Early Days

Not knowing what to do with the bankrupt National Pencil Company, owner Sigmund Montag sold his company to his son-in-law Monie Ferst in 1919. In 1931, Mr. Ferst would move his company, now renamed to Scripto, to a new location on Houston Street in Sweet Auburn that by the 1940s had an employee base of nearly all working-class Black women. Indeed, Scripto counted itself as one of the earliest Atlanta companies to hire Black employees for work on the assembly line.1

This 1911 Sanborn map depicts the location of the National Pencil Company, the precursor to Scripto and has been circled on the map by the author. The National Pencil Company was located on N. Bell Street.
The precursor to the Scripto was the National Pencil Company depicted here on N. Bell Street and has been circled.2
The author has circled the location of the Scripto plant on this Sanborn map. The Scripto company was the successor to the National Pencil Company and was located on historic Houston Street N.E.
Circled in this image is the location of the Scripto company after it relocated onto historic Houston Street (now John Wesley Dobbs Avenue) in the Sweet Auburn district.3

That the plant had been well accustomed to labor organizing and action by the 1964 strike was no fluke. The immediate decades after World War II saw the growth of greater workplace democracy. Rather than let corporate power and influence go unchecked, unions would represent the interests of the rank and file and successfully deliver material benefits to their working-class bases.4 This is one story of ordinary employees doing the extraordinary: unionizing against all odds to demand a higher standard of living once thought to be exclusive only to the upper classes.

The United Steelworkers of America (USW) led the first recorded unionization effort of Scripto’s employees in 1940. Although initially unsuccessful, the USW tried again in 1946 and unionized the employees after beating out the International Association of Machinists (IAM). Having received a charter from the national USW union, the unionized employees then founded Local 3748. 5 Beginning on October 7th, 1946, the Local led over 80 percent of the then 600 employees out on strike for “vacations with pay, [an] eight-hour day, wages, and union security.” The primarily Black, female employees on strike would not go at it alone: at least by the strike’s second day, a committee of the Atlanta Baptist Ministers’ Union would endorse the strike. After months of police violence and declining financial resources from the union, the strike ended on March 22nd, 1947. Of the over 500 who originally struck, only nineteen were allowed back, and Local 3748 thereafter became inactive.6

In the 1950s, another promising opportunity for labor organizing lay in the company’s diversifying its output. Coinciding with a product expansion that now included ballpoint pens and lighters, Scripto opened a new ordnance division in 1951 to make explosives for the army. The following year, the USW and the IAM again attempted to organize the workers at the new plant amidst hostility from company head Steven V. Carmichael who reportedly would rather “let the machinery rust out before he would allow [any] union to come in.” The majority Black, female workforce voted to revitalize the defunct Local 3748 of the USW on May 7th, 1953, but this victory was short-lived. Scripto fired women who had been most enthusiastic for a union and would not work with the union to secure a new contract. The final nail in the coffin came when the company stopped producing ordinances in 1954.7

This picture on the left depicts a single male employee of Scripto working with machinery. The image is dated to April 1953.
Dated to April 1953, a single male Scripto employee is working with machinery.8
This picture on the right dated to April of 1953 presumably depicts four male employees of Scripto in the foreground.
Also dated to April 1953, four Scripto male employees are smiling for the camera in the foreground.9

Third Time’s a Charm

Having caught a whiff of union-friendly sentiments in the early 1960s, Scripto management sought to stymie what would be the third unionization campaign in company history. On May 21st, 1963, Scripto lawyer A. G. Cleveland, Jr. noted in an internal memo the presence of union organizers on three separate occasions on company grounds. In one of those instances, a white man and a Black man were seen passing out authorization cards to the white employees.10 An authorization card is a non-binding document that a worker may sign to give a union permission to negotiate working conditions on their behalf with management. Minimally, 30 percent of workers must sign cards to authorize a union election.11 Clearly, those organizers had their eyes set on gathering the requisite number of signed cards. Several weeks later in June, Attorney Cleveland, Jr. in another memo recommended surveilling at least ten union-sympathetic employees.12

This is a memo dated to June 14th, 1963 from company lawyer A. G. Cleveland, Jr. A paragraph that the author has circled in blue recommends surveilling employees suspected of being too union-friendly.
This is the memo dated to June 14, 1963 that has been referenced above. Circled in blue is a concerning paragraph about employee surveillance. Keeping tabs on union-friendly employees is not a sign of a healthy workplace.

