Ewart Guinier

Ewart Gladstone Guinier (May 17, 1910 – February 4, 1990) was a Jamaican-American educator, lawyer, and labor leader.

He was the founding chairman of Harvard University's Afro-American Studies department, now known as the Department of African and African-American Studies.

Ewart Guinier was born to Howard and Marie-Louise Beresford Guinier on May 17, 1910, in the Panama Canal Zone.

His parents were Jamaican immigrants living under segregation in the Canal Zone; his father worked as a lawyer and real estate agent, and his mother was a bookkeeper.

Following his father's death in 1919, his mother emigrated to Boston.

Guinier joined her there in 1925, when he was 15 years old.

He attended Boston English High School.

After high school, Guinier studied at Harvard College, beginning his freshman year in 1929.

Guinier was one of only a few Black students at the university at the time, and he faced pervasive discrimination, including exclusion from the dormitory system and being ruled ineligible for financial aid.

He later told The New York Times that upon his arrival on campus, he received a letter stating that his request for off-campus housing had been approved – despite the fact that he had never made such a request.

Guinier experienced outright social ostracism from white classmates, but was able to make friends with Black upper-class men, including Robert Weaver and Frank Snowden.

He became a member of the Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity in 1930.

As the Great Depression took hold, Guinier struggled to afford the costs of his education, and decided to leave Harvard after his sophomore year.

He moved to New York City to finish his degree tuition-free at City College, taking night classes while working a day job as a freight elevator operator at the New York Times building.

The New York City locals left the SCMEA in the mid-1930s, to join the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) as the State, County, and Municipal Workers Union (SCMU).

Guinier served as chairman of the SCMU for the New York State region.

During World War II, Guinier served in the Army in the Pacific.

When he returned to New York, he resumed his involvement with the labor movement.

Guinier graduated summa cum laude in 1935, then went on to earn a master's from Columbia University's Teacher's College in 1939.

In 1935, Ewart Guinier began working as head of the Men's Service Rating Bureau, part of the New York City Department of Welfare.

Two years later, he took the Civil Service examination and became an examiner at the same department.

He went on to a post as Chief of the Civil Service Commission.

Guinier's involvement with trade unionism began while he was at the Rating Bureau: he and other Black employees were only hired on a temporary basis, and they organized to advocate for permanent status.

Guinier would become the first chairman of the Rating Bureau local of the State, County, and Municipal Employees of American (SCMEA).

In 1946, after a merger with a Washington-based union, the SCMU had become the United Public Workers (UPW).

Guinier served as a regional director for the UPW, then as secretary treasurer for its New York district.

In 1948, he became international secretary treasurer – a position that made him the second-highest-ranked official in the union.

Black workers made up one third of the UPW's membership, and the union's organizing efforts combated the racist and discriminatory practices of federal and state employers.

In 1949 Guinier ran for Manhattan Borough President on the American Labor Party ticket, the first Black candidate to be nominated for that office by any party.

His campaign was chaired by attorney Hope Stevens, who wrote that the campaign "would put an end to the lily-white standards of other political parties which have long denied the Negro people of New York political representation in our city government."

Guinier's platform was pro-labor and antiracist.

He promoted policy ideas that would support fair employment practices and root out housing discrimination.

He received 38 percent of the votes cast in that race, and lost to the Democratic Party candidate, Robert Wagner.

In 1950, in the midst of a nationwide red scare, the UPW was purged from the CIO because of its connections to the Communist Party.

Guinier would write in 1951 that "the U.S. government is the nation's biggest Jim Crow employer."

It was dissolved in 1953.

Guinier continued to be active in labor and community organizing both nationally and locally.

He helped to found the Harlem Affairs Committee in 1953, and the Jamaica Coordinating Council in 1962.

He was also involved in Communist organizations, including the Harlem Trade Union Council, which he co-founded with Ferdinand Smith, and the National Negro Labor Council, where he was a founding member and a vice president.

In 1956, already midway through a career in labor organizing and politics, Guinier returned to graduate study and completed a law degree from New York University in 1959.