Claude Burfect reflects on a life of activism

February 23, 2025

MLK Labor spoke with retired WFSE Local 341 leader Claude Burfect about his lifelong activism, spanning civil rights to the labor movement.

Growing up in the Jim Crow South

Claude Burfect was born in New Orleans, Louisiana in 1942, deep in the heart of the Jim Crow era. His father died before his second birthday, leaving his mother to work multiple jobs cleaning houses to raise him and his three siblings.

Despite the segregation and injustice surrounding him, Burfect has fond memories of his early life in Louisiana. His close-knit family and community provided a foundation of support and belonging.

A Speech That Inspired a Life of Activism

At 15, Burfect attended a speech by NAACP President Roy Wilkins at Dillard University. Inspired, he embarked on a 70-year journey of activism. “My eyes were opened to the injustices around me,” Burfect recalls. “After hearing Roy Wilkins’ speech, I joined the NAACP and began organizing in my community.”

In addition to the NAACP, he organized with the Congress of Racial Equality (CORE) and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee (SNCC), participating in marches, rallies, and sit-ins.  He took part in Freedom Rides alongside iconic civil rights leader John Lewis.

In 1963, his uncle Percy Murphy Griffin and Attorney Earl Amadee, both civil rights activists in Louisiana, worked with Reverend Joseph Vaughn of Saint Marks Missionary Baptist Church to send Burfect and members of his church to Martin Luther King Jr.’s March on Washington.

During these years of activism, Burfect was beaten by police multiple times, including one instance where a police baton fractured his skull. He knew of the lynching of friends and fellow activists who spoke out against racism and segregation.

Finding a New Life in Washington State

After graduating college in 1964, Burfect was drafted into the Vietnam War. While en route to an Army training base in Georgia, his mixed-race contingent stopped at a segregated restaurant that refused to seat him and other Black servicemembers indoors. In solidarity, the entire group refused to eat at the restaurant.

After serving for two years, he was discharged from the Army at Fort Lewis in Washington State. In his early 20s, far from home, he chose to stay in the Pacific Northwest, drawn by its economic opportunities. He took a unionized job at Boeing and signed his IAM District 751 union card on his first day.

The equal treatment guaranteed by his union contract was life-changing, and he soon became a shop steward. “The union allowed me to use my passion for helping others. I was able to support workers of all colors and ensure they were treated equally,” Burfect says. “If I had returned to the South, where unions were much weaker, I wouldn’t have been able to do this.”

From Civil Rights Activist to Union Leader

By the 1970s, the United States was rapidly changing. Burfect was building a new life in Seattle but remained motivated by the grave injustices he experienced a decade earlier. He saw an opportunity to continue fighting for racial equality through union activism.

He took a job teaching Math and Language Arts at Madrona Middle School in Seattle, joining the Seattle Education Association, and then became a political reporter for the Seattle Times in Olympia. There, he joined the Newspaper Guild and founded a Black Caucus to increase diversity at the Times.

Burfect took a job working for Washington State in the 1990s where he stayed until his retirement in 2013. During this time, he became active in his union, WFSE/AFSCME Local 341, serving as Local President for 12 years and briefly as a Union Representative.

“My guiding principle as a union activist was that I wanted to see things get better for everybody,” he notes. “Having a union gave me opportunities I never would have had. I want others to experience what I did.”

In addition to his work with WFSE, Burfect has been active with the Seattle King County NAACP, where he served as First Vice President, and the Coalition of Black Trade Unionists (CBTU) Puget Sound Chapter. He continues to serve on the MLK Labor Executive Board.

Bridging the Divide

Despite a lifetime of activism, Burfect remains committed to improving the world. “We still have a lot of work to do, even within the labor movement,” he notes. “Our unions are splintered along the same lines as our country. We need to bridge that divide.”