The next development came on September 11th, 1963. Surprisingly, Scripto Vice President John E. Aderhold delivered a speech that expressed approval for an election on the 27th that would decide whether the employees wanted representation from the International Chemical Workers Union (ICWU). In a display of benevolence, Aderhold justified his stance on the belief that the “democratic way of life is the correct way of life.” Moreover, he reemphasized the benefits Scripto supposedly already offered, which included a company-paid pension, medical insurance, bonuses, and paid off days. Those pesky, outside union organizers causing “mounting tensions, confusions, and false rumors” could not be trusted.13

This is an excerpt from a speech Scripto Vice President J. E. Aderhold gave just over two weeks before the union election. The sections marked with blue are particularly telling. Aderhold's employees are led to believe how good they have it already in comparison to their peers. Aderhold may have well have asked, "Why risk losing it all for some union?"
This is an excerpt from a speech Scripto VP Aderhold gave just over two weeks before the union election. The sections marked with blue are particularly telling. Aderhold’s employees are led to believe how good they have it already in comparison to their peers. Aderhold may have well have asked, “Why risk losing it all for some union?”

Well versed in corporate obstructionist tactics, the ICWU handed out a flyer the very same day as Aderhold’s speech to remind employees of their solemn right to be unionized. The document laid out the following corporate machinations to be vigilant for:14

  1. Threaten layoffs should the election come in favor of the union.
  2. Avoid contract negotiations with the union.
  3. Move operations to less union-friendly locales.
  4. Slash wages and benefits.
  5. General ploys to coerce employees to vote “no” for a union.

Such illegal actions violate the 1935 National Labor Relations Act guaranteeing workers the “right to self-organization, to form, join, or assist labor organizations, [and] to bargain collectively through representatives of their own choosing …”15 To a primarily Black, female audience in the Deep South, the lines in the flyer asserting “Scripto employees are not slaves! They are entitled to the same rights and protection any other American citizen enjoys!” would have been poignantly resonant. Amidst the ongoing Civil Rights Movement, the connection between economic rights and the right to live free from Jim Crow segregation would not have been lost on those women. The upcoming election was a vote for dignified treatment.16

This was the handout the ICWU had planned to give out to Scripto employees on the same day Vice President Aderhold gave his speech discouraging his employees from voting "yes" for the union. At the top of the image is a date "September 11, 1963" that has been underlined twice in blue. Towards the bottom of the image is a circled portion that reminded Scripto employees of their fundamental right to unionize.
This ICWU handout was given out to Scripto employees on the same day (see the blue underlines at the top of the image) Vice President Aderhold gave his speech discouraging his employees from voting “yes” for the union. The circled portion must have aroused many sentiments in employees who refused to bow to Scripto’s “Stooges,” “little Judases,” and “Company pets.”
This picture is a close-up of the bottom right corner of the original Sanborn map. The author has circled in blue the location of the historic Forsyth Building at the intersection of Walton and Forsyth Streets. This building used to house the offices of the ICWU.
Zooming in on this Sanborn map reveals the historic Forsyth Building (now Forsyth-Walton Building) that was the location of the ICWU office in Atlanta and has been circled in blue. The map itself does not actually name the circled building, but we can deduce that this is the right place since the Forsyth Building is located on the intersection of Walton St. N.W. and Forsyth St. N.W.17

On the anticipated election day, 953 employees casted their ballots out of a total of 1,004 eligible voters; that amounted to an impressive voter turnout rate of 94.9 percent. In the end, the months-long unionization campaign paid off because 519 voted “yes” for union representation versus the 428 who voted “no.” The remaining five ballots submitted were inconsequential to the final result. Immediately, Scripto raised a formal objection to the result on October 4th, 1963 in a challenge to the expressed democratic will of its employees. The company accused union organizers of deliberately whipping up race-based anxieties over Black safety and wellbeing by encouraging employees to close ranks and vote “yes” for the ICWU to demonstrate loyalty to the Black race. On the basis of an atmosphere “not conducive to a sober and informed exercise of the franchise,” Scripto argued to have the results nullified. Walter C. Phillips, the National Labor Relations Board’s (NLRB) Regional Director for the Tenth Region, had supervised the election and found no merit to the objection and contended that the ICWU was the rightful representing party for Scripto employees.18

