Making Good Trouble: MIKE RICH

 

By Susan O'Leary

It is a joy to work with Mike Rich on the neighborhood People's World route each week in Fair Haven. Mike has been a member of the Communist Party for many years and recently stepped up his involvement in the current political environment. I've attended several rallies with Mike from advocating immigrant rights to pushing Yale to justly fund their unions.

Mike was born in 1946 to a family that worked the land as sharecroppers. JT Reeves was the former plantation owner in Camden, Alabama. Forced to go to work at an early age to help his family of nine, he was unable to finish high school. He was paid $2 a day for his labor working from 6 am to 6 pm.

Becoming an adolescent in the 1960s, Mike was aware of the Civil Rights Movement and the pressure to fight for rights such as voting and better working compensation. He couldn't understand how his father put up with the treatment he endured to try to support his family.

There was a lot going on around him. John Lewis marched across the Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama. Martin Luther King was there and dogs were unleashed on them along with police brutality and powerful water hoses. Mike wasn't at that march because his mother warned it was too dangerous.

However things in neighboring Camden were just as disturbing. He had a gun put to his head just by driving past a white woman with friends in a car. Paused for a moment, Mike stepped out of the car and was confronted by a white man with a gun.

His younger brother, able to attend school and gain an education, was murdered by the Ku Klux Klan for advocating for his peers. They knocked him in the head and disposed of his body in a neighboring deep pond. The Ku Klux Klan didn't like young Black men to be educated. His friends that were with him remained silent because they feared retaliation. Mike was 19 when this incident happened. He had already left the area and moved to Syracuse, NY for better working conditions and to flee the dangers in the South. There were other incidents. A neighbor was lynched and accused of rape for talking with a white woman. After hanging the young man they tied his body to a railroad track.

In Syracuse Mike got $2 an hour instead of $2 a day. He came back to Alabama for the legendary march in Selma. After that he went to Florida and worked in a lumber job. After one and a half years he came back to Alabama and started work on the railroad moving throughout the South. From Camden he went to Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina and Virginia. The pay was decent and he worked primarily with African American men. He worked with the railroad another year and a half.

Next he went to New York to meet up with his younger brother in Harlem. There he worked as a short order cook in a restaurant. He tried having his own restaurant but it was too difficult to juggle all the responsibilities.

After that he worked in the garment district for three years. This was a union job and the pay was lucrative. He was introduced to his future wife Olivia by a co-worler who encouraged him to meet his sister in New Haven. The engagement lasted two years before he settled in New Haven. He got a job at Circuit-Wise and this was when he met Joelle Fishman, Art Perlo and the Communist Party. The workers at Circuit-Wise went on strike for union recognition led by Dorothy Johnson. Joelle and Art walked the picket line. The People's World was distributed weekly. Art gave lessons to understand the class struggle. The strike lasted 19 months before the UE 299 union was established. Mike worked at Circuit-Wise until they relocated to Mexico. After unemployment he started working at a hotel on Long Wharf in New Haven.

Unfortunately Mike lost his wife Olivia from a diabetic coma. They worked together at Circuit-Wise. They had one daughter who had seven children. Mike and Olivia raised his grandson. He has many grandkids now and he is very proud of their achievements. His daughter's twins just graduated from Amistad Academy. His grandson is working on his master's degree. Olivia and Mike helped raise his daughter's children and now he has a great granddaughter named Olivia after his wife.

Mike was honored with a lifetime achievement award at the age of 75 at the Communist Party national convention in 2024 in Chicago. At a recent rally a young girl came up to him and in tears thanked him for all he's done with his active life. We in the Communist Party are blessed that Mike is still with us at the age of 80. It is a pleasure to know and work with him.