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THREE CHALLENGES TO ORGANIZED LABOR

JESSE L. JACKSON

FRIENDS, brothers and sisters, delegates to this historic Convention of the Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butchers Workmen of North America, AFL-CIO. It is always good for me to share the fellowship of those who have been in Freedom's battles with us over the years as the many members of this distinguished Union have been. 
The years ahead, of course, confront us with unprecedented challenges because of the nature of the national crisis in our country which has not yet fully matured. Yet the forces which you represent in the history of our country, the forces of Organized labor and the Black Community have a long history of battling for survival and improvement in conditions, which prepares us in a very special way for the tasks we face today.
Gathered here in this Deep-South city, in a former confederate state, we are reminded that a hundred years ago in 1872 the forces of Labor and the Black Community were at that time mobilizing, regrouping, and developing to deal with the special problems with had arisen out of the Civil War. At that time the new born "National Labor Union" under William Sylvis and Isaac Meyers was beginning to pull together the forces that would fight for the eight-hour day and the dignity of the working people. And central to their responsibility at that time was the struggle to keep alive the Reconstruction effort which Afro-Americans were leading; an effort to reconstruct southern government, abolish the remnants of slavery, build a public school system, free to all children, and establish the right of women to serve on juries and receive their own pay checks for their work. 
That year, 1872, was a high watermark in the number of Black and poor elected to office in the South. The history of this last hundred years has become generally well-known to us for we have been

[[footnote]]
Rev. Jesse L. Jackson is the nationally known Freedom Fighter, who was formerly National Director of Operation Breadbasket, the economic arm of SCLC. He is now President of Operation PUSH, a civil economics organization, with headquarters in Chicago. 

The basis for this article was Rev. Jackson's keynote address delivered to a Union Convention in Florida, August 9, 1972.
[[/footnote]]

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