Alexis Herman, a Democratic insider who grew up in quarantine in Alabama, has become the first Black Labor Secretary to help resolve a crippling strike by United’s parcel service workers. She was 77 years old.
Her death was announced by her family after a brief illness. The announcement did not say where he died in Washington.
President Bill Clinton was familiar with Herman when he nominated her for Labor Secretary in her second term. She was the CEO of the 1992 Democratic National Convention. After winning the 1992 presidential election, he was deputy director of Clinton’s transition team. and during his first term at the White House was the public liaison director.
When he nominated her for Secretary of Labor, President Clinton mentioned her work at the Public Liaison Bureau, a grassroots organizer of supporting administrative policies. “She was my eyes and ears,” he said. “I work to connect American people, businesses, labor, individuals and communities with government.”
Herman was only three months after running the Labor Department in early August 1997 when 185,000 UPS workers delivered hobling packages nationwide.
Mr. Herman spent five days in a Washington hotel room to convince the leaders of UPS and Teamsters Union to focus on the issue.
“I wasn’t trying to get subtle,” she told the show “today” after the 15-day strike. “I was trying to be very direct. I moved with them.”
Joseph McCultin, a labor historian at Georgetown University, said Herman’s role in resolving the strike helped to alleviate tensions between the Clinton administration and the labor movement over issues such as the impact of the North American Free Trade Agreement.
Herman also played a role in his efforts to cut down on sweat shops by creating a code of conduct and surveillance system for American companies that make apparel overseas. She helped to support two increases in the minimum wage and helped pass the 1998 Labor Force Investment Act. This is an overhaul of the vocational training program.
During her tenure, the unemployment rate fell to its lowest level in 30 years.
“We saw the efforts of Alexis’ champions to increase diversity in government and the workplace and encourage young people to become involved in politics,” said Robert Reich, in a statement.
Alexis Margaret Herman was born on July 16, 1947 in Mobile, Alabama. Her father, Alex Herman, owned an insurance company. He also owns the Chattanooga White Sox, a black minor league team, and signed his first professional contract to future Hall of Fame pitcher Satchel Page.
Herman was a civil rights activist, Democratic politician and mobile ward leader.
After Herman and her father visited the pastor on Christmas Eve when they were five years old, their car was driven off the dirt road by one person driven by a member of the Ku Klux Klan. She recalled that her father handed her a small silver pistol he had brought for protection when he traveled to a community meeting.
“He told me, ‘If anyone opens this door, I want you to pull this trigger,'” she told the Chicago Tribune in 1997.
He closed the door behind him and confronted the Clanman who beat him.
About a year later, Herman was walking home with his mother. My mother was so tired that she decided to take the bus the rest. When they boarded, her mother collapsed from fatigue in the front seat. The bus driver told her to move behind the bus.
But she couldn’t- or could not–and the driver took her out of her seat, opened the door and shoved her into the street.
“Tears in her eyes, tears of stockings and struggled to get down her knees, she held her head high and said, ‘Now Alexis, we’ll continue walking,'” Herman wrote in an essay included in the anthology My Mother’s Daughter (2024), edited by Paulette Nobel Lewis.
Herman was educated in a parochial school to avoid the need to attend a separate school.
After graduating from Xavier University, Louisiana with a bachelor’s degree in sociology in 1969, Herman was hired as a social worker at Mobile Catholic Charities. With that job, she persuaded the city’s shipyard in Pascagoura, near Pascagoura, Michigan, to give apprentices to young black workers.
She moved to Atlanta, directed the Southern Regional Council program and lobbyed businesses to hire white women.
The program attracted the attention of the new Carter administration. In 1977, she was appointed director of the Labor Bureau’s Women’s Bureau. This represents the needs of working women.
After President Jimmy Carter lost his re-election bid in 1980, Herman founded a consulting company with Ernest Green, one of nine black students who separated Little Rock High School in 1957, and advised businesses on marketing and minority employment issues. She soon began meeting influential black politicians, including civil rights leader and former Atlanta mayor Andrew Young. Pastor Jesse Jackson took part in the 1984 and 1988 presidential campaigns. Ronald H. Brown became chairman of the Democratic National Committee in 1989. Herman has become a lieutenant.
When Herman was nominated for Secretary of Labor, her confirmation was supported for months by a Senate investigation into whether influential Democrat donors used the Public Liaison Bureau to help them sue special interests to gain access to President Clinton. Some Republicans also raised past claims that they led federal contracts and grants to their peers near the end of President Carter’s term.
She was cleaned up and confirmed by the 85-13 Senate.
In 2000, after nearly two years of investigation, an independent prosecutor cleared the charges of her former business partner that she accepted kickbacks in the awarding of a federal contract while she ran a public liaison office.
In a statement at the time, President Clinton claimed that Ms Herman had done nothing wrong and was “prideful to call her my friend.”
His marriage to Charles Franklin ended in 2014 with his death. She was survived by her stepchildren, Charles Franklin Jr., Michelle Franklin and Shelly Smith, and cousin Bernard Broads.
After serving in the Clinton administration, Herman founded consulting firms, new ventures, and served on the boards of Coca-Cola, Entelgee and other companies. She was also co-chair of the Bush Clinton Katrina Fund after Hurricane Katrina in 2006 and joined the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund board of directors after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti.
She is named after the private and women’s rights activists who were president of the Dorothy I. Height Education Fund and her leader.
In a statement, National Urban League president Mark Morial praised Herman, who was the senior vice-chairman of the organization’s board of directors. Her “commitment to empowering underserved individuals and marginalized communities,” he said, “it was fierce, authentic and unwavering.”
