak’s founder George Eastman to hire graduates from the Black colleges and universities that benefitted from his philanthropy.²⁵ Evidence of Kodak’s racism—institutional and otherwise—persisted into the post-riot period. The company’s director of industrial relations, Monroe C. Dill, announced in the wake of the 1964 riot that Kodak was not “in the habit of hiring bodies. We seek skills. We don’t grow many peanuts in Eastman Kodak,” suggesting of course that African Americans were not fit for employment there.²⁶ Despite the negative response that Kodak engendered with Dill’s remarks, future Kodak president Louis K. Eilers would reportedly inform one of Rochester’s most respected Black ministers, “You know, we did your folks, we did you an enormous favor. We took you out of Africa where you were eating worms and things.”²⁷ Given the personal sentiments of Kodak’s top executives, it is easy to see how corporate policies discriminating against African Americans would follow. Several Black Rochester residents recalled applying for jobs at Eastman Kodak in the 1950s and 1960s only to be told, “We don’t have any colored jobs. [We] got some jobs, but nothing for you.”²⁸ One African American who did work for Kodak recalled his experiences there:

Well, I started out as, just as everybody else back in those days—Blacks, colored, Negro, whatever area, age, you were in. The only jobs you could get is either running the elevator, moppin’ floors, or “trucking,” as they called it—taking material from one machine to another.… They had a gentleman there who didn’t go to the service, went to RIT, got the management degrees and his salesman’s and everything else there that they would teach him. When he came back to Kodak, there was no job for him.²⁹

For his part, the same employee recalled that to secure a better position at Kodak, he leveraged his athletic ability. Kodak, like most Rochester corporations, played basketball in the intramural company league. Charles Price remembered, “I told them, ‘Well if you want me to play on your team, you know, give me a little better job than pickin’ up papers or moppin’ floors.’ They gave me a job in an experimental lab.”³⁰ Kodak’s competing reputations, nationally and locally derived, made it an ideal target for FIGHT. FIGHT’s president, Minister Franklin Florence, felt “that if [they] could get Kodak in line, every other business [in Rochester] would follow.”³¹

Paternalism Meets Black Power

To get Kodak in line, Florence led a small delegation of FIGHT officers to the company’s headquarters in the fall of 1966 and demanded to see the president. Once an audience was gained, FIGHT proposed a program in which Kodak would hire and then train five to six hundred African Americans who could not meet Kodak’s regular standards (which required a high school diploma) for entry-level positions across the board in the film and camera industry. Florence passionately argued that he was “not talking about the man who can compete. We’re talking about the down-and-out, the man crushed by this evil system, the man emasculated, who can’t make it on his own. He has a right to work.”³² Though Florence’s rhetoric privileged men, FIGHT’s job training committee also sought jobs for women.³³ In exchange for Kodak’s hiring the hard-core unemployed, FIGHT offered to provide recruitment and counseling to the trainees, and advice, consultation, and assistance to Kodak for the duration of the project. Kodak president William Vaughn politely declined FIGHT’s proposal but agreed to another meeting to discuss ways in which FIGHT could support existing Kodak programs. At that next meeting FIGHT arrived with its proposed demands in writing. Apparently Kodak was no more swayed by the written word than by the spoken. Again, Vaughn and his men said no but persisted in their attempts to redirect FIGHT’s attention to Kodak’s programs.³⁴

For several months, meetings continued between the two entities without substantial progress; their engagement, however, became increasingly ugly. The underlying conflict was simple. FIGHT demanded the power to negotiate with Kodak as an equal player, while Kodak refused to share the helm with any organization, particularly a Black Power organization that made labor demands. All the while, their progress—or lack thereof—was followed closely in the local newspapers. Rochesterians, Black and white, watched with bated breath. Having learned something about the power of media, Minister Florence held a press conference after each Kodak encounter to present FIGHT’s position and to expose Kodak’s. Despite its inability to move Kodak with this strategy, FIGHT kept the issue alive in the local papers and by putting constant pressure on Kodak. Florence and his Industrial Areas Foundation counterparts Saul Alinsky and Ed Chambers were also busily converting potential sympathizers to their cause on a national scale. Florence traveled to the 1966 Black Power Conference in Washington, DC, to tell the tale of FIGHT and Kodak in Rochester, while Alinsky worked the Jewish circuit, contacting national Jewish organizations to hear FIGHT’s story.³⁵ Both were building support for a national campaign against Kodak should their confrontation come to that. Alinsky prophesied, “I tell you this, Eastman Kodak has plenty to be concerned about, because this kind of an issue … if it ever develops … and it may well develop … will become a nation-wide issue across the board to every negro [sic] ghetto in America.”³⁶

