E.T "Al" Kehrer oral history interview, February 10, 1995

Interviewed by Marcia Fishman: Al Kehrer discusses his family background, including the Americanization of German Americans after World War I as well as growing up in Detroit, Michigan. He also speaks of his interest in the labor movement and the influence of teachers such as Florence Sweeney, first president of the Detroit Federation of Teachers (DFT), and Max Jaslow, who taught night classes to the United Auto Workers (UAW). Kehrer found many opportunities for childhood employment during the Great Depression. He bluntly discusses religion and churchmen (Henry Hitt Crane, Father Joseph Marx, Father Coughlin) and their influence on working class people. Kehrer also discusses radicalism in the 1930s and the Young Socialists League. He served in the U.S. Merchant Marine during World War II and afterwards was sent by David Dubinsky to the Southern Department of ILGWU as a labor organizer. Kehrer also discusses the ILGWU Institute’s role in labor education. He talks frankly about Nick Bonnano and his role as an organizer while Kehrer was regional director of the ILGWU. He compares labor unions and workers in the Southern United States, the Caribbean, and Southeast Asia. When discussing attitudes toward unionization Kehrer says, “I don’t remember any situation in which the black workers were anti-union.” The important issues Kehrer discusses concerning race relations include the Civil Rights Act; the Ku Klux Klan; the Civil Rights Movement, sit-ins, and especially the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC); the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP); and the Amalgamated Clothing Workers.