The months-long, back-and-forth legal campaign between company counsel (anti-union election certification) and Regional Director Phillips (pro-union election certification) ended on June 9th, 1964 when the NLRB sided in favor of Phillips’ findings and approved the ICWU as the representative for Scripto employees. Not one to go down lightly, the company on July 2nd, 1964 requested that the Board convene a hearing to let the company make its case, but the Board shot down this last-ditch attempt at delaying the election result’s ratification.19 Still one to spite its employees, Scripto refused to negotiate a new contract for several months afterwards. That left employees with little left but this: a strike.20

The Strike and its Aftermath

In late November 1964, Local 574 of the ICWU went on strike on issues of “protocol, racial discrimination, and wages.” Right before doing so, the local had rejected the company’s blatantly discriminatory contract offer. Scripto insultingly proposed that its primarily Black, female workforce deserved only a measly 2 percent raise because those workers did not qualify for the higher raise afforded to “skilled” workers.21 Even if the women did not come with postsecondary degrees or years of technical training, no one can deny the invaluable teamwork, precision, and efficiency they brought onto the factory floor every day.22

Come that December, the strike gained momentum. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. publicly came out in support of the strikers and mobilized his Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to boycott the company. In addition, the prospect of potentially violating affirmative action policy further increased the pressure. Around the time of the strike, the federal government had already contracted Scripto to produce writing implements. Under former President John F. Kennedy’s Executive Order 10925 (1961), contractors were forbidden from discriminating against their workers on the basis of race or skin color. Scripto risked forfeiting those lucrative government contracts if found in violation of the executive order. To the shock of the ICWU, Dr. King clandestinely negotiated with the new Scripto CEO Carl Singer and reached a settlement by early January 1965. In return for ending the strike and boycott, Scripto agreed to recognize Local 574 of the ICWU, pay Christmas bonuses, and raise everyone’s wages by four cents.23

Although Scripto would continue to have a working relationship with the ICWU for the rest of the 1960s, the end was nearing. By early 1978, Scripto moved operations to Doraville and left behind a vacant, ten-acre shell of a factory complex in downtown Atlanta. In November of 1984, Scripto became “Scripto Tokai” to reflect its new Japanese corporate owner, Tokai Seiki. In the following years, Tokai Seiki closed down the Doraville plant, moved production across the country to Southern California, and then settled down in Tijuana, Mexico. The old downtown Scripto factory breathed its last breath in 1995 when Tokai Seiki subsidized its demolition. A parking lot for the Martin Luther King Jr. Museum lies above the dust of a bygone era.24