Back in Rochester, the issue became increasingly divisive. Rather than implement FIGHT’s proposal, Kodak hired the Indianapolis-based Board of Fundamental Education to “institute a program of remedial studies for illiterate and near-illiterate” potential employees. It was an obvious attempt to earn goodwill in the community while cutting FIGHT and Minister Florence out.³⁷ In response, FIGHT stepped up the attack on Kodak, no longer asking for a joint job-training program, but demanding one. No one had ever made demands of this kind on Kodak. Many believed that FIGHT’s undertaking—to affirm Florence’s assertion that “the right to jobs transcends the right to make money”—held the potential to turn that tide.³⁸ As summer became fall and fall turned to winter, the city’s institutions and population split in their support; some believed FIGHT was out of line, while others hoped Kodak’s smugness could be checked. Animosity gripped the city. Local news editor Paul Miller sided with Kodak and took every opportunity to lambast FIGHT and Florence in his editorial pages. But in the pulpit, if not across the pew, FIGHT found support in the city’s churches. The Rochester Area Council of Churches and many of its denominations supported FIGHT and its attempts to remedy the ills of urban poverty. The laity, however, found themselves divided. Some were members of Friends of FIGHT, the white auxiliary formed to support the Black Power organization. Others were Kodak employees who had greatly benefited from Kodak’s largesse and wholeheartedly supported their employer. Still another group belonged to the ranks of both Friends of FIGHT and Kodak. In fact, the conflict would fracture Rochester so deeply that before it ended, local lore would be established. A white minister, by all accounts unaccustomed to the harassment faced by Movement activists, hung himself in his basement to escape the constant barrage of angry phone calls he received for supporting FIGHT; a Black minister reported finding the lug nuts on his tires loosened after a FIGHT meeting; and new Kodak president Louis Eilers had installed a device to intercept abusive calls to his personal phone line.³⁹

As the impasse continued, a major stumbling block became the negotiators involved. Neither side approved of the other’s negotiating team. In fact, Kodak was disinclined to use the term “negotiating team” at all, as it smacked of a labor conflict. At one point, Monroe Dill, the industrial relations director, reminded a reporter, “The officials [working with FIGHT] should not be designated a ‘negotiating’ team. We think of these talks as discussions, not negotiations.”⁴⁰ Nonetheless, many believed if the spokesmen were replaced, a resolution could emerge. Here, members of the suburban Third Presbyterian Church interceded. A well-positioned member of the church connected John Mulder, both a member of Third Presbyterian and an assistant vice president at Kodak, with the Reverend Marvin Chandler, a member of the Rochester Area Council of Churches and a FIGHT vice president. The two discussed the Kodak-FIGHT impasse that continued to dominate the pages of the local papers. Both parties agreed they might work together and approached their respective sides to gain organizational permission to continue talks. Mulder proposed that he head a new team to meet with FIGHT; this team would consist of men directly responsible for Kodak’s hiring and training, men who understood what was possible within the company. Vaughn, who was about to leave his position as president to become the chair of board and who was tired of the negative media attention surrounding his inability to successfully negotiate with African Americans, agreed to Mulder’s proposal.

