Ten Things You Might Not Know About Unions-- Part 4: The Questionable Ring and From Shakespeare to Pullman Porters

6.  A Chicago union official named ANGELO INCISO was interviewed by a u.S. Senate subcommittee in the mid-1950s about why he spent $1,200 of union funds for a men's diamond ring.  here is where it gets good.

The labor boss said the ring was to reward a union ally and that it would have taken too long to get approval and that the jewelry would have gone "out of style."

He also took a union-paid "goodwill tour" overseas  This caused a senator to ask, "To whom were you spreading goodwill?"  Inciso's answer:  "Myself."

Good one Mr. Inciso.

7.  Famed African-American labor leader A. PHILLIP RANDOLPH became an actor in his early twenties and played parts in Shakespeare plays.  But when he wrote his parents that he had gotten a break in Harlem theater, his African Methodist Episcopal preacher father told him to forget it.  And he did.

Instead, Randoloph went into politics and labor activism, eventually becoming the head of the Pullman Porters union.

--Cooter