Civil rights & activism / Labor
Snow Flake Grigsby
1899–1981 · civil rights activist, postal worker and trade unionist
South Carolina-born postal worker who campaigned for five decades in Detroit for fair hiring and housing for Black residents through mass protest and community organizing.
- Born
Newberry County, South Carolina- Died
Detroit, Michigan
aged 82- Also known as
- Snow Grigsby
- Detroit years
- 1920s–1981
- Field
- Civil rights & activism, Labor
01 / The Detroit story
The Detroit story
Snow Flake Grigsby was born in Newberry County, South Carolina, in 1899, one of twelve children of farmers, and earned his high school diploma at Harbison Junior College in 1923 before joining the migration north to Detroit. He studied at the Detroit Institute of Technology and made his living as a postal employee, raising a son and a daughter with his wife, Eliza. Alongside his job he became one of the most persistent civil rights organizers in the city for about half a century. Grigsby relied on mass protest, petitions and neighborhood organizing to challenge discrimination in public jobs, utilities and housing, pressing city agencies and employers to hire Black Detroiters and to open neighborhoods and public housing to them. Active in labor circles as a trade unionist, he linked the fight for jobs to the fight for civil rights, part of a generation of Black Detroit activists whose groundwork made later victories possible. He died after a long battle with cancer at Harper Hospital in Detroit in 1981, aged 82.
Highlights
- Civil rights organizer in Detroit for about five decades
- Campaigned for fair hiring and housing through mass protest
- Worked as a Detroit postal employee
- Attended the Detroit Institute of Technology