Building Bridges presents Dr. King in the fight for civil rights, labor rights and peace

WBAI Radio’s Building Bridges:

Community & Labor Report – National Edition

Produced & Hosted by Mimi Rosenberg & Ken Nash



Dr. King in the Fight for Civil Rights, Labor Rights and Peace



Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr.

Labor and the War in Vietnam

Intro by Cleveland Robinson

Chicago – Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace

November 11, 1967

Intro by Cleveland Robinson

Interview with Taylor Rogers

Past President Memphis Sanitation Workers Union

And a compilation of speeches by Dr. King at Memphis in 1968

Dr. King built bridges from the civil rights movement to other social movements uniting the protest movements for social change in the late 1960’s.

As the decade progressed the war in Vietnam grew inintensity as did the movement against it. In 1967 Dr King came out in opposition to the War joining

the massive protest movement against the War in Vietnam. Many in the civil rights movement criticized this decision. While George Meany Pres. of the

AFL-CIO actively supported the War, a number of labor unions opposed the war and met at a Labor Leadership Assembly for Peace in Chicago in November, 1967 at which King spoke.

Although Dr. King always appreciated the need for involvement of unions in the movement for civil rights, it was not till the later part of the 1960's that the

movement for economic rights became central to his vision of the struggle for social change. By 1968 he had moved his headquarters to Chicago and was

immersed in organizing a poor people's march to Washington DC. When the Nashville Sanitation workers went on strike he joined them for his last battle.

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Building Bridges is regularly broadcast over WBAI, 99.5 FM in the N.Y.C

Metropolitan area on Mondays from 7-8pm EST and streamed at http://www.2600.com/offthehook/hot2.ram

for more information email knash@igc.org