Wilbur Hobby

Hobby returned to Durham in 1946. He took a job at the American Tobacco Company's plant in Durham as a machine oiler for 75 cents per hour and joined the Tobacco Workers International Union without much thought.[2] In fact, Hobby had developed some anti-labor sentiments during the war, viewing workers who went on strike as selfish while soldiers risked their lives defending the right to strike.[3]

Hobby credits a specific instance during a night shift as changing his attitude towards unions. His tasks suddenly were split onto two floors instead of just one, making it extremely difficult to get everything required done in the allotted time. When he asked a friend what to do about the situation, Hobby was referred to their union representative. A day later, all was back to normal, and Hobby had discovered how a union could provide security and stability in the workplace. He went to the next meeting simply to express his gratitude, and he guessed that he ended up going to every successive one for the next fifteen years.[1]

Hobby's interest in the union was duly noted, and he was soon elected president of the plant's night shift. Hobby's tenure was short-lived, however, because he was called back into the U.S. Navy in 1950 during the Korean War. He served for 18 months. During this time period, Hobby's opinion on racial issues began to take on their mature form. During the Korean War, Blacks were not required to eat at separate tables from whites (President Truman legally desegregated the armed forces in 1948). Despite his expectations of an awful experience, Hobby decided to sit with two Blacks one day. Reflecting back on the experience years later, Hobby said, "I was visibly surprised when I didn't feel any physical pain. I was … twenty-five years old and expecting physical pain just because I sat down and ate with them".[1]

Upon his return to Durham, Hobby decided to enroll at Duke University, where he studied political science and labor economics. He combined this with his old job at the tobacco plant and also became the editor of the Durham Labor Journal, a pro-union publication. Feeling overworked, Hobby dropped out of Duke a semester short of graduation in 1955.[4]

This aided Hobby's rise in the labor movement. Already well-versed in the North Carolina political scene, Hobby was appointed Southern political director of the Textile Workers Union of America in 1958, and became director of the AFL-CIO Committee on Political Education (COPE) for the seven southern states of Alabama, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, North Carolina, South Carolina, and West Virginia (comprising Area 3) only one year later. Hobby spent the 1960s organizing the spread of unions in the South and promoting AFL-CIO-endorsed candidates for public office. He also strove to become president of the North Carolina chapter of the AFL-CIO, and was successful on his fourth attempt in 1969. Hobby considered the previous president, Milton Barbee, too timid to lead the organization into the future.

Hobby's first union leadership position at the American Tobacco Company's local plant was his stepping stone into politics. He was elected president of Voters for a Better Government (VBG), an officially non-partisan, but Democratic-leaning, Durham-based organization in 1949. Uniting liberal academics from Duke University and North Carolina Central University with laborers of all races, VBG helped elect the progressive Dan Edwards as Mayor of Durham. Hobby became part of the Durham County Democratic Party power structure, and he soon involved VBG in the 1950 Senate race, which pitted conservative Democratic candidate Willis Smith against Frank Graham, the former president of the University of North Carolina, who had been appointed to the position. Smith won with a campaign that characterized Graham as pro-integration and as likely pro-communist.[3]

Hobby was frustrated by the obvious racial undertones of the loss and concluded he had to work harder to develop a message that would unite, not split, white labor and Blacks. VBG's efforts to register more Blacks increased under his leadership, with Hobby working with Dan Martin, a Black political organizer to try to end the Jim Crow system that prevented Blacks from exercising their rights as citizens.[1]

Hobby continually ran into the same racial issues in politics, particularly when he served as southern director of the AFL-CIO's Committee on Political Education (COPE) from 1958 to 1969. The Durham United Political Education Committee (DUPEC) allied with conservative businesspeople to eliminate Hobby's and his allies' control of the Democratic Party. DUPEC accused Hobby of "selling their jobs to the NAACP".[4]

Throughout North Carolina, white unionists flocked to segregationist gubernatorial candidate I. Beverly Lake in the 1960 election, and many supported Alabama Governor George Wallace in the 1960 and 1964 Presidential elections. Hobby used his position at COPE to fight back against the segregationists, rallying support around candidates including Al Gore Sr. in Tennessee and Claude Pepper in Florida. He also spearheaded the AFL-CIO's endorsement of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in the South, a position that initially ran counter to many of the candidates he backed. Hobby said, quite bluntly, "Civil rights are not [just] Negro rights. Civil rights are the human rights of every citizen".[4]

Over the course of a quarter century, Hobby developed a number of political allies, and forged relationships with a unique cross-section of the population. In 1972, he became the first union leader to run for governor in North Carolina history. Hobby knew he was an underdog, and hoped to use his candidacy to bring his populist viewpoints into mainstream political conversation. His campaign slogan was "Let's Keep the Big Boys Honest".

A champion of the underprivileged, Hobby felt that relative tax rates were unjust and bad for the middle and lower classes.[4] He believed that enough revenue was collected to create a useful pool of government services, but the wealthy were paying too little and the poor too much for them to have any meaningful impact on people's lives. He argued that setting the amount of state taxes due as a progressive proportion of the federal income rate owed would rectify the situation. Hobby also opposed existing sales taxes on food and medicine, which he thought unfairly targeted the least fortunate.

Hobby called for expanded vocational programs for North Carolina's students, but opposed those who wished to technically train students from the very beginning of their educational careers.[5] He felt that the purpose of the education system was to produce well-rounded individuals and capable citizens. He also wished to help more of North Carolina's students obtain at least some college training by having the state of North Carolina match pre-existing federal funds for community colleges, a plan that was not popular at a time when more than half of the state's high school graduates went on to no further schooling.

North Carolina provided one of the lowest qualities of life for its citizens of any state in the early 1970s. Twenty percent of residences were classified as having inadequate plumbing or being overcrowded, with far more substandard by other measures.[5] Hobby's political agenda in this area was complicated by the fact that three quarters of these housing units were located in rural areas. Hobby wanted to increase the amount of funding for projects in cities, too, so there was no single solution. His goal was to create a third path for impoverished rural folks that did not involve accepting a substandard status quo or being forced into cities.

Hobby's liberalism was evident in his views on a host of other foreign and domestic policy issues. He opposed the war in Vietnam,[5] called out Blue Shield and Blue Cross for their extreme rate hikes,[3] and supported the Equal Rights Amendment (ERA), which passed Congress the year of his campaign (1972). Despite the initial opposition of the AFL-CIO, Hobby helped push the organization to reverse its stance on the ERA, which it did publicly in 1973.[1]

Hobby could not overcome his late start, lack of funding, and policy views that were to the left of what was a conservative electorate, even in a Democratic primary. He tried to organize debates, but his campaign was not important enough for other candidates to feel the need to reciprocate. One illuminating event involved a speech on the state capitol grounds about a week before the election. Labor was expected to bus in thousands of supporters, but only 250 people attended. Even with the small crowd, Hobby gave a blistering speech about the issues plaguing the little guy in North Carolina politics.[3] He came in last in the primary with 7% of the vote, and the only municipality he won was Chapel Hill. However, his candidacy did help cause a runoff between the two frontrunners, Hargrove Bowles and Pat Taylor.[3] Hobby also maintained that his cause helped the unions, bringing attention to the workers' issues in an anti-union state.[6]