Given the corporate sponsorship of contemporary King day celebrations, it may come as a surprise that the holiday began as a union demand in contract negotiations... ... In 1968, just four days after Kings assassination, Representative John Conyers introduced a bill to make the slain leaders birthday a national holiday. The bill would likely have died in committee, and stayed buried, had it not been for thousands of working-class Americans--most of them black, but also white, Asian and Latino--who risked their jobs over the next fifteen years to demand the right to honor a man they viewed as a working-class hero.
Posted on: Fri, 17 Jan 2014 22:15:29 +0000
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015