Prior to joining FMCS, Bill Abner’s work as a union official in Chicago prepared him well for his role as Special Assistant to the FMCS Director. A book on former UAW president Walter Reuther made this reference to Abner:
“He was perhaps the union equivalent of a Rhodes scholar. Bill Abner, thirty-nine years old in 1959, was a Chicago born black who had organized thousands during the war in several South Side foundries and small manufacturing plants. A law school graduate, he was an adept and forceful speaker who clashed repeatedly with Communist-orientated blacks in the Cook County Industrial Union Council and the Chicago branch of the NAACP, of which he had been president in the early 1950’s. In 1962 he took on Malcolm X before a University of Chicago audience and, according to most observers, got the better of the black-nationalist in open debate.” (Walter Reuther by Nelson Lichtenstein, 1995)
The 1960s were the hay day of collective bargaining with numerous strikes and high visibility disputes. As an African-American, Abner played a key role in a number of major disputes including some in the South at a time when black faces were not seen in authoritative positions at the bargaining table.
When I asked him how he managed to successfully mediate with racially bigoted southern parties, he suggested an interesting theory based on what he believed to be the parties’ capacity for self-delusion. Here’s his theory:
— The parties needed a settlement, having failed to achieve one in direct bargaining and with a local FMCS mediator’s help.
— The National Director of FMCS had sent me to help them, and no other choice was offered.
— Therefore, to overcome their typical reaction to a black, they choose to identify this black (me) as positively different from any black they had ever known. In this view, I was not just a good mediator, I was exceptional. I was better than any other mediator.
— As a result of this self-delusion, Abner believed the parties credited him with exceptional skill, and inappropriately greeted his ordinary actions and suggestions with great respect and deference, and thus they gave him more impact on their settlement than he felt he deserved.
Abner’s reflections on this phenomenon seemed to me a combination of amusement and amazement. He was a very humble and honest man.
In 1969, Abner left FMCS to become Director of the National Center for Dispute Settlement (NCDS), a nonprofit created in response to the Kerner Commission Report following the major civil rights violence of the 1960s. The primary purpose of NCDS was to promote peaceful dispute settlement by using negotiations, mediation and arbitration. I worked at NCDS for two years in 1969-70 as Bill’s Assistant Director.
Abner hired me seeking a white mediator to team with him in cases where a black and white team would be helpful. Although many FMCS mediators had more experience than me, Abner knew about my interest in civil rights based on my two published articles on civil rights conflict resolution, which he told me he had seen as Special Assistant in the Director’s office.