GROW. RISE. TOGETHER.
W elcome to the 73rd conven- tion of the National Asso- ciation of Letter Carriers. We have the privilege of meeting in cities with incredible labor history all over the country each convention, but Boston is the site of three impor- tant firsts in our history: the loca- tion of the first post office in what would eventually become the Unit- ed States; the city of origin of our beloved national publication, The Postal Record ; and the location of the first NALC convention after our founding in 1889. A lot has changed in the years since, but, at its core, the city represents our country’s legacy of Americans joining togeth- er to fight for a better life. Boston is, of course, known as the birthplace of the American Rev- olution. We all know the story of the Boston Tea Party, where Ameri- can colonists protested British tax- ation by dumping more than 300 chests of tea into Boston Harbor, and the legend of Paul Revere’s famous midnight ride to alert Min- utemen in surrounding towns that the British Army was approaching, leading to the battles of Lexington and Concord. But, more than a century before the start of the American Revolu- tion, a Boston tavern owned by Richard Fairbanks was designated the British colonies’ first post of- fice. On Nov. 6, 1639, the Mas- sachusetts General Court named Fairbanks’s tavern as a post of- fice for letters coming into or go- ing out of the colony to overseas posts. The tavern no longer exists (it was located at the current site of the Boston Globe building), but nearly four centuries later, our country’s postal system is still a vibrant and important part of daily life. In fact, next year we will cele- brate the 250th anniversary of the official creation of the Post Office of the United States at the Second Continental Congress. Boston is also the birthplace of The Postal Record and the site of the very first NALC convention, held Executive summary
in 1890. A year before, a group of 60 letter carriers from across the country had come together in Mil- waukee to discuss what they could accomplish by banding together, and unanimously passed a resolu- tion to establish the NALC. Around the same time, the New York Let- ter Carriers Association had also formed, but the two groups found they did not share the same phi- losophies. A primary issue both as- sociations organized around was the eight-hour workday, which was also an intense nationwide move- ment that involved an enormous number of workers in addition to letter carriers. One month before the first planned NALC convention, the two groups resolved to put aside their differences and merged their organizations into one, de- claring, “We should be co-laborers in a common cause.” It was with this spirit that 68 letter carriers at- tended the first NALC convention in August 1890. Boston carriers had already proven their dedication to the common cause, as a letter carrier by the name of Alvin G. Brown had begun a publication called The Postal Record in 1887, which re- counted the concerns of letter car- riers, but also carried material of interest to all postal workers. The journal was later purchased by an NALC national officer, who built up its subscribership while he held
Top: The Boston Tea Party Above: Benjamin Franklin
The Postal Record 17 August 2024
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