J. Ernest Wilkins Sr.

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J. Ernest Wilkins Sr.
J. Ernest Wilkins Sr.
U.S. Assistant Secretary of Labor, 1954–58
Born(1894-02-01)February 1, 1894
Farmington, Missouri
DiedJanuary 19, 1959(1959-01-19) (aged 64)
Washington, D.C.
Resting placeLincoln Cemetery
Alma materUniversity of Illinois; University of Chicago
Known forLabor leader, Undersecretary of Labor, Civil Rights
Political partyRepublican
Spouse
Lucille Robinson
​
(m. 1922)​
Children3 sons, including J. Ernest Wilkins Jr.

Jesse Ernest Wilkins Sr. (February 1, 1894 – January 19, 1959)

African-American to be appointed to a sub-cabinet position in the United States Government and the first to attend White House cabinet-level meetings.[2][3]

After a falling-out with Secretary of Labor James P. Mitchell, Wilkins resigned from his sub-cabinet post in 1958, but continued to serve on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission.

Education and early career

J.E. Wilkins, 1918

Wilkins was the son of a Missouri Baptist preacher.

Phi Beta Kappa Society and then practiced law locally for several years.[4]

Public service

In 1954, Wilkins was appointed by President

Labor Secretary James Mitchell.[2][5] Wilkins had previously served the Eisenhower administration as acting chairman of the President's Committee on Government Contracts at the request of Val Washington.[6][7]

During his tenure with the administration he was a member of Equality Committee, working with E. Frederic Morrow, Val Washington, Joseph Douglas, James Nabrit Jr. and Samuel Pierce.[8] Still earlier he had been a member of Eisenhower's President's Committee on Governmental Employment Policy (PCGEP) board when he was with the Labor Department.[7]

In 1957, Labor Secretary Mitchell began working toward having Wilkins removed from his post, beginning by having Wilkins appointed to the U.S. Civil Rights Commission, where he became the first Black member.[9]

When Wilkins did not immediately resign, Mitchell applied pressure. He pushed back against a position paper that Wilkins proposed to deliver to the 1958 meeting of the U.N.'s International Labour Organization, then announced three days before the conference that Wilkins would be excluded from the meeting. Three days after the US delegation left for Geneva without him, Wilkins had a heart attack that hospitalized him for three months. Returning to work in July, 1958, he no longer had a full-time secretary.[9][10]

On August 5, 1958, Wilkins met with President Eisenhower to plead for his job, saying that he needed six more months to qualify for a civil service pension. (The Civil Rights Commission job was unpaid.) Eisenhower's response was that Mitchell was entitled to replace Wilkins. On November 6, 1958, Wilkins submitted his resignation and Mitchell named his replacement: George C. Lodge, the 35-year-old son of Henry Cabot Lodge.[10][11]

After resigning from his sub-cabinet post, Wilkins continued to serve on the Civil Rights Commission until his death two months later from another heart attack.[12][13][11]

While investigating charges that Black voting rights had been violated, his work with the six-member

Civil Rights Commission was hampered in Montgomery, Alabama when he was refused accommodation at the hotel where the other commission members were staying. He subsequently found a room for himself at Maxwell Air Force Base.[14] When the commission tried to subpoena county voting records, they discovered that then-Circuit Judge George Wallace had seized the records, and was threatening to jail any commission member who would interfere in his jurisdiction.[14]

Other achievements

In 1953, Wilkins became the first African American to serve on the nine-member Judicial Council of the

Methodist Church (which one, there are several, the United Methodist Church did not then exist and never has been the only one), when he was elected its secretary. The body is Methodism's nominal and administrative head.[15]

From 1954 to 1957, Wilkins served as U.S. representative on the governing body of the International Labour Organization.[3] In 1959, Wilkins also became the first African-American president of the Judicial Council of the Methodist Church.[3]

He also served as the Grand Polemarch (national president) of Kappa Alpha Psi Fraternity, Inc.[2]