  1. Thomas Allan Scott, Cobb County, Georgia and the Origins of the Suburban South: A Twentieth-Century History, 1st ed. (Marietta, Georgia: Cobb County Landmark & Historical Society, Inc., 2003), 207, https://soar.kennesaw.edu/handle/11360/3388; Joseph M. Thompson, “Pens, Planes, and Politics: How Race and Labor Practices Shaped Postwar Atlanta,” in Reconsidering Southern Labor History: Race, Class, and Power (Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 2018), 225, https://muse.jhu.edu/pub/227/edited_volume/book/59212. ↩︎
  2. Map 472. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia. Sanborn Map Company, 1911. Map. https://digitalsanbornmaps-proquest-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/browse_maps/11/1377/6154/6520/97554?accountid=11226. ↩︎
  3. Map 236. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia. Sanborn Map Company, 1932-1950. Map. https://digitalsanbornmaps-proquest-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/browse_maps/11/1377/6156/6529/98416?accountid=11226. ↩︎
  4. William E. Scheuerman, “Why Unions Matter,” in A New American Labor Movement: The Decline of Collective Bargaining and the Rise of Direct Action (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2021), 11–16, https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&AuthType=ip,shib&db=nlebk&AN=2717562&site=eds-live&scope=site&custid=gsu1. ↩︎
  5. Thompson, “Pens, Planes, and Politics,” 226; “All About Unions,” Workplace Fairness, accessed April 23, 2024, https://www.workplacefairness.org/labor-unions/. ↩︎
  6. Thompson, 226; Ruth L. Cornelius, “Scripto Strike Continues; Company Writes Workers,” Atlanta Daily World (1932-), October 9, 1946, 1 https://www.proquest.com/hnpatlantadailyworld/docview/490803969/abstract/EF6B2A8CCCA44B53PQ/3. ↩︎
  7. Thompson, 229-230. ↩︎
  8. Scripto Employee Working with Machinery, photograph, Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection, 1920-1976. Photographic Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, accessed April 25, 2024, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/lane/id/12707/rec/6. ↩︎
  9. Four Scripto Employees Posing for the Camera, photograph, Lane Brothers Commercial Photographers Photographic Collection, 1920-1976. Photographic Collection, Special Collections and Archives, Georgia State University Library, accessed April 25, 2024, https://digitalcollections.library.gsu.edu/digital/collection/lane/id/12557/rec/9. ↩︎
  10. “Company Memo,” May 21, 1963, Folder 1, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records (L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA. ↩︎
  11. “Understanding Union Organizing and Union Authorization Cards” (University of Tampa), accessed April 25, 2024, https://www.ut.edu/uploadedFiles/Academics/Provost/Unionization/Fact-Sheet-1-Understanding-Union-organizing-and-union-card-FAQ.pdf; “Your Right to Form a Union,” National Labor Relations Board, accessed April 25, 2024, https://www.nlrb.gov/about-nlrb/rights-we-protect/the-law/employees/your-right-to-form-a-union. ↩︎
  12. “Re: Scripto, Inc.- Union Matters,” June 14, 1963, Folder 1, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records (L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA. ↩︎
  13. “Business News Notes: Appointments,” The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution (1950-1968), Sunday Ed., January 15, 1961, 44, https://www.proquest.com/hnpatlantaconstitution2/docview/1643936794/abstract/3E58699CDBC84EB3PQ/1; “J. E. Aderhold Speech,” 1-3, September 11, 1963, Folder 1, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA. ↩︎
  14. “What You May Expect Scripto To Do During The Next Few Days!” September 11, 1963, Folder 3, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records (L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA. ↩︎
  15. “National Labor Relations Act,” National Labor Relations Board, accessed April 25, 2024, https://www.nlrb.gov/guidance/key-reference-materials/national-labor-relations-act. ↩︎
  16. “What You May Expect Scripto To Do During The Next Few Days!” Scripto Strike Records, Special Collections at GSU Library; Thompson, “Pens, Planes, and Politics,” 232. ↩︎
  17. Map 7. Sanborn Fire Insurance Map from Atlanta, Fulton County, Georgia. Sanborn Map Company, 1931-1950. Map. https://digitalsanbornmaps-proquest-com.eu1.proxy.openathens.net/browse_maps/11/1377/6156/6528/98289?accountid=11226; Stephannie Stokes, “Historic Building Facing Demolition Renews Atlanta Preservation Debate,” WABE, October 28, 2015, https://www.wabe.org/historic-building-facing-demolition-renews-atlanta-preservation-debate/. ↩︎
  18. “Report on Objections,” 1-2, October 9, 1963, Folder 5, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records (L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA; “Order Remanding Proceeding to Regional Director,” 1-2, February 5, 1964, Folder 5, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records (L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA. ↩︎
  19. “Order Denying Motion,” July 23, 1964, Folder 5, Box 1, Scripto Strike Records (L2003-01), Special Collections at GSU Library, Atlanta, GA. ↩︎
  20. Thompson, “Pens, Planes, and Politics,” 232. ↩︎
  21. “Three Issues Jell In Scripto Strike,” The Atlanta Journal and the Atlanta Constitution (1950-1968), Sunday Ed., November 29, 1964, 74, https://www.proquest.com/hnpatlantaconstitution2/docview/1636081555/abstract/F7A00CD2B9DC48DCPQ/2. ↩︎
  22. “There’s No Such Thing as a ‘Low-Skill Worker,’” National Fund for Workforce Solutions, January 6, 2022, https://nationalfund.org/no-such-thing-as-low-skill-worker/. ↩︎
  23. Thompson, “Pens, Planes, and Politics,” 232-233; “Affirmative Action,” LII / Legal Information Institute, accessed March 7, 2024, https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/affirmative_action. ↩︎
  24. Thompson, 233. ↩︎