Even several years into her second century, Mary Pullins would march up to the front of the crowd at steelworker union events and rouse the crowd with a little dance.
During her 25-year career at a South Side steel mill decades earlier, Mrs. Pullins dealt with often racist policies but took no guff from management.
A white foreman once referred to her as “Sister,” and she was quick to set him straight.
“My daddy never told me I had a brother who looked like you,” she told the man, according to her family.
Mrs. Pullins, 108, died of heart failure Friday, May 21, at her longtime home in Chicago’s Chatham neighborhood, said her great-grandson Richard Pegue III.
She grew up Mary Sykes on her uncle’s farm in Mississippi and had her only son when she was 20. A local lynching prompted her to look north for better opportunity, and she left her baby with her mother until she could establish herself in Chicago, Pegue said.
Though not a big woman, she worked loading and shoving around heavy carts in the freight tunnels that run beneath downtown Chicago. In 1941, she started her career at Carnegie Steel on the South Side.
Her son, Richard Pegue, became a Chicago Park District police officer and was shot and killed while on duty in 1946. His son, also named Richard Pegue, went on to become a well-known Chicago disc jockey.
In Chicago, she married Samuel Pullins, a valet and steelworker active in his union. The couple settled in a two-flat. Her younger brother and his large family moved in to the second floor after she hit the winning numbers in a neighborhood policy game — a popular if illicit forerunner of the lottery — and was able to bring them up from the South.
Starting as a swing grinder, rolling stainless steel at the steel mill, she took classes to serve as a union counselor, helping families in need. She was a successful recruiter of new members and remained dedicated to the union cause long after her retirement.
At meetings of the Steelworkers Organization of Active Retirees and events like the commemoration of the 1937 Memorial Day Massacre, when 10 demonstrators were shot and killed during a strike, Mrs. Pullins inspired the crowd when she came to the front to spryly dance and say a few words, said Les Orear, president emeritus of the Illinois Labor History Society.
“They loved her because of her strong support of unions,” said Beatrice Lumpkin, a veteran activist whose late husband, Frank, became a union movement legend by leading the fight for steelworkers laid off by Wisconsin Steel in 1980.
More Top Picks Best Aed Units For Cardiac Patients At Home
Mrs. Pullins sang at the National Convention of Gospel Choirs and Choruses staged by Thomas Dorsey and was a longtime member of Christ Universal Temple, her family said.
“When she came to Chicago, she didn’t know a soul. She did all that on her own,” Lumpkin said, marveling at Mrs. Pullins’ long and busy life — as well as her still nimble intellect as she passed 100 years.
“I was flabbergasted. She memorized my phone number!” Lumpkin said. “And it’s not like she called me every day.”
Only a couple months ago, Mrs. Pullins called a friend who she knew liked her oxtail soup.
“She told him to come over and get a couple quarts,” Lumpkin said.
Samuel Pullins died in 1981.
She is survived by two other great-grandchildren.
Visitation is set for 3 to 7 p.m. Thursday, as well as for one hour before 11 a.m. services Friday, at Carter Funeral Chapels, 2100 E. 75th St.