Growing up on Chicago’s South Side, I learned at an early age the power of unions to dramatically improve the opportunities of black families in America. My grandparents were janitors in Chicago, the children of sharecroppers who fled the racist violence and oppression of the South for new opportunities in the North. They began their working lives in the 1940s when jobs did not have benefits like pensions and health care. They lived in public housing because black people could not move wherever they wanted.