Velma Hopkins Quotes

American labor organizer

Velma Hopkins (February 24, 1909 – March 19, 1996) was an American labor rights activist. In 1943 she helped organize a strike against R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company, which attracted over 10,000 participants from Winston-Salem, North Carolina and led to the founding of the only union to be formed by Reynolds Tobacco employees. Hopkins was a leader in Local 22, a racially integrated union led primarily by Black women. Her efforts in fighting for higher pay and fair treatment made her a leader within the African American community of Winston-Salem.

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We'd go to singing and he'd say, "Velma, how can you sing? They're working the hell out of you." And I said, "I'm singing the hell out of you."...it made you forget how hard you were being worked and the treatment you were going through. Singing is something that is good for the soul, and we used to do lots of it. We had to.

They can say anything they want to about it, but we carried it out democratically. Ain't going to say we didn't make mistakes. Hell, I made mistakes, you have, and they did. But some of the mistakes they made, we talked about them.