All Labor Has Dignity by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

All Labor Has Dignity by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr

Author:Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 2010-10-15T00:00:00+00:00


CHAPTER IX

“The unresolved race question”

For a year leading up to the one-hundredth anniversary, in 1963, of President Abraham Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation freeing of the slaves, King campaigned to get President John F. Kennedy to declare a second Emancipation Proclamation and issue an executive order enforcing civil rights and voting rights. Fearful of segregationist southern Democrats and northern Republicans who controlled committees of Congress and threatened to filibuster any progressive legislation, Kennedy did nothing until King and others organized a mass movement in Birmingham, Alabama, that triggered desegregation struggles throughout the South and led to the hugely effective March on Washington. Those events forced Kennedy to demand a civil rights law.

King in his previous speech at District 65 had promised to attend its thirtieth annual convention on the understanding that it would also use that occasion to celebrate the Emancipation Proclamation. District 65 secretary-treasurer Cleveland Robinson had handled much financing and organizing for the March on Washington and remained one of King’s closest labor advisors. Up to twenty thousand people appeared on October 23 at Madison Square Garden in New York City, as did the Mayor Robert Wagner, all celebrating the thirtieth anniversary of the union and the one-hundredth anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation. This massive event created huge excitement and contributed to raising $100,000 for a Freedom Fund that it created through repeated contributions by union members, one dollar at a time.

This speech followed not only the immense success of the March on Washington but also the murder of Medgar Evers in the summer and then the horrendous bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church that killed four girls in Birmingham. King told the New York Times that mass rallies and organizing set off by the Birmingham movement and the March on Washington had infused African Americans in the North with a new militancy but had also raised violent resentments among some whites. One of his most ardent supporters in the North remained District 65, which consisted largely of African Americans and Puerto Ricans led by veterans of New York City’s old labor left. Cleveland Robinson served on the SCLC board and would continue to push labor issues there throughout the 1960s. He also helped to organize a ticker-tape parade for King when he returned from Oslo, Norway, after receiving the Nobel Peace Prize in December 1964.

This speech is drawn from a transcript in the King files in Atlanta supplemented by a District 65 recording issued as an album to union members. King begins the speech in a quiet and sober way but builds up to the kind of crescendo for which he was so well known.



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