Personal life

Lucille Robinson Wilkins, in her marriage announcement on December 2, 1922[16]

Wilkins married Lucille Robinson (b. 1899 (?) - d. November 1964, Brooklyn, N.Y., aged 65), who taught school in Chicago, was secretary to the women's division of the

Methodist Church, and who also practiced law with her husband for 33 years.[17]

Together they raised three sons:

Agency for International Development (AID);[4] and Julian B. Wilkins, who practiced general and corporate law.[17]

Wilkins died as a result of a

heart attack in Washington, D.C., in late January 1959, at the age of 64.[3]

Wilkins is the grandfather of two notable attorneys: David B. Wilkins, a professor at the Harvard Law School, and Timothy A. Wilkins, a partner with Freshfields Bruckhaus Deringer.[18] In 2010 Wilkins' granddaughter, Carolyn Marie Wilkins, a Professor at the Berklee College of Music in Boston, wrote of her grandfather and her family more generally in her biography Damn Near White: An African American Family's Rise from Slavery to Bittersweet Success.[19]

See also

References

  1. ^ Chicago Bar Record. Chicago Bar Association. 1959.
  2. ^ a b c d e "To the White House", Time, August 30, 1954
  3. ^ a b c d Milestones, Time, February 2, 1959.
  4. ^
    ISBN 978-0-7382-0318-8
  5. ISBN 978-1-58062-431-2
    ;
  6. ISBN 978-0-8420-2967-4
    ;
  7. ^
    ISBN 978-0-8153-2309-9
  8. ISBN 978-0-8147-7517-2
    ;
  9. ^
    ISBN 9781617037894
    . In the fall of 1957, Secretary Mitchell, according to reliable sources, indicated to aides his displeasure with Wilkins as head of the eighty-person staff that handled relations with labor leaders in seventy-nine countries, and revealed that he had been responsible for Wilkins's appointment to the newly minted U.S. Commission on Civil Rights as a means of easing him out...someone at the White House decided to make his resignation certain by planting with nationally syndicated columnist Drew Pearson a version of events patently intended to humiliate Wilkins...Wilkins was the third high-ranking Negro "dropped" by the [Eisenhower] Administration.
  10. ^
    ISBN 9780826272409
    . On August 5, 1958, J. Ernest met with Eisenhower...the president's secretary took notes:...'he wanted to stay on for another six months which would enable him to get a pension...on November 6, 1958, .. [he] formally submitted his resignation to the president.
  11. ^ a b Reports and Documents (1961) United States: Freedom of Communications: Final Report Part IV. USA: US Government Printing Office. 1961. Edward P Morgan and the News ABC, October 18, 1960...'Wilkins resigned as Assistant Secretary on November 8, 1959. [Henry Cabot] Lodge's son George was appointed to the job on the same day. There were reports at the time that Labor Secretary Mitchell had asked Wilkins to quit. Wilkins claimed he was quitting for personal reasons. He died 2 months later.'
  12. ISSN 0012-9011
    ;
  13. ^ Halpern, Aden (March 28, 2019). "J. Ernest Wilkins Sr.: A Legacy of Labor and Civil Rights Advocacy". US State Department News. Retrieved December 17, 2021. Wilkins resigned in 1958 but continued to serve the public as the first African American on the United States Civil Rights Commission.
  14. ^ a b Predictable Welcome, Time, December 15, 1958
  15. ISSN 0021-5996
    ;
  16. ^ Taylor, Julius F. (December 2, 1922). "The Broad Ax". No. 10. Retrieved 17 June 2015.
  17. ^ a b "This Week's Census: Died - Mrs. Lucille Robinson Wilkins", Jet, December 3, 1964.
  18. ^ "Race, Sustainability, and Social Justice: A Conversation with the Wilkins Brothers". Harvard CLP. Retrieved 2021-05-27.
  19. ISBN 978-0-8262-1899-5
    .

External links
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