“While we fight for economic gains to meet our members’ material needs, we can also produce cultural programs to enrich their lives and deepen their understanding,” founding 1199 President Leon Davis, once said.

“A good union doesn’t have to be dull,” was the mantra of EVP Moe Foner, the iconic cultural impresario and founder of 1199’s Bread and Roses (B&R) Project. Foner did more than any 1199er to cultivate relationships with a host of progressive artists.

In 1979, Academy Awardwinning actor Jane Fonda appeared alongside Foner at a press conference held inside the Union’s New York City headquarters. Fonda read James Oppenheim’s poem Bread and Roses, recalling the 1912 textile workers strike in Lawrence, Massachusetts.

Undoubtedly, the two most legendary artists widely associated with 1199’s alliance with the arts & entertainment world in the early days were writers, producers, and activists Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee. The celebrated duo were often at the center of productions featuring other acclaimed artists, including Sidney Poitier, Ricardo Montalban, Maya Angelou, and Lee Grant.

In a 1953 black & white silent film about Local 1199 that dramatizes union life, we see members applauding a live performance by two African American artists – novelist and playwright Alice Childress and Beah Richards, later nominated for an Academy Award for her portrayal of Sidney Poitier’s mother in the film Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner?

Shortly after that film was produced, Davis and Dee began their annual 1199 Negro History Week productions. The first starred Dee and a young Poitier—the first African American to win a Best Actor Oscar. Veteran 1199ers noted how the productions deepened their understanding of, and appreciation for the struggles Black and Brown hospital workers who would soon join the 1199 family faced.

Comedian Dick Gregory, folksinger Pete Seeger, jazz drummer Max Roach, singers Nina Simone and Abby Lincoln, as well as actors Will Geer and John Randolph—all performed throughout the early years of the hospital organizing campaign as well.

During the hospital organizing campaign in 1962, the Committee for Justice to Hospital Workers elected iconic writer James Baldwin as vice-chair. Together with committee chairs A. Philip Randolph and Joseph Monserrat, Baldwin wrote a letter to The New York Times condemning hospital officials’ refusal to permit a unionrepresentation election.

The union also used artists and their work culture to generate public support. In 1967, it produced a celebrated film that movingly dramatized the plight of service workers and the vast improvements that came with unionization.

Like a Beautiful Child was directed and produced by John Schultz, a CBS TV editor who earlier had made Hospital Strike about the 46-day strike that established 1199 as the city’s foremost healthcare union.

The next year, 1199 won the historic hundred-dollar-minimum wage, big improvements in health benefits, and a Training Fund that became the envy of the country’s unions and non-profits.

Music has always been central to 1199. For decades, members arriving at 1199 rallies were greeted by the Bronx R&B band GQ. Other musicians who have performed at 1199 events include jazz great Ella Fitzgerald, South African anti-apartheid activist Miriam Makeba, legendary folk musician Pete Seeger, blues and folk singer Odetta, Afro-Cuban drummer Mongo Santamaria, and folk musician Joan Baez. During the historic 1963 March on Washington in which she performed with Bob Dylan, Baez took a photo wearing an 1199 cap.

Milton Glaser, who created the iconic “I Love New York” logo, was among the many well-known visual artists who worked with 1199. He was a lifelong friend of Foner and worked closely with Esther Cohen, Foner’s B&R successor. It was Cohen who commissioned Glaser to produce B&R’s popular “ORGANIZE” poster. Glaser was also a member of B&R’s board of advisors.

During B&R’s inaugural year, the union sold out Lincoln Center’s Avery Fisher Hall for Harry Belafonte’s first New York City appearance in 18 years.

“1199 means a great deal to me,” Belafonte told the cheering crowd.

“I come here with passion and sentiment. On every issue worth fighting for, 1199 has been there.

I have to be involved with 1199 as long as there is an 1199.”

In 2011, Belafonte assumed leadership of B&R when he was 84-years-old. He held that position until his death in 2023.

In recent years, some of the loudest applause at 1199 events has been reserved for actor-activist Danny Glover.

“I’m here to be with the people who are sick and tired of being sick and tired—who want to sit down with the employer and say, ‘Let’s talk about what’s fair,’” he shouted to loud applause a year later at a Pocono Medical Center rally in East Stroudsburg, PA. “‘Let’s talk about what’s being done to decimate the working class.’”

More recently, it’s not unusual to see hip hop artists at 1199 events. Bronx rapper and actor Fat Joe performed at a March 21, 2023 Albany rally to save Medicaid funding. He was cheered on by 15,000 members while being joined on stage by fellow Bronx rapper and songwriter, Remy Ma and Long Island’s Rakim, originally of Eric B and Rakim.

The power that cultural allies can bring to help turbocharge the movement has never been lost on 1199 members. Indeed, turning out in solidarity with fellow union members to protect Union rights and level the playing field with the rich and powerful doesn’t have to be dull.