Civil & Human Rights

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Kathleen Geier wrote an important post at the Political Animal blog about the forgotten history of the Civil Rights Movement. After all, the March on Washington was The March on Washington was a march for “Jobs and Freedom” (excerpts):

Americans remember the march as an historic step forward in the
battle for civil rights. But feel-good media celebrations of the march,
and the civil rights era in general, often focus on the less
controversial parts of the civil rights project: equal accommodations
and the like. What they leave out is the more radical, still unfinished
business of Dr. King’s and the civil rights movement’s agenda: the part
that involved, in the words of Harold Meyerson, “massive structural changes to the economy.”

Meyerson has a wonderful piece
in The American Prospect this week about the economic progressives who
helped plan the March on Washington. Among them were activists Bayard
Rustin and Ella Baker and labor leader A. Philip Randolph. Like MLK
himself, they were democratic socialists. As Meyerson notes, as early as
1962, democratic socialist and writer Michael Harrington was worried
about “the declining number of African Americans in manufacturing jobs.”
He believed that ensuring the government’s commitment to full
employment was crucial. Activists such as A. Philip Randolph raised
similar concerns. Meyerson picks up the story:

An organization that Randolph chaired, the Negro
American Labor Council, began discussing what action it could take to
address the plight of urban black workers in 1961. Rustin started taking
soundings for some kind of national demonstration in 1962, and in
December of that year, he and Randolph began talking about a march on
Washington. Randolph asked Rustin to write a prospectus for such a
march, and with Kahn and Norman Hill, an African American socialist
activist, he co-authored a paper calling for an “Emancipation March for
Jobs” that he presented to Randolph in January 1963 (the 100th
anniversary of the Emancipation Proclamation).

Ultimately, the focus of the march expanded beyond economic
rights to include civil rights and voting rights. But economic rights
remained an important feature of the march and a linchpin of the civil
rights struggle in the years ahead.

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

From the Washington Post, Transcript of Obama’s speech (excerpts):

Because they marched, America became more free and more fair, not
just for African-Americans but for women and Latinos, Asians and Native
Americans, for Catholics, Jews and Muslims, for gays, for Americans with
disabilities.

America changed for you and for me.

And the
entire world drew strength from that example, whether it be young people
who watched from the other side of an Iron Curtain and would eventually
tear down that wall, or the young people inside South Africa who would
eventually end the scourge of apartheid. (Applause.) Those are the
victories they won, with iron wills and hope in their hearts. That is
the transformation that they wrought with each step of their well-worn
shoes. That's the depth that I and millions of Americans owe those
maids, those laborers, those porters, those secretaries — folks who
could have run a company, maybe, if they had ever had a chance; those
white students who put themselves in harm's way even though they didn't
have to — (applause) — those Japanese- Americans who recalled their
own interment, those Jewish Americans who had survived the Holocaust,
people who could have given up and given in but kept on keeping on,
knowing that weeping may endure for a night, but joy cometh in the
morning — (cheers, applause) — on the battlefield of justice, men and
women without rank or wealth or title or fame would liberate us all, in
ways that our children now take for granted as people of all colors and
creeds live together and learn together and walk together, and fight
alongside one another and love one another, and judge one another by the
content of our character in this greatest nation on Earth.

To
dismiss the magnitude of this progress, to suggest, as some sometimes
do, that little has changed — that dishonors the courage and the
sacrifice of those who paid the price to march in those years.
(Applause.) Medgar Evers, James Chaney, Andrew Goodman, Michael
Schwerner, Martin Luther King Jr., they did not die in vain. (Applause.)
Their victory was great.

(Video below the fold.)

By Tom Prezelski

Re-blogged from Rum, Romanism and Rebellion

In retrospect, inducting Martin Luther King Jr. into the Pantheon of
American Heroes may have been a mistake and a disservice to what he
fought for.

Back during the late 1980s and early 1990s, one of the
big arguments here in Arizona was about the Martin Luther King Holiday.
It was debated on the floor of the legislature, was an issue in
political campaigns, and prompted marches and public demonstrations
across the state. Everybody in public life, even Alice Cooper, was asked
their opinion about the issue.

Opposition to the holiday was an
article of faith on the right. Their argument was that King was a
radical left winger, perhaps even a socialist, and a figure this
controversial was not the sort of person who should be honored with a
holiday.

The response of holiday supporters was to say that this
was laughable bunk. King was no radical, they said, just a very nice man
who wanted everyone to hold hands and sing, or something like that.