AFM’s Last Black Local: Local 274 Remembered by Philly Musicians

February 1, 2025

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Recently, Local 77 (Philadelphia, PA) announced an initiative to recognize the charter of former Local 274, which was founded by Black jazz musicians in 1935. The local thrived in Philadelphia until 1971, when it lost its charter for refusing to merge with Local 77.

Aside from its work of ensuring all musicians are treated equally and feel welcomed, the Local 77 Inclusion, Diversity, Equity, Access, and Solidarity (IDEAS) Council, led by chair Laura Munich, is determined to ensure this history is corrected. This spring, the membership of Local 77 will vote on the adoption of 274 as part of Local 77’s official name. It’s a symbolic gesture that’s more than 50 years overdue.

During the early 20th century, more than 50 Black AFM locals were established alongside their white counterparts in cities large and small. This was mainly because the white locals had made it difficult or impossible for Black musicians to join.

This was true of Local 77, which only admitted musicians who performed Euro-centric classical music. Racial discrimination and segregation was rife in Philadelphia and the labor industry. Some venues refused to hire Black musicians, and certain venues were reserved for white musicians only.

Chartered in 1935, Local 274’s mission was predominantly to break down socially constructed barriers that denied people of color opportunities in the Philadelphia music industry. Its musicians wanted more and better opportunities.

During the Civil Rights Movement, the AFM set a March 4, 1964, deadline for integrating all locals. That deadline came and went as the mergers slowly progressed. The mergers resulted in hyphenated designations: Local 10-208 (Chicago, IL), Local 65-699 (Houston, TX), etc. Local 274 was the last so-called “Black” union to exist, and lost its charter for refusing to integrate.

Though founded as Philadelphia’s Black musicians’ protective union, it was not an exclusively Black union or segregated. It provided membership to musicians of all races who performed all types of music—jazz, big band, and blues—in clubs, theaters, cafés, ballrooms, and hotels throughout the city.

For Munich, her family’s association with the AFM goes way back. Her father was a lifelong member of Local 77. However, she did not join the union until 2020, though she’s been a professional pianist and vocalist for most of her life. As a freelance musician who did not work under a collective bargaining agreement (CBA), she waswrongly told that she was ineligible to join the union.

She joined during the COVID quarantine, when she wanted to connect with others and support musicians who were suddenly unable to work. She reached out to a longtime friend, Jarred Antonacci, who is also secretary-treasurer of Local 77.

When he told her about the local’s online music festival to raise funds, she wanted to help. “Once I became involved in this fundraising effort, it became clear that this was something I wanted to be a part of,” she said, but she still had doubts. “I didn’t see much minority presence in the local’s leadership and I didn’t see much outreach to the jazz community.”

It became her goal to excavate the history relating to the local’s lack of diversity, and educate the members and people in the Philadelphia music scene. Together with Local 77 Vice President Marjorie Goldberg and other board members and musicians, she helped form the local’s first IDEAS Council.

After the murder of George Floyd, the council hardened its resolve. Goldberg says their first mission was to ensure musicians were protected. While a few of the orchestras were connected to the Sphinx Organization, many were decades behind in terms of diversity and they needed to fix it. “Work also involved protecting Black musicians from becoming tokenized by employers who were using them to get funding,” she says.

“And then, we ended up talking about what’s going on in specific workplaces,” says Goldberg. “Laura helped one of the musicians spearhead an orchestra-specific diversity committee because they felt management was biased.” That work included pushing the orchestra to perform works other than those from white European composers.

Among the IDEAS Council’s priorities are ensuring all musicians feel welcome in the local and adding CBA language protecting musicians from all types of discrimination. “Laura’s involvement with the local and talking to the musicians as a biracial woman in the music industry, who is not an orchestral musician, is invaluable,” says Goldberg.

“Everybody knows that a diverse workplace is a better workplace,” she says. “Today, all new CBAs have anti-discrimination and anti-harassment language. Every new contract the local bargains addresses requests made by the Black Orchestra Network and Sphinx, and incorporates NAAS [National Alliance for Audition Support] guidelines.”

With new audition processes working and managements behaving, it was time to turn the IDEAS Council back to a deep self-reflection and addressing Local 77’s troubled past. “The wrongs of racial segregation and institutionalized racism were baked into our union,” says Munich, whose family history is also deeply interwoven with the desegregation story. Her great uncle, Black jazz pianist Ernest Vincent “E.V.” Lewis, was appointed a special assistant to the AFM president and tasked with encouraging mergers among locals around the country.

Because Local 274 was not actually segregated, the argument about forcing a merger with Local 77 doesn’t hold true. The musicians of Local 274 had many reasons for refusing to merge. They had considerable resources and had seen the dire results of other mergers. Black locals that had merged were promised better access and opportunities that really didn’t pan out, and their treasuries and real estate had become property of the larger white local they merged into. “They did not want to relinquish their self-determination,” says Munich.

While incorporating 274 into Local 77’s name is a small gesture, it is important to recognizing the history of a proud and successful Philadelphia local.

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