Led by John Mulder, the new Kodak team met secretly with FIGHT leaders for two days in Rochester’s Downtowner Motel, which was no small feat given the media interest in the controversy. During that time, the two sides made progress in multiple ways. First, and perhaps most importantly for the players involved, they began to develop a relationship of trust. Chandler recalled that while “John Mulder didn’t understand [the Black church experience], he didn’t understand all that,” he “really honored me by giving me his trust to try to make these connections, which we did.”⁴¹ Second, on December 20, just days before Christmas, the two sides emerged with a gift in hand, a peace offering for Rochester. They had signed an agreement providing for the “recruitment and referral” of six hundred hard-core unemployed “over a 24-month period, barring unforeseen economic changes affecting the Rochester community.”⁴² The agreement also called for the two organizations to familiarize each other with their respective operations, to share information on referrals, and to continue semi-monthly meetings to increase the program’s effectiveness.⁴³ These were terms that Mulder believed Kodak could agree to. Both teams were jubilant; both returned to their people to share the news and expectantly await their holiday celebrations. According to FIGHT’s standard operating procedure, Florence called a press conference to announce the agreement. It appeared that Rochester would enjoy a peaceful holiday.

But that was not to be. The next morning, unbeknownst to FIGHT, Kodak’s executive committee met to discuss the accord. They unanimously voted to rescind the agreement. Later that day, Kodak’s board of directors seconded the committee’s decision. Publicly, the company would declare that John Mulder lacked the authorization to sign such an agreement. Kodak’s chair of the board reportedly described this period of negotiations as the “Mulder Misadventure” at the annual stockholder’s meeting in Flemington, New Jersey.⁴⁴ Secretly, the executives disliked the preferential hiring of African Americans, particularly those supported by a Black Power organization, and they feared anything that smacked of a labor contract, a trap Kodak had avoided for nearly a century. Mulder was immediately called to account in Louis Eilers’s office. Eilers was set to replace Vaughn as Kodak president on January 1, and Eilers was not pleased that the FIGHT controversy had become one of his first responsibilities. He forbade Mulder to discuss the matter publicly, a command that Mulder has honored ever since. In the press, which was unable to detail Mulder’s version of the events, Eilers would later describe Mulder as well-meaning but overzealous and liberal. Mulder would lose his post as an assistant vice president at Kodak before the misadventure was over.⁴⁵

When Mulder realized that Kodak would not honor the agreement he had signed, he immediately called Chandler to ask if he could stop by his home. Chandler received the call in the midst of a holiday/victory celebration with Rochester’s Black ministers and invited him to join them, given that Florence was also in attendance. When Mulder walked into the living room, “his eyes … full of tears,” everyone present understood from his demeanor that the agreement would not come to fruition. Florence recalled that Mulder “looked like Christ must have looked when Peter denied him.”⁴⁶ His delivery of the information in person, however, further endeared him to the FIGHT contingent.⁴⁷ Kodak’s repudiation of the signed document led local reporter Desmond Stone to declare the December 20th agreement “the most controversial piece of paper in Rochester’s history.”⁴⁸

The fallout from the repudiated agreement was catastrophic, as recrimination replaced disappointment. Both sides staged press conferences, took out full-page advertisements in the local papers, consulted with their constituencies, and prophesied the outcome for Rochester if the struggle continued. Kodak claimed it was not being racist; on the contrary, preferential hiring of African Americans, it claimed, “violated anti-discrimination laws.”⁴⁹ Kodak simply could not “discriminate by having an exclusive recruiting arrangement with any organization.”⁵⁰ Its executives assuaged their having reneged by pointing to a recent history of training initiatives and hiring practices benefiting, among others, African Americans. Eilers would later deem these programs “the white hope for the poor of Rochester.”⁵¹ FIGHT, the company claimed, was simply engaging in corporate harassment and failed to work with existing Kodak programs. Kodak’s resistance to the agreement was most likely the result of several decades of anti-union labor policy. “We will not sign anything,” Eilers clarified, “that gives a third party a voice in the formulation of industrial relations policy to do with hiring and placing.”⁵² Florence, however, had no interest in labor unions, an exclusive arrangement, or harassment for the sake of harassment. His concern lay with the Black poor: “When [Kodak] tore up that agreement, they tore up the hopes of the poor people of Rochester. The issue is, they have signed an agreement with us—are they honorable men? Do their signatures mean one thing to white men, another to Black?”⁵³

