Ernest McBride, Sr.

Who was Ernest McBride, Sr.?

Ernest McBride, Sr. was a Long Beach civil rights activist and community leader. McBride was born on Nov. 20, 1909, one of seven children of a Mississippi Delta farmer. At age 8, the family moved to Arkansas, where the children attended segregated schools. It was at the all-black Scipio A. Jones High School in Little Rock where McBride first learned about Mahatma Gandhi’s model for peaceful protest of injustice.

After graduation, McBride played briefly with the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro National League, but soon headed to California in search of better jobs and higher wages.

At his first job on an all-black crew loading cotton onto ships in San Pedro Harbor, McBride discovered that his crew as making less than the previous workers—Latinos, who had been fired after asking for raise. McBride quit and fought to unionize all shipyard workers, regardless of race.

Later, while working as a supermarket janitor, he helped bring in a store clerks’ union although he was never able to join the union himself. Among the many injustices he fought were attempts to bar him and his wife, Lillian, also active in the movement, from purchasing a home on Lemon Avenue in Long Beach in 1948.