{{Short description|American labor leader and public speaker (1890–1949)}} {{About|the IWW organizer|the colonial governor|Benjamin Fletcher|the member of an English music duo|Aquilo (band)}} {{Use American English|date=April 2026}} {{Use mdy dates|date=April 2026}} {{Infobox person | name = Ben Fletcher | image = Photograph of Ben Fletcher 13126 - NARA -117703309 - cropped from source edit.jpg | caption = Fletcher's Leavenworth Penitentiary mugshot, September 1918 | birth_date = {{Birth date|1890|04|13}} | birth_place = Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, U.S. | death_date = {{Death date and age|1949|07|10|1890|04|13}} | death_place = Brooklyn, New York City, U.S. | occupation = {{hlist|Union activist|longshoreman}} | years_active = 1913–1949 }} '''Benjamin Harrison Fletcher''' (April 13, 1890 – July 10, 1949) was an early 20th-century African-American labor leader and public speaker. He was a prominent member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW, or the "Wobblies"), a left-wing trade union which was influential during his time.<ref>{{cite news|title=FREE 38 I.W.W.'S ON BAIL.; Haywood and Others to Leave Prison Pending Court Review.|url=https://www.nytimes.com/1919/04/03/archives/free-38-iwws-on-bail-haywood-and-others-to-leave-prison-pending.html|newspaper=The New York Times|date=April 2, 1919}}</ref><ref name=":0">{{Cite web|last=Cole|first=Peter|date=2020-12-01|title=The Great Black Radical You've Never Heard Of|url=https://inthesetimes.com/article/ben-fletcher-iww-wobblies-worker-organizing|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201201191459/https://inthesetimes.com/article/ben-fletcher-iww-wobblies-worker-organizing|archive-date=2020-12-01|access-date=2020-12-02|website=In These Times|language=en}}</ref><ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> Fletcher co-founded and helped lead the interracial Local 8 branch of the IWW’s Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union.<ref name=":0" />
==Early life== Benjamin Harrison Fletcher was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on April 13, 1890.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> He worked as a day laborer and a longshoreman, loading and unloading ships.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Seraile |first=William |title=Ben Fletcher, I.w.w. Organizer |date=1979 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/27772602 |journal=Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies |volume=46 |issue=3 |pages=212–232 |jstor=27772602 |issn=0031-4528}}</ref> Fletcher joined the IWW and the Socialist Party around 1912.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Cole|first=Peter|date=2003-03-01|title=Quakertown Blues: Philadelphia's Longshoremen and the Decline of the IWW|url=https://lh.journals.yorku.ca/index.php/lh/article/view/5512|journal=Left History: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Historical Inquiry and Debate|language=en|volume=8|issue=2|doi=10.25071/1913-9632.5512|issn=1913-9632|doi-access=free}}</ref> Shortly thereafter, Fletcher became a leader of the IWW in Philadelphia, beginning a career in public speaking that won him many accolades.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography">{{Cite web|date=2003-09-26|title=Fletcher, Ben, 1890–1949|url=http://libcom.org/history/articles/1890-19-ben-fletcher|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201115195841/https://libcom.org/history/articles/1890-19-ben-fletcher|archive-date=2020-11-15|website=libcom.org|language=en}}</ref>
== Local 8 ==
Fletcher, along with other Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) members, co-founded Local 8 of the Marine Transport Workers Industrial Union in Philadelphia in 1913.<ref name=":0" /> The local was unique in its time for being interracial, with about one-third of its members African American, another one-third Irish American, and the remaining one-third largely composed of other European immigrants.<ref name=":0" /> Upon its formation, Fletcher helped lead Local 8.<ref name=":0" /> Its members espoused anti-capitalist and anti-racist rhetoric, and were subject to red-baiting by dockyard bosses and local government officials.<ref name=":0" /> By 1916, all but two of Philadelphia's docks were under IWW control.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> Local 8 exercised considerable control of Philadelphia's waterfront for about a decade.<ref name=":0" />
== Subsequent organizing efforts == Following the successful organization of Local 8 in Philadelphia, Fletcher traveled up and down the U.S. eastern seaboard on behalf of the IWW.<ref name=":0" /> In a 1931 ''Amsterdam News'' interview (his only known interview), he recounted his escape from a potential lynching in 1917 while trying to organize a union among dock workers in Norfolk, Virginia.<ref name=":0" /> From there he fled to Boston, where he continued his organizing activities for a brief period.<ref name=":0" />
== Treason arrest and sentence == [[File:A GROUP OF I. W. W. CLASS WAR PRISONERS 1921 Trim.jpg|thumb|right|Fletcher (front row, second from right) amongst a group of I.W.W. prisoners, June 1921|318x318px]] While in Boston, Fletcher learned he was to be indicted for labor organizing.<ref name=":0" /> He returned to Philadelphia where he said that he "preferred to be placed under arrest."<ref name=":0" /> Upon his return, Fletcher and 165 other union activists were publicly indicted.<ref name=":0" /> At the time, the IWW had about a million members, including 100,000 black workers who were rejected from other unions such as the American Federation of Labor. Fletcher was arrested on February 9, 1918, and held with a $10,000 bond.<ref name=":0" /> Two weeks later, the district attorney reduced the bond to $1,500, which was promptly paid for by the IWW.<ref name=":0" />
