Ernest Samuel McBride Sr. (November 20, 1909 – May 5, 2007) was an African American civil rights activist and community leader based in Long Beach, California. He fought to improve the working prospects and conditions of African Americans in the shipyards, grocery stores, housing, police and fire departments in Long Beach. He was a co-founder of the Long Beach chapter of National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). Like Martin Luther King Jr., McBride employed Mahatma Gandhi's model of peaceful protest to achieve civil rights gains. He became a target of the FBI's COINTELPRO, which targeted many of the country's civil rights organizations and leaders, including Martin Luther King Jr. - most famously resulting in the FBI - King Suicide Letter. McBride's legacy is memorialized in numerous awards, historic land marking of his home, and the naming of a high school and park. Early life and education McBride was born on November 20, 1909, one of seven children of a Mississippi Delta farmer. There were no schools for black people in Mississippi so, at age 8, the family moved to Arkansas so that the children could attend school. In Little Rock, Arkansas, McBride and his siblings attended segregated schools. While still in school, he witnessed a white mob drag a black man to death behind an automobile, then set the man on fire. At the all-black Scipio A. Jones High School, McBride first learned about Mahatma Gandhi's model for peaceful protest of injustice. McBride graduated from Scipio A. Jones High School in 1930. Career McBride played briefly with the Memphis Red Sox in the Negro National League, but soon headed to California in search of better jobs and higher wages. When he arrived in Long Beach in 1930, he found the city as segregated as Little Rock. His first job there was working on an all-black crew loading cotton onto ships in San Pedro Harbor. McBride discovered that his crew was making less than the previous workers—Latinos, who had been fired after asking for raise. McBride quit the job to fight to unionize shipyard workers, regardless of race. While working at a Ralph's grocery store in 1932, McBride became a union organizer for the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO). He organized the Ralph's employees, who picketed the store until it signed an agreement with the employees. McBride served for five years on the CIO grievance committee and was