Mississippi students see labor and civil rights as their social justice movement
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On the evening of March 18, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr. addressed striking sanitation workers in Memphis, and this is what he told them:
"All labor has worth. … Don't despair. Nothing worthwhile is gained without sacrifice. The thing for you to do is stay together. … Let it be known everywhere that along with wages and all of the other securities that you are struggling for, you’re also struggling for the right to be organized and be recognized."
Seventeen days later, King was assassinated on the balcony of the Lorraine Hotel in downtown Memphis.
The next year, a great leader of both the civil rights and labor movements, Brotherhood of Sleeping Car Porters founder A. Philip Randolph, had this to say: "The labor movement has been the home of the working man, and traditionally, it has been the only haven for the dispossessed; and therefore, I have tried to build an alliance between the Negro and the American labor movement."
Josh Dedmond, Monica Atkins and Tyson Jackson are wanting to build on the alliance King, Randolph and others envisioned four decades ago. They believe labor and workers' rights can be the civil rights movement of today.
That's why they and other Jackson, Miss.-area members of the newly formed Mississippi Student Justice Alliance are planning an "I Am" labor-and-civil rights conference in Jackson in late November. The conference is named after the "I Am A Man" sign sanitation workers carried in Memphis. The Jackson conference will feature veterans of that 1968 strike.
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http://www.southernstudies.org/2012/11/mississippi-students-see-labor-and-civil-rights-as-their-social-justice-movement.html