Fletcher was charged with treasonous activities, and was the only Black person among the 166 IWW members tried.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> While no direct evidence of treason was provided against him, Local 8, or even the IWW (most of the "evidence" consisted of statements expressing the IWW's anti-capitalist beliefs, rather than any planned actions to interrupt the war effort), all of the defendants were found guilty—the jury came back in under an hour, all guilty on all counts.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /><ref name=":2">{{Cite journal|last=Seraile|first=William|date=1979|title=Ben Fletcher, IWW Organizer|url=https://journals.psu.edu/phj/article/view/24112/23881|journal=Pennsylvania History: A Journal of Mid-Atlantic Studies|volume=46|issue=3|pages=221|jstor=}}</ref> Fletcher was fined $30,000 and sentenced to ten years in the Leavenworth federal penitentiary in Kansas.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> As the sentences were announced, IWW leader Bill Haywood reported that, "Ben Fletcher sidled over to me and said: 'The Judge has been using very ungrammatical language.' I looked at his smiling black face and asked: 'How's that, Ben? He said: 'His sentences are much too long.'"<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /><ref name=":2" /> While in jail, Fletcher's release became a cause célèbre among Black radicals, championed by ''The Messenger'', a monthly magazine co-edited by A. Philip Randolph.<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Randolph|first=A. Philip|date=December 1919|title=Class War Prisoners|url=https://babel.hathitrust.org/cgi/pt?id=uc1.c2904887&view=1up&seq=357&q1=BEN%20FLETCHER|journal=The Messenger|volume=2|issue=2|page=19|via=HathiTrust}}</ref> Fletcher served for approximately three years before his sentence was commuted, along with most of the other jailed Wobblies, in 1922.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /><ref>Cole, Peter (2007). ''Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-era Philadelphia''. Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 90 {{ISBN|978-0-252-03186-1}}</ref><ref name=":2" />
== Post-release and death ==
After his release, Fletcher remained committed to the IWW, though he never played as active a role again as he had prior to imprisonment.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> He stayed involved in Local 8, but was not a central figure.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> During the 1920s, he collaborated with the Communist Party USA, where he clashed with Lovett Fort-Whiteman.<ref name=":1">{{Cite web|last=Kelley|first=Robin|date=2020-10-29|title=Ben Fletcher's One Big Union|url=https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/ben-fletchers-one-big-union|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20201111044225/https://www.dissentmagazine.org/online_articles/ben-fletchers-one-big-union|archive-date=2020-11-11|access-date=2020-12-02|website=Dissent Magazine|language=en}}</ref> Fletcher later denounced the CPUSA as insincere, and warned that it was trying to take over the IWW's unions.<ref name=":1" /> He continued to give occasional speeches on tours and street corners into the 1930s.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> Like other longshoreman, he faced health problems from a relatively young age.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> He subsequently moved to Bedford-Stuyvesant in Brooklyn with his wife, where he worked as a building superintendent, until he died in 1949.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" /> He is buried in Brooklyn, New York.<ref name="Ben Fletcher's biography" />
== Legacy == The union that Fletcher helped lead for a decade, Local 8, stands as a rare example of interracial equality in the early 20th century.<ref>{{cite news |author=Zapatita |last2=Dempsey |first2=Dean |date=August 10, 2006|title=Union International – The IWW and the Other Campaign|newspaper=Indybay|url=http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/10/18295932.php|url-status=live|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170923220236/https://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2006/08/10/18295932.php|archive-date=2017-09-23|access-date=2020-12-02}}</ref> On June 21, 2025, a Pennsylvania State Historical Marker was unveiled in Philadelphia commemorating Fletcher and Local 8.<ref>{{Cite Instagram |user=grittycitywobs |postid=DLOaM9-o_pw |title=On June 21, 2025, the Philadelphia IWW and @phillydsa unveiled a historical marker for Local 8 and Fellow Worker Ben Fletcher. |date=23 June 2025}}</ref><ref>{{cite web |title=Local 8, Industrial Workers of the World |url=https://www.pa.gov/agencies/phmc/historic-preservation/pa-historical-marker-program/approved-markers.html#q=Local%208&sortCriteria=%40copapwpyear%20descending |website=pa.gov/agencies/phmc |publisher=Pennsylvania State Historic Preservation Office |access-date=25 June 2025}}</ref>
== References == {{Reflist}}
==Further reading== *{{cite book|last=Arneson|first=Eric|title=Encyclopedia of U.S. Labor and Working-class History.|year=2007|publisher=Routledge|location=New York|isbn=978-0-415-96826-3}} *{{cite book|last=Cole|first=Peter|title=Wobblies on the Waterfront: Interracial Unionism in Progressive-era Philadelphia|year=2007|publisher=University of Illinois Press|location=Urbana|isbn=978-0-252-03186-1|url-access=registration|url=https://archive.org/details/wobbliesonwaterf0000cole}} *{{Cite book |last=Cole |first=Peter |title=Ben Fletcher|publisher=PM Press |year=2020 |isbn=978-1-62963-862-1 |edition=2nd |oclc=1222798643}} *{{cite book|last=Kimeldorf|first=Howard|title=Battling for American Labor : Wobblies, Craft Workers, and the Making of the Union Movement.|url=https://archive.org/details/battlingforameri0000kime|url-access=registration|year=1999|publisher=University of California Press|location=Berkeley, Calif.|isbn=978-0-520-21833-8}}
==External links== * [https://web.archive.org/web/20110228100851/http://www.iww.org/culture/biography/BenFletcher1.shtml Fellow Worker Ben Fletcher – A Legacy of Solidarity] in "Selected IWW Member Biographies" * [https://libcom.org/article/fletcher-ben-1890-1949 Ben Fletcher's biography] in Libcom.org
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{{DEFAULTSORT:Fletcher, Ben}} Category:1890 births Category:1949 deaths Category:Activists from Philadelphia Category:African-American trade unionists Category:American anti-capitalists Category:American anti-racism activists Category:Industrial Workers of the World members Category:Socialist Party of America politicians from Pennsylvania Category:20th-century African-American people Category:20th-century American trade unionists