With the repudiation of the agreement, FIGHT pulled out all the stops. Minister Florence warned of an impending “long hot summer,” rekindling fears of another revolt. “What happens in Rochester in the summer of ’67,” he cautioned, “is at the doorstep of [the] Eastman Kodak Company.”⁵⁴ Florence’s prediction was seconded during the timely visit of Stokely Carmichael, that “high priest of ‘Black Power,’ ” who descended upon Rochester to offer FIGHT his support.⁵⁵ The chair of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), Carmichael was affiliated with Saul Alinsky and IAF projects in Detroit, though in true Black Power fashion, he indicated to his audience that “his organization was supporting only FIGHT, not Alinsky-organized groups in other cities.”⁵⁶ Carmichael was followed into Rochester by national television crews from NBC and CBS that were only too happy to broadcast his statements to a national audience.⁵⁷ With the spotlight on him, Carmichael warned Kodak and its supporters that SNCC had “been looking for a fight against a big company to show Black people across the country about institutional racism. You’ve got everything we’re looking for.… We’re going to bring them to their knees if it’s the last thing we do. When we’re through, they’ll see him [indicating Florence] and he’ll say, ‘Jump,’ and they’ll say, ‘How high?’ ”⁵⁸ WNYR, a local station, became nearly hysterical at the presence of Carmichael and the national media in Rochester. Its fear that Rochester would be portrayed negatively across the nation mirrored Kodak’s: “And now the television film will be taken to studios far from Rochester, edited and probably sent into millions of homes across the U.S. The nation will get a look at what they have no choice but to believe is our city.”⁵⁹ Kodak remained silent regarding Carmichael’s threat of an international boycott, but clearly FIGHT had raised the stakes.

FIGHT’s leaders began to recognize their next step; little more would be accomplished if they continued to wage their battle in Rochester alone. If Kodak was to be persuaded, they realized, it would happen in the national spotlight. This prompted an abrupt change in course and two new strategies. For the first time, FIGHT directed its appeals that the December 20th agreement be honored not to Kodak executives, but directly to the company’s shareholders. FIGHT also sought to maximize its local church-based support by enlisting assistance from the National Council of Churches and its various national affiliates. Both strategies were new to the Black Power movement and, therefore, garnered increased media attention.

Given Kodak’s repudiation of the December 20th agreement and FIGHT’s advertisement of that repudiation as a double-crossing of the poor, church groups rallied behind FIGHT’s efforts. In January, the National Council of Churches’ Commission on Religion and Race, the Board of National Missions of the United Presbyterian Church in the USA, the United Presbyterian Church’s New York Synod, and the Board for Homeland Ministries of the United Church of Christ (Congregational and Evangelical & Reformed) and the Unitarian Universalist Association led the national church effort to support FIGHT by sending a joint telegram to Kodak president Louis Eilers, informing him that they were “gravely concerned about employment opportunities at Eastman Kodak.” The telegram continued: “Believe good faith negotiation with FIGHT should continue. Urge that Dec. 20 agreement be honored.”⁶⁰ Once on board, these national bodies continued their efforts by lobbying their respective churches and affiliates to investigate the Rochester situation further and support FIGHT. They sent passionate letters to their various memberships outlining the work that FIGHT was doing to alleviate poverty in Rochester, the need for effective leadership to represent the poor, and the preordained role of the church in poverty struggles.⁶¹ The Rochester controversy thus became a frequent topic in both church newsletters and sermons.

With the churches largely supporting FIGHT’s position, Florence and Alinsky implemented the next phase in their campaign to force Kodak to honor its signed agreement.⁶² “Keep your sermons,” they requested of the churches. “Give us your stocks!”⁶³ Florence and the FIGHT leadership implemented a tactic that activists in organizations such as Carmichael’s SNCC had recently begun to explore.⁶⁴ FIGHT asked national church bodies to withhold their shareholder proxies at Kodak’s annual meeting. Every shareholder of a publicly traded company has the option of attending the annual shareholders meeting and the right to vote on corporate matters, including the election of officers. Frequently, stockholding organizations (such as churches) will simply sign a proxy form authorizing the company’s president or the chair of the board to vote on their behalf. Instead of following this course, FIGHT asked these churches to transfer their proxy forms to FIGHT, or at the very least to withhold their proxies from Kodak officers. In so doing, the church leadership would be expected to attend the shareholders meeting to publicly question Kodak’s reneging on the December 20th agreement. Presbyterian Life reported, “There followed the unprecedented refusal of boards and agencies … to entrust their proxies to company management at the annual stockholder’s meeting. The questions raised at that meeting may make a national issue of Kodak’s employment practices.”⁶⁵ The strategy was an immediate success. The national bodies of the Episcopal Church and the Church of Christ not only signed over their proxy forms to FIGHT, but sent an evaluation of the Rochester situation to each of their churches across the nation. The National Council of Churches asked its members to give Christian assistance to FIGHT in the struggle against Kodak, prompting discussions in the pulpit and the pew.

