"All Labor Has Dignity"

November 1, 2010

A gathering of King's speeches to remind readers that his campaign for civil rights was as much about economic justice as desegregation. Editor Honey includes prepared formal lectures by King as well as his extemporaneous "Mountaintop" speech given the night before his assassination.

Copyright 2010 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 1, 2010
King was in the midst of cultivating an alliance between the civil rights movement and labor unions when he was assassinated in 1968. He was in Memphis to support a strike by black sanitation workers and was planning the Poor Peoples Campaign, advocating for jobs, unionization, and dignity for all workers. Despite the sometimes prickly relationship between African Americans and unions with members eager to protect jobs by discrimination, King made substantial inroads with many union leaders. Honey, scholar and former civil rights organizer, offers a collection of 15 of Kings speeches (12 previously unpublished) on workers rights. Drawing on archival material from the King Center for Nonviolent Social Change, Honey reforms Kings image from civil rights activist to labor activist. In speeches delivered in venues including a 1961 AFL-CIO convention in Miami and a meeting with Teamsters in New York in 1967, Kings words put into perspective the labor movement since the 1930s and its links to the civil rights movement via such similar tactics as sit-ins, boycotts, and strikes. This important collection broadens our perception of Kings vision of social justice.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)