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Summary
Summary
An unprecedented and timely collection of Dr. King's speeches on labor rights and economic justice
People forget that Dr. King was every bit as committed to economic justice as he was to ending racial segregation. He fought throughout his life to connect the labor and civil rights movements, envisioning them as twin pillars for social reform. As we struggle with massive unemployment, a staggering racial wealth gap, and the near collapse of a financial system that puts profits before people, King's prophetic writings and speeches underscore his relevance for today. They help us imagine King anew- as a human rights leader whose commitment to unions and an end to poverty was a crucial part of his civil rights agenda.
Covering all the civil rights movement highlights-Montgomery, Albany, Birmingham, Selma, Chicago, and Memphis-award-winning historian Michael K. Honey introduces and traces King's dream of economic equality. Gathered in one volume for the first time, the majority of these speeches will be new to most readers. The collection begins with King's lectures to unions in the 1960s and includes his addresses during his Poor People's Campaign, culminating with his momentous "Mountaintop" speech, delivered in support of striking black sanitation workers in Memphis. Unprecedented and timely, "All Labor Has Dignity" will more fully restore our understanding of King's lasting vision of economic justice, bringing his demand for equality right into the present.
Author Notes
Martin Luther King, Jr. was born on January 15, 1929 into a middle-class black family in Atlanta, Georgia. He received a degree from Morehouse College. While there his early concerns for social justice for African Americans were deepened by reading Henry David Thoreau's essay "Civil Disobedience." He enrolled in Crozer Theological Seminary and there became acquainted with the Social Gospel movement and the works of its chief spokesman, Walter Rauschenbusch. Mohandas Gandhi's practice of nonviolent resistance (ahimsaahimsa) later became a tactic for transforming love into social change.
After seminary, he postponed his ministry vocation by first earning a doctorate at Boston University School of Theology. There he discovered the works of Reinhold Niebuhr and was especially struck by Niebuhr's insistence that the powerless must somehow gain power if they are to achieve what is theirs by right. In the Montgomery bus boycott, it was by economic clout that African Americans broke down the walls separating the races, for without African American riders, the city's transportation system nearly collapsed.
The bus boycott took place in 1954, the year King and his bride, Coretta Scott, went to Montgomery, where he had been called to serve as pastor of the Dexter Avenue Baptist Church. Following the boycott, he founded the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC) to coordinate civil rights organizations. Working through African American churches, activists led demonstrations all over the South and drew attention, through television and newspaper reports, to the fact that nonviolent demonstrations by blacks were being suppressed violently by white police and state troopers. The federal government was finally forced to intervene and pass legislation protecting the right of African Americans to vote and desegregating public accommodations. For his nonviolent activism, King received the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964.
While organizing a "poor people's campaign" to persuade Congress to take action against poverty, King accepted an invitation to visit Memphis, Tennessee, where sanitation workers were on strike. There, on April 4, 1968, he was gunned down while standing on the balcony of his hotel.
(Bowker Author Biography)
Reviews (3)
Booklist Review
King was in the midst of cultivating an alliance between the civil rights movement and labor unions when he was assassinated in 1968. He was in Memphis to support a strike by black sanitation workers and was planning the Poor People's Campaign, advocating for jobs, unionization, and dignity for all workers. Despite the sometimes prickly relationship between African Americans and unions with members eager to protect jobs by discrimination, King made substantial inroads with many union leaders. Honey, scholar and former civil rights organizer, offers a collection of 15 of King's speeches (12 previously unpublished) on workers' rights. Drawing on archival material from the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Honey reforms King's image from civil rights activist to labor activist. In speeches delivered in venues including a 1961 AFL-CIO convention in Miami and a meeting with Teamsters in New York in 1967, King's words put into perspective the labor movement since the 1930s and its links to the civil rights movement via such similar tactics as sit-ins, boycotts, and strikes. This important collection broadens our perception of King's vision of social justice.--Bush, Vanessa Copyright 2010 Booklist
Choice Review
