MLK: The Dignity And Worth Of Labor
AFL-CIO Convention, December 1961
Negroes are almost entirely a working people. There are pitifully few Negro millionaires, and few Negro employers. Our needs are identical with labor’s needs — decent wages, fair working conditions, livable housing, old age security, health and welfare measures, conditions in which families can grow, have education for their children and respect in the community. That is why Negroes support labor’s demands and fight laws which curb labor. That is why the labor-hater and labor-baiter is virtually always a twin-headed creature spewing anti-Negro epithets from one mouth and anti-labor propaganda from the other mouth.
AFSCME Memphis Sanitation Strike, April 3, 1968
You are demanding that this city will respect the dignity of labor. So often we overlook the work and the