All You Need Is One Share

FIGHT stopped or slowed all other organizational efforts in preparation for the annual Kodak meeting. Minister Florence and Ed Chambers, the IAF staff person, reassigned all staff members to maximize their manpower for “Focus on Flemington.”⁶⁶ In addition to asking national church bodies to withhold their proxies, FIGHT purchased ten shares of Kodak stock; with those shares it gained access to the annual meeting in Flemington, New Jersey, for ten members of FIGHT’s executive board.⁶⁷ Once there, FIGHT hoped to disrupt the meeting and then force Kodak to recognize and honor the rescinded December 20th agreement. Planning began in earnest to recruit large numbers of supporters for the Flemington event.

By far the most damaging aspect of FIGHT’s new campaign, however, was the national media attention both Kodak and Rochester received. All of a sudden, the Rochester struggle jumped from church bulletins and local papers to the pages of Business Weekly, Fortune, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. A New York Times front-page headline announced, “All You Need Is One Share,” while U.S. News and World Report offered “New Threat for Employers? What a Negro Group Seeks from Kodak.” The Washington Post poked fun at the film company, offering its own headline, “Picture’s Fuzzy as Kodak Fights FIGHT.” From Kansas City to Cleveland, Washington, DC, to New York City, all eyes were on this new potential hazard to business. An Associated Press correspondent rightly summarized, “The Rochester struggle offers a study in microcosm of racial complexities facing large cities across the land: On the one hand, a militant ‘Black Power’ organization that purports to speak for the restless and exploited poor. On the other, a prestigious corporation that reflects, as few others, ‘the establishment.’ Caught in the crossfire are the churches, which helped give birth to the city’s new Negro militancy; traditional civil rights groups, which find in Black Power an uneasy alliance; civic and social leaders, watching in anguish a wedge of discord knife through the community.”⁶⁸ The outcome of this new strategy would reach far across the nation—indeed, Fortune magazine warned that Kodak’s troubles “may be a portent of confrontations to come between other companies and other Negro organizations.”⁶⁹

As an unexpected outcome of the national media attention, FIGHT received proxy forms from individual Kodak shareholders far and near. Many individuals sent their proxy forms to FIGHT with heartfelt messages of support. One such note read, “Enclosed please find a proxy for my 56 shares signed over to you … to vote as best you see fit. I wholly approve of this approach to get action. MORE POWER TO YOU!!!!”⁷⁰ Still another read, “I would like very much to support you in your effort to induce Eastman Kodak to abide by its earlier agreement with your organization. I own some shares of Eastman Kodak and wonder whether it would help if I turned the proxy over to you. I don’t think I shall be able to attend the stockholders meeting myself.”⁷¹ Though the New York Times would later report that “these expressions of stockholder discontent were too scattered to have much influence on management,” most business journals and corporations acknowledged that “their potential influence is immense if the nation’s growing ranks of stockholders could be mobilized to support them.”⁷² The potential had grown exponentially in the previous fifteen years. Between 1952 and 1967, during a postwar boom, the number of individual shareholders in the United States increased from 6.5 million to 20 million.⁷³ In addition to individual proxy contributions and the support of national church bodies, organizations such as the Young Women’s Christian Association (YWCA) also withheld their proxy status. The NAACP’s labor secretary, Herbert Hill, brought the Office of Federal Contract Compliance to bear by requesting that Kodak’s federal contracts be canceled. For its part, Walter Reuther’s Citizens Crusade against Poverty also promised to investigate Kodak.⁷⁴ FIGHT’s plan was well underway.

