President Henry Nicolas stands as an icon and a hero of America’s struggle for justice for the last 50 years.
But it wasn’t always the case. Born on a cotton plantation in Mississippi, the son of a sharecropper, Henry hopped a freight as a teenager all the way to the US Navy. He did his duty and wound up as an orderly in Mt. Sinai Hospital.
From there he began his journey to the highest ranks of the American labor movement and hero of Progressive America.
Henry became active in 1199 and began to learn organizing as he worked as a volunteer organizer doing all he could to build a union and a movement of hospital and health care workers. Within just a few years, Henry had organized 80 straight hospitals.
And he had built a national union.
Meanwhile Henry had also earned a seat at the leadership table of the Civil Rights Movement where he, Dr. King, A. Philip Randolph, Bayard Rustin, and Bill Lucy worked to connect labor and civil rights. Together, they built one strong movement for economic and social justice in America.
When Dr. King was assassinated, Henry determined to keep alive the dream of a powerful movement to change America.
A year after we lost Dr. King, Henry took a small group of organizers to the heart of the OLD Deep South in Charleston, South Carolina to organize hospital workers who lived on pennies an hour in wages. With Henry’s organizing and leadership, the workers organized striking for six months for union recognition and fighting to change their city and state. Henry lived under constant threat, even barely dodging death when his hotel was blown up. He also survived six months in an outdoor jail baked by the sun, tortured by the mosquitoes, surviving on no food but grits and water.
Henry founded the national union, and has led it boldly through a host of stormy waters to become one of the world’s most respected unions.
In the meantime, he lead the union’s most important organizing and bargaining campaigns and strikes.
Photo: A young Henry Nicholas, now president of AFSCME District 1199C, with Dr. King. (Courtesy 1199C Library)