Martin Luther King Jr. — Visionary and Trade Unionist

[Omaha Steve]

In the last few years I have learned so much about Dr. King. I had blinders on for years. I have no excuse. I thank labor for opening my eyes. I have seen the promised land too.

OS


by James Parks, Jan 18, 2008

We all know that Martin Luther King Jr. was a visionary. We know he was a champion for civil rights. But did you know that he also was a strong supporter of unions and workers’ rights from Day One?

As AFL-CIO Organizing Director Stewart Acuff said last year, speaking before the Electrical Workers:

I would submit to you that Dr. King was a trade unionist. He believed in our movement and struggled for our movement. He knew and he preached that civil rights were inadequate without economic rights. Dr. King knew that our economic system allows a few to have too much power and wealth and workers to have too little, so he believed that we have a responsibility to struggle to push down wealth and power from those who have too much to those who have too little. That is why he was a trade unionist. His last great campaign was the Poor People’s Campaign to organize America’s poor to fight for economic justice and dignity.

Click here to read excerpts from Acuff’s speech.

http://link.brightcove.com/services/player/bcpid1378314715?bctid=1373284584


In 1961, King explained his belief that the civil rights and union movements were linked. Speaking before the AFL-CIO Convention that year, he said:

The two most dynamic and cohesive liberal forces in the country are the labor movement and the Negro freedom movement…Together we can bring about the day when there will be no separate identification of Negroes and labor.

Four years later, he told the Illinois AFL-CIO convention:

Negroes in the United States read the history of labor and find it mirrors their own experience. We are confronted by powerful forces telling us to rely on the goodwill and understanding of those who profit by exploiting us. They deplore our discontent, they resent our will to organize, so that we may guarantee that humanity will prevail and equality will be exacted.

And in 1967, one year before he died, King wrote in his book, Where Do We Go From Here: Chaos or Community? that unions are just as important as business in ensuring economic success for people of color:

Our young people need to think of union careers as earnestly as they do business careers and professions.

FULL story at link.