As FIGHT and Kodak prepared for the annual meeting, tension and pressure continued to mount in Rochester and thus in Flemington, New Jersey, as well. As the Episcopal and the Methodist Churches added their shares to those that would be withheld from Kodak management, an interdenominational task force formed to pressure Kodak further. Its spokesperson warned that Rochester

is being talked about in Harlem, Boston, St. Louis and in all other ghettos from Chicago to Texas, and along the coast to Florida. The use of power is an essential ingredient in our country’s economic position. Corporate power is very strong and there is some question about the way Kodak used corporate power in this situation. There are a lot of anti-poverty people in churches who are interested in what is happening and who want to make sure this issue is not kept to Rochester but is raised in other communities to make certain other corporations do not do the same type of thing.⁷⁵

The task force also took it upon itself to arrange transportation for concerned college students wanting to support FIGHT at the Flemington meeting. Robert Maurer, a student at New York’s Union Theological Seminary, took the lead in organizing these student groups. He expected to enlist “busloads of students from about 15 colleges, including the University of Rochester, Princeton and Cornell.”⁷⁶

Aware of this massive organizing effort, Kodak executives prepared to defend themselves at the April meeting. In Rochester, William Vaughn, now Kodak’s chairman of the board, practiced and rehearsed his role in the confab by answering questions aggressively delivered by his executives role-playing as “angry militants.”⁷⁷ There was good reason for his preparation; the New York Times reported of the event, “When Eastman Kodak Co. President Louis K. Eilers takes the microphone tomorrow at the annual meeting here he’ll be living a corporation president’s nightmare. In the audience will be angry civil rights workers and ghetto organizers, intent church officials, and private citizens—all stockholders of Kodak and supporters of a militant Rochester Negro Organization.”⁷⁸ Kodak’s preparations were not limited to formulating answers to shareholder questions, but were also devoted to developing a full-fledged security and public relations campaign. In advance of the meeting, reported the Rochester Times-Union, “copies of Vaughn’s remarks along with statements about Kodak’s employment programs were packaged for distribution to guests as they left the meeting. Kodak guarded them ahead of time for fear they might be used against the company by its critics during the meeting.” The company also “augmented its usual staff with extra public relations men and 21 security guards from its 250-man force in Rochester.”⁷⁹

Meanwhile, FIGHT continued both its organizational planning and its bluster. Florence declared that the civil rights movement was dead and that something new was needed to replace it.⁸⁰ He, along with the FIGHT leadership, believed the proxy strategy in the hands of Black Power organizations was just that something new. Once again, this posturing—asserting that FIGHT was on the cutting edge—drew the national television crews to FIGHT events. Bob Schackne of CBS assured the FIGHT organization that he would cover the events at Flemington and that perhaps some premeeting filming in Rochester was necessary. FIGHT too prepared for the upcoming meeting. Staff and volunteers made placards and posters; bus captains were assigned and given instructions for keeping order en route to and in Flemington; and perhaps most importantly, opportunities for resolution with Kodak were continually considered. Most of the parties involved, and some that were not, hoped for a pre-Flemington resolution. Even New York Republican senator Jacob Javits tentatively entered the fray, asking the Justice Department to intervene and mediate. Though tight-lipped about how such a resolution might come about, Javits and his team announced they were working on it. It is unclear whether Javits had an inside track to the FIGHT organization, but the local papers reported that he scheduled a meeting with Kodak executives in advance of the Flemington event to discuss the ongoing dispute.⁸¹ While FIGHT had prepared mightily for Flemington, the organization realized it was “in a situation … where the threat of a demonstration is greater than the demonstration itself.”⁸² Nonetheless, without a satisfactory resolution, FIGHT pressed on.

Buttressed by all this ballyhoo, FIGHT did not fail to deliver. With busloads of supporters, all equipped with placards and signs, and proxy forms in hand, FIGHT descended upon Flemington. In tightly disciplined ranks, the FIGHT supporters, who came from Rochester, Chicago, Boston, and New York City, carried signs warning, “Industry AVOID Rochester, NY” and “Broken Promises—Hot Summer.” Others announced, “K.K.K. Kindly Kodak Klan,” “Kodak 61,000 Employees, Token Negroes,” and “The Right to a Job Transcends the Right to Profits.”⁸³ Supporters also identified themselves geographically, educationally, and professionally by carrying identifiers such as “Princeton on Principle,” “Priest for FIGHT,” and simply “Jersey City.” They marched from the Kodak offices downtown to the high school auditorium where the annual meeting was set to take place. The demonstrators did not speak, did not answer questions, and did not deviate from their instructions. FIGHT leadership brought with them from Rochester a sound truck with speakers, microphones, and a platform for addressing the crowd that gathered (see figure 5.1).

