Hosts Nicole Franklin and Bryant Monteilh introduce listeners to 100-year-old Merrill Pittman Cooper. This is the story of a strike, a scurrilous stepfather and a suicide from the first African American president of the Philadelphia transit workers union, Local 234.
Hosts Nicole Franklin and Bryant Monteilh bring audiences a voice from the aftermath of the 1944 Philadelphia transit strike that shut down the city and disrupted the war effort at the time. White workers were determined that Black workers would not be promoted from the back rooms to train and trolley conductors. At 100 years old Merrill Pittman Cooper shares his very candid view as an African American driver hired just one year later during very tumultuous times. He eventually meets his wife while driving the bus and he retires having served as the first African American Philadelphia transit workers union president. Mr. Cooper's story is an American story. And, there's one question Mr. Cooper has that continues to linger.