From a 21st-century view, Martin Luther King's most memorable achievements have been reduced to bites from his "I Have a Dream" speech and leadership of the Montgomery bus boycott. Honey (Univ. of Washington, Tacoma), a distinguished African American history and labor scholar, has compiled this essential collection of 15 speeches and one non-speech document, previously unpublished in book form, which highlights King's importance as a labor activist. King was always a champion for labor rights and economic justice, and this volume illustrates that dimension of his leadership. Preceding each carefully transcribed speech, a brief essay by Honey puts King's words into context. Further, the book comes with a CD containing two of the speeches, which greatly assists the reader in "hearing" texts of material originally prepared for oral delivery. The material was retrieved from the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change and presents speeches given in a variety of venues, ranging from a talk at a UAW dinner (1981) to an address to New York City Teamsters (1967) and to the final "All Labor Has Dignity" speech delivered to AFSCME in Memphis on April 3, 1968. These important, historic documents continue to call people to action. Summing Up: Highly recommended. All academic, general, and professional readers. D. W. Bilal Purdue University
Library Journal Review
A gathering of King's speeches to remind readers that his campaign for civil rights was as much about economic justice as desegregation. Editor Honey includes prepared formal lectures by King as well as his extemporaneous "Mountaintop" speech given the night before his assassination. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Excerpts
Excerpts
National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace Chicago, Illinois, November 11, 1967 Mr. Chairman, distinguished guests, my brothers and sisters of the labor movement, ladies and gentlemen. I need not pause to say how very delighted I am to be here this afternoon and to be some little part of this extremely significant assembly. . . . I don't feel that I come among strangers today for I feel that I'm an honorary member of many labor unions all across the country. (Applause) In fact, I think Cleve Robinson and Dave Livingston of District 65 in New York made me an honorary member a long time ago and I've been a 65er a long time. . . . I want to try to talk very honestly and frankly about this great problem, this great issue that we face as a result of the war in Vietnam. Some of my words may appear to be rather harsh, but they will be as harsh as truth and as gentle as a nonviolent devotee would be. (Laughter) I want to use as a subject "The Domestic Impact of the War in America." This question is historic because it is an authentic expression of the conscience of the labor movement. As has been said already this afternoon, tens of millions of Americans oppose the war in Vietnam. Never in our history has there been such a passionate, popular resistance to a current war. In addition to the millions upon millions of ordinary people, eminent scholars, distinguished senators, journalists, businessmen, professionals, students, and political leaders at all levels have protested the war and offered alternatives with an amazing tenacity and boldness. But one voice was missing--the loud, clear voice of labor. The absence of that one voice was all the more tragic because it may be the decisive one for tipping the balance toward peace. Labor has been missing. For too long the moral appeal has been flickering, not shining as it did in its dynamic days of growth. This conference, a united expression of varied branches of labor, reaffirms that the trade union movement is part of forward-looking America. (Applause) That no matter what the formal resolutions of higher bodies may be, the troubled conscience of the working people cannot be stilled. This conference speaks for millions. You here today will long be remembered as those who had the courage to speak out and the wisdom to be right. It is noteworthy that the Labor Party of Great Britain, which, of course, has no responsibility for our actions, nonetheless went on record on October 4 in a formal national resolution calling upon its Labor government to dissociate itself completely from U.S. policy in Vietnam. (Applause) It urged its government to persuade the United States to end the bombing of North Vietnam immediately, permanently, and unconditionally. Now what are some of the domestic consequences of the war in Vietnam? It has made the Great Society a myth and replaced it with a troubled and confused society. The war has strengthened domestic reaction. It has given the extreme right, the anti-labor, anti-Negro, and antihumanistic forces a weapon of spurious patriotism to galvanize its supporters into reaching for power, right up to the White House. It hopes to use national frustration to take control and restore the America of social insecurity and power for the privileged. When a Hollywood performer, lacking distinction even as an actor [Ronald Reagan], can become a leading war-hawk candidate for the presidency, only the irrationalities induced by a war psychosis can explain such a melancholy turn of events. (Applause) The war in Vietnam has produced a shameful order of priorities in which the decay, squalor, and pollution of the cities are neglected. And even though 70 percent of our population now lives in them, the war has smothered and nearly extinguished the beginnings of progress toward racial justice. The war has created the bizarre spectacle of armed forces of the United States fighting in ghetto streets in America while they are fighting in jungles in Asia. The war has so increased Negro frustration and despair that urban outbreaks are now an ugly feature of the American scene. How can the administration, with quivering anger, denounce the violence of ghetto Negroes when it has given an example of violence in Asia that shocks the world? (Applause) Excerpted from All Labor Has Dignity: On Labor Rights and Economic Justice by Martin Luther King All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.
