“We have no more time for war, or exploitation, or poisoning the earth. We must learn to live together now.”
Ernest Thompson Looking at an early draft of our timeline of 400 years of inequality, New School Professor Michael Park observed, “We see many terrible things in this timeline, but we also see that great advances have occurred when people created coalitions.”
Our project has selected Homeboy Came to Orange because it tells a story of building people’s power by using coalition. Randy Shaw, in a review of the third edition, wrote: “Despite 50th anniversary stories on the Civil Rights movement and new African-American history museums, many stories of African-Americans overcoming urban racism in the north remain little known. That makes this book on Ernest Thompson, a great community and social justice organizer, particularly important.” |

Ernest Thompson grew up on the Eastern Shore in Maryland. As he became aware of injustice, he swore that he would find power to change the situation. He journeyed north during the Great Migration and found work in factories. Conditions were terrible and was low. Ernie began to organize. It took many struggles to win solid union representation in the American Radiator plant where he worked. His local joined the United Electrical Radio and Machine Workers of America.
He became the first African American to be a full-time paid organizer with UE. He headed UE’s Fair Employment Practices.
As a leading civil rights figure, he helped to build the National Negro Labor Council, which fought for equal employment for African Americans. NNLC led protests that helped to desegregate Sears Roebucks and other stores, the airlines, and the railroads.
McCarthyism devastated both UE and NNLC, and in 1956 Ernie found himself out of work and living in the small city of Orange, NJ. He was terribly depressed, but his wife Maggie got him organizing again, fighting school segregation. Success in eliminating a hateful gerrymander led to larger political campaigns to win black representation in city government and to use that power for the good of the city.
What was crucial to Ernie’s success as union organizer and as a community organizer was that he became skilled at using the tool of coalition. He was able to build powerful coalitions within the Black community and to take that base into the central arena, building coalition to win advances for all.
Ernie was quite ill at the end of his life, but he clung to life until he was able to finish his book. He believed that separatists had no solutions for the problems facing our world. He wrote, “We have no more time for war, or exploitation, or poisoning the earth. We must learn to live together now.”
Ernie was quite ill at the end of his life, but he clung to life until he was able to finish his book. He believed that separatists had no solutions for the problems facing our world. He wrote, “We have no more time for war, or exploitation, or poisoning the earth. We must learn to live together now.”