Labor / Civil rights & activism
Myra Wolfgang
1914–1976 · labor leader, women's rights activist
Detroit organizer of waitresses and hotel workers, nicknamed the Battling Belle of Detroit, who helped lead the 1937 Woolworth sit-down strike.
- Born
Montreal, Quebec- Died
- Birth name
- Myra Komaroff
- Also known as
- Battling Belle of Detroit
- Detroit years
- 1915–1976
- Field
- Labor, Civil rights & activism
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Myra Komaroff was born in Montreal in 1914 to Lithuanian Jewish immigrants and came to Detroit as a baby, growing up in a family whose real estate business did well enough to move to a large home on Westminster Avenue. After studying commercial art in Pittsburgh she returned to Detroit in 1932 and, looking for work in the Depression, became involved with Local 705 of the waiters' union. In 1937 she helped organize and joined the successful sit-down strike by the young women clerks at the F. W. Woolworth store in downtown Detroit, one of the most publicized actions of that strike-filled year. In the 1940s and 1950s she ran the Detroit Joint Council of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union and became an international vice president. She fought for minimum wages and fair treatment for waitresses, maids and other low-paid women, and in 1974 chaired the founding of the Coalition of Labor Union Women. Detroit's press called her the Battling Belle of Detroit. She died in 1976.
Highlights
- Helped organize the 1937 Woolworth sit-down strike in downtown Detroit
- Led the Detroit Joint Council of the hotel and restaurant workers' union
- International vice president of the Hotel Employees and Restaurant Employees Union
- Chaired the founding of the Coalition of Labor Union Women in 1974