Table of Contents
| Introduction | p. xiii |
| Editor's Note | p. xxxvii |
| Part I Forging a Civil Rights-Labor Alliance in the Shadow of the Cold War | |
| Chapter I "A look to the future" | p. 3 |
| Twenty-fifth Anniversary of the Highlander Folk School, Monteagle, Tennessee, September 2, 1957 | |
| Chapter II "It is a dark day indeed when men cannot work to implement the ideal of brotherhood without being labeled communist." | p. 19 |
| Statement of Martin Luther King and the Southern Christian Leadership Conference in defense of the United Packinghouse Workers Union of America, Atlanta, Georgia, June 11, 1959 | |
| Chapter III "We, the Negro people and labor... inevitably will sow the seeds of liberalism." | p. 23 |
| Twenty-fifth Anniversary Dinner, United Automobile Workers Union, Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan, April 27, 1961 | |
| Chapter IV If the Negro Wins, Labor Wins | p. 31 |
| AFL-CIO Fourth Constitutional Convention, Americana Hotel, Miami Beach, Florida, December 11, 1961 | |
| Chapter V "I am in one of those houses of labor to which I come not to criticize, but to praise." | p. 47 |
| Thirteenth Convention, United Packinghouse Workers Union of America, Minneapolis, Minnesota, May 21, 1962 | |
| Chapter VI "There are three major social evils...the evil of war, the evil of economic injustice, and the evil of racial injustice." | p. 55 |
| District 65 Convention, Retail, Wholesale and Department Store Union (RWDSU), Laurels Country Club, Monticello, New York, September 8, 1962 | |
| Chapter VII Industry knows only two types of workers who in years past, were brought frequently to their jobs in chains." | p. 65 |
| Twenty-fifth Anniversary Dinner, National Maritime Union, Americana Hotel, New York City, October 13, 1962 | |
| Chapter VIII "Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy." | |
| Detroit March for Civil Rights, Cobo Hall, Detroit, Michigan, June 23, 1963 | |
| Chapter IX "The unresolved race question" | p. 87 |
| Thirtieth Anniversary of District 65, RWDSU, Madison Square Garden, New York City, October 23, 1963 | |
| Part II Standing at the Crossroads: Race, Labor, War, and Poverty | |
| Chapter X "The explosion in Watts reminded us all that the northern ghettos are the prisons of forgotten men." | p. 103 |
| District 65, RWDSU, New York City, September 18, 1965 | |
| Chapter XI "Labor cannot stand still long or it will slip backward." | p. 111 |
| Illinois State Convention AFL-CIO, Springfield, Illinois, October 7, 1965 | |
| Chapter XII Civil Rights at the Crossroads | p. 121 |
| Shop Stewards of Local 815, Teamsters, and the Allied Trades Council, Americana Hotel, New York City, May 2, 1967 | |
| Chapter XIII Domestic Impact of the War in Vietnam | p. 137 |
| National Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace, Chicago, Illinois, November 11, 1967 | |
| Part III Down Jericho Road: The Poor People's Campaign and Memphis Strike | |
| Chapter XIV "The other America" | p. 153 |
| Local 1199 Salute to Freedom, Hunter College, New York City, March 10, 1968 | |
| Chapter XV "All labor has dignity." | p. 167 |
| American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees (AFSCME) mass meeting, Memphis Sanitation Strike, Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Church of God in Christ, Memphis, Tennessee, March 18, 1968 | |
| Chapter XVI To the Mountaintop: "Let us develop a kind of dangerous unselfishness." | p. 179 |
| AFSCME mass meeting, Memphis Sanitation Strike, Bishop Charles Mason Temple, Church of God in Christ, Memphis, Tennessee, April 3, 1968 | |
| Epilogue: King and Labor | p. 197 |
| Appendix: A Note on the Speeches | p. 201 |
| Acknowledgments | p. 207 |
| Index | p. 209 |
