Martin Luther King’s dream unrealized

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The militant outpouring on the streets in reaction to the acquittal of George Zimmerman, racist murderer of Tray­ von Martin, combined with a series of other recent attacks on people of color in the U.S. (such as the Supreme Court’s gutting of the Voting Rights Act) has most observers predicting a big turnout in DC on Aug. 24. The event will mark the 50th anniversary of the 1963 March on Washington, which featured Martin Luther King’s speech, “I have a dream.”

Benjamin Jealous, president of the National Association for the Advance­ ment of Colored People (NAACP), one of the main groups endorsing this year’s march, told the London Guardian that given these events, the significance of the march had “multiplied rapidly.” But Jealous added: “The reality is that large civil rights marches have in the past been heavily funded by unions. The trade-union movement has come under withering attack in recent years and its resources are fewer as a result.”

Jealous is certainly right about the vicious, and all too often effective, at­ tacks on unions—attacks that make labor’s participation on Aug. 24 all the more necessary. Thanks in part to the ferment that the civil rights move­ ment had inspired, the unions recruited heavily in the public and service sectors during the 1960s and ’70s, especially among Black and Latin@ workers. Most of those unions remain massive today, though they are under heavy assault, while unions in private industry have greatly shrunk or disappeared.

The crucial question, however, is not how much dues money or staff unions have to allocate to the march, but the political relationship of labor to today’s antiracist movement. From that per­ spective, it’s worth looking back at pre­ vious Marches on Washington.

The first, which remained only a call and never actually occurred, was that conceived by A. Philip Randolph, found­ er and head of the Brotherhood of Pull­ man Sleeping Car Porters, and was to have occurred in 1941. Randolph was a leader of the Socialist Party, i.e., he was a reformist “socialist.”

Explaining the roots of Randolph’s March On Washington Movement, Ev­ elyn Sell, in her review of Herbert Gar­ finkel’s “When Negroes March” in the International Socialist Review (Winter 1960), wrote: “Mr. Garfinkel traces the March on Washington movement from the time that the depression signs of ‘No Help Wanted’ changed to the pre-World War II signs, ‘Help Wanted—White.’ Ne­ gro leaders appealed to President Roos­ evelt … on behalf of the Negro commu­ (Left) M.L. King at 1963 March. nity, which was frozen out of the ‘ben­ efits’ of the war preparedness program. … It was at this point that Randolph is­ sued the first call for ‘An “all-out” thun­ dering march on Washington.’”

“Local March committees were set up in 18 cities, outdoor rallies were held, poster walks took place, funds solicited, MOW buttons were sold by the thou­ sands. Counter-pressures and appeals for national unity on the part of the gov­ ernment only served to encourage the March supporters in their project.”

Just one week before the March was to take place, however, Roosevelt ordered a Fair Employment Practices Commit­ tee to be set up, and Randolph called off the March. A struggle began over how to enforce the FEPC’s provisions, and the committee died after the war, throttled in a bipartisan effort.

Of course, Randolph’s insistence on his right to tell the masses when they could come into the streets was a ma­ (continued on page 10)

See pages 11 & 12 .

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SOCIALIST ACTION Tony Savino / Socialist Action

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