Summer-Fall 2001
Millie Jeffrey, tireless champion for justice
Photo by Lisa Spindler
"In the early sixties, I was at an NAACP convention in Chicago. Mayor [Richard] Daley had said there were no ghettoes in Chicago--imagine that! Then there was a newspaper photo of my daughter being carried off to jail in Baltimore, where there had been a big civil rights demonstration at a [segregated] amusement park. So what to do? I sent her a telegram. It said something like "You have my full support." She showed it to [her cell mates] and told them, 'Well, my family thinks what we're doing is O.K.' When your daughter is arrested, you want her to know that you have her in your thoughts."
When Bill Clinton presented Mildred Jeffrey '32 with the 2000 Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation's highest civilian honor, the tall president had to bend almost double to congratulate the diminutive 89-year-old labor leader.
But when it comes to the things that count--courage, energy, vision, and public service--Millie Jeffrey is a giant. Indeed, the Mildred Jeffrey Collection at Wayne State University--where she served on the board of governors for 16 years--runs to 63 linear feet of documents, on subjects ranging from civil rights to consumer protection to women in the labor movement.
When Jeffrey was still Mildred McWilliams, studying psychology as a College of Liberal Arts (CLA) undergraduate during the Depression, she began testing her political wings as a young socialist and member of the Women's International League For Peace and Freedom. The campus YWCA to which she belonged ("one of the most radical groups on campus at the time") took a public stand in favor of racial integration, and so did she. With an African-American classmate, she worked to desegregate some restaurants near campus where black diners were not welcome.
A few months later, a photo of Millie marching in support of Socialist party leader Norman Thomas appeared on the front page of the Minneapolis newspaper. Her younger sister, Arlene McWilliams Swain, recalls that in those days, just saying the word "socialist" could get your mouth washed out with soap: "There I was in Catholic grade school, and there was a picture of my big sister in the newspaper, picketing for a socialist!"
In Jeffrey's view, that Catholic upbringing helped shape her political ideals, developing in her "a strong sense of caring and compassion." That sense of caring--honed by education both in the classroom and in the trenches, coupled with uncommon stamina-- would lead Jeffrey from her Iowa roots to the forefront of the labor, civil rights, and women's movements throughout the next seven decades. Her friends would include the likes of Hubert Humphrey and Martin Luther King, as well as Geraldine Ferraro, whose historic U.S. vice presidential candidacy she helped orchestrate.
With a B.A. from the U and a master's degree from Bryn Mawr, in 1934 Jeffrey began a decade of work as a labor organizer in the troubled garment industry. In the 1940s, she joined the NAACP and helped to organize Americans for Democratic Action. As returning World War II soldiers displaced the women workers who had filled the ranks of industry, Jeffrey--who already had distinguished herself as a tough but compassionate labor leader--organized the first UAW Women's Conference as the director of a new arm of the United Auto Workers (UAW) union, the Women's Bureau.
"My underlying goal was always to empower women," she says. "Get them to learn their rights--and to exercise them!"
Serving in the administrations of two presidents (Kennedy and Carter), Jeffrey continued working tirelessly to enlarge the economic and political opportunities of women, workers, and people of color. In 1971 she cofounded of the National Women's Political Caucus and eagerly joined the fight for ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment.
A self-described "Midwest product" and the eldest of seven children, Jeffrey credits her mother as "an inspiration and a mentor." "She was determined that all of her children would be college-educated," says Jeffrey admiringly, so she moved the family from a small Iowa town to Minneapolis for educational opportunities.
At Minneapolis's Central High School, Jeffrey was senior class vice president and a member of several clubs, including "something called the CCC. That stood for courtesy, consideration, and cleanliness," she laughs. "I still pick up papers on the street."
Reflecting on her accomplishments, Jeffrey is a little impatient with those who try to plumb the wellsprings of her extraordinary character. "I wasn't always inquiring as to my inner motives," she huffs. "I just did it."
As for her future, she doesn't plan to slow down any time soon. "I will retire,"she says flatly, "when I die."