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THREE CHALLENGES TO LABOR                            JACKSON
those rank and filers and Union heads who were critical of or opposed certain aspects of American foreign policy at that time. Just as the same thing happened as many of us began to oppose the Vietnam War of recent years.
The nation witnessed the tragedy of Organized Labor becoming a house divided against itself, and the fighting capacities, particularly of the CIO, became strait-jacketed under the Taft-Hartley Law. The alliance that had been so steadily growing between Organized Labor and the Black Community, a fraternal effort based upon mutual self-interest, was thrown into confusion and temporary disarray by this assault.
These were the beginnings of the moral and political crisis which ahs reached such great depths today. Given the strain which the Truman-McCarthy period placed upon the "New Deal" coalition, the Black Community took the initiative to lead the progressive forces of the nation in resistance to this situation, for we had emerged from World War Two with determination that, like other "Third World" peoples, our time of freedom had come.
So drawing upon the strengths that we had built up over the years in the form of the Black Church on the one hand and the growing number of Black trade unionists on the other, our Movement took the initiative to see that the "Human Rights" thrust kept on building. The strength and determination of the Black Community in the face of this period of chaos and hysteria were symbolized in the leadership of Paul Robeson in the continuing struggle for Human Rights. And I am sure it's a source of great pride to this Union that one of the most militant and solid bases of support for Pual Robeson and our Movement during that period was the Packinghouse Workers in Chicago.
The birth of the National Negro Labor Council which mobilized the sisters and brothers in such places as Cincinnati, Cleveland, and Detroit was a very significant development in the struggle cementing the unity of our people which was an urgent task in those difficult days. The spiritual and moral strength of our Movement developed and extended into the South where in Birmingham, Alabama, for example, the black and white workers in the Mine, Mill and Smelter Workers Union fought pitched battles with the Ku Klux Klan and saved the life of the Union and its right to exist.
Finally, the dawn broke at Montgomery in 1955 as the Black Church gave us the giant leadership symbol of Martin Luther King,jr. In mass direct action we had found a form of struggle for turning
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