Awaiting the coming commotion, Flemington officials took several precautions on the day of the event, canceling classes for the high school’s students and scheduling the town’s full police force for duty. Kodak, too, brought its own security forces to patrol the meeting and the grounds. The World Journal Tribune reported, “Heavy security was in effect as the meeting opened in an atmosphere of tension. All persons entering the school had been stopped twice—once to show their credentials and register, and again while waiting for a guard to escort them inside in small groups.”⁸⁴ The effect on this small, rural, New Jersey town was impressive, with the New York Times and news outlets across the nation running multiple photos of the spectacle the following day.

Amid the reporters and camera crews, FIGHT president Franklin Florence stormed into the shareholders meeting, interrupted the proceedings as soon as they began, and demanded to know if Kodak would honor the signed December 20th agreement. Without allowing Vaughn or Eilers a chance to answer, Florence gave the leaders two hours to discuss their response before he returned. This time frame also provided sympathetic shareholders an opportunity to question Kodak on the agreement and the company’s labor policies. As Florence exited the meeting, portions of his supporters followed him out, while others stayed to question Eilers, Vaughn, and Kodak’s legal team. Having thoroughly organized and rehearsed their actions, FIGHT came prepared with color-coded flags to indicate to supporters what their next step should be.⁸⁵ There was little disorder or hesitation as Florence left. The meeting continued with shareholders addressing pointed questions to Kodak’s leadership. The leaders repeated the standard line—they could not legally or in good conscience honor the December 20th agreement, but they had implemented many other programs to address the labor needs of the hard-core unemployed in Rochester.

Outside, Florence and Alinsky were in their element, both making passionate speeches to the crowd and the media (see figure 5.2). Alinsky announced to reporters, “Eastman Kodak is going to make Bull Connor look like an integrationist.”⁸⁶ He further “called upon all groups interested in civil rights to sell their stock in companies not favorable to civil rights and invest their money in those firms that are friendly to the Movement.”⁸⁷ Meanwhile, Florence reminded the nation that temperatures (and tempers) were cool in April, but that soon “the long hot summer” would be upon them. His now famous refrain that “what happened in Rochester this summer lies at the foot of Eastman Kodak” garnered the media attention that FIGHT had come to expect. Newspaper headlines the following day from Kansas City to Boston reported “the threat of racial violence” if Kodak continued its present course.⁸⁸

At 2:00 p.m., Florence returned to the auditorium, interrupting the shareholders meeting a second time to demand an answer to his previous question: “Would Kodak honor the agreement?” In an equally loud and clear voice, reportedly to the great cheering of Kodak employees and loud, angry boos from FIGHT supporters, William Vaughn repeated his answer: “No.” Expecting no less, Florence exited the meeting to reveal FIGHT’s next move to the crowd outdoors and, of course, to the national media gathered nearby. He promised to organize a national Black Power pilgrimage to Rochester. The date of this event, he announced, would coincide with the third anniversary of Rochester’s 1964 uprising, arousing latent fears that further outbreaks of racial violence were on the horizon. Florence, of course, only alluded to the possibility, but nearly all parties jumped on the reference.

Not to be outdone, Kodak also announced its next steps in the wake of the shareholders meeting. It seems management understood that the problem was largely one of public opinion. Their proposed solution involved making a $15,000 donation to the Flemington high school, where it had held the controversial meeting, and hiring Uptown Associates, a Black-owned advertising company to “explor[e] methods of giving better service to all our markets, including the ethnic market.”⁸⁹ That the New York Times covered this development suggests just how tarnished Kodak’s reputation was at the close of the shareholders meeting (see figure 5.3).

