A Life of Joyful Resistance
Originally published in 2018, this tribute honors educator and labor activist Beatrice Lumpkin, whose lifelong fight for justice continues to inspire following her passing at age 107.
Editor's Note (June 2026): We are republishing this article, originally published on Aug. 1, 2018, to honor the life and legacy of Beatrice Lumpkin, who died on June 14, 2026, at the age of 107. When this story first appeared, it celebrated her 100th birthday and the extraordinary example she set as an educator, labor leader and lifelong champion for justice. Today, her words and her unwavering belief in the power of collective action remain as relevant and inspiring as ever. We share this story in gratitude for her life and the lasting impact she had on generations of educators, workers and activists.
For her 100th birthday on Aug. 3, 2018, Beatrice Lumpkin is giving AFT members the gift of her life’s work as a warrior for social justice. No one exemplifies better than she a life devoted to education, trade unionism and democracy. But what’s particularly relevant right now is her buoyancy through struggles that no one should ever have to face. It’s right there in the title of her memoir, Joy in the Struggle. She is a joyful warrior.
First and closest to our members’ hearts is her work as a mathematics educator and member of the Chicago Teachers Union. After many years of blue-collar work in laundries, machine shops and assembly lines, Lumpkin became an accredited math teacher, first in the Chicago public schools and then as an associate professor of mathematics at Chicago City College. Part of her preparation included research into the origins of mathematics in Africa, so she could offset eurocentrism in math and science.
Lumpkin started early in her struggle to advance the labor movement. As a teenager, she joined the young people’s arm of the Communist Party. In 1934, while she attended Hunter College in New York City, the college tried to increase milk prices in its cafeteria, leading to Lumpkin’s first “Norma Rae” moment, she told People’s World. The 16-year-old freshman led a milk boycott.
“The boycott was a huge success,” she recalled. “Students massed around our table. I had to climb on top of a table to be heard. I did not realize that the dean of students had come into the lunchroom. … It was too late to be diplomatic; I am afraid that I had already called her a fascist.”
Her boycott worked so well that the next spring she helped lead a student strike to protest American militarism, for which she was suspended. Two years later, Hunter sent her home again, this time for helping organize an anti-fascist conference.
Her early career as an industrial worker is chronicled in the Chicago Reader, as are her early years in Buffalo and Chicago with her husband, Frank Lumpkin, a son of Georgia sharecroppers who became a professional boxer, laborer, merchant seaman, steelworker and eventual leader of the U.S. Communist Party. When Chicago’s Wisconsin Steel closed suddenly without paying its workers, he led a 17-year fight for justice. During that time, Beatrice chaired the Wisconsin Steel Workers Women’s Committee. She also became a founder of both the Coalition of Labor Union Women and the Alliance for Retired Americans.
Despite her joyful approach, Lumpkin’s life has been laced with struggle and pain, especially in the 1950s and ’60s, when she and her husband endured blacklists and red-baiting, union busting, unemployment and the vicious racism they faced in Chicago — a series of battles she chronicles in her biography of Frank, Always Bring a Crowd!
AFT members are lucky to have Lumpkin on our side. From the time she served as a poll watcher in 1936, at age 18, to her description of herself as “ecstatic” when Barack Obama first ran for president in 2008, she’s always stood with workers. Her favorite Obama T-shirt reads: “We are the ones we’ve been waiting for.” She loved the feeling of empowerment that took root in working-class neighborhoods and communities of color — a feeling in resurgence today with our democracy under threat.
Lumpkin encourages AFT members to stand up and fight for what’s right. “They’re trying to take away our safety net — trying to gut Social Security and take away our right to organize,” she says. “But we’re not going to let them take those things away.”
AFT President Randi Weingarten is marking Lumpkin’s birthday with praise for the centenarian. Lumpkin says the secret to her longevity is good luck, good genes and good doctors. Like the rest of us, Weingarten is awed by Lumpkin’s achievements in the labor movement. “I’m glad these stories are being told,” Weingarten says, calling on every AFT retiree to pass along the history of our union. Like Lumpkin, she urges us to find hope in the darkness and joy in the struggle. “If we believe that our rights mean something, we have the obligation to do everything in our power to save our democracy and to save the aspirations and values of working people,” Weingarten says. “Together we can accomplish what is impossible for us to do alone.”
There’s no argument from Lumpkin, who is looking forward to the midterm elections this fall.
“I feel so good about the young people today who are newly streaming into the political process,” she says. “They are changing the debate, and will help us rebuild labor and save public education.”
Story by Annette Licitra and Adrienne Coles / photos by Pamela Wolfe and the Illinois Alliance for Retired Americans
Republished with permission from AFT Voices.
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The AFT was formed by teachers more than 100 years ago and is now a 1.8 million-member union of professionals that champions fairness; democracy; economic opportunity; and high-quality public education, healthcare and public services for our students, their families and our communities. We are... See More
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