Throughout our history, men and women have fought for a racially inclusive future, joining together to demand a more just America. Leaders like Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Dubois, and Martin Luther King Jr. looked at unions as the key to African American workers to achieve equality, knowing the labor movement could not be whole without the participation of black workers. The history of race and the working class in the United States begins with African American workers in the South. When African Americans migrated to the north, they found growing discrimination and unequal access to opportunities. In the time between World Wars I and II, businesses used ethnic differences to damage labor unity. Some unions embraced unification; others did not.
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Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged that the end of legal segregation was just one step forward in the struggle for equality, good jobs were essential to the advancement of African Americans. He believed that unions were the key to higher wages and more opportunities. In the hours after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s killing, rioting erupted all over the United States. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated just two months after King’s assassination. Days of fighting between protesters and police followed. Americans went to vote in 1968, deeply disturbed. George Wallace was a white supremacist who ran as a third-party candidate and won more than 9 million votes. Only 500,000 votes split Richard Nixon from Hubert Humphrey, but Nixon won. In an industry usually operated by white men, the management hire people that look like themselves based off of an unconscious or deliberate bias. To hire more people of color, industries have to change their practices and no longer give preference to people of certain colors. They have to encourage equal opportunity and make sure that working people can join a union to enforce labor laws and standards. To the labor force, this change could feel like a lost advantage. To a worker of color, this could look like opened doors and new opportunities. Every accomplished movement in United States history -- including the labor movement -- began when Americans rose up and fought together for a more just
Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. acknowledged that the end of legal segregation was just one step forward in the struggle for equality, good jobs were essential to the advancement of African Americans. He believed that unions were the key to higher wages and more opportunities. In the hours after Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s killing, rioting erupted all over the United States. Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated just two months after King’s assassination. Days of fighting between protesters and police followed. Americans went to vote in 1968, deeply disturbed. George Wallace was a white supremacist who ran as a third-party candidate and won more than 9 million votes. Only 500,000 votes split Richard Nixon from Hubert Humphrey, but Nixon won. In an industry usually operated by white men, the management hire people that look like themselves based off of an unconscious or deliberate bias. To hire more people of color, industries have to change their practices and no longer give preference to people of certain colors. They have to encourage equal opportunity and make sure that working people can join a union to enforce labor laws and standards. To the labor force, this change could feel like a lost advantage. To a worker of color, this could look like opened doors and new opportunities. Every accomplished movement in United States history -- including the labor movement -- began when Americans rose up and fought together for a more just