Whether or not Kodak executives feared Florence’s threat of a Black Power pilgrimage to Rochester on the anniversary of the 1964 uprising, others in the state certainly did. New York had suffered disproportionate losses financially as well as in reputation during the early rebellions, both in Rochester and in Harlem. State officials could not in good conscience watch another one in the making. Senator Javits already had a failed intervention on his hands. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, famed sociologist responsible for the 1965 “Moynihan Report,” interceded in the months that followed, imploring Kodak to go back to the bargaining table.⁹⁰ As director of the Joint Center for Urban Studies at Harvard University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a reputed expert on urban turmoil, Moynihan was as likely as any to intercede. He was acquainted with Kodak’s assistant counsel, who reportedly asked the future senator to come to Rochester to discuss conditions.⁹¹ By June, just weeks before the pilgrimage was scheduled to take place, Kodak quietly made a working agreement with FIGHT to implement job training and employment for Rochester’s hard-core unemployed. Despite the limited gains in the agreement—Kodak only agreed to a generic commitment to work with FIGHT in devising joint projects for Black employment and training—FIGHT claimed the victory.⁹²

The immediate struggle between FIGHT and Eastman Kodak came to an anticlimactic close in June 1967, at FIGHT’s annual meeting, a year after the Black Power organization decided to approach Kodak with a proposal for jobs. The local outcome of this struggle cannot be overstated. Constance Mitchell recalled that in Rochester,

it stood for opening the door to employment. And I think what opened the door to employment was going to Flemington, and bringing Kodak to its knees. And then when Kodak was brought to its knees, all of the sudden, General Motors and Strong and everybody else said, “You know, if they can bring Kodak to their knees, they can bring us to our knees. So maybe we need to open this door a little bit wider and offer some more entry level jobs.” So I think that the manufacturing community came together and said, “Let’s make sure that this door stays open, now that it’s open.” … I think that FIGHT forced their hand in Flemington, and I think the Kodak and the manufacturers decided to open up that door afterwards.⁹³

The focus on jobs and training for African Americans, the sense of communal obligation for employment opportunities, and the realization that corporations needed to adjust their sense of responsibility began a series of marked changes in Rochester. As Mitchell noted, entry-level jobs opened to African Americans at a never-before-seen rate. But perhaps more importantly, the economic thrust of Black Power had been established. This victory for FIGHT established the organization as a formidable, if not entirely respected, player in Rochester’s power structure. That victory also led to the further implementation of Black economic opportunities and development.

The exchange in Rochester, however, had implications well beyond that Northern city. The extensive coverage in the Wall Street Journal, Business Weekly, and the New York Times prompted a national debate over corporate responsibility and racial equality. FIGHT provided an opening salvo in a struggle to force corporations to act responsibly toward the poor and unemployed in the communities in which they operated. Business Weekly, perhaps more than any other publication, grasped the national significance of the FIGHT-Kodak conflict. In a summary article, the journal gave credence to Minister Florence’s earlier boast that the civil rights movement was dead and that FIGHT’s strategies would replace it: “The Kodak situation dramatically reveals that today’s ghetto-bound, militant urban Negro may generate even more problems for business than the civil rights struggle in the South created.… Kodak’s dealing with Fight [sic], in fact, starkly dramatize the clash of modern, radical Negro tactics with well-meaning but traditionalist business attitudes.”⁹⁴

That business corporations had a responsibility extending beyond traditional philanthropy to the communities in which they operated was significant in and of itself. But the implications of FIGHT’s accomplishment extended beyond new visions of corporate morality and responsibility. The proxy strategy adapted by the FIGHT organization became a staple in the arsenal of activists over the next forty years. As students and antiwar activists came to challenge corporate underwriting of the war in Vietnam, colonialism in the third world, and apartheid in South Africa, the Rochester strategy would find new audiences.⁹⁵ Further, well-meaning church groups now possessed a successful example for supporting social and political causes across the globe. The same churches that supported FIGHT involved themselves in South African protests and refused to purchase supplies and services from companies that would not affirm equal employment opportunities. Buoyed by the Rochester success, these groups went so far as to create pamphlets for purchasing agents that listed companies with responsible hiring practices.⁹⁶ A new age in Black Power, corporate responsibility, and church involvement